Never getting to know each other.

My true love is on a diet. A questionable diet, in my opinion. It’s a masochistic diet. A punishing diet. Because it’s so limiting. In choice of foods. I guess it’s recommended by her doctor. A specialist. In thyroid disorders. Not necessarily diets. A doctor she visits twice a year. In Rome. I’ve never met the doctor. But I don’t trust him. I keep imagining him as a quack. Or a charlatan. But my true love has faith and confidence in him. Maybe naïve trust. I don’t. The trouble with too many doctors: They don’t get to know their patients. And patients don’t get to know them. They spend so very little time with each other. A 5-minute chat here. A 15-minute conference there. At the most. My true love went to her local physician yesterday. And took a number. Waited almost 3 hours to see him. And then she had a less-than-10-minute consultation. One might say this is an indictment of the Italian health care system. But hey, I’ve had similar experiences in the USA. And I rarely have more than a 10-minute conversation with my primary care doctor. I’ve gone to her for years. Decades, actually. That’s a plus. She’s at least remotely familiar with my medical history. But I wonder if she’s stretched thin. Overworked. And really, we don’t know each other all that well. That’s the absurdity of life. We never get to fully know each other. Doctor and patient. –Jim Broede