"Hello there!"
I looked up from the history I was writing on a patient's case paper. Normally I would be busy seeing patients in an examination room. But there was a shortage of resident doctors, and I was filling in. I was the unit head, and I had to see that all work was finished in time. Putting on airs would not help do that. That was how that Professor saw me while using my outpatient clinic as a thoroughfare.
"Hello" I said.
"Do you know if they increased our retirement age to 63?" she asked.
"Not yet. But I don't see any point in doing it for surgical specialties. If our hands shake like this" I said, moving my hand in a demonstration of a senile tremor, we won't be able to operate well at that age. It is not as if we have to just sit and write prescriptions."
"Oh, that won't happen. One should eat well, exercise and be fit. Look at me. I am sixty, but I don't look a day over forty."
She held her hand over her upper chest, well in front of the rib cage, as if there was something there preventing direct contact with the rib cage. What was more interesting was that she had made a statement about herself that a third party is supposed to make about a woman well above forty. She waited for me to agree with her, and when I did not, would not, or could not, or perhaps when she saw the answer in my facial expression, she turned and went away. 'Can't blame people who say she is a bit funny' I thought, and went back to my writing of the history of the patient who was sitting there, not understanding a word of what was being said.
I looked up from the history I was writing on a patient's case paper. Normally I would be busy seeing patients in an examination room. But there was a shortage of resident doctors, and I was filling in. I was the unit head, and I had to see that all work was finished in time. Putting on airs would not help do that. That was how that Professor saw me while using my outpatient clinic as a thoroughfare.
"Hello" I said.
"Do you know if they increased our retirement age to 63?" she asked.
"Not yet. But I don't see any point in doing it for surgical specialties. If our hands shake like this" I said, moving my hand in a demonstration of a senile tremor, we won't be able to operate well at that age. It is not as if we have to just sit and write prescriptions."
"Oh, that won't happen. One should eat well, exercise and be fit. Look at me. I am sixty, but I don't look a day over forty."
She held her hand over her upper chest, well in front of the rib cage, as if there was something there preventing direct contact with the rib cage. What was more interesting was that she had made a statement about herself that a third party is supposed to make about a woman well above forty. She waited for me to agree with her, and when I did not, would not, or could not, or perhaps when she saw the answer in my facial expression, she turned and went away. 'Can't blame people who say she is a bit funny' I thought, and went back to my writing of the history of the patient who was sitting there, not understanding a word of what was being said.
