Salami, White Bread and The Bargain

Like most doctor's offices, this one is freezing.  The Food Channel is on in the waiting area and if it weren't so cold, I'm pretty sure I'd be napping within minutes.  The nurse calls me into an exam room and I go gratefully, hoping for some warmth.  I'm weighed and measured, have my blood pressure taken, and asked an endless list of medical history questions.  I pass the EKG with flying colors and get odd looks when I tell them I take no medications - None at all? the physician's assistance repeats twice with more than a hint of doubt - None at all, I tell her firmly.  No medications, no aches and pains, no alcohol, no recent surgeries or illnesses.  Well,
she tells me with a shake of her pretty head, A pack a day smoker and you're the healthiest unhealthy person I know.

The doctor - young and bespectacled and awesomely pleasant - reads the history, looks at the EKG, listens to my heart, examines my feet and feels my arms and throat before passing a calm and measured judgement that he doubts it was cardiac related.

More'n likely, he says with a slight smile, An esophageal spasm from salami and white bread getting lodged in your throat, no signs whatever of cardiac involvement. But........

The all powerful, attention grabbing, medical BUT.  I brace myself for a lecture on diet, exercise and smoking. Instead he begins a kind of one sided negotiation - I can cut my risk in half with an aspirin each morning, 30 minutes of walking every day and resuming my cholesterol meds.  Am I willing to try?  And he is so earnest, so kind, so gently persuasive and damnably reasonable that - without being quite aware I've been cardiologically conned, even if for my own good - I agree to it all.  And he smiles.

On my way out, both the nurse and physician's assistant stop to wish me well and I have a suspicion that both are being genuine.  Can it actually be that this practice cares more about patients than money?  It's a wayward thought but one that stays with me despite my cynicism and experience with the medical profession.

And I smile.