Medical shame

I received a card from my primary care doctor today.  He has acquired a new name.  Now he is called The Medical Group of South Florida.

In the card, the good doctor is quoted as follows:

"The time I spend with a patient is the most vital ingredient of excellence in medical practice.  There are no shortcuts or substitutions."

That quote is followed by this statement:

We are living in a time of extraordinary medical technological advances.  I strongly believe  that we are losing ground on the other important side of the medical balance, the personal touch or human side.That is why I will now concentrate on a smaller number of patients called Concierge Medicine.



I look forward to you becoming part of the exciting times in our relationship.

This is followed by a list of services that will be part of Concierge Medicine.

They include:
Same day appointments, if needed.
Patients have 24/7 access to the doctor.
Minimal office waits.
Etc, etc.
The cost per person is $3000.00.  Per couple $5000.00.

Well...
that's one way to reduce the workload.  Separate the wealthy from the not-so-wealthy.
The gentrification  of our social structure continues apace.

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Such beauty in one sentence.

"It is an uneasy lot at best, to be what we call highly taught and yet not to enjoy;  to be present at this great spectacle of life and never to be liberated from a small hungry shivering self - never to be fully possessed by the glory we behold, never to have our consciousness rapturously transformed into the vividness of a thought, the ardour of a passion, the energy of an action, but always to be scholarly and uninspired, ambitious and timid, scrupulous and dimsighted."

- George Eliot
   Middlemarch

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I believe this.

An economy cannot sustain itself without giving back.

Wendell Berry

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Pedastal

PEDESTAL


I loved her then.
I love her still.
We never touched.
We never will.

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Apology

I apologize for neglecting this blog.  The few readers I have deserve better.





Closing with this poem by Robert Frost:


CARPE DIEM

Age saw two quiet children
Go loving by at twilight,
He knew not whether homeward,
Or outward from the village,
Or (chimes were ringing) churchward.
He waited (they were strangers)
Till they were out of hearing
To bid them both be happy.
Be happy, happy, happy,
And seize the day of pleasure.
The age-long theme is Age's.
'Twas Age imposed on poems
Their gather-roses burden
To warn against the danger
That overtaken lovers
From being overflooded
With happiness should have it
And yet not know they have it.
But bid life seize the present?
It lives less in the present
Than in the future always,
And less in both together
Than in the past.  The present
Is too much for the senses,
Too crowding, too confusing -
Too present to imagine.

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June 7, 2010

To fill a gap
Insert the Thing that caused it-
Block it up
With Other - and 'twill yawn the more-
You cannot solder an Abyss
With Air.

Poem # 223 by Emily Dickinson
From the Final Harvest Edition by Thomas H. Johnson

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Do you remember me?

By an accident of circumstance,  the woman on the other end of a call he made  was a friend of 55 years ago.
 
Do you remember me? she asked, after telling him her name.

He hesitated.

Do I remember you?   You had a bronze-colored late 50's Plymouth.  Your license plate number was RO-7477.  Your telephone number was SL3-2128.  Your birthday is December 22.
Yes, he thought, I remember you.
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