When we lived in Finchley in 2004 and 2005, the nearest NHS surgery (that is, office), in a ghastly old house right on the main road, was so Dickensian as to make one require potent antidepressants at the end of a visit, in addition to whatever other medications the doctor had prescribed. When we came down to Ramsgate, we were therefore determined to find somewhere more salubrious, and we did, at an attractive new facility about a third of the way to Broadstairs, where Dickens, speaking of Dickens, is known to have done some of his writing about ghastly squalor while enjoying the ocean breezes. I had my first appointment there a couple of hours ago, and what a pleasure it was!
In New York, I consult a sad-eyed, petite Iranian-born doctor of around 78. He’s very gentle (he gave me the least awful prostate examination of my life) and kind, but his staff is surly and inattentive, and I invariably spend half an hour, even when I arrive on time, sitting in his waiting room watching commercials for special medications on the dedicated waiting room big-screen TV, or trying to find amusement in People Weekly. The new anti-depressant he has me on isn’t working, though no one can deny it’s got a much more inviting name than Zoloft, say, or Effexor: Pristiq.
Seven minutes late this morning, a friendly woman called Rose invited me into her office, apologised for the short wait, asked me questions about my genetic predisposition to heart disease and diabetes, or lack thereof, noted my height and weight, pronounced my urine free of anything alarming, pronounced my blood pressure normal, and declined to respond to questions regarding my extremely painful left knee, the one that got mangled in September 2008 when a teenaged driver in Beacon knocked me down in the middle of Maine Street (beween New Hampshir and Vrmont Streets) because she was sending a text instead of watching where the hell she was going. But she (Rose, not the teen) offered to try to get me an appointment with someone who could indeed respond to my questions, and did, virtually instantly.
Dr. Durani, a handsome, slightly rotund Indian of less than 40, welcomed me into his own office, at whose sink he washed his hands with notable vigour. Then, without having dried them, he strode back to me and offered me the right one for shaking. It may have been my most remarkable hand-shaking experience since the one all those decades ago with Tom Petty, shaking whose tiny hand felt like grasping limp pasta. But the good doctor soon demonstrated himself to be very much less eccentric than his failure to dry his grabbers might have led me to dread as he examined my knee and suggested I just take a great deal of ibuprofen.
As I walked home, it hurt like a motherfucker. No, a pair of them.
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