The joke

I told my GP a joke the other day. It was only a short joke, one of the few I know by heart. She pressed her hands to her cheeks and stared at me.

Dr G is a broadminded, competent, compassionate doctor. She’s quite easy-going. I arrived at one appointment to find her wearing shorts and a T-shirt; she shrugged—’I just didn’t feel like wearing work clothes today’. But she does come from a culture not known for its ready sense of humour. She was probably concerned for the character who was the butt of the joke—so to speak. That character, through a degree of dementia perhaps, had a self-inflicted injury—okay, maybe not an injury as such. But there would have been some discomfort. Not to mention inconvenience.

I moved to the Bega Valley 20 years ago. My first GP, Dr S, was new to the area too and the Bega District News noted her arrival—new doctors setting up in rural areas are a cause for celebration, especially those with long term plans. The story was accompanied by a photo of Dr S at her desk, but not from an angle you’d expect; it was taken from behind and clearly showed a small tattoo on her lower back where her cotton top had ridden up. This was long before the ubiquity of tattoos—especially on the professional classes. She was immediately dubbed ‘the hippie doctor’.

Back to the joke. Maybe I can’t blame Dr G’s heritage for her reaction. After all, her countrymen and women are known for schadenfreude—pleasure taken in the misfortune of another. Maybe all those years of dealings in bodily misfortune leach the schadenfreude out of you.

Dr S, the hippie doctor, had qualified recently, in her forties, after many years of midwifery. It was refreshing to have a doctor who willingly admitted, ‘I don’t know, I’ll look it up!’ She was always happy to listen to any theories I might have about my own condition or treatment. But she was a visiting obstetrician at Bega Hospital and it seemed that every time I arrived for an appointment she’d just been called away to deliver a baby. I asked around and Dr W in Narooma was recommended.

Dr W was conservative. She was competent and compassionate, understated, neat and petite. During one consultation, probably to save me the trouble of climbing onto the examination table, she knelt down on the floor and curled over her little handheld microscope to examine a skin lesion on my foot. I looked down and marvelled at how little space she took up—I could have dropped a cardboard box over her. A woman of few words, she could quickly allay my concern about a new symptom; ‘very common’ she would murmur, and that would be that.

I didn’t bring up my own health theories with Dr W. I learned quickly that she wasn’t interested, not in the way that the hippie doctor had been. And I wouldn’t have told her a joke, no way. Even one with a paramedical setting, like the one I told Dr G. No matter how funny it was.

When you have a chronic condition it’s advisable to manage it yourself, to some extent. You do the research and you use your GP to gain access to what you need, be it drugs, or a government program, or a specialist visit. If they have their own ideas too, that’s useful. But they must be willing to consider yours.

When Dr W retired I was placed on Dr G’s list. And Dr G is just the GP I want at this stage of my condition. She listens to my ideas (puts the kybosh on the less practical ones) and has ideas of her own. She runs pretty much on time. If she doesn’t get jokes, that’s a small thing.

Actually I’m pretty sure she did get the joke. But if compassion was her initial response, is that such a bad thing, in a doctor?

Oh yes, the joke.

Maud and Maisie are chatting in the nursing home. Maud says, ‘Maisie, why do you have a suppository stuck in your ear? ‘Oh!’ says Maisie. ‘So that’s where my hearing aid must be!’