I recently had the most fun ever of any visit to a doctor’s office. I had previously gone to have my eyes checked and was referred from the first eye doctor to a specialist eye doctor for a minor procedure. While at the specialist, things started off very routinely. An assistant (I’ll call her Betty) of the specialist called my name in the waiting room and we achieved Phase I of my visit as she reviewed the information on the several page form I had downloaded from the Internet and completed before going to the office. Betty also measured the pressure in my eyes and after providing her with additional information I was sent back to the lobby.
Shortly thereafter I was called back into the small room by another person (I’ll call her Anna). I wasn’t sure who she was but she seemed pretty professional. After we talked a bit, I found out she was the doctor I had come to see. As she was reviewing my paperwork that had already been input into their computer, I said to her: “You sure don’t look like your photo!” She immediately asked me where I had seen her photo and I told her at the doctor’s office that had referred me to her. That doctor had given me a choice of two doctors he recommended. In doing so, he showed me a photo of each. One was a Caucasian male and the other was an African American female. For some unknown reason, I selected the female doctor, perhaps because I thought she might show more compassion to me. It happened that Anna was a blond haired, rather pale white Caucasian! She thought I was kidding about the experience and I promised her that either my eyes were a lot worse than I thought they were or I was telling her the truth. We both had a great laugh and she told other employees in the office about the mix-up.
Now for the educational part: Betty, who was African American, took me into another room to get me ready for the procedure. We had some time to meet each other while we waited for Anna. Betty was a talker and so am I. We talked about her brother dying after being shot at the age of 19 and my oldest son dying from heart problems at the age of 23. As we talked, she started talking about all of the bad things that are happening in today’s world with kidnappings and of recent hit and runs. I agreed with her and mentioned about someone in the news recently who did a dastardly thing. Betty immediately told me she knew the lady I was talking about. She was very clear that she did not condone what the lady had done but told me a lot of background about what she did and the kind of life she had lived for many years. I was enlightened by Betty and I didn’t condone the lady’s actions either but knew I shouldn’t have jumped to the conclusions I had because as Paul Harvey’s decades old radio program was called, I didn’t know “The Rest of the Story”.
When Anna came in, I kiddingly told her we were in the middle of talking and we were not ready for her yet. As she went behind me, Betty and I were still talking and laughing, at which point I heard a pleasant but serious voice from Anna who said: “I have very sharp instruments right above your eye. We’d better become serious.”….SILENCE followed.
I left the office feeling I had made two new friends for whom I had much respect.
Jeff Hall, Honey Brook, contributes columns to Tri County Record.
