“I guess what I’m tryin’ to say is…not everything comes down to how you carry it in the street. I mean, it do come down to that if you gonna be in the street. But that ain’t the only way to be.”
Eight weeks later and I’m done playing Family Medicine doctor and I’m preparing to pretend to be a surgeon, starting next week. As I’ve previously written about, the patient population in the county clinic has been, at times, challenging to work with – and indeed many days were filled with people so dysfunctional that trying to practice any medicine other than crisis mitigation was laughable. Now, a few days have gone by and the sharp image of those hostile people has blurred a little bit and I find myself reflecting on the less dramatic segment of patient population. These are people who, for whatever reason are without health insurance and income (as to get this insurance, you basically cannot have an income of any kind.) Perhaps they found themselves suddenly without a job or had an acute sickness or trauma rendering them unable to work. It could really be anyone though – I found myself connecting with people I have very little in common with constantly, and really, this is a huge p...