Competent People: TerryD, He's good to me

For nearly thirty years my "general practitioner" has been an Internal Medicine Specialist. TerryD's a brilliant man. He's not only an MD. He also holds a PhD. But his training goes far beyond that. He has to study continuously because he must keep abreast of medical advances.

Yes! He will perform any medical procedure commonly done in a doctor's office. And he will do it with faultless expertise. Stitch my laceration, check my blood-pressure, examine my throat and ears, prescribe for me a suitable pharmaceutical. Set up and administer my stress test, check my prostate gland. Whatever needs done, TerryD will usually do it for me. When he feels some procedure can be better done by another specialist, he sends me to that person.

It seems to me at times I am wasting his valuable time.

But TerryD apparently doesn't feel that way. Or if he does, he doesn't show it. He is the sort of physician who puts the CARE into the term medical care. I'm not certain, but since the death of my wife three years ago, Terry may be the person who cares about me the most. He certainly takes care of me the most.

We often have challenging discussions about things that fall into my area of expertise: current difficulties with school finance, multiple challenges of school leadership, niceties of emerging school law, areas of specific educational expertise. . .that sort of thing. This is a truly bright man. He knows his stuff. He knows much of my stuff. His interests and knowledge go beyond medicine. His is a mind worth engaging.

Sometimes -- after discussing some historical, philosophical, educational, or religious idea in an email -- I might close with an offhand comment lightly complaining about some minor discomfort I've been experiencing. I mean it's like: "It's your fault X-discomfort is occurring in my life right now, because you have kept me alive and healthy all these years. . . ."

So he calls me in. He's arbitrary and insistent. Something about what I've described piques his interest. His is an exacting and mindful brain. A no-stone-unturned mentality. So in I go -- doing dutifully what my respect for him insists I do. He's busy, but he works me in.

I sit patiently (no pun intended) waiting to be called into one of the examination rooms. I look up from the book I've brought along and scan the ranks of other waiting patients. I recognize them vaguely. And well I should. I've seen them here before. These are others whose lives TerryD has prolonged. I can't divine their ailments.

They appear like all the healthy aging folks I see all around me in the grocery store, for instance:

old
lucky,
good genes,
well-cared-for,
thinning gray hair,
maybe-a-little-jowly,

thicker in the middle.
bright-eyed and hopeful types,
grown accustomed to the gentle aging
that results from regular physical examinations
and appropriate early-intervention health care.

This late-middle-age hardiness is traceable directly back to

TerryD's astute and studied professionalism.

Finally I'm called in. On the way to placement in my examination room, I'm weighed and measured, heart-rated and blood-pressured, by one or another of the nurse-assistants I've seen and known for years.

I wink: "Don't I know you from somewhere, Cutie-Pie?"

An eye-rolling head-shake: "I'll give you 'Cutie-Pie" you old fart." A three-beat pause: "Better flirt with me some-more! I'm not getting any blood-pressure reading. . . ."

"Your beauty stuns me! Please touch me there again. . . ."

A stern side-long glance: "Pretty needy. . .you're gettin' turned on by a blood-pressure cuff."

By the time she shoves me into my examination room, she's chuckled out and glad to be rid of me.

After all these years of serious incidents and small ailments (I haven't been able to hide from Terry) my file is the size of a Funk&Wagnells dictionary. In there is the history of my knee replacement, my severed left thumb, my coronary episode, and a host of other medical misfortunes TerryD has faithfully seen me through.

I try to hide from him as many of my dumb-stuff-accidents as I can. Otherwise there'd be two Funky-W files.

Here's the kinda thing Terry accomplishes for me. Shortly after my wife's death three years ago, my daughter threatened to tell on me and get Terry to call me in for a look-see at the recurrence of a troublesome symptom -- like the time I rolled over in bed and a sneaking-up-on-me mass in my right breast sent a shot of pain through my chest that woke me up. Next thing I know, this upstart-loving daughter has my butt in one of TerryD's waiting room chairs.

Then, the very next thing after that is a buncha imaging, leading to surgical removal of a lump that proves benign. Now I'm not exactly a worry-wart. . .but until that breast wad was proven benign I kept thinking: Wait a minute now. We BOTH can't die of breast cancer! Has to be some Fairness Rule about something like that. Or am I wrong?

But TerryD is thorough in all our dealings. And I'm here to prove it.

Ever since a lifetime of running long distance exhausted me into a heart attack, he's changed his tactics -- and some of mine. I'm now a walker. Like two hours out, two hours back. Brisk! Sometimes less. But I like a challenge. That coronary crisis was when I was an upstart of sixty. Now I'm fifteen years older. I'm healthier and stronger now than I was then. TerryD is doing something right.

But! Ever since the coronary, I have a stress test every six months. And he has me on a daily blood-pressure-cholesterol-reduction regimen, an 80mg aspirin, and a marble-sack fulla daily vitamins the size of a lumberjack's lunch -- this on top of a multi-vitamin. I have long forgotten what each vitamin is for exactly, though he explained all that clearly a long time ago. What I remember is that my various excretions are the richest in the county. And my heart runs like a precision Swiss watch.

Here's what I want you to understand about preventative health care as administered by a superbly trained, long-studied, and continuously updated physician like TerryD: he cares about his patients. Each is a very real person to him. He knows us all because each of us is an individual long-term human study.

But TerryD is much more than a caring human being -- as important as that may be in any human transaction.

TerryD is also a skilled scientist. As you can plainly observe, the term science is at the core of the word scientist. The term science comes from the Latin verb Scio, to know. In our advanced culture that means to know through the senses -- through extensions of the senses. Extensions such as microscopes and X-rays and a raft of other incredibly wonderful new devices.


TerryD is a genius in the strictest sense of that word:

He has a genius for human beings. He cares.
He also has a genius for science. He knows.

Such people should be honored.
Such people stand at the very peak of our civilization.

One more thing that reflects upon TerryD's character:

After all these years he rarely charges me for his services --
beyond necessary testing expenses.

TerryD barely touches my bank account,

But!

He always touches my heart.