Tale of a Stereotype: The German Doctor

Not all German doctors are like the one I'm about to describe. His German traits--his insatiable desire for order in particular, to the point where he listened to not a word I said--impressed me. So much so that I'm cancelling my next appointment after I see another doctor who will, I'm reasonably confident, offer different advice.

I developed a pain in my knee that seems arthritic or a "a sign of degeneration" according to an MRI and an X-ray, and wanted to see whether any treatment apart from the one I'd already been trying--cross trainer, ballet stretches, stationary bike--might help. Since the doctor I wished I'd gone to initially was on vacation, I picked someone vaguely in my neighborhood who had stellar ratings on Jameda. Glancing at the disk on which every X-ray trained on my bones appeared, he insisted the one he needed wasn't there. I assured him it was; he yelled for his assistant, an efficient young woman who rolled her eyes at me when he complained that the right material was not there, when it was, and quickly found what he needed. She was seated beside him on a physician's stool with rollers. The minute she'd brought up the material he needed, he grabbed her around the waist and rolled her out of the way.

    Oh, and when he examined me, he pressed down on my kneecaps. Which hurt. I'm certain the kneecaps of a teenage athlete would have hurt, but he insisted my age was to blame.

    We talked about my cancer diagnosis, and I made clear the findings of the MRI, namely that cancer wasn't to blame.

    "Sie brauchen ein Ordner!" he yelled. "Sie sind Tumor-Patient!" (You need a loose leaf notebook. You're a tumor patient!")

    Germans love their notebooks. Every bill, every pay slip, every insurance contract, every medical form, every this, every that, gets placed in plastic pocket and filed in one of those notebooks. Most Germans have shelves and shelves of notebooks. I have around three. Notebooks, that is. Not shelves of them.

    He thought every single letter I've ever gotten about my cancer diagnosis, from 2016 on, should be filed away in a big notebook. What he thought of me, personally, for not being fond of notebooks, was written all over his affronted face.

    Every time I have a CT scan, my whole history appears along with whatever's new in my diagnosis. No need for notebooks. He did not like my pointing this out.

    "Dünne Frauen!" he yelled, shaking his head. Thin women--by his standards, I'm thin? Me with my 62 kilos and my belly fat? The very sight of me seemed to irritate him.

    On the way out of his office I noticed that his receptionist is obese.

Donald Trump's Wonderful Memory

Person. Woman. Man. Camera. TV.

Can our POTUS repeat that? You bet! How does he manage this cognitive feat, demonstrating his vast competence as Master of the Universe?

1. Who's the most important PERSON in the world? Oh, so easy.

2. What does the most important person in the world enjoy grabbing? Now this was a bit harder. He had to get from "woman" to "pussy" but he managed.

3. See #1. Easy-peasy.

4. Camera. Like a mirror, only you have to wait a little bit! But so much fun! Yes, you have to wait, and I don't like that, but then you get to see yourself.

5. TV. Watches it all the time! Gimme 'nother cheeseburger, cutie. Look, there I am. Look, there I'm talking. Look at my nice hair and my face. Oh, my face! Can you resist me? Commmeerrre, baby.

We All Can't Breathe

The corona virus, the tweets of a monster, the staggering number of racist killings, make it hard for all of us to take anything like a breath. When we do, we're not relaxing, just pausing between bouts of anxiety. When Yeats wrote, 

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity,

he was living through the end of World War I, the Easter Rising, the quickly-crushed Irish War of Independence--all while his wife,  Georgie Hyde-Lees, was almost dying, a victim of the 1918 flu pandemic. She lived to give birth to two children, one of whom became a painter and set designer, the other a barrister.

There's the passionate intensity of a Trump rally and there's the passionate intensity of a peaceful demonstrator. Then there's the passionate intensity of a looter. There's a passionate intensity of Anthony Fauci telling the truth. He doesn't lack all conviction, but we are all losing hope in our ability to hear him. I'm happy to be in Germany, where most people do wear masks in public places. There's always the droplet-spraying toddler on the tram, the old guy with his mask slung around his chin and his finger up his nose, the angry young man shouldering his way through with no mask and a can of Red Bull or Beer, but these folks are not the majority here.