Yes. I have been watching the First Season of "Marcus Welby, M.D." I am seeking a psychic vaccine against the ravages of a society tearing itself apart. I suppose, though, even when this show premiered in 1969, we were also going through the ravages of a society tearing itself apart. That was the era of the Vietnam War, of student campus protests, of complaints about the meaning of equality and its implementation. I guess, truth be acknowledged, with human beings there is always a catastrophe to be dealt with, real or imagined. So, Dr. Welby probably provided similar psychological medicine back when it was first run and I was watching it.
What got me on this, besides the need to hide under my bed covers? That back when Dr. Welby was fictionally practicing medicine, his real life colleages were doing it in much the same way. This was the time when medicine still, though it was fading away, was a personal interaction with no more than one secretary between the doctor and the patient instead of a phalanx of paraprofessionals and administrative staff, and as we experience today in every aspect of life, the "phone tree" which confuses, confounds and frustrates. Today, the first thing on the phone tree of a doctor's office is, "If this is an emergency, hang up and call 911." Not so paranthetically, I am thinking, that phrase has always bothered me, because often when something is going on, I imagine the whole problem is that we are not sure if its an emergency, so that's why we want to call our doctor. Instead, now people stuff the Emergency Rooms with things that aren't real emergencies, but naturally, they just got scared, and they aren't allowed to commune with their doctors to see if they really should go, and clog the Emergency Rooms. Vicious circle. Well, that dovetails into one of the things still done back when Dr. Welby was on the screen and we were living without the level of technology that we have today. The doctor would make house calls. So, you called with a potential emergency, the doctor heard the problem, agreed or disagreed that it was an emergency, and that an ambulance was necessary, and was ready to be present when you arrived at the hospital.
Even in 1969, though, the world of the General Practitioner, the Family Doctor, was starting to phase out. Dr. Welby was fighting against it. But he didn't have a chance. And neither did we. Now, we have the Internist, who usually is a specialist in something, Cardiology, Urology, etc. but pretty much everything sends you off to someone else. I recall when my father was sick, that I got a snarky laugh from Dad's cardiologist/internist when I complained that it seemed that what was going on with his Urologist was unknown to him. That would never have happened with Dr. Welby. And quite frankly, it wouldn't have happened with my old Pediatrician/Family Doctor, who treated everyone in my family when I grew up, Dr. Alan Goldberg. As late as 1979, when I was a last year student in law school and developed a massive rash and flu like symptoms, Dr. Goldberg came to the apartment my dad and I shared (they had known each other as kids as well) his house call concluding that I had a rather late in life case of the Measles. Once I was diagnosed, Dr. Goldberg, whose avocation was jazz, played a tune on my upright piano.
Today, in additon to the guards at the desk, and the variety of paraprofessionals who take your most recent history only to have the doctor ask the same questions when he or she arrives on the scene for the most cursory of examinations and conversation, you have a secure link with which to ask your questions about a medical issue or medication. You ask your question. You have to wait for a response, but this means you have to log off and wait till there is a notice on your e mail that you have a message in your link. So you have to go on with your user name and password and read the message, usually from the secretary, which may or may not answer your questions, and then respond. Then go off the link and wait again. Sometimes the waits between communications are brief. Sometimes they are not. So, last week I sent a link note to my doctor that I was running out of my blood pressure medication. I had misjudged what I had left. He responded, it looked like himself and not some one else, because the answer was "Done". I had asked him to send the request to my local pharmacy, long used by me, instead of the mail in pharmacy to which I have become attached with a change of insurance cards. By Monday I was out of the medication. On Tuesday, the 21st, I went to my pharmacy, and they gave me a different medication, one the doctor had recently prescribed (which is a separate tale which remains to be seen) but did not apparently have the one that he and I had "discussed" on the link. I went back on the link and this time got the secretary. She said that it had been ordered and was at the pharmacy on the 19th. Ok. I guess I am the crazy one. I went back on the 23rd, after I got this message. They said they had no such prescription and in fact they were completely out of the medicine that was at issue. I showed them the note from my link, that I had to get on, that this was what I was told. The pharmacist assistant is a lady I have long known and liked as she makes an effort rare in customer service. She apologized. Meanwhile I was sharing the news on my link with the secretary, and that I had a half left (I had broken one in two) and I figured it would be ok, until today, when I was promised the medication. No notification by text that it was ready, today, Saturday. But there was a notification about the other medication, and how to use it, that I probably won't use (another story as I said). So I called the pharmacy and of course got their tree, and a mechanical notification that they were "working" on my medication order.
Dr. Welby would have delivered it and had a cup of joe with me by now. And provided some bon mots about dealing with a pandemic and a quarantine.
I happen to like my internist/cardiologist. He is talented. He is well-regarded by patients and fellow doctors. There is no place to go for me to get a better physician in these modern days. But soemthing, among the many somethings, has been lost from days gone by.
In seeking its utopias, humanity has become less than human and mostly mechanized--just as science fiction writers in the 19th and 20th centuries predicted.
I miss Doc Goldberg. I miss the image of Dr. Welby, though at least I can content and comfort myself by his kind manner on Amazon Prime.
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