An amalgam of information one learns from co-patients while visiting the doctor

THIS column piece is a sequel to the one I wrote last July 31 entitled, “The doctor is not yet in.” In that report, I chided some physicians, surgeons, physical therapists and even psychiatrists for being tardy, even notorious for not arriving at their clinics on time. They openly defy their sets of schedule as painted on their clinic doors.

In the course of even myself being inconvenienced in so many occasions by late-arriving medical practitioners in the recent past, I noticed surprisingly that my co-patients are, one might say, a patient lot.

Patients endure waiting for as much as 120 minutes before they can see their doctor. Most of them are too sick to complain, I guess.

To overcome boredom while waiting for the “specialist,” I have devised a way to while my time away so as not to lose (“patience?”) those precious minutes of waiting. In what way?

I engage my co-patients in casual conversation in the reception area of the cramped clinic. To my surprise, they are just as willing for any exchange of lazy talk.

I find it effective not only to fight boredom but also rewarding, for most often I learn some casual information from co-patients. I call this unplanned deviation “information therapy.”

But these are just friendly chats which, at the same time, elicit a mixture of knowledge hitherto unknown to me, in the course of our casual conversation.

For example, while waiting for an ophthalmologist, an elderly woman of 90 from Malate asked me what I did for a living. When told that I was still writing for this newspaper, she said:

“What do you know, at 21 years old, I was a cub reporter of the Manila Bulletin for a few months right after graduation from UP. My editor was a Caucasian. I forgot his name now.”

There, you see, while waiting for the doctor, I even got on board a nostalgic ride!

My cardiologist is probably the most popular practitioner in that government hospital, averaging 25 patients four hours each day in a four-day-a- week schedule. He is comparatively young and jolly, compared to older specialists, and that probably explains his popularity.

One Wednesday mid-morning, a retired male public school teacher from Southern Leyte engaged me in a casual conversation that started about local politics and ended up discussing endemic creatures of the region.

“Bohol cannot claim to be the exclusive domain of the tarsier. Called ‘mago’ by the natives, we have the tiny mammals in Region 8 too. But the mystery is, it is not found in Cebu, a twin province of Bohol,” the neatly dressed ex-teacher told me, complete with classroom demeanor.

Scanning the pages of a daily one afternoon inside the clinic of an internist in a Mandaluyong hospital, a tough-talking fellow of maybe 65 years of age, told me President Duterte should not be feared now. “While mayor of Davao City, maybe, because he had everyone under the grip of his hand.”

Realizing that I could casually converse in Cebuano-Visayan, the guy eased up talking to me. “Don’t be cowed by his discourses. Filipinos should show their opposition to him,” he said with a clinched fist. He said he was from Tagum, Davao.

There you are. One gets to have an inside-view kind of information not reported in media, as exhorted by interesting people one meets while waiting for the doctor.

Before you know it, the doctor’s secretary calls your name – “The doctor is now ready to see you.”