When the Bough Breaks

Yesterday I was gloriously excused for a few hours from my (minimal)(laughable)(let's face it, largely fake) responsibilities in the neurosurgery OR for a good ole fashioned GYN appointment. Anymore when I see a physician for any reason I find myself in an odd position: I'm the patient. It seems spending the past six months on the other side of the drop sheet has afforded me new insights into my own health care. Specifically, I am now determined never to be sick or require medical attention ever. Ever ever ever. I don't want to be in a hospital EVERRRRR, MY GOD. And doctors on the whole frankly freak my shit out. But! The root of these notions are stories for a different HIPAA laced day.

So anyway, the times when I do have to suck it up and go to the doctor I find myself surveying things with a short white coat sized grain of salt (AKA I can probably convince you I know what's going on while having absolutely no idea).

My doc's waiting room is arranged such that a whole host of chairs forms a U shape facing a central wall. On said central wall there are four or five large bulletin boards teeming with pinned up baby face snapshots, all staring out with empty baby stares in a kind of an eerie way, eliciting a creepy feeling from passerby not unlike the spook I imagine supermarket employees get walking down the Gerber food aisle after the customers have gone home.

I couldn't help but... question... the decor from a, I suppose, social sensitivity standpoint.   I mean, really? Baby faces? Obviously they are the cooing mugs of past deliveries, but... they're the successful deliveries.

Am I being  a freak thinking that such a display might alienate or off put patients who came in uncertain about their pregnancy? Or even less politically/socially/religiously charged, an infertile patient coming in for consultation? Or the patient who comes in for an anatomy ultrasound and learns the fetus has been lost?

I just... I don't know... was surprised.

Some of you I'm sure will commence eye rolling, but others will maybe understand  why I think doctors can be a little too focused on the science sometimes. Detrimentally so.