which is the cardiology doctor who deals with pacemakers, and by the way, today is the first time I've ever managed to say the word "electrophysiologist" without stumbling. I'm still not sure I'm spelling it right.
We went to see him to hand over this fucking paperwork which we've been chasing doctors around left right and center about since April, and we actually faxed it to him already but apparently he never got it.
We also went to tell him in person about Mommy, because she likes him a lot and considers him a friend. She gives him dad jokes for his son. Apparently, his son gave him a joke to tell her next time he sees her, but he never did see her because of all this.
And he cried, and said he'll stop by tomorrow, as a friend and not a doctor.
So I told him the Cat on the Roof joke, which my mother loves. It's not just Mommy who loves it, Daddy loved it too, and when he died, my mother's first impulse was to break the news to us by saying "Daddy's on the roof". She managed to refrain, which is probably just as well, but she's spent the better part of the past 30 years telling that story to nearly everybody, which is why I told her EP, and I told him the context too so he'd know.
And here's the joke as my mother tells it:
There were two brothers, one of whom was kind of dim. Anyway, the other brother went on vacation, and asked that first brother to take care of his cat. On the first day of vacation, the man calls his brother and asks "Hey, how's the cat?" and his brother says "I'm sorry, the cat died." And this man loved his cat, so he hung up the phone and stormed off and didn't call back for three days. And when he called his brother again he said "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have acted like that. It's just that it was such a shock, especially since I loved that cat! You should have broken the news more gently. Like, you could have said 'The cat is on the roof.' I would have been concerned, but not too worried, and I'd call back the next day. And the next day you could have said 'Well, the cat fell off the roof, but she's at the vet.' And now I would have been a little more worried, but still, I would have had the time to process it. And then I'd call back the third day, and then you could say 'I'm so sorry, the vet did all she could, but unfortunately, the cat died' and that would be awful, but I wouldn't be surprised. Do you understand? But don't worry about it. I'm over it. So, how's Mom?"
"Um... Mom is on the roof."
Well, you can see why everybody in my family loves this joke.
Also, it turns out that doctor with the accent - it wasn't his accent OR his soft voice, both of which are a problem when combined with face masks and (probable) auditory processing disorder! No, we're all agreed (Me, Jenn, Michele) that he's just bad at talking to patients and their families, especially when it comes to bad news! Well, it's a skill you have to learn, and he's in his first year as a doctor (also, doctors need to ditch this weird system and come up with a sane ranking system of numbers instead of resident, attending, fellow, I don't know who outranks whom!) and clearly he needs a little help. Which we did tell somebody else to tell his supervisor to go over with him, because you need to be able to communicate with people who don't know anything and don't want to but also sorta need to. He was not clear at all! It's not just me who wasn't sure if I understood him right!
We did get a talk with a more senior doctor... with junior doctor standing right there, kinda awkward as hell, but he's gotta learn somehow. Actually, now that I think about it, a better way of learning might involve actors instead of actual on-the-job training...? People pretending to be the patients and their families? Oh well. We have no reason to think he's made any mistakes at the medicine part of the job, he just needs a bit more scaffolding with the people part.
Typing all this out is really good. I'm a lot less sob-y now.
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