The Joy of Human Contact

My brother is a radiologist. He spends his days sitting in front of images of CT scans or chest X rays, searching for tumors and pathology and dictating his findings into a machine. 

When I asked him how he could enjoy that, the absence of patient contact, not talking to a real patient all day, he said, "That's the best part."
Of course, patients can be demanding, entitled, infuriating, frustrating, but they are also the source of the real juice of daily medical practice.
Yesterday, an eighty-eight year old woman was brought to my office by her two sixty something daughters. She had diabetes. Or maybe some thyroid problem. I can hardly recall her prosaic disease. What I remember was the food fight I started when I asked her about her personal history.
She has eight kids. But she didn't start having kids right out of high school, as I had expected. Oh, no, she went to New York City and got a job dancing.

"Dancing! " one daughter gasped. "What kind of dancing?"
"Oh, burlesque," the mother replied with a faint smile, eyelids half closed, remembering.
"Burlesque?" the other daughter said. "What do you mean?"
"Well, you know, those were different days. I kept my clothes on. Well, mostly."
"What?"  both daughters exclaimed.
They clearly did not know this part of their mother.
"Was this Broadway?" I asked.
"Oh, not hardly. You know the sort of place, where the piano's hot and the gin is cold," she looked me up and down, "Well, maybe you don't. Did you ever get out of the library?"
"Mother!!!"

Looking at her, at her high cheekbones and her blue eyes, I tried to imagine her 65 years ago, and I could imagine she was quite a looker. Even now, she was pretty.
"Is that how you met your husband?" I asked.
"No," one daughter answered primly, "Mother met my father at work, in Manhattan."
"That's right," said the mother. "At my work. He used to come by after he got off work at the subway and watch all the shows and then take me out, around 2 AM. He said he liked the way I danced. He was just trying to get into my pants."
"MoTHER!" the daughters, scandalized, shouted in unison.
"Well, that's the truth," the mother said.
By this time I thought I might have to resuscitate both daughters, so I tried to steer the conversation back to more medical things.
As she left the exam room, I made sure to push the daughters out ahead of me, so I could have a word with Mother.
"I think you have shocked your daughters," I said. "They didn't seem to know about your career."
"They never asked," the mother said with a mix of indignation and amusement. "To this day they think of me as a baby factory and a sort of house slave. Never asked me about any of that part of my life."
"Do you have any photos of you, as a dancer?"
"Oh, I've got a nice one," she said.
"I'd like to see it sometime."
"I'll bring it next visit," she said. "Of course, we'll have to keep it between us. I don't think my daughters could take it. They are just such prudes."

Now, I ask you. Did you have more fun than that at work today?