Skyline Happenings

Ed note: I remember feeling somewhat puzzled and annoyed that during my first Medicare annual checkup that my doctor never touched me. An assistant checked my BP, weighed me, checked my meds and did a cursory dementia screen. Then is was all questions and computer checks during the doctor’s time. I could have had a thyroid nodule or a melanoma on my back which would have been undetected. 

Touch is being lost in the medical encounter. There is simply something powerful about the laying on of hands. We often though are missing the gentle touch of the doctor. Where is the human interaction with a provider that really knows you? This is being lost. The following article in the NYT sensitively deals with this issue. If you get a chance please also see this prior posting: http://www.skyline725.com/abraham-verghese-a-doctors-touch/

From the NYT: “It started, as it does for thousands of women every year, with a routine mammogram, and its routine process of having my breasts — like a lump of dough — manipulated by another woman’s hands and placed, albeit gently, into tight compression. It’s never comfortable, but you get used to it because you have to.

Here is a version of the well known in-flu-Enza nursery rhyme in “Our Paper” Vol. 10 (1894) by Massachusetts Reformatory (Concord, Mass.):

There was a little girl, and she had a little bird, 
And she called it by the pretty name of Enza; 
But one day it flew away, but it didn’t go to stay, 
For when she raised the window, in-flu-Enza.

The flu season is already upon us. The sign up sheet is in the lobby for your appointment. Jeannie is giving the shots in our Medical Clinic opposite the mail room. This space is often referred to as the Kline Galland Clinic, but they currently rent this space only 2 hours twice a week. See below: