An excerpt from Actual Medication, Unreal Tales, Quantity 3.
The café was quiet, tucked between a shuttered bookstore and a yoga studio that solely appeared to open throughout Mercury retrograde. It was the form of place that didn’t promote, which made it good for writers, wanderers, and at present, two physicians who had lengthy since found that tales, not stethoscopes, had been the truest diagnostic instruments.
Dr. Gary Handler stirred his espresso absentmindedly, watching the cream swirl like a galaxy. Throughout from him sat Margot, an outdated buddy, a retired doctor, an artist, and someday poet who painted with phrases when her brushes dried up.
“So let me get this straight,” she mentioned, folding her studying glasses and pointing them at him like a tiny conductor’s baton. “You wish to use my sentence as your LinkedIn tagline?”
Gary smiled sheepishly. “Simply the half about storytelling. You mentioned it so completely: ‘Storytelling is liberating itself from commerce, politics, and faith, and rising as medication and tradition.’ It’s stunning. That’s what we do, isn’t it? I imply, that’s what we wish to do.”
She glanced at him. “Gary, that sentence is my life’s journey rendered to readability.”
“Oh,” he mentioned, sitting again. “So… no, then?”
“No,” she mentioned, however not unkindly.
He laughed. “Nice. I made one up simply in case. ‘Doctor and writer of tales that ignite ardour, serving up medication for the plenty.’”
She thought of it. “It’s stunning. However is it you?”
“That’s the query, isn’t it?” he mentioned. “We reside in a world of taglines, one-liners, chief complaints. And the shorter the abstract, the extra we lose.”
Margot nodded slowly. “You sound like a person who’s been mis-tagged.”
“Perhaps I’m simply resisting compression,” he mentioned. “Each time I attempt to outline myself in a phrase, I really feel like I’m advertising and marketing toothpaste.”
“Properly, to be truthful,” she mentioned, “most of us are attempting to go away folks with a very good style of their mouth.”
They laughed.
He checked out her fondly. “Severely. Isn’t that what medication has develop into? A cascade of reductions. The diabetic in Room 3. The ‘sore on head’ in Room 7.”
Margot’s face lit with mischief. “Don’t inform me that’s a euphemism.”
Gary winced. “Oh, it was. My first yr of residency. Chart mentioned ‘sore on head.’ I lifted the curtain and seemed on the affected person’s scalp. Nothing. I requested, ‘Present me the sore,’ and he dropped his pants. Seems the ‘head’ in query wasn’t the one up north.”
Margot coated her mouth. “You’re kidding.”
“I want I had been. I prescribed penicillin. Then humility.”
They sat quietly for a second, the sound of the espresso machine filling the area.
“You already know,” he mentioned after some time, “taglines aren’t all dangerous. They are often a gap. Like a chief grievance, they get us within the door. However the issue comes once we assume that’s all there’s.”
“Like mistaking the important thing for the entire home,” she mentioned.
“Precisely.” He seemed out the window. “It’s one thing I continue learning as a author and a physician. We love pithy stuff, nevertheless it’s by no means sufficient. You don’t deal with the affected person by treating the label. You don’t join with a reader by giving them a slogan.”
“You join,” she mentioned, “by listening.”
He nodded. “By digging. Like Peter Gabriel mentioned, ‘Digging within the dust, to seek out the locations we received damage.’ Medication’s supposed to assist us try this. Storytelling too.”
Margot smiled. “So possibly that’s your tagline: Nonetheless digging.”
He chuckled. “I like that. Sincere. Doesn’t fake to be a remaining draft.”
“None of us are,” she mentioned, reaching for her bag. “We’re all simply working variations. Dwelling tales.”
Gary picked up his pen, flipped open his pocket book, and jotted it down: Nonetheless digging.
As she left, he sat along with his espresso, letting the phrases settle.
Perhaps the very best tales weren’t meant to be compressed. Perhaps they had been meant to be found slowly, reverently, with sufficient curiosity to look past the floor.
And isn’t that what actual medication is, too?
Arthur Lazarus is a former Doximity Fellow, a member of the editorial board of the American Affiliation for Doctor Management, and an adjunct professor of psychiatry on the Lewis Katz College of Medication at Temple College in Philadelphia, PA. He’s the writer of a number of books on narrative medication, together with Narrative Medication: New and Chosen Essays, and Narrative Rx: A Fast Information to Narrative Medication for College students, Residents, and Attendings, accessible as a free obtain.
