by Linda Burleson

Created on: July 28, 2008   Last Updated: August 03, 2008

To become a physician one must go to four years of undergraduate college majoring in pre-med, four years of medical school, two years as an intern, and finally an undetermined number of years as a resident depending upon specialty choice. And speaking of specialties, doctors are becoming more and more specialized. Not only are there plastic surgeons, there are hand specialists, nose specialists, etc. There are gastrointerologists who are particular about which part of the intestinal system they treat. Does this make them infallable, even in their specialty? It does not. Will they say, "I'm stumped?". Very rarely will one admit to not being able to diagnose or treat a problem.

Perhaps by specializing in these particular body parts, they can be better at what they do, because they do not have to deal with so very much. Even so, my experience with doctors does not elicit trust. It seems that few of them go into medicine for the reasons that doctors used to. There was a time in history when doctoring was not profitable. People often bartered for medical care, and when they had nothing to barter, the doctor treated them, regardless. They even made house calls. Today it is an extremely lucrative career, and many go into the profession for that reason.

While in college, I visited a roommates ranch where we went horseback riding. My horse ran back to the barn and threw me. My collar bone was broken. We went to the hospital about twenty miles away. The doctor was two hours getting there (he was golfing), and after glancing at the x-rays did a terrible job of wrapping me in some sort of gauze brace for the two and a half hour ride back to school. I went to a specialist in town the next day who told me that it would leave a large knot but the only solution would be to rebreak it as it had begun to knit, then operate to set it which would leave a large scar. I opted for the knot.

Some forty years ago, I went to my obstetrician for a weekly visit in my ninth month. He told me that I wouldn't deliver for at least two weeks. I went into labor the next night with a baby that was posterior in the birth canal and a doctor that was deer hunting. The doctor he left in charge had several patients of his own in labor plus a couple more of my doctor's patients(maybe there was a full moon). My labor lasted nearly thirty hours, I dehydrated, and my dad had to grab a doctor out of the hall to get some help. He finally delivered the baby without a caesarean section, but we had to pay him

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