Quality time

Doctors are busy people. Since most doctors are paid by the job and not by the hour, every extra moment your family physician spends with you is a lost opportunity to make more money by moving on to the next patient.

One time I went to my doctor in New Orleans, and he asked me how I was feeling.

"Fine," I said.

Then he asked a couple of other similar "probing" questions, was satisfied with my asymptomatic responses and within a minute headed for the exit, either to get to his next bit of piecework or to the cute drug rep waiting for him in the lobby.

He was nearly outside before I stopped him.

"Wait," I said in disbelief as his hand reached for the doorknob. "I haven't told you why I came to see you today." I was there for a "permission slip" and a few exotic vaccinations for a Southeast Asian adventure I was planning, and when I explained the purpose of the visit, he got a bit testy with me.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he snapped.

"You never bothered to ask," I snapped back.

To his credit, my doctor was clearly a bit chagrined, although his ego didn't quite allow him to apologize.

So last Friday I was at my Suburbingham doctor for a routine blood test. My doctor walked into the examining room, and before he could say anything, I hit him with the following question: "So, doc, what do you think of health care reform?"

Let me tell you, if you want to spend some quality time with your doctor right now, just ask that question. This ended up being the single longest office visit I've ever had with a doctor as he launched into a monologue on the mess that is our current health care system complete with detailed explanations of insurance repayment ratios, the impending demise of the primary care physician, why the current system is broken and why the proposed solutions out of Washington won't solve the problem. All that was missing was the PowerPoint slide show.

"Okay," I said after I thought I had a full grasp of his perspective and he paused momentarily to take a breath. "Now, let's talk about me."

The really good news out of all of this came a couple of days later when the doctor's office called with the results of my blood test. Cholesterol levels down, blood sugar level down, weight down, blood pressure levels down--all very good news in my case. The doctor is very pleased with me, his office manager said. At least the Best Year Ever Plan is beginning to pay dividends on the health front.

Speaking of quality time, Teri and I spent a beautiful fall weekend in Baton Rouge, Louisiana with a bunch of dear friends. The weekend was wonderful, even if the football game that was the excuse for us to gather together was a dreadful and dull affair.

I want to keep some of these friends, so you'll just have to use your imagination about the antics that took place there, but this trip back to my former home state reminded me of something I had almost forgotten--the average IQ drops 30 points the moment you cross the state line and enter Louisiana. It's not like my current home state of Alabama is the epicenter of intellectual firepower, but compared to Louisiana . . .

I don't know why Louisiana is the dumbest state in the nation, but I'm convinced it's true. I won't offer evidence here--I could, but the stories I would relate are mostly more sad than funny--but if you're an outsider and you've ever been there, you know it's true.

Just to be clear, since I've already mentioned that I really want to keep my friends, I'm not including the Louisianians we were visiting in my assessment of the general population. They included a doctor, a teacher, a financial guru, other medical professionals and a rocket scientist (okay, so he was really a professor of theoretical condensed matter physics--same difference). These people were doing their best to bring up the curve for the rest of the state.

Don't get me wrong--I really love Louisiana, especially South Louisiana, and it was my home for fifteen mostly happy years. Louisiana has a quality of life and a love of life that is unmatched anywhere else. The people there are wonderful, but Louisiana is definitely the dimmest bulb in the American chandelier.

I wonder if all the years I spent there permanently dinged my own IQ level.

Speaking of rocket scientists, the smartest place on the planet outside the bowels of the research labs at Stanford and MIT has to be the Chick-fil-A fast food joint on University Drive in Huntsville, Alabama on any weekday at lunchtime. If you ever go there for lunch, you will literally be surrounded by the rocket scientists who work for NASA and the major aerospace corporations and have their labs and offices clustered in that immediate area. There will also find a smattering of professors from the nearby university, but they actually bring down the average score.