You just never know about families. I mean, who would have ever thought that I would give up my “golden years” to take care of my mother.
Then there’s what’s happening to the venerable doctor that I used to go to, back when I lived a lot closer to his office. Not too long ago, I got a letter in the mail from the young doctor with whom he was sharing a practice saying that Dr. Skiff had retired. Come to find out (from another patient of his who had spoken to the venerable doctor, who is 77 years old) that it’s far from the whole story. Apparently Dr. Skiff’s children from his first marriage (one of whose spouses works in the office) did some maneuvering to get him “fired,” after first slowly siphoning off his patients to the other doctor. I’m sure there’s a whole lot of resentment over the second marriage and second batch of children and a whole lot of other relative things going on, but it still sounds like a rotton deal for my ol’ GP.
In actuality, Dr. John Skiff, is a board certified internist who comes from a medical lineage. His father, Dr. J. Victor Skiff has a golf course named after him in Saratoga Springs. The Dr. John Skiff whose patients I and my family were for more than 30 years proved to be an excellent diagnostician, figuring out — after I had been to several specialists for a swollen knee that kept me on crutches for a month — that the swelling was due to salmonella poisoning from a bout of food poisoning I had several days before the swelling appeared. A dose of the right antibiotic, and the swelling immediately disappeared. Before I went to Dr Skiff, the specialists had coritsone-shot me, MRId me, tried to fluid-drain me, and finally gave up. Dr. Skiff was like a medical sleuth — he would keep investigating until he found the culprit.
Dr. Skiff’s patients either hated him or loved him. As he was diagnosing and treating, he would expound on what he was finding, why he thought it was what he thought it was, other similar cases he had had — or the lack of similar cases –, what the various options were for treating, etc. etc. etc. He also loved to try out new therapies and was always up on the latest.
My kids never had a pediatrician. I never had a separate gynocologist. We all went to Dr. Skiff for everything, and he never failed us. Except once, when I was switching birth control pills and he never mentioned that I needed to use additional birth control because I might become fertile until the new dosage took hold. And that’s how theonetrue b!X came about. So I guess he didn’t fail me after all.
It’s one thing to be able to continue to choose your own life’s path as you get older. It’s another to be manipulated by family.
And sometimes it’s hard to know whether you’re choosing or being manipulated.
you sit at the dinner table and she talks non-stop. she says that she remembers the first time she met you. you and some of your women friends were having dinner in her apartment. you have no idea what she’s talking about. you ask her if she knows who you are. she changes the subject. talks to you as though you were a childhood friend of hers, or maybe her sister. the characters from her life are all confused, confusing. are you my mother, she asks. no, I’m your daughter, you say. yes, she says and talks about the pretty dress you wore when you crowned the Virgin Mary in the May procession. she wants you to be that girl again, and you know that you were never the girl she thought you were to begin with.