Caring First

Today was my follow-up visit with Dr. Santos. Paul and I raced downtown in the late Friday afternoon traffic, hitting snarls of cars, horse carts and scooters. Are traffic jams universal on Friday afternoon? [ I know where everyone in New York goes on Friday afternoon from early May until late September. But where are they going in Dakar? Are there also traffic jams in Acra and Capetown and Khartoum?]

I arrived at the office, a little breathless, a little late and apologizing in my oh-so-flawed French. When I walked into Dr. Santos’s office, he smiled and quietly asked, “How are you feeling?” What followed was a 20 minute conversation that included 3 minutes of health and 17 minutes of everything else. On the health side, he encouraged me to consider making some dietary changes. On “everything else”, we discussed family…mostly his three boys in university in Paris, Nice and New York starting next fall, being 58 and wondering what happened to the past 35 years, traveling and how intimidating it can be, being happy in what you do. He is a lovely man. We exchanged email addresses so that I can send him information about the hospital. And then we wished each other good health.

The grace note to the experience was that when I checked out, there was no charge for the visit. This really is the health CARE!