At the doctor’s office for my physical, I sit in the room and wonder to myself, what if the doctor is just making all this stuff up? Does anyone ever actually check his work?
There’s a reason I’m thinking this beyond simple paranoia, it’s worth pointing out. While doing all the traditional doctor-doing-a-physical things, my doctor was also chatting away, telling me his point of view on anything and everything I happened to ask about, and his views were… well, I wouldn’t go so far as to say “crackpot,” but certainly unconventional. He would happily tell me what supplements he believed were a scam, but also which fruits and vegetables he believed were essentially worthless and should be avoided in any sensible diet — or which diseases were actually great weight-loss tools, for that matter. All of this, delivered in a very friendly, conversational style that somewhat undercut the fact that none of it actually seemed that professional, and then he left the room to go check on something, leaving me to sit there and think, I’m sure this guy is on the level, but what if he’s not?
It left me fully aware of how utterly unknowable all this stuff really is — although, admittedly, I’d be thinking something similar since my maybe-flu brought me to the emergency room where I was all but told, yeah, we don’t know, we can’t help you I guess and sent home none the wiser. There’s a hope we all have with doctors maybe more than any other profession that they fully get it and understand and never make any mistakes but have all the answers, and it’s inexplicable and unfair. Why do they have to be infallible when we’re not? Why aren’t they able to not have the answers, or say the wrong thing, or have weird opinions about why apples are pointless when you really get down to it?
The answer is, of course, we don’t go see doctors when we’re feeling ready to be playful or challenged or have a good back-and-forth about random topics. We go when we want someone to tell us what’s wrong and just know it for sure, because we’re scared and we don’t like the unknown at that point in our lives. It’s got to be hard for the doctors in question, who (just like the rest of us) sometimes will just want to bullshit and say dumb shit and not have to be right all the time.
But when they try, they leave someone in the room thinking, what if the doctor is just making all this stuff up? Does anyone ever actually check his work?