My Doctor, the Artist

Medicine is in a civil war…science versus art. The battle rages, tooth and nail.

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You know it’s time when pain is a hot poker in your joints, when your vows of repentance fall flat, when the rosaries of contrition become nooses and when the prayers of the doomed no longer cut it. Then you make the call.

I shout into the phone, “I gotta see him. I’m dying.”

“Calm down. Do you need 911?”

“No, no, the ER’s a death trap of germs. Get him on the phone. Now.”

Soon the soothing voice of my go-to orthopedic answers. I can feel his smirk.

“Pain finally got your attention, huh? I told you so. OK, come on over. Bring money, lots of it.”

“I’ve got Medicare, Blue Cross, your work’s free.”

He laughs. “Medicare’s broke; Blue Cross has locked the vaults. Cashier’s check or cash, one easy payment. I need a new car.”

I hobble into a closet called an exam room. Peanut hulls are larger. Dr. K strolls in as if the whole world’s at peace. He adjusts his blue beret and matching ascot and loosens his black waistcoat. He pulls up a stool at the exam table and begins to draw on the paper covering it. I grimace and chew my nails.

Nurse Loretta stands behind him, draped in a model’s smock sketched with tiny pastel-colored anatomical body parts. Very calming. She whistles lightly and twirls a hypodermic needle slightly bigger than a majorette’s baton. The tune is vaguely familiar, something about when saints go marching in.

Dr. K continues to draw.

“What’s this, man, you’re doing art while I’m saying last rites?”

His drawing takes the shape of an elephant, which is prophetic, judging by the enormity of my pain.

“What’s this elephant have to do with my pain, you quack? Get to the business at hand, my hip.”

“In time, in time,” he mutters. He strokes his goatee and keeps drawing.

He finishes just seconds before I lose consciousness. With a Salvador Dali flourish, he exclaims, “Done. Another masterpiece.”

His ego takes over as he preaches the gospel of how art is superior to science with its inscrutable digits, sonographic images, graphs and blips on a screen. He adds proudly that he’s finishing an on-line PhD course in art from an obscure ‘university’ with a name that rhymes with hypocrisy.

“This drawing will explain the MRI. But first, did you notice my new waiting room?”

“Yeah, I did. What’s with the spa music and wall art, all these drawings of arthritic joints, titanium prostheses and other sordid gore of surgical malfeasance?”

“It’s the new wave of medicine, fishhead. One drawing of art is worth a thousand words of medical arcana. Nobody reads, just looks at pictures. Art reveals, science obscures.”

“Uh, what’s with the wine cooler?”

“Oh, that. Have you ever been to a gallery without wine? It opens the senses, dulls the stress and loosens the wallet. Everybody’s happy. Smiles everywhere, right?”

Maybe he’s on to something radical. A new movement in medicine. It can happen. Plenty of specimens out there to test the validity of the concept. Hedge funds will soon swarm. His creativity is extraordinary.

“Who’s the Mona Lisa lady in the drawing by the votive candles and smoking incense?” I ask.

“Ah, yes, that’s Barbara, my crowning achievement, the epitome of art over science. I replaced every joint in her body. She’s good as new. Wouldn’t think she’s 103, huh?”

“That’s incredible. You did all that from a drawing?”

“That’s right. The drawing plus eight new joints. Same day surgery. She woke up, got up and walked right out, same day. That’s art, brother, not science.”

I’m incredulous. “How did you come by this concept of art over science?”

He laughs. “By accident, like most things. I typed in a billing code one day that said ‘drawing.’ I meant ‘blood drawing,’ but the insurance computer somehow dredged up a cryptic code lurking in the bowels of their files. It paid, and paid big. Art pays.”

“Unfortunately, nothing lasts forever. Medicare and the other insurance criminals fixed the glitch and shut it all down. We’re all cash pay now.”

“What about the other docs?”

“Oh, yeah, galleries in all the waiting rooms now. It’s revolutionary.”

“Now, let’s fix your pain. Loretta, the needle.” Those were the last words I heard that day.

**********

Where does this madness end where art trumps science? Anybody’s guess. But Dr. K recently sold the drawing of my hip in the six-figure range to Sotheby’s. My cut should be arriving soon.

Here’s hoping your drawing will be a masterpiece.


Bud Hearn
September 6, 2017