Spaghetti and diarrhea

To a black-tie dinner at the rather pokey country house pub/hotel, the Boars Head at Ripley in Yorkshire, a place well overdue for a refurbishment.

Mostly doctors.

I have observed over the years that Doctors, when gathered together, a bit like lawyers or soldiers, tend to tell war stories, about their patients or clients or campaigns and son on. Being married to a doctor I am often exposed to such stories. Being a lawyer, I regularly have to listen to stories about magnificent cross examinations, deadly closing speeches and appalling judges and evil clients. And having been a soldier I know too well how much bull there can be a gathering of squaddies, indeed I may have told a few such tall stories myself and have even put some of my stories into writing (see below).

But doctors’ stories are something else.

So it was that my table, a very distinguished doctor commenced telling us of his greatest medical triumph. The patient, he told us was referred to him after passing through endless previous doctors, all who failed to spot or diagnose his medical condition. Was it two previous doctors and a handful of consultants, or maybe a dozen GP’s and a hundred consultants, whatever, the fortunate man arrived at our storytellers clinic.   He suffered, from violent vomiting and constant diarrhea. He couldn’t keep food down as it splattered out in diarrhea or spilled out in vomiting goo.

It was at this moment that the waiter appeared with our spaghetti and meatballs.

But the doctor was in full stride now, expressing his concerns about the diarrhea stricken patient. “No one else” he told us, “ none of the thousand previous doctors” had thought to examine his diarrhoea.

“Aha” said a number of doctors, who clearly agreed that failing to examine the patients diarrhea was not good medical practice. One even tapped the side of his nose with a wise medical finger, he knew, you need to check the diarrhea.

“I found blood in the diarrhea” he exclaimed triumphally, and again there was a collective “ahh” for they knew that finding blood in diarrhea was indeed a medically significant discovery.

“Blood in his diarrhea” he said again, with dramatic empathises, smacking the table with the palm of his hand.

I quietly moved the bowl of blood red ketchup a bit further down the table.   I thought the other doctors were about to start applauding him, or perhaps raising their wine glasses like they do in that tirvento advertisement on the TV, but instead they all started to tuck into their spaghetti and meatballs with a hearty appetite.

I made an excuse and rose from the table. I took a Boar’s Head umbrella from reception and stepped out of the inn into the cold night air and stood for a while under the Yorkshire rain. I reflected upon the war stories I had heard and told over the years and decided that on the whole, from the medical legal and military experiences to which I had been exposed that I think, on the whole, I prefer soldier’s stories.

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