‘So many doctors, so little time.’
I just got back from The City, which is what people in New York call New York. (Note: No one ever calls it “The Big Apple.” So don’t. Just don’t. Also note: If you ask someone where they’re from and they say “New York,” they mean The City. If they’re from somewhere else in New York State, they say “Buffalo.”)
So. What was I doing in Not-The-Big-A? Window-shopping on Madison Avenue? Exhibit-hopping at the Museum of Natural History? Maybe hiking along the High Line? Nah. I was getting a mammogram. Also one of those icky pelvic sonograms.
Actually hiking the High Line. Highly recommend
Yes, I have reached that point in my life where visits to The City are planned around appointments with doctors. Sooooo many doctors.
No, I’m not going to show you pics of my doctors. Well, except in the photo at the top of this post. That’s my favorite doctor, the one I’m married to, taken inside the Met. This photo here was taken outside the Met. With no doctor
Now, there’s nothing particularly wrong with me. But every time I see a doctor, I need to see another doctor. Say I go to the dermatologist. He looks me over and sends me to a different dermatologist who specializes in whatever that skin thingie is on my leg. He takes said skin thingie off, but then I have to go to yet another doctor to get sewn up. See? Whack-A-Mole.
Another shot taken inside a museum with a favorite person, this time MoMA and The Child
And it doesn’t let up. The general guy sends you to the heart guy. The bone guy sends you to the pain guy. Or the eye guy (like Dr. Dude) sends you to the retina guy. I even have a hand guy who once saw me for arthritis. Lately it’s been acting up, but in my feet. So I guess I can’t go back to him. Though maybe that’s not a bad thing. When I asked what I could do about the arthritis, he said, “Get different parents.”
Outside the Metropolitan Opera with The Child and the SIL
When I was a kid, our family had two doctors: a regular doctor and a dentist. When I grew to young adulthood, I still only had two doctors. But now they were a dentist and a gynecologist. I used to tease my dentist that he should invent a new specialty called “dentecology,” so that women like me could get both ends tended to in one visit. Easy-peasy. All he’d need was an exam chair that tilted both ways.
Strolling Fifth Avenue with the Louis Vuitton store as backdrop. I was probably on the way to the dentist
Now that I’m on the Far Side of Seventy, my doctors are legion. And, as I mentioned, there’s nothing alarming about my condition — nothing that a time machine couldn’t fix. I honestly can’t imagine what would happen to my doctor-studded schedule should I become certifiably ill.
The Central Park reservoir on a pretty day, no doctors in sight
Ironically enough, there is one doctor I never see. That’s my ophthalmologist, AKA Dr. Dude. Just like the shoemaker’s kids have no shoes, this eye doc’s wife never has an appointment. He tells me to “just stop by” and he’ll “squeeze me in.” Which, of course, never happens. Though, trust me, I see plenty of him nights and weekends.
The doctor I “see” most often — just not in his office
Amagansett, New York. April 2026
