Implicit in the cliche, "Trust me, I'm a doctor", is the notion that doctors are always right and are always, selflessly, looking out for our best interests. My personal feeling is that "Trust me, I'm a teacher" would more appropriately fulfil these notions. I often smile to myself when I recall how I used to look at my teachers and wonder how they knew so much and always had an answer for everything. Now, of course, I know that that's not true.

Part of getting people to trust you is getting them to believe that you do have all the answers, even when you don't. Making it up as you go along is a fine art which doctors and teachers develop in equal measure. It's basically the ability to make educated guesses and find logical links between things. And yes, there are times when the guesses are wrong and the links illogical.

The problem for doctors is that wrong guesses and illogical links are easily discovered. Twice I have been to doctors for an ear infection and discovered that my trust was misplaced. The first time I went to see an ear, nose and throat "specialist" who was recommended to me. His clinic, like many doctors' clinics in Yuanlin, was a small bland-looking office-like structure, generously littered with patients' medical files and fading medical posters peeling off glaring white tiled walls. He examined my ear while I sat in what looked like a dentist's chair and then announced that I had an ear infection. He then dabbed my ear with some ointment stuff and gave me a few small packets, each containing a multi-coloured concoction of seven pills, telling me that I should take one packet three times a day.

After an agonizing and restless night I made another appointment with another doctor at a Yuanlin hospital, hoping that he would either heal me or kill me, whichever would prove more effective in getting rid of the pain. I took the candy medication the previous doctor had given me to show the second doctor, Dr. Leo, what I did not want. He was true to his name and prescribed an aggressive treatment of real antibiotics and painkillers that cured me in no time.

Last week I developed another infection in the same left ear and went back to the hospital hoping to see Dr. Leo again. Unfortunately, another doctor was there and I trusted his prescription of antibiotics, because he was after all at the same hospital. Ha! The next day I made another appointment, insisting that I wanted to see Dr. Leo, but had to wait an extra day to see him. It was worth the wait.

There is seldom agony when a teacher guesses wrong, but God help the patient who has a wrong-guessing doctor.

16 January 2003

Dion Marc Delport

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