The Dawkter’s Wife is In
Recently, one of our neighbors approached me about her husband’s back problems. “What should he do?” she asked. The obvious answer that I shared with her was that … he should see his doctor.
“Who would you recommend?” she pressed on, convinced that I am privy to an insider’s secret on just who the best doctors are. As the story unfolded, I found out he the had, indeed already visited his family doctor. They just weren’t satisfied that he had *only* pulled a muscle. What she wanted from me was a referral to a good neurologist … oh … and while I was thinking about it, would it be possible for my husband to refill the pain prescription that her husband had received? The family practitioner had also not done that and with it being the weekend and all … well, “you know how difficult it can be to get a prescription refill on the weekend”.
I should have been surprised, but I wasn’t. Throughout the years, I have heard about friends’ and neighbors’ hemorrhoids and digestive problems, impotence, migraines, depressions and various bodily secretions. I have learned to listen with a straight face and then refer them to *real doctors* … ones that actually went to medical school.
The most startling example from my own personal ‘Dawkter’s Wife Files’ happened to me this past year when I was picking up my daughter from school. A car pulled up right next to me on my driver’s side. The occupants proceeded to signal me to roll my window down. I recognized a man and wife as parents of one of the boy scouts in my son’s group. Their son was no longer a boy scout and I hadn’t seen either of them in roughly 2 years. I had seen the mom a few times, but I didn’t even know her name.
She was sitting in the passenger’s seat and addressed me as if we were lifelong friends.
The woman proceeded to talk with me about her recent rectal surgery. She was struggling with a complication and wondered what I thought the problem might be. “What should I do about this?”
The exchange initially left me speechless. Though my husband is used to hearing about these intimate details, I felt embarrassed and a little overwhelmed. She continued talking about the surgery, and her frustrations with the side-effects oblivious to my flushed face.
“I’ve been trying to get an appointment with your husband, but I can’t seem to get a hold of him. Can you talk to him for me?” she asked. I agreed to talk with him,(and he did call her later) but the entire exchange and drive-by intimacy left me reassessing my role as just the dawkter’s wife.
I was stunned by this incident and the drive-by-intimacy. Later, I felt a little honored that in her vulnerable state, she thought she could reach out to me. I have started to realize that for many people, the *dawkter’s wife* is a familiar person .. fictitious, invented, fabled … but believed to be an extension of the doctor nonetheless. I am learning that the role of dawkter’s wife extends beyond supporting my husband through medical training … it also demands a greater responsibility publicly. I believe that we can be supportive of patients who reach out to us by actively listening, and then referring them on to their physicians for real medical advice.
