On doctors, heroin addicts, Cha Cha Cha and San Francisco

Similar to many technology geeks, I’ve got a fake outrageous moral disdain for physicians. I hate the fact that they get to wear a white coat while I’m stuck with normal clothing. Well, I guess I don’t really “hate” doctors - I just hate them like Seinfeld hates them (who rightfully questions why doctors need offices, why they need to get everyone to drop their pants, why they make you wait in the big waiting room, then the little waiting room, why they make you sit on butcher paper, etc.).

So I make it a point to let my physician friends know about all this every time I see them. This morning, on a beautiful SF afternoon, I was hanging out with my friend PD who is a resident at UCSF. We were perched on a couple of bar stools at Cha Cha Cha on Haight when I launched into one of my usual tirades.

If you haven’t been to Cha Cha Cha - I highly recommend it. Great Cajun food and tapas plates, but certainly not the kinda place where you see a doctor and a geek arguing about the state of medicine on Sunday afternoons.

So we’re in the middle of this when the waitress, who is a tattoo-covered artist type starts smiling at us. Of course. I’m with a doctor. I’m elevated just by being within his “aura”. Life is so unfair - but I digress.

She says, “Are you a doctor?” and part of me wanted to finish my friend’s sentence and say, “YES I AM”, before I realized that that might be a crime and that I’d be held accountable if she choked on the spot. So I shut the hell up while my friend nodded his assent.

That was all that was needed. Let’s just say that our waitress was, uh, clinically curious. First she had a question about why asthma medicine caused her to itch on her face. Fair enough, PD shoots out a competent-sounding answer. Makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Well, she’s just hooked. She lets the questions fire left and right! Duck and cover, baby, she REALLY wants to learn. There was one bomb about why “meth heads don’t have any teeth”, to which PD claimed ignorance. There was a question about whether “fibromyalgia is bullshit”. There was a line uttered at some point about how “heroin addicts must never use the toilet”, which shook me to my very core and cause the seafood paella to regurgitate.

Then we get to the moneymaker. She asks my friend, who is in anesthesia, “Should I be under anesthesia if I get a boob job for my 30th?”

I looked at PD. Get it right, buddy, dont screw this one up. PD waited for a second, then answered the question as any doctor would. No snickering, no banging the table, no weird looks - just a straight answer about the chest wall, breast tissue, saline versus silicone, etc. It was probably the most formative moment of my life. I felt like a…grown up. Don’t laugh.

The paella was great, and she even hooked us up with some free dessert for PD’s expertise.

I guess the moral of the story is that I don’t hate doctors anymore. And that Cha Cha Cha has great food and friendly waitstaff. Try it out yourself sometime.