If you remember Marcus Welby, M.D., you’ll enjoy this chapter. Dr. Welby was the kind of doctor we all wish we had today. We’ll talk about house calls, how examinations can be done when we’re not even aware that they’re being done, and how personality and compassion impact how we respond to a doctor and his directions. Experience a doctor-patient encounter of the old kind.

One man and his wife had just had a baby. A couple of months later, his wife started dropping things. They called their doctor and he told them to go to the emergency room. After they were there for a while, another doctor came out to talk to the husband. The doctor said, “Your wife has Guillain-Barre syndrome.” Of course he did not explain what that was. “She will be on a respirator for months if she doesn’t die.” He walked away without saying anything else or explaining things. The husband was so taken aback, he was crushed…a few hours before, they had been sitting and eating breakfast and now he was told she might die. It turns out that she did recover fully. Fortunately she made a complete recovery.