Joe: My doctor is one of the funniest men I've ever known.
Moe: How funny is he?
Joe: He keeps me in stitches.

Well actually, he doesn't, because I had the stitches in my leg removed this morning. And all is well. He had to do a little excavating to get them out because my leg has healed so beautifully in the two weeks I've had the stitches that the skin had closed over the top of the stitches in a few spots. But no problem. All it did was hurt.

After he'd removed the stitches we talked for a moment. I told him how much I appreciated his calling me a week ago Friday at 6 in the evening to tell me that there was no sign of cancer. He said to the nurse who was assisting, "See how much it means to patients if you call them?" Apparently she doesn't want to do it. I said, "If the news is good, why wouldn't you want to call and relieve people from the anxiety of waiting?" "It's hard calling someone to tell them that there is a problem," my doctor said. You can't very well say, "There's a problem, you'd better come in and talk to me about it, and bring your family." His way of doing it is to call and say, "There's a problem that I need you to come in and talk about, but we'll take care of it." That's far more compassionate and reassuring.

"Now calling you was like music," he said to me. I almost fell over. I'd never mentioned music to him, and it was such an unusual way to say it.

"It was like music."

Amen.

Jerry