MD Anderson

I'm in Houston, in the exam room which is the port of call when you see a doc in one of these places. Trailed by younger docs, tea boys, etc.

MD Anderson is big-boned and Texan, just like you'd expect.

But I've noticed that with all three hospitals I have washed up on in this little odyssey, the decorating scheme is essentially the same. The Big Bucks are at the entrance, near the gift shops and non-denominational chapels and reception desks that dwarf the people behind them. Here in Houston they seem to specialize in aquaria with tropical* fish. Texas-sized.

Then, as you progress from waiting room to waiting room and into the specialty areas, things grow less and less ornamental, more and more functional, and way less decorated, until finally you wind up in an exam room with a dying plant in the corner. Then off to a lab with scuffed floors and no windows.

Maybe they have it backwards. Perhaps we should enter into a modest, businesslike place, then at each stage things become more opulent until finally the doc is in kind of a throne room, with attendants fanning and musicians in the corner.

Just a thought.

Still waiting.


* I was thrilled to realize recently that "tropical" means something that lies between the Tropic of Cancer (guess how I got there) and the Tropic of Capricorn. And to learn that the sun signs, Cancer and Capricorn, are obsolete - times have passed and the latitudes are under new signs.