The Naked Self

I recently attended a talk on the subject of the various failures of the contemporary American medical system.  One signal feature the speaker offered was the patient's presumed loss of dignity in the consulting room, one example being being that healthcare workers address patients by their given names.  I find this illustration odd.  The consulting room is not the same as a social event where societal patterns are reinforced, one of them being the use of surnames.  The consulting room is all about efficient action to increase well being, and I do not think it is in anyone's best interests to have to labor over the extraordinary variety of pronunciations of surnames in the USA. My given name is Charles.  I was raised in a very rigid class structure, and would have been startled to hear my mother addressed as Ruth by other than her intimates.  I as any pompous young professors was intoxicated with being addressed as Professor Beye, but not so pompous as to imagine the title and I were inseparable.  I will never forget when I once had to welcome various administrative figures into a meeting and one woman introduced herself to me with "How do you do?  I am Dean Smith," to which I could not resist replying "What an unusual first name!" and she didn't get it.  So if the hospital personnel want to call me Charles, okay.  The other feature stressed in the talk was the loss of dignity and person hood when wearing a hospital gown, presumably because there was none of the security of undergarments,  too much flesh showing through the cracks, that troublesome gap with the ass showing through the back, who knows?  Yes, it's nudity with a little cotton/poly cover.  And yet the diagnostic and healing process is focused on my body not my personality, and I may as well bare the flesh to make it easier.  I guess perhaps a lifetime of nude sexual encounters with a wide range of people has left me if with nothing else at least a sense that me nude is able to talk to another person clothed without a sense of loss.  And anal penetration is hardly going to be a surprise.  There's nothing like a digital exploration of your prostate up your rectum to put things into perspective, especially if you are otherwise engaged in a lively friendly conversation with your oncologist/urologist.  Since I have sometimes been connected with doctors from teaching hospitals I have been asked if I would mind if some youngster sit in the examination and in fact on more the one occasion participate.  So I have had a second digital examination from some sweet young thing (female; I have to say that because I get even more gushy over the cute young guys) while my doctor stands by talking about what the sensations the tip of her finger is encountering possibly mean.  It's like suddenly finding yourself in a stall in the mens room in speeding train at three in the morning pulled in there by a handsome rugged pullman porter who thought a connection of bare flesh between us might help to while away the midnight hours.  It's really all the same, I figure, so just relax.