“Under your tongue… under your tongue… close your mouth… don’t bite!” Seeing a thermometer, the guest had unbuttoned his shirt and lifted his arm. Over much of the world, doctors take a temperature in the armpit. It’s often a struggle to make guests understand.
A woman began vomiting the morning after Christmas dinner. People blame upset stomachs on their last meal, but mostly these are viral infections. Although miserable, they rarely last long. Doctors enjoy short-lived illnesses because we get the credit when they go away.
In a brief look back at 2021, there was widespread hope that it would be a slow return back to normal as pandemic concerns eased and society reordered itself, but pandemic troubles lingered through the year.
“Pick up card! Pick up card!” intoned the computer. This sometime meant a typing mistake, so I re-entered the numbers and heard the same announcement.
Waiting at the local carwash, my eye ran over a sheet of ads along one wall. Among notices for personal injury lawyers, pest control, acupuncturists, and pizzas was a photo of a smiling young man in a white coat carrying a doctor’s bag. According to the text, a phone call would bring him to your door at a fee less than an emergency room’s. All ads for housecalls deliver this cheerful boast, never mentioning that the average ER visit, as of 2009, cost $1318.
Patriots boast that American medicine is the best in the world. My view is more nuanced, but let me take their point of view. You’ll be amazed at the dumb things foreign doctors do!
I saw a young Australian couple traveling with an infant. A placid sleeper in Australia, the infant had been screaming through the night since arriving six days earlier, attracting complaints from other guests, driving the poor parents to desperation. They wanted to go home.
“Doctor Dolman is out of town. Could you speak to a guest at the Fairmont?” That was a jolt. Dolman was an ambitious young doctor aiming to start a concierge practice. He had phoned months earlier to introduce himself and offer to cover my hotels when I wanted to get away.
Years ago Prentice-Hall published The Man’s Health Book, and UPS delivered my ten free copies. Usually I gave those to family and friends. Except for my mother, no one reads them, so I wondered if I could put them to better use.
Hot summer days remind me of why I love America. We appreciate air conditioning. Citizens of most other nations consider it unhealthy. They tolerate it as an exotic American quirk, but as soon as someone in the party falls ill, the air conditioning goes off.
Her vacation had been a disaster so far, the guest explained. Worse, when she tried to buy amoxicillin to knock out her bronchitis, the pharmacist told her she needed a prescription. This was obviously a scam to line the pockets of American doctors, the guest added. She didn’t need my services except to provide the amoxicillin, so I should not take up her time.
Long-run future economic activity and hotel business opportunity will materialize in outlying areas of major MSAs, medium and small cities, and tax and cost-of-living friendly states. Many urban centers and high tax states run counter to the trend.
Influenza had kept a guest in bed three days with fever, body aches, and general misery. He had meetings, he said, and needed something to knock it out.
Universal Assistance asked me to see a young woman with abdominal pain at the Airport Marriott. According to the dispatcher, she had no other symptoms.
“My other son is coming down with something. Do you mind taking a quick look?”
In the room, I was prepared to diagnose a routine stomach virus until I pulled back the covers and saw her swollen abdomen.
As long as they do good work, doctors assume patients will remain loyal, but hotel doctors learn not to be so trusting. Helping sick guests produces no income for the hotel. Ninety percent are not terribly ill; if rebuffed when they ask for a doctor they rarely make a fuss, so the manager never hears about them. Years may pass before a GM encounters an imbroglio that only a doctor on the spot can defuse; I’ve recounted a few. Although the best marketing tool, they never happen when I need them.
“Welcome to the Biltmore. Are you checking in?” That is not my favorite greeting, because it means the valet doesn’t recognize me. My response is always: “I’m the hotel doctor. I’ll be here twenty minutes. They hold my car.”
An elderly Mexican psychoanalyst was attending a psychoanalytic convention, but a cold was making her so miserable that she wanted to return home early.
Before hanging up the phone, I tell guests my fee, but this is not universal among hotel doctors. Guests may learn when the doctor hands over the invoice at the end of the visit.