My new personal physician, a beautiful young woman with, I believe, outstanding professional capabilities, happens to be on maternity leave at the moment. I required that a medical prescription be renewed and the clinic out of which she works will not issue them by telephone request, requiring a visit to the prescribing physician.

Makes sense, in that an brief evaluation can be conducted before issuing a renewal to ensure that all is well. In her absence, one of her colleagues saw me, a far older man whose manner I quite liked. I explained, when he prepared to take my blood pressure, that it would be high as a result of a verbal altercation I'd had with my daughter, soon to be 50, yet still emotionally manipulative. I didn't mention that it always seems to be high when it's tested at a doctor's office (white-coat syndrome).

He casually dismissed my concern, said it was "in the normal range", although I didn't ask for the values, and I doubted his assertion. Pleasantly surprised nonetheless and not prepared to challenge his calm authority. He would, doubtless, have his professional reasons. I am not his patient after all, and he may have thought to inject a lighter tone, to relax my obvious tension.

Wouldn't have been helped by the lugubrious feeling that overtakes me while in the waiting room, as I read a novel I've brought along. There have been so many doctors' appointments lately; and I never leave the house without a book. This one is A Casual Brutality by Neil Bissoondath, a consummately creative author, whose magic with language and description is a marvel, but the sad undercurrents of his story and the violence implied and described underlying it all, is supremely depressing.

Why wouldn't I select a more upbeat book to raise my spirits as I wait to see a health professional, and when my blood pressure is so routinely checked as an indication of my health? Beats me.