As morning verged into afternoon and the heavy rain that had begun the night before began to subside under a still-dark cloud cover, we set off for the appointment we'd made a week earlier to have our flu shots. It's a large warren, the clinic we attend, where many general practitioners have their practise seeing their patients, and there are as well, numerous other offices within the complex, with other types of health practitioners using it as their headquarters. The reception area is large, airy, attractive and clean, much unlike the one I'd gone to a few years earlier after the physician we'd depended on for forty years retired and we had to find a new family doctor.

After checking in with our Ontario Health cards, we never have to wait for periods of time such as we'd long grown accustomed to in the decades previous. Although we thought the world of our former family doctor, we had long grown accustomed, even when our children were very young, to having to wait interminably to finally be ushered into the doctor's examination room. Obviously, he was popular as a physician in a close-knit suburban area that hadn't in those years many general practitioners to serve the population, limited as it was. And if there was an emergency of any kind it was always possible to see that doctor immediately; he would set aside anything else he was involved with, to respond to that emergency.

Although it seemed his receptionist must be over-booking, we also knew that the kindly, personable doctor whom everyone wanted to see, spent far more time than was allotted to his patients, explaining matters unfamiliar to them, allaying concerns, obedient to his perceived need to have his patients leave satisfied they had the requisite information to understand any diagnosis, with their encounter with the doctor concluded.

The friendly atmosphere of that location with that doctor's deserved retirement led me to a multiple-physician clinic closer to where we had moved twenty years earlier, in a multi-storied building given to a variety of health-providers' services, including blood laboratories, X-ray labs, and a huge pharmacy. At the offices of the physician I had chosen to attend, the receptionists were harried and rude, the facilities unclean and unappetizing. I chose to leave that physician and those premises for a variety of reasons.

The doctor that had taken my husband on as a patient agreed to serve as my physician as well after an interview had been conducted, and that led me to attend the same clinic and doctor as my husband. A large, clean well-organized establishment where everyone, from the receptionists to the multitude of nurses and other physicians are unfailingly courteous, empathetic and totally dedicated to their patients' well-being. We had also discovered that the doctor whom we ended up with, was also the personal physician-choice of our now-retired, elderly and long-time family practitioner.