The biggest influence in my life  If you listen to your patients long enough, they will tell you what is wrong with them        Uncle Doc (Dr. McGee) was a general practitioner.  He practiced in Dwight and Pontiac, Illinois.  I guess you would say that he was the Marcus Welby, MD type.  I'm sure if you'd seen him in a crowd, you'd guess he was  a doctor.  He just had the calm gentle knowing demeanor.  He sat next to me at our rehearsal dinner.  I had just graduated from Iowa State University with my brand new diploma.  At first he was very interested in the practice of veterinary medicine and questioned me extensively about the art and state of our technology.  I admit to being a bit uncomfortable, as I, like so many in those days viewed the physician as being the pinnacle of the medical arts.  Veterinarians were viewed as somewhat second class medical people.  After a bit we got around to him, and he started out with a statement of frustration.      "You know, all these young graduate docs?  All they want to do is tests.  They don't know how to do anything else.  They don't listen to the history, they don't do a thorough exam, they just order tests!"  "And you know what?  If you listen to your patients they will tell you what's wrong with them!"  (Perhaps it is telling that this conversation was back in 1968.)  With that Uncle Doc began to tell a story of a patient he'd had several years ago.  He went on, "This was a 23 year old woman who came to me one Saturday morning.  You know how Saturday mornings are don't you?"  He continued before I could answer.  "You get to work at nine o'clock and you're already fourty-five minutes behind.  Your parking lot is full and they're parking in the street. About my fifth patient of the morning was this young woman  who had a complaint that she had a buzzing in her head.  Since I was already significantly behind schedule and all the exam rooms were full, the girls put this young lady in my office.  She brought along with her all of her medical history which made a stack about this high." (He gestured with his hand indicating a stack of papers and files about a foot high.)  "She was a terrific patient," he said "You know patients will go on about their families, their jobs and anything and everything except what you want to hear?  Well, she knew exactly what I needed to hear about her condition and stayed with the subject.  There was no hyperbole, just the basics.  Just the facts.  It was wonderful.  Even so, her history went on for fourty five minutes.  You could hear an increasing din from the reception room, kids screaming and the muffled sounds of increasing angry clients.  My girls kept coming into the office and sliding notes on my desk, reminding me of how far behind I was.  Finally, a note showed up that just said, PLEASE!"      Uncle Doc, now heavily into his story telling continued, "Well, anyway, she told me she had this buzzing in her head that started when she was about 16 years old.  She'd been awoken one morning with this buzzing that wouldn't go away.  It was keeping her up nights and she had begun to seriously worry that something terrible was wrong with her.  So, she went to see her family physician.  He examined her and found nothing wrong, but decided her complaint was real and referred her to an internal medicine specialist.  She made the appointment and within a week went for her exam with him.  After his examination he announced that physically there was nothing wrong with her and gave her a referral to a psychiatrist.  She said she was very offended by this, because she was pretty sure she wasn't crazy, so she didn't make the appointment for quite a while.  But, as the days turned into weeks and she wasn't sleeping, she decided that it didn't matter if she was crazy.  She'd happily be crazy if somebody could make the buzzing go away.  Weeks more passed before she could get the appointment, but after consulting the psychiatrist, he declared she wasn't crazy and referred her to yet someone else.  As it turned out for the last 7 years she'd been referred from one specialist to another."      "I just sat back in my office chair, listening but at the same time my prevailing thought was 'what in the heck are you doing in my office?  I'm just a general practitioner and I do a little surgery, I'm nobody special'.  I didn't have the foggiest idea what was wrong with her and you know as a doctor your mindset is that people come to you so you'll fix their problem, and I wasn't going to be able to fix her problem.  I didn't have any idea what her problem was.  So, when she finally finished her history, I paused for a moment and then as softly and kindly as I could asked her, 'Why are you here?   I'm just a general practitioner.'  Her response was a tremendous relief to my growing sense of guilt of knowing I wasn't going to be of any help to her.  She said, 'My friends said you would listen to me'."  And then Uncle Doc said, "Perhaps it is like the great thinkers of our time, Einstein, Newton and so forth, that their great revelations come to them when they least expect them.    I had this peculiar thought come into my head that if she had a buzzing in her head that she could hear, maybe I could hear it.  So, I put the earpieces of my stethoscope in my ears, leaned forward and put the head of the stethoscope on her forehead.  After a moment, I sat back again and said to her, 'You're right, you have a buzzing in your head.'  Well, at that point, she sort of went wild with excitement and joy.  Someone else in the world knew she wasn't crazy, she really did have a buzzxing in her head.    I told her, I suspected she had developed and A-V shunt.  I explained to her that an A-V shunt was an anomaly that happens when an artery, thick walled like a garden hose, designed to handle high pressure blood from the heart dumps abruptly into a paper thin walled vein instead of the vessles dividing further down into a cappilary bed before draining into the low pressure thin walled veins.  So, when high pressure blood is driven directly into a vein, the thin walled vein will vibrate and make the noise you hear."  Then Uncle Doc said, "I'm going to send you to a...."  Where upon the young lady immediately interupted him and said, "You're not sending me anywhere..."      With that, Uncle Doc sat back in his chair, with his crinkly eyed,  kindly grin and said to me, "I got to do my first brain surgery!"     I have discovered Uncle Doc's advice is true.  If I listen to my owners long enough, they instinctively know whats wrong with their friend and they will tell me.