A memory…
It was 1949 and I was 9 years old. On this day in memory, I was ill and so my mother had called the doctor. And about an hour later, the doctor was ringing our doorbell. No, this wasn’t because I was afflicted with some dreaded contagious disease. This is what doctors did for those who were sick; they made house calls.
Now, we knew this doctor and we knew his family, but that isn’t why we were privileged to have him making house calls for us. All doctors did it.
This doctor was also wealthy; owning a new home on a large corner lot and driving a new car, a Buick. Smart doctors always drove Buicks as that brand gave them the look of sober responsibility and wealth without being ostentatious. He also owned one of the few television sets in town, so we were sometimes invited to join the crowd that sat around the little 9" screen in his front room on Saturday nights.
Our family didn’t have medical insurance, if it even existed in those years? We paid cash or made arrangements with the doctor to pay monthly.
I know this sounds like a fairy tale…doctors making house calls to patients without medical insurance. But this was life in the 1940’s and 50’s. And it’s my memory. What’s yours? And where did we go wrong?
I also remember that Doctor. I believe he gave our parents a volume discount on tonsil removal, if all three children had it done at the same time. Although I do not remember very much about his family, I know I was not afraid of the doctor, even as a little girl.
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