Terry and I have recently discovered a British TV series, Doc Martin. I read somewhere about a man who was sick and to help himself feel better, he would watch the series and laugh, which as we all know, is very good medicine. If you are familiar with the American TV show, House, then you get a bit of the premise of Doc Martin. Dr. Martin Ellingham is a brilliant surgeon who has been let go from the prestigious position he had in London due to a blood phobia. Pretty bad for a surgeon. Since England has socialized medicine, Dr. Ellingham is sent where the government needs him, a small, quirky fishing village in Cornwall. The ailments he turns up in his surgery (that’s what the British call a doctor’s office) are quite varied, and like Dr. House, he is superb at diagnosing them. And, like House, the ailments are taken from real life cases. Also like Dr. House, Doc Martin is not very good with people. We have been watching the past seasons on Hulu, and like the chap I read about, the laughter is good for us. Especially when the joke is on US.
The Doc Martin that we watched last night had a case of an old man who had developed a terrible smell about him but there seemed to be no medical reason for the odor, nor was there a hygiene problem as Doc Martin had social services check out his home and bathing routines. He had lost his pet bird about the same time as the odor problem started. Turned out, the missing bird had died in his valise which he carried everywhere. It was only at the end of the program that the bird was found.
Now, to bring that story closer to home: A few weeks ago, when returning to Fresno with the tiny grandchildren, we stopped at Starbucks where Terry bought a fancy brownie of which he only ate half. After getting home, he wondered aloud what had become of the rest of his brownie. We never did find it. Until today when I noticed the bag (think valise) I had taken on the trip. A newspaper was sticking out of the top of it and I realized I had been so busy with small children that I had never emptied the bag upon our arrival at home. There, further down in the bag, was the brownie (now hard as a rock) along with a bag of dried apricots, gummy worms, and a half-drank bottle of cranberry juice. Fortunately for us, the contents had not begun to smell. Terry and I laughed about our slide into ineptitude.
