The immediacy of our tech-bombed culture--you can text your gift certificate to your friend, you can schedule your manicure, automobile service, etc within seconds with an immediate gratification, an immediate "dzing" popping out of your little smartphone. But you can't get your colonoscopy tomorrow. And you certainly cannot demand that I drop other patients' appointments to accomodate your perceived emergency, which consists of skin tags or "a rash" present for 2 years, but THIS MORNING you got agitated about it and you want it erased.
THE BODY DOES NOT GET YOUR TEXT MESSAGE. YOU CAN'T PING IT INTO SUBMISSION.
Baby boomers...the generation we all love to hate. Gen-X physician here. I evaluate and treat baby boomers on a daily basis (there's just so many of them!) I will generalize and state that as a group, they're predictably the most narcissistic and consistently in-denial patients I see. When they need surgery, "what do you mean I need surgery? What do you mean my knees are shredded/I have skin cancer/arrythmias/I have to not bear weight for 2 weeks...yadda yadda yadda. The "greatest generation" tended to accept when they got old and frail and slid into senescence with benign acceptance. Boomers demand everything be done, immediately, and it cannot interfere with the upcoming cruise they booked, and they refuse to pay for it. They want Medicare to pay for face lifts. "it's important for my mental health to have a good looking face when I look in the mirror". Yes that may be true, but it isn't the financial responsibility of the American taxpayer. Go talk to your congressional reps...and they're smoking pot or getting their cannabis and pizza "just like I did in college in 1970" to care for their arthritic joints while they await the replacement. Paid for by you and me. Because they bungee jumped onto some rocks. Did they ruin the globe? maybe. "I'm a baby boomer but I don't want to be lumped in with these sociopathic morons"...the camel fails to see its own hump.
