It's Probably Nothing

by Conger, Beach

• ISBN13: 9781603583848
• ISBN10: 160358384X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-09-09
• Publisher: Chelsea Green Pub Co

Summary

It's Probably Nothingcontinues the tale woven by Dr. Beach Conger in his first book, Bag Balm and Duct Tape. This new collection sees Conger and his wife yearning for new challenges and relocating to the suburbs of Philadelphia after 25 years in mythical Dumster, Vermont. Conger gamely takes a job in a teaching hospital in the poorest part of the city and gets to experience urban bureaucratized medicine and its trials- a far cry from the more idiosyncratic and hands-on version he practiced in Vermont. After 5 years Conger and his wife move back to Dumster, where he rediscovers more about his patients' capacity to both cope and cherish one another than he expected.Each of the tightly constructed chapters is centered around a particular patient or particular theme in medicine. It's Probably Nothingis both funny and poignant, and showcases both Conger's irreverent view into medicine and his profound empathy for the characters he encounters along the way. His experience highlights how medicine-and problems with out current medical system-can remain the same and yet be vastly different across class, race, and region. Among the people the reader meets are urban drag queens, small-town farmers and other heroes, Vermont celebrities, and the occasional reclusive author.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. ix
Author's Note	p. xiii
Nat's Lunch	p. 1
I Never Broke One Before Neither	p. 10
Not Enough Misery	p. 14
A Hallucination	p. 22
Attending Physician	p. 36
Eastern Queen	p. 40
The Optimist	p. 52
Differential Diagnosis	p. 58
An Encounter	p. 66
Going Back	p. 68
The Farmer and the Preacher	p. 76
The Flux	p. 79
It Must Be Stratospherical by Now	p. 88
It's Probably Nothing	p. 95
First Man	p. 104
Sometimes in Life You Make Bad Decisions	p. 112
It's Not a Tumor	p. 118
Not Too Bad	p. 135
The Best Thing That Ever Happened	p. 150
Just a Cough	p. 161
I'm No Good	p. 168
One Out to Go	p. 179
Americanitis	p. 186
A Matched Set	p. 200
What the Doctor Did	p. 211
The Stork at the Window	p. 216
Unnecessary Care	p. 225
On Doctoring	p. 233
Endangered Species	p. 246
The Value of Convenience	p. 250
Acknowledgments	p. 257
About the Author	p. 258
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

Excerpts

It's Probably Nothingis actually quite wonderful. With wit and humility, but above all with deep affection, Beach Conger captures perfectly what it is to be a Vermonter. This book is a must-read for doctors and patients alike.--Peter Welch, US Representative, Vermont