Art and Medicine

 

Yesterday I had an appointment at a Stanford medical facility, and the waiting room was completely packed. I guess there's a lot of people who've been putting off medical treatment because of Covid worries (like me!). There was no where for me to hang out or sit so I paced the halls, and pretended I was at an art gallery. Because of course Stanford has actual Roy Lichtenstein's and Andy Warhol's on the wall in a hallway at an eye clinic. University endowment size matters, money talks, etc. All of these pieces were donated by presumably wealthy Stanford grads, doctors or patients for sizable tax write-offs. Win/win? Not exactly, but at least these pieces are getting seen by a lot of patient eyeballs instead of sitting in some rich person's house or art storage closet. It was all pop art in that hallway, easy for people with eye problems to see, which I thought was a nice choice.

I feel very lucky and privileged to get high quality health care in such an elegant setting, especially in this country. But I also had to drive an hour to get there. Five minutes away is the tiny medical clinic office in my town, which smells too much like mold for me to go in for very long at a time. They have an x-ray machine from the 1960's. There are very faded posters of Monet's waterlilies in the waiting room. It's a remarkable disparity really. It honestly made me feel a little ill to consider this. 

But at least I got my eye questions answered, and I now have the news that I have the very beginning of cataracts forming. Not a surprise as my parents and grandparents had them, so at some point there will be a surgery in my future. Maybe I'll still be lucky and be surrounded by Lichtensteins and Warhols at that point. But I'm guessing that a lot will change between now and then.