Medical Matters:The world of medicine has its own internal rhythms. Somewhere between the anti-flu season and the first skiing injury, the Christmas rota makes its appearance.
'Tis the season to be jolly and 'tis also the season to be off-duty, if you can wrangle it at all. In hospitals Asian and middle-Eastern doctors suddenly find themselves inexplicably popular and - fair play to them - they generally shoulder the bulk of the on-call duty when eventually asked.
I often feel that the Irish nation should erect a statue to The Unknown Foreign Doctor who has kept the show on the road for all these years.
The experienced general practitioner can observe the effect of Christmas in the practice. First to come is the winter flitter. He wants nine months' prescriptions on the over-70s medical card for him and his wife before they head for the second house in Spain.
As you try to stress the importance of having the odd check-up, you realise it was that attitude that made him so much money in the first place.
Next to arrive is The Daughter Home From America. By rule of thumb, the farther away they are from the parent the more grief they give the sibling at home and to the doctor, who between them have kept the poor old crathur going for the past year.
She usually demands an in-depth interview, with written notes, before heading away again, her guilt purged.
As Christmas approaches the shops and surgeries are heaving. The most common consultations are of the "nip it in the bud" kind. They have very trivial complaints but want an overhaul just in case.
You would swear they were setting off on an Arctic expedition instead of spending a few days at home.
During the Christmas period the calls can be divided into two types. In the first category are the genuine patients. In fact, you wished they had called earlier as they feel so bad about ringing you that they are practically at death's door by the time they do.
In the second category are those who couldn't give a damn.
For example, the woman who wanted a house call on Christmas Day as her new shoes had skinned her heels while she was out on Christmas Eve.
But the Christmas Day call which will always stand out in my memory, for sheer insensitivity, happened long ago in Wales.
The snow had been falling with a Dickensian fervour and the village looked like a Christmas card. A call came in to see the daughter who was right bad with the head and the stomach.
And no, they couldn't come out to me - did I not know it was snowing? They lived up a hilly lane and there was no way my car could have made it up, so I asked my neighbour to lend me his tractor.
He was not too pleased to be pulled away from his family on Christmas morning but as it was an emergency he offered to drive me. It was a James Herriot moment, the doctor and the farmer slowly ascending the snowy hillside in the crisp morning air. When we reached the house the mother seemed affronted at my eccentric transport and baldly told me that I was no longer wanted.
The teenage girl , who had been shrewdly diagnosed by her granny as having a vicious hangover, had already been cured by the application of a bottle of stout. As we drove away, thankless and frozen, my neighbour and chauffeur asked: "Do you get much of that?"
"A bit," I admitted. After a long pause he said, "I think I'll stick to the farming."
You do get it a bit. You also get the cards and the presents from old dears who can't afford it but you have to take them anyway. I remember Maggie who presented me with a statue of St Anthony because I was always losing my keys.
I remember Nevin Maguire, Ireland's finest chef, personally delivering a dessert every Christmas Eve. I have drunk many expensive wines, but none tasted finer than the screw-top bottle of plonk presented to me by the parents of a little boy whose meningitis I had, by the grace of God, spotted in time.
I remember Terry, the only person who ever successfully braved my Boxer Susie and placed a box of chocolates on the seat of my car (Susie promptly ate them and got magnificently sick over the seat but the thought was there).
The whole year and years of general practice whirl by once again , in a wild Christmas dance of thanks and recollection. Happy Christmas to them all, and to your good health.
Pat Harrold, the James Herriot of general practice, plies his trade in Co Tipperary.
