ABSTRACT
If one stops for a moment to consider what they actually do for a living, it's a wonder anyone talks to gastroenterologists at all. At our thematic cocktail party, I have in the past lusted after a more glamorous label to my medical exploits than rheumatologist. Joints and stuff. It immediately makes me seem dull and uninteresting — and I like to keep that as some sort of surprise. I've flirted with the idea of telling the thematic cute female that I'm a brain surgeon. It shouldn't be too difficult to bluff one's way through this, in the absence of cute female being a brain surgeon's daughter ('she was only a brain surgeon's daughter, but she knew how to count to ten ... '). And the public do have this rigid pecking order, as we've mentioned before. It's as if they associate the personality of the doctor with the part of the body they work on. So brain surgeons must be extremely clever — 'brainy'. Which brings us back to the opening sentence of this chapter.
