Hepatitis Cteakhouse
This week I traveled Texas for 22 hours, and the group I was with ate dinner together at steakhouse.
Nearby, a small group was assembling in a private dining room. I could see the whole party through the glass door that separated them from the rest of us. The table fit about 12 people or so, and at the head of it was a projector screen reserved mostly for stuff like wedding slideshows or a CEO’s misguided overview of his Asian expansion plans.
But on this night, the group in that room were physicians. I assume so, because I could clearly read the presentation’s title screen: Key factors in the early diagnosis of Hepatitis C.
And so, for two-plus hours, I monitored peripherally as a group of very smart and serious men and women talked about a potentially fatal liver disease over plates of filet mignons and mashed potatoes and several bottles of wine from the south of France.
It got me thinking: which wine pairs best with a Hepatitis C presentation? I know from experience that discussions of Hep A and B always require a lovely California red with a bold mouthfeel, though if the conversation ever moves to Hepatitis D - God forbid - it’s recommended that one switches to a dryer white.
I wondered what the doctors’ dinner conversation was like. “Dr. Osgood, what percentage of your patients would you say show normalization of alanine aminotransferase levels during the acute phase, and is that a hint of cayenne pepper I taste in these mashed potatoes? Jesus, they are delightful.”
They probably made a joke about how full they were, and how it made their stomachs hurt, not unlike a common symptom of Hep C. Jaundice is another well-known Hep C symptom, though discussions of jaundice make for inappropriate dinner conversation, even by physician standards.
“Speaking of extrahepatatic manifestations outside of the liver, is anyone in the mood for dessert?”
“Could you go back to that last slide, Mark? I missed how long it was before cirrhosis develops. And did they ever bring the decaf?”
Because of their proper professionalism, I’m presuming none of them ever stopped to think of how odd the discussion Hep C is at a dinner table, and therefore they also never realized their server looked exactly like Philip Seymour Hoffman. But I did. I tend to notice strange things like that.
