I’ve been acquiring quite a collection of the letters that hospital consultants send to your GP informing them of the appointments you have had with them, their diagnoses, treatments, and discharge notes. Clearly there is a preferred format and style for writing these. They usually begin something like this:
It was a pleasure to meet this pleasant gentleman, who presented with a pain in the lower abdomen that he had had for six weeks, which made walking almost impossible… etcetera.
Some of my favourites include the nurse’s letter which describes me as ‘this gentleman’ in nearly every sentence (I have pretty strong objections to being called a gentleman in the first place: I’m with John Ball on this: ‘When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?’) when a simple ‘he’ or even ‘Mr Price’ would have sounded less clunky. And most recently, the one which began ‘It was a delight to meet this 70-year old chap…’
Apart from the fact that I’M NOT YET 70, I’M STILL ONLY 69! it sounded like something you might (just about) say but not write, or as if English was not his first language — as it probably wasn’t, in this chap’s case. What you call a man is possibly one of the most awkward idioms to learn in a language not quite your own. Like with my American friends who had learned that ‘bloke’ was a common English term for a man, but hadn’t quite grasped that you don’t use it as a direct form of address, as in saying to a barman “A pint of beer, please. Thanks, bloke.”
In any case, I would propose a different style and content altogether. Something more along the lines of:
Mr Price is a miserable old curmudgeon, whose pleasant and cheerful manner is a mask he assumes to conceal his pain and fear, and the fact that he is really screaming inside…
It would be more honest. But I suppose not entirely the kind of thing you’d want a doctor who didn’t know you to be the first thing they learn about you from your permanent medical records.
Godspelled 