United We Fall

drawing by Suzanne Dunaway

Doctors have professional organizations in both Italy and the US, but their purposes are light-years apart. Where the American Medical Association is basically a lobbyist for doctors, the equivalent on this side of the Atlantic, the Ordine dei Medici, is more like a police force. I’ve visited their Rome office exactly five times, and I remember every one:

 1)    In 1979, to find out how to get my American internal medicine specialty recognized. That didn’t take long: “You can’t.”

2)    In 1998, to peddle an old pulmonary function testing machine by tacking up a For Sale notice on the Ordine’s cork bulletin board. No buyers materialized, but some employee with nothing better to do noticed the words “Diplomate, American Board of Internal Medicine” on my letterhead, and sent me a registered letter enjoining me to remove them. Turns out you’re not allowed to mention foreign specializations. I took the appropriate action for any old Italy hand, i.e. I did nothing whatsoever. The ABIM is still on my letterhead – they never followed up.

3)    In 2004, to buy passes to drive into the center of Rome, a prerogative reserved for residents and for docs on house calls. We had always had free dashboard permits, but suddenly City Hall announced it would start charging for the privilege. I lined up at the Ordine dei Medici along with hundreds of other colleagues dumb enough to take the initiative seriously, forked over a 10 euro note that they said would be good for ten single entries, and received a receipt that stated the passes would come in the mail. Did any passes come in your mail? No? Well none arrived in mine either. Good thing I hadn’t thrown out my old dashboard permit.

4)    In 2005, to try putting my first Aventino Hill office on a more formal legal footing. My two partners and I partners trooped over to the Ordine for an hour-long briefing from their lawyer, taking careful notes on his advice. Fortunately we didn’t act on it – we learned later from unimpeachable sources that he had been wrong from A to Z.

5)    In 2010, to defend my second Aventino Hill office, soon after we moved in. Our neighbors sicced the Ordine on us, after sending around the Carabinieri, the Health Department, and the Lazio Region, as part of their unsuccessful campaign to kick us out of the building. (The one agency they never snitched to was the IRS – fearful of drawing attention to their own tax returns?) The Ordine called us in for interrogation, and then mailed a ten-point accusation in impenetrable legalese to which we promptly, humbly, and painstakingly replied. A year later, when we hadn’t heard back, we phoned to make sure they’d dropped the charges. No, they just hadn’t gotten around to looking at our letter yet. They finally did read it, and grant their absolution . . . in 2013.

*****

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