Diagnoses: Uncomfortable
Saturday February 5th 2011, a rectangle room surrounded by white (or ivory) walls, six rows of ten chairs, a large desk facing us all, as we face each other. These are the surroundings of those who sit in the Woodbine Medical Centre in the small town of Keswick Ontario. A doctor’s office is seen by many to be a place to dread and avoid at all costs, but when we get sick we have no choice but to consult medical attention, which results in having to wait in the doctor’s office. This is not only a communal space we are used to in a large city like Toronto, this doctor’s office is located in what is considered today to be a small town. The way Keswick is constructed, populated and seen by city lifestyles are all factors in what defines it as a small town compared to larger cities, and this directly affects how this doctor’s office may be different from others (Rybczynski 35-50). Concentrating on how the space speaks will be focused around the objects affecting behaviours of the small town community, how the space itself affects our emotions and feelings, and why a doctor’s office has a feeling of conformity and normality when in truth most fear it more than any other community gathering. The doctor’s office is a space known by the world to be one of health, and safety, and as a small community we are connected more intimately, and in turn our space of health and safety differ in other ways.
Many behaviours and actions that are seen regularly in this environment are due to the objects and space that surround the people at that particular time. We have become so used to the normality of the space that we no longer see the strangeness, we are no longer able to see the space for what it truly is and how it speaks. The first thing I notice is that as every person walks into the main entrance they all observe those already sitting, maybe they are seeing who to sit furthest away from (the older woman with the heaving cough perhaps), none the less everyone sitting down is greeted with a thorough stare, it is not only the doctor who performs examinations. After each person has checked in and asked to take a seat that is when musical chairs begins. Interestingly enough you would think that most people do choose to sit isolated from the rest, but there are always odd people who mix up the normality of the environment. This translates from William H. Whyte‘s thoughts in the film The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, and how a good town is able to provide comfort even with the presence of oddness. Other behavioral concerns that appear are those surrounding the dreaded magazines. They are in every doctor’s office as supposed entertainment, and they usually include last year’s collection of Reader’s Digests and some House & Home catalogues, none the less why is it that there is always an obvious competition for these golden magazines? When you really think about it, this is a health environment dedicated to keeping the small town healthy, and meanwhile they have us sifting through magazines that heinously sick people have been sifting through for years. This irony does not only apply to the filthy magazines but to concept of the doctor’s office entirely. We are all sitting within disease reach of each other and we have to wait in this small rectangular space for (as I calculated with 12 patients) an average of 35 minutes, all in all the doctor’s office allows us to respond in different ways, whether it is sit on the opposite side of the room or the seat closest to the magazines, in the end the objects and surroundings are what drive us to understand the behaviours taking place around us.
“Individuality [is erected by] the intensification of emotional life due to the swift and continuous shift of external and internal stimuli” (Simmel, 31). Our emotions and the way we feel in our surroundings are just as important to address as the way we behave. In the case of a doctor’s office we all have different emotions but for the most part they surround the same category. Fear can be categorized as fear for the unknown; we are all emotionally affected before we even walk in the door. We go to a doctor’s office for concern of our health and bodies, and this kind of emotional presence changes how we enter a room. Even the way the nurse calls your name, and what the doctor will have to say about your current situation is linked to why we feel the way we do. There is also the fear of embarrassment; no one likes to be poked and prodded to find out what’s “wrong with you” and in the end your emotions are specifically linked to the room, the space and the environment as a whole. The bland walls and neutral colouring are chosen to be calming and relaxing, but these surroundings do scream other things that can be giving us the feeling of unease. The closeness of everyone together is a comfort for most metropolis areas (Simmel 30-45) but in the case of a health vicinity the atmosphere of dense intimacy can be very unsettling. This continuously present uncomfortable feeling also connects to how we react to others in the room. “People do not converse in large public spaces” (Whyte). The neatly placed décor and shuffled magazines, and the blandness of the walls can be seen as triggers that make us think negatively towards others. We observe that the girl that came in after you have been called in first, and this not only upsets you but drives the nerves and fears that have already set in. Case in point that we are labeled as a small town, but we are trained to orient to the behaviours surrounding that label (Rybczynski 35-50). We are a fairly small town but that does not mean we must resort to sitting in a small rectangular space only inches from one another, but that is the way it has always been; white walls, identical chairs, no breathing room.
There are six rows of ten seats linked together, and an opposing row of two against the wall, each chair is dark brown in colour and is perhaps meant to match the drab walls and plain carpeting. The only décor are the many signs and posters of the potential diseases we are likely to get and how to treat them. The constant reminders of death and disease plaster the walls and once we read far enough to see that “It can happen to you” it should not be a mystery why people dread the doctor’s office. There are many places in a community that are focused around large groups of people coming together for a similar reason. The grocery store, bank, dental office and things alike are all examples of urban gatherings that could be compared to the environment of the doctor’s office, the main difference that appeals to my eyes is that we use the space as if it is so personal and normal to us but where we go to seek medical attention speaks to us in a very foreign language.
The doctor’s office is a space known by the world to be one of health, safety and safety, and as a small community we are connected more intimately, and in turn our space of health and safety differ in other ways. The way we interact with each other is blurred by the preconceived idea of what the doctor’s office space is like. We are all blinded by the stereotypical objects around us that we are unable to act differently than the rest of the people in the room. It is this kind of community space that shapes a small town to behave a particular way, and the way we feel about doctor’s is linked to the doctor’s office but in its entirety, the space is what brings us to our concluding feelings and behaviours. When it comes to following the leader, we are preceding the pattern by orienting to small town behaviour in small town spaces. The diagnoses of the doctor’s office is simple, before we get diagnosed we submit ourselves to the exam of others.
