The Good Doctor

February 25, 2026

Ever wonder why we use the expression, “The good doctor…?” 

You know, in the movies, whenever someone refers to a doctor, they often will insert the adjective, “good.” Like Sherlock Holmes, when referring to Watson, might say “…the good doctor is correct in his observation, if flawed in his reasoning…” 

Shakespeare used it in MacBeth. End of Act V Scene 1, when the woman and the physician spot Lady MacBeth walking in her sleep in her jammies screaming, “Out, damn’d spot, out” and the woman says to the doc “Good night, good doctor.”

Maybe,  that’s it?  

Maybe it’s just a linguistic tic dating back to a time when everybody was ticking off honorifics like Pez from a Pez container. You know… “Good day, good sir.” Or “Me good wife doest love me, doth she not?”

We in the legal biz would call that question “compound.” Think about it. It’s two questions wrapped in one. Does the witness answer “yes she doth” or “no she doth not?” Or “yes, she doth not” or “no, she doth?”

Aye, that is the question. 

Hmm, funny thing. I don’t exactly remember the Bard handing out token “goods” when we legal beagles were discussed.  Those Elizabethans might say, “Good King Wenceslas:” or “the good Robin of Loxley” But I don’t remember anyone ever referring to an attorney as, “the good lawyer Jackson…” Sure as hell wasn’t Shakespeare! He said, “first thing we do is kill all the lawyers.”

Not that I’m bitter. 

I know what you are thinking. “Where…pray tell…or is it forsooth? … are you going with this, Rob?” 

That my friend is a fair question. Let me tell you.

Should you ever have the misfortune to become a Parky, I wish you the good fortune to have a doctor like Dr. Sirisha Nandipati as your neurologist. 

I could tell you about her high fallutin credentials, Cornell undergrad. Her two years studying and treating Alzheimer’s at Mt. Sinai before she became a doctor, her med school and residency at Mt. Sinai, her fellowship in movement disorders at U.C. San Diego. Her membership in the American Academy of Neurology and the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society (No body parties like the boys and girls in the Movement Disorder Society.). 

I could point you to her presentation to the Parkinson’s Support Group of Sonoma County. (Well, maybe they do?) 

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEnKW-vEug4)

This was a gig she volunteered for and for which she was not paid.

I could point to a lot of those certificate-on-the-wall and cheesy acrylic trophy type accomplishments. But, not to get too legalistic, those things don’t do her justice.

Seems to me that good doctors too often take the rap for a healthcare system that is…what’s the word I’m looking for?…bad. They are given patient quotas to see each day and then blamed that they don’t seem to spend time with us. They must answer to insurance or government bozo bean counters who would dictate the needs of their patients. They must see patients all day whose lousy habits and unhealthy lifestyle cause their condition, but then blame a doctor who might have the temerity to suggest maybe they might want to stop smoking or drinking or eating themselves to a fast-food death. They can seem short on judgment and long on diagnostic tests as a substitute, not to aid in a diagnosis, but to delay or avoid the very exercise of judgment we seek.

They don’t seem to listen. 

They don’t seem to care.

Me? I’m a physician-full-employment-act into…or is it onto?… myself.  I keep my GP Dr. Sangster, my urologist Dr. Bellinger, my gastroenterologist Dr. Spears, my interventional radiologist Dr. Kim, my neurological pharmaceutical specialist Dr. Ray… all of them… busy night and day. And to a one, they are everything you might hope for in a doctor.

Dr. Nandipati? She is special. I knew the first time Cathy and I met her.

I came armed with cutting edge questions regarding a recent study just published in the world-wide-web. (“Let’s see how she handles my fast ball.”)

There’s the wind up. There’s the pitch.

Gulp.

Cutting edge?

You know those guys at Beni Ha Ha who slice and dice vegetables in mid-air before they even land on the sizzler? I think it was when she opened with…”That’s not quite right Mr. Jackson…I was involved in that study and …” that it occurred to me I might have been wise to keep my grilling to my own hibachi.

“Yes, well…that’s what I thought too. Good to see the good doctor agrees with me, isn’t it honey?”

I felt like the DA in My Cousin Vinny after he was foolish enough to test Marisa Tomei on the timing of a 1955 Bel Air Chevrolet with a 327 engine and a four-barrel carb.

“We’ll stipulate she’s an expert, your honor.”

I am a lucky man.

I have a wonderful wife who I know, no matter how compound your question might be and how foolish her husband will always be, loves me. The question need never have been asked.

And I have a good doctor. Not just because she knows her stuff, but because she listens, cares and, despite all the pressures which must come with our health care system, never lets those show and always shows me nothing but kindness.

For that good fortune, this old lawyer is eternally grateful.