Be grateful for your primary care physician while you have one — and show your appreciation on March 30, also known as National Doctors’ Day. Yes, it’s real.
Thank Eudora Brown Almond, a Winder, Ga., doctor’s wife, who, in 1933, led the charge to set aside a special day for MDs. Why? Because they take care of us. Why March 30? Because it was a painless choice; it commemorated the day in 1842 when anesthesia was first used in surgery. In 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed legislation establishing the date as a national day for Marcus Welbys.
Doc’s Day Rx: Give walnuts, which look brainy and make people smarter.
(KevinDyer/Getty Images)
Time was, Docs’ Day was celebrated by mailing cards (whee) and visiting graves (eww). Another internet idea: “Find something related to medicine such as … fruits shaped like bones.” Um, what? Maybe a celery rib will pass for a tibia, but who wants a bunch of that tasteless stuff? New York nutritionist Lisa R. Young offered a better body-conscious idea: Walnuts. “They look like the brain and have Omega 3 fatty acids that make us smarter,” she said. Sold.
“A man gave me a prosthetic foot … I use it as a paper weight.”
Still there are some grateful — and creative — patients who think out of the box on March 30 — and beyond. Ask Dara Kass, M.D., associate professor of emergency medicine at New York University Langone Medical Center. “A man gave me a prosthetic foot that he couldn’t use anymore,” she told the Daily News. “I use it as a paper weight.”
