Quack!

I received a letter today with the disturbing news that my beloved quack is retiring on December 31. He says 30 years of private practice is enough.

Well, well, well. I had just gotten him broken in after ten years or so and now I've got to find another quack to train.

Okay, the search criteria were fairly straightforward.

Have an office no further away than Winston-Salem.

Be a graduate of an institute other than the Darjeeling Institute of Holistic Healing or the East Slobovian School of Medical Sciences and Diesel Mechanics.

Speak English, preferably as a first language, in an understandable dialect.

Have a surname name, ideally of a third generation Ashkenazic family, that can be written unambiguously with letters from the Latin alphabet.

Accept the meager offerings of my insurance provider as payment for their services.

So, off I set on my providers Web site to find the perfect prospect.

Gottesman? Levi? Levin? Levine? Levinson?. Levinstein? Rosenbaum? Silberstein? Nope. Apparent the sons of Abraham don't care for life in the mountains.

Smith? Jones? Wilke? Good! University of Maryland. Decades of experience in internal medicine and cardiology.

Not accepting new patients.

Come on, Dave. Open your mind to new possibilities.

Ah! The Blue Ridge Medicine Group in Mt. Airy.


Dr. Tamas Balogh (Semmelweis University Medical School in Budapest, Hungary) enjoys swimming, biking and travel.


Dr. Jan Kriska (Comenius University in Slovakia) participates in triathlons, soccer and biking.


Dr. Catalin Burciu (University of Medicine and Pharmacy Carol Davila in Bucharest, Romania) isn't nearly as energetic as his colleagues.

All three are accepting new patients.

So maybe their names are better written in one of the many variation of the Cryllic alphabet. Hey, only Allah knows perfection.