These doctors, who had long experience with people in pain in addition to their traditional training and schooling, had discovered that nothing happens without communication, treatment based on evidence of outcome, and what used to be called a good bedside manner.

Well, delusions are a wonderful thing, and they keep you company, too.

Housework hassles go on, are never resolved, and will probably extend into the afterlife ('Why am I the one who takes the clouds to the dry cleaners?').

Simple intervention - the time spent with a patient - is a very powerful ingredient of the patient-doctor contract. The evidence is against the traditions such as surgery for back pain being true - the evidence says it doesn't work.

Motherhood is like Albania- you can't trust the descriptions in the books, you have to go there.

Addiction might be redefined not as a character flaw but as a "biochemical deficit management." Our emotional habits will become an accepted factor of good health, along with slogans like "Heartache can be harmful to your unborn children."

When a couple turns domestic, for the first while having to talk about the need for aluminum eaves troughing and other matters only gets in the way of the relationship. Then, magically, these negotiations take the place of the relationship.