Just spent the morning with a friend whose husband was having a biopsy at a local hospital.

A dozen people showed up to lend support for the couple and we crammed ourselves into the tiny, drab surgical waiting area. Of that twelve, at least ten had experienced some sort of health crisis which required medical intervention. Surgery, reconstruction, biopsy, replacement, chemotherapy, bunions, the group had pretty much tasted all of the medical specialties, with the exception of pediatrics, in the past year or so.

Each encounter seemed to place a mantle of expertise over the one having had the ailment. Each was an expert on doctors, nurses, drugs and hospital procedures. And while our mutual friend laid there trying to keep up a brave front, which I think he was able to do by simply ignoring most of the chatter, his friends recounted every ache and pain and treatment option for their own situation. At each telling the stories became more and more dire. It was a wonder, there at the end, that any one of the twelve was still breathing.

It was fascinating...not.

OK, it was a little fascinating. I was appalled and curious at the same time regarding what possible excuse people could give for this type of conversation in a hospital room in front of a patient. Was it to show that they too had suffered, perhaps more than the current patient could even dream of? Was it one-ups-manship or that ability to have a worse malady and a more consequential outcome than anyone else? I do not know.

My friend and I will laugh about that some day. And that's what I'm thinking about.