'A Man of My Kidney'

I met my nephrologist for the first time when we shared an elevator to his office on the fourth floor of the hospital. Between patients he was eating a banana, his breakfast, and carried a stack of folders in his other hand. On the front of his white lab coat was his name, the hospital’s name and his specialty, nephrology. From the Greek nephros for “kidney,” which makes him a kidney man. More tests, more blood drawn, more peeing in a  cup. 

He is the first black doctor I have ever had and seems like “a man of my kidney,” an old expression meaning, according to the OED, “temperament, nature, constitution, disposition; hence, kind, sort, class, stamp.” He’s my kind of guy, easy and interesting to talk to, sympathetic and highly articulate. Like many engineers I’ve known, he draws things to explain his explanations. I told him his sketch of my kidneys/bladder/etc. resembled a woman’s reproductive system. That got a laugh.

 

I know the kidney expression, like so may others, from Shakespeare. In this case, Falstaff speaks in The Merry Wives of Windsor, Act III, Scene 5:

 

“[T]hink of that,—a

man of my kidney,—think of that,—that am as subject

to heat as butter; a man of continual dissolution

and thaw: it was a miracle to escape suffocation.”

 

It’s easier to speak comfortably with a doctor who speaks like a man, not a Merck Manual; in effect, a human being. What started as a clinical interview turned into a conversation, an interesting one, with a man of my kidney.