10/23 Saw a sports doctor on Madison and had my shoulder examined, which has developed a stabbing pain during weight-lifting, making all exercise next to impossible. Yet in the rest of the day, I feel almost nothing. He puts me through a barrage of at least 20 tests, turning and lifting and twisting my arm in all sorts of ways. Almost none of them hurts. He eventually settles for a labral tear, not anything in the rotator cuff, as I had thought. Conservative treatment, should take 4-6 weeks.

It was the first time I saw a doctor googling as part of his regular work – not really the diagnostic process, he used his twists and turns for that, but in order to show me his theory he googled for drawings of the shoulder system and went back and forth until he found one that illustrated most clearly what he wanted to say. So far, I’ve been used to there being a poster on the wall of the examination room, or a special computer system that patients don’t have access to.

He asked what kind of doctor I am, and I said computer science. He said he’d wanted to do that too, but his parents talked him out of it. He seemed genuinely unhappy, or at least in doubt about it. Talked about introvertedness, which we both deeply share, and how my job as a computer guy is for the most part working with people, and how every company today is a software company, and how AI will radically change both of our fields.