My friend Tom
Innocence revisited
This anecdote provides a humorous twist to the challenges of convincing patients with diabetes to change their diets.
Tom Slater has been my patient – and my friend – since I first started working for the Victorian Aboriginal Health Service in Melbourne. He is a huge specimen of a man, weighing all of 140 kg, and during his interesting life of 67 years he has done a number of jobs. A varied and colourful career has seen him cutting sugar cane in Queensland, playing rugby league for Wigan in England, selling pharmaceuticals for a drug company in Sydney and working for Gough Whitlam’s office in Canberra as an Aboriginal liaison officer.
The first time I met Tom, I introduced myself: ‘Good morning, Mr Slater, I’m Dr Sanjiva, the new doctor’.
‘G’day, mate’, he said, ‘just call me Tom’.