I knew a man, who died four years ago, aged 59, who had the same arthritic condition as me. He was diagnosed at 23, as I was, and his upbringing had been one of not taking any pills, regardless of being ill. That strategy didn't pay off for his father, who didn't feel well one afternoon, and didn't feel confident driving, and rang his son to come and collect him (he was a teacher). He was driving past a major public hospital and said, "Son, I think we'd better go in there." He did and he died that night of a heart attack. The man I knew died of bowel cancer.

Anyway, the man was a smoker, and a bit overweight, and a family member told him that he should go and see this doctor in a small country town, who had helped them. The doctor was a heavy smoker and told the man between puffs of a cigarette that he needed to quit smoking and do a few other things. When I was a small kid, I saw a doctor who, if he knew you and knew you were a smoker, would call you in, and say, "Thank God it's you," before lighting a cigarette and asking why you were there. The doctor would smoke it, do any exam he had to do, wash his hands, light another cigarette, write a script, sit a talk to you for a couple of minutes while he smoked the cigarette, and then go out the back and empty his ashtray, spray air freshener around the room and wait a few minutes before calling the next patient.

My GP is Asian, and most of her patients are Asian, and I know that some Asian people will go to an Asian doctor because an Asian doctor will understand them in a way that a Western doctor won't. I can remember my mother saying that she wished my doctor was Australian (i.e. white) rather than Asian, but what she doesn't understand is, I, too, can better relate to an Asian doctor, and she sees it as being unpatriotic to go to an Asian doctor. To that, I say two things. One, an Asian man came to see my rheumatologist one day, and his GP was Australian, so it balances out. And two, I don't view an Australian seeing an Asian doctor as being any different to an Australian having a Holden as a company car that they didn't really like, but didn't have a choice, and when they retired, they relinquished the company car and bought a Mazda.

What those examples indicate are the hypocrisy of a doctor telling people not to smoke when they sit there smoking and my mother has said, "Oh, but the doctor might not have troubles," and I say, "That's almost like saying, "My Pop started smoking when he was 14 and lived to be 92, and died of old age, so why should I stop smoking?"" A good doctor has empathy with their patients and doesn't do what they tell others not to. And okay, you don't have to be Asian, speak an Asian language (I speak Japanese and a bit of Chinese) or have lived in Asia to have an Asian doctor (and nor is it what the right-wing call "reverse racism"). But I can understand why Asian people might prefer an Asian doctor.

The first example also demonstrates that many doctors learn about diseases from books, and on medical wards, during their clinical years, they have a teaching doctor who can say something like, "Disease A follows this course, a case in point being Mrs. B in this bed." But autism is NOT a disease that needs treatment, and again, with the example of an Asian person preferring an Asian doctor, I could not get over the rudeness of one doctor one day saying that he'd seen a Chinese lady with a swollen eye and laughed as he said that he didn't have to tell someone what she looked like, but some neurotypical folk who work with autistic people have learnt it all from books treat autistic people like broken neurotypical folks who need to make more of an effort, rather than as different people. Just like an Asian person might prefer an Asian doctor, an autistic person might prefer an autistic therapist, who understands their struggles, I know I do. In fact, I have started with a therapist who is autistic and LGBTIQA and we have a great relationship.