By the pricking of my thumbs, something awkward this way comes...

I go to the doctor's fairly regularly - not that I am at death's door, but I am female which comes with a lot of medical stuff as standard - and I have occasionally come across the strange social scenario in which you meet someone you know whilst at the doctors. I've never really got a handle on what you can say - even the classic 'How are you?' seems inappropriate when you're speaking to someone who's either visiting a doctor or accompanying someone to the doctor. A normally innocuous question is sudddenly offensively intrusive when asked at the doctor's, and once you've not asked how someone is, there aren't really any other questions which can be safely asked in the knowledge that the person might be about to receive devastating news, or even just have to wee in a pot or endure some stranger rummaging around in their pants as 'routine'. Then there's a whole range of follow up awkwardness, where you don't want to mention to anyone else that you've seen the person at the doc's but at the same time feel like you're being slightly deceptive especially if you don't know what they were in for in the first place. In short, I would prefer it if everyone agreed that we are all strangers at the surgery - I don't want to be in the waiting room with an unpleasantly warm tube of piss trying to hold it in such a way that a casual acquaintance can't work out what's in it; I don't want to put myself through these paroxysms of social etiquette only to have my toolish neighbour come barrelling up to me and start trying to guess what I'm there for (no, really - he did this once); and I don't want to end up staring into the middle distance (because they don't seem to have magazines any more, presumably due to the risk of cross-infection) trying not to look at someone I vaguely know because I don't want to be intrusive only to then wonder whether they think I'm rude for not asking how they are.