Dear everyone,

I sure have missed these questions.  Thanks to Edward Vavra for opening the
discussion.  I hope that it doesn't stop here.

I do have one concern about the sentence in question.  Was no one else
troubled by the pronoun reference problem in the absolute phrase (singular
*patient* = plural *their*)?  Have we really begun to accept a plural
pronoun for a singular antecedent to establish gender neutrality, avoid
using more than one pronoun (e.g. *his or her*), or avoid making all our
antecedents plural?  As a writing teacher, I often find myself forcing my
students to struggle with this frustrating question.

Looking forward to your answers,

Paul E. Doniger