Rather than shake their heads sadly as they run through my latest tests, they often try to lighten things up by dancing sideways into a an entirely different area.
''Are you going to see Black Sabbath?'' asked one of the professors last week, not the one who played drums for Auckland punk band The Killjoys, known for their sprightly track on the compilation album Class Of 81, even though he didn't actually play on that song.
Black Sabbath!
Not due here until the end of April next year and already they are cropping up during medical discussion all over the city.
Who in 1970 would have imagined this band's image would be all over the backs of Dunedin buses in 2015?
Not me, Jimmy.
''Quite probably,'' I replied.
''Now here's a thing. I actually first heard Black Sabbath through a coiled tunnel of rubber tubing.''
The two professors, so glad my impending death was not being discussed, laughed like two parallel drains.
''Sounds like a great idea for a column,'' said the other professor, the one-time punk drummer.
If I had a tooth for every time someone has said to me, sounds like a great idea for a column, I would have an enormous number of teeth.
But you can't write a column about coiled rubber tubing.
I smiled appreciatively - and toothily - at the two great medical men, and we turned talk back to impending death.
Ozzy Osbourne has been duelling with impending death forever.
His wife, Sharon, grew up with impending death, as her dad, the legendary manager Don Arden, was known to hang rock stars out of high-level building windows by their feet to ensure contracts were signed.
Ozzy is not the brightest guitar pick thrown out into an audience.
Humans average around 100 billion brain cells.
According to medical records obtained through the Official Secret Act, Ozzy Osborne has just 23.
And six of those are under imminent threat.
That's why Ozzy bites heads off dogs.
In 1970, I had yet to realise that the first thing a young man should own was an outstanding stereo.
Somehow I was surviving on a thing called an HMV Stereo 2, the smallest and weakest of three different HMV models made back then.
Tiny feather-light speakers, incapable of doing any damage at all, even with the volume on 10, the Stereo 2 only worked for me when I clamped each speaker to my ears, headphones before I knew what headphones were.
I never heard a bass-line on these speakers.
Noise, then, was the thing that was missing, and in 1970, we discovered how noisy music could sound if played through a huge valve guitar amplifier.
Total harmonic distortion was pretty high, sure, but nothing beats sheer shuddering sonic thunder.
And from there it was a very short jump to coiled rubber tubing.
We had been drinking beer that day, we were all a bit giggly - you know how it was in 1970.
And someone had bought this album called Black Sabbath which he wanted to try out.
Someone else, who had had more beer than the rest of us, spied three metres of coiled rubber tubing in the corner of the room.
He thought it would be a good idea to tape one end to the giant guitar amp and affix the other end to our ears as we lay on the floor, normally where you lay after lots of beer. We took turns with the rubber tunnel, usually handing the tubed piping on with the word WOW.
To this day I would recommend listening to all early 1970s metal bands, especially Black Sabbath, through coiled rubber tubing.
I'm sure tickets for the April 30 concert are selling well, but if the promoters really want to blow the walls out of the place, coiled rubber tubing should be free at every entrance.
It will be like doubling your brain cells.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
