I Know I Can't!

Cue to the medicine floor at 9pm.
A nurse notes a patient rifling through the refrigerator at the nurse's station, dumping all the juice boxes into a garbage bag she's taken from the trash can in her room. The nurse watches, agape, as the patient finishes cleaning out the entire fridge, then begins dragging her bag o' goodies down the hall. The nurse finally recovers as the patient is about to enter her room (an easy 30 feet away).
Frozen, RN: "Hey! You can't do that!"
Mrs. Frontal Infarcts: "I know I can't!"
The patient then proceeds to drag her prize into the room and shut the door.
End scene.

This story had a happy ending, however. Shortly afterward, a highly-trained team of professionals was assembled, and the hostage juice boxes of 6-South were successfully extracted.

Photographic Evidence

So here's an example of a typical patient encounter nowadays in what I fondly refer to as "Coochie Clinic"

Me: "So what's brought you in to see us?"
Miss Photogenic: "Well I got this heat rash"

She immediately pulls down the 'dress' that is roughly the size of something that I, at 115 pounds less, would wear as a tank top. I get an eye full of cleavage and it takes about three seconds to identify the ringworm.

Me, with full poker face: "Ah, OK, and have you had any other skin problems?"
Miss Photogenic: "Yeah, I had this spider bite about a month ago, here, I gotta picture!"

As I'm thinking to myself, "Oh shit, I know what spider bite is code for," she grabs her smartphone, clicks around, and then shoves it under my nose. Sure enough, there is a picture of her very large breast lifted up by a hand and a huge ass Staph abscess underneath.

Really, people?

An Old ER Doc's Favorite Story

So an older ER doc told me his favorite story not too long ago. It went something like this:

A woman is brought in by police at 5 am on a week day to be checked out for "being maced in the eyes." Apparently she was drinking earlier and had gotten combative with the cops, leading to her getting maced. The ER doc went into her room to check her out and noticed she wasn't looking too bothered by the whole "mace-to-the-face" thing.

Doc: "Ma'am, I understand you were maced, how are you feeling?"
Mrs. Demeanor: "Fine."
Doc, getting a little confused now: "You aren't feeling any pain?"
Mrs. Demeanor: "Naw, my eyes hurt when they firs' did it, but I took care of it."
Doc: "You took care of it? You were maced. How did you take care of it?"
Mrs. Demeanor: "I put beer in 'em."
Doc, really confused now: "You...put...beer in them? And that worked?"
Mrs. Demeanor, as if this is quite obvious: "Yeah."
Doc: "Can I ask you were you got beer at 4:30 in the morning?"
Mrs. Demeanor, giving him a look of disgust and putting as much condescension as possible into her voice: "From my purse."
She then reached into her purse to prove that she was packin'..cheap beer.

So there it is ladies and gentlemen. If you get maced and your eyes are on fire, just rub some beer in them. Even better than the good old "rub some dirt on it" solution...

Standardized Patients

So my medical school has us work with standardized patients sometimes. This basically allows us to sort of kind of learn to take a history and do a physical exam without actually being let loose on some poor person with real medical problems. These people get paid to spend a couple hours being poked and prodded by a bunch of 20-somethings who feel all kinds of uncomfortable with tasks such as asking obese older women to lift their breasts out of the way and feelin' up femoral pulses on crusty old guys.

Now most of these SP's have been doing this for a while and it's old hat to them. They have their chief complaint, they know their story and what answers they should give to relevant questions, and the feedback they give is usually something along the lines of: "Explained what she was doing well."; "Was very compassionate."; "Know hows to act like a human being."...or some other generic shit like that. But sometimes the feedback is off-topic or even downright crazy-pants, and of course we all like to share those fun stories. A few examples:

Mrs. Old-Fashioned: "Blouse was too low and distracted me."
The student's 'blouse' was a dress with a buttoned-up cardigan over it, but this one's still not too out there. At least it wasn't a male patient talking about how distracting it was.

Mrs. Fashion Police: "She should not have been wearing boots with heels!"
It was 15 degrees outside. Unfortunately she did not share what kind of shoes she would have considered more appropriate.

Mrs. PC: "Beard made me uncomfortable, unless it was for religious or cultural reasons."
10 to 1 odds she clutched her purse closer then he walked in the room.

This gem happened after an encounter where the patient was supposedly angry and the student was supposed to placate him.
Mr. Drug Seeker: "He did an OK job [of apologizing], but he should have offered me free drug samples."

This happened with an actual patient who gave permission to be examined by two students in a group of four.
Mr. Creepster: "Is there a girl in the group? Yeah? She can definitely examine me."
He got two burly male students.