Friday, August 4, 2023

Getting Jiggy with it


History-taking is vital in medical practice. It translates a narrative using clinical knowledge acquired over many years of training in a systemic art form, to analyse symptoms and form a diagnosis. It is one essential skill that differentiates a doctor from a google search. 

A doctor knows what questions to ask next, taking the patient's full circumstance into perspective. 

Thanks to hot knowledge and the internet, I find a lot more people presenting with diagnoses rather than symptoms. This can be misleading for the doctor and they have to work backwards to prove or disprove the theory. 

Some patients, having analysed their symptoms online, will maintain a streamlined presentation of symptoms to lead a doctor towards the diagnosis they have decided. This can be detrimental. I will share some examples another time.

Today, it is my dearly beloved reception staff who have decided to make my job easier by diagnosing the patient at booking.

He is a 90 year old man. Booking notes: "Depression. Since his wife died recently, he has not been eating and is losing weight."

I set my mood and called for him on the buzzer. A spritely man swung the door open, did a little jig then waltzed unto the patient chair. 

I looked at the booking notes again to be sure I had the right patient as it seemed completely incongruous with the man sat in front of me. 

"Hello Mr. Jiggy. " I said with a smile, confirming his identity and wondering if I had actually misread his actions. Perhaps he was staggering drunk from drowning his grief, but no, he was collected and smelled fresh. 

"How are you?" I asked cautiously, stressing on the "are" to emphasize my concern for his wellbeing.

"Oh, I'm feeling Chucklarious." He said and then giggled at his own clever spontaneous joke. "Do you get it, chuckle, hilarious, chucklarious?"

I looked at the booking notes and back at him again.

"I'm so sorry to hear about your wife" I started 

"Aah," he said and waved his hand in the air dismissively. "That one, she was a bad woman. Terrible, terrible woman."

I sat back in my chair. Better let him take the lead on this one, I thought.

He then told me the sad story of how his late wife, who had been his second wife, had transferred all the money in their account, which was most of his life savings, to her son from a previous marriage just before she died. "Twenty years of my life wasted on that godforsaken woman." He said.

"I should have known she was up to something when she asked me to marry her. That was a red flag!" He said "My first wife did the same and it did not end very well either."

The conversation went into his historical love life, complex family dynamics, his time in the war and so on. 

We talk about marriage proposal traditions. Me mostly uhm-ing and saying " well" to most of his opinions.

My head was still waiting to get to the bereavement and grief part where he was not eating and eventually, he did. 

"So you see, the problem is, I have not had to cook for myself in seventy years and don't know where to start now. My daughter (who lives in Australia) suggests I buy one of these air fryer things. What do you think doc, are they any good?"

We talk about air fryers.

"Well actually, what I would like is to meet a nice woman who can cook." I suggest simple air fryer recipes and options like Meals-on-wheels and home delivery food services. "well yeah, I guess," he says turning his head form one side to the other in contradictory movement. "But I'd prefer to meet a woman, they're other things you can do with a woman."

Err, okay. I'm not ageist, I concur but spare me the details please. 

We talk about various places he can go to find love. He has tried the pub, too many men there. He has tried the community centre but they mostly did things like knitting and line-dancing - too boring for him. He was considering going online but he didn't trust that. 

I agreed to refer him to the befriending service and see what other suggestions they may have. 

He was a charming pleasant man and my last patient for the day so I had allowed the conversation run longer than usual.

After a while, Mr Jiggy sits back in the chair and looks at me with a smile on his face.

"So," he says. "Do you know how to cook?" 

😊


Ps: Who is to argue that some Jollof rice is not a cure for Depression 😄🤯🤓


Tuesday, January 31, 2023

Truth or How dare you?




Some days at work leave me questioning my sanity. 

Today was one of those. 

Alpha

After checking the first patient's blood pressure, I tell her "Your blood pressure is raised again today, I'm afraid."

She replies "I don't know how you can just sit there and tell me my blood pressure is high. I know my own body and I know that its not. "

I stare at the electronic blood pressure machine, wondering why it was being so rude to this lovely lady until I realised she was talking to me! 

Me? What did I do?

"I'm not just telling you anything, I'm only reading what the machine says."

Sigh


Beta

"Doc, I need you to find another way to prove that I am pregnant. "

I had just informed the next patient that the second blood test and third urine pregnancy test confirmed that she was NOT pregnant. 

"But I am nearly due and if you don't refer me soon, I'll need to be induced and I don't want that. I am very sure I'm pregnant because I felt it when the embryo divided and became a foetus. I have been pregnant many times before so I definitely know!"

I managed to convince her to start taking her antipsychotic medication again and see me in 2 weeks to discuss this "pregnancy" further. 


Charlie

Young, curvy lady sitting in front of me. 

"I know I'm a man. I just need to get rid of these things on my chest and sort the other stuff..."

Hey, its 2023! 

Somebody, somewhere is trying to match her body with his mind, unlike patient beta unfortunately, where I'm trying to match her mind with her body.

But my job here today is to fix the depression probably caused by the testosterone which is forcing the body to match the mind whilst messing up the mind further....you get the drift.


Delta

By the next patient, I had completely resigned from logical thinking. We needed to work out his body mass index so I asked casually. 

"Do you know how tall you are?" 

He was a thirty year old man, standing at about eye-to-eye level with my 5ft and nearly 6 inches. 

"I'm 5ft 11" He said confidently, tilting his chin forward and spreading his arms apart, in attempt to somehow elongate himself .

I smile. "I don't think so. But let's see what this height chart says. "

He stands in the measuring position, against the Height chart on the wall and it reads 172cm (which converts to around 5ft 7" in old money).

"What does it say?" He asks, as I make a note of it.

I reply "It says 172cm which is about 5 ft 7 inches." Then quickly add "But that doesn't mean you are not 5ft 11."

Honestly, I don't know what is real or right any more. 😏