A 22 year old patient comes in with a positive review of systems (says “yes” every time you ask if he is having problems with a body system) … the Macerena (pain or other symptoms anywhere you touch your body while doing the dance) … whatever you want to call it.
Symptoms were present for more than 2 weeks and included cough, headache, fever to 100.6, runny nose, sore throat, weakness, loss of taste, increase in body fat (he used to be 10% body fat, now he’s at least 15%), funny looking diarrhea stools that float more than usual (including vivid description of how stool should slide right from rectum into the toilet bowl and his are not), abdominal cramps, episodic vomiting (with an episode of fretching while waiting to be seen resulting in the hawking up of a saliva loogie which he left oozing down the side of the sink), leg cramps and … I finally had to stop him. Enough is enough, Buddy. You’re 22, not 102.
Some “pale sickly looking little Chinese doctor” treated him earlier in the week for bronchitis and gave him Augmentin which caused him worse stomach aches and more diarrhea. Now he wanted a different antibiotic. And he also wanted to know what was wrong with him.
Oh yeah, and “by the way,” he had some family medical leave papers for me to fill out because he couldn’t go to work for the past two weeks and was probably going to need another week or so to get better. He couldn’t get in to see his regular doctor all week because all he can seem to do all day is sleep and by the time he can get enough energy to get out of bed, the doctor’s office is closed.
Yeah. I noticed how you had to be wheeled into the room by wheelchair.
His physical examination was … normal.
I even checked “unnecessary” labs on him and the labs were … normal.
You can get Motrin or Aleve over the counter. Here’s some Phenergan. Don’t shoot it into your arteries and don’t sprinkle it into your eyeballs for that matter. You’re cleared to go back to work. I don’t fill out family leave papers in the emergency department. You’ll need to muster up the energy during normal business hours to get to your family physician for that one. Have a nice day.
Two days later I get a call from the doc working in the ED. Mr. Macerena was back. Now he couldn’t go to work because the medication I prescribed him made him sleep all day. He needed a note. Oh, and I allegedly told him that I would fill out the medical leave papers for him, but forgot to do so. He wanted this doc to fill out the papers.
With an obvious sarcastic tone in her voice, she told me “I was just checking to make sure that you wanted the medical leave papers filled out and seeing what you wanted me to write for a diagnosis.”
In other words, she was calling to yank my chain. It worked. I felt like driving to work just to smack the guy.
“You’ve got to be kidding me. Rip those damn papers up. Right now. I want to hear the sound of tearing paper in the phone. Don’t worry, he’s too weak to do anything to you. Better yet … just casually walk up to him, then grab the papers out of his hands, run away, and shove them in the paper shredder. Then take his pills away from him and dump them in the toilet. No. Open them up and sprinkle them into his eyes. Then get me the phone number for his boss so we can settle this ‘I can’t go to work’ stuff once and for all.”
The doc laughed, thanked me, and hung up. Sure. She gets a kick out of it and now I’m all wired up for the next couple of hours.
Then I get another call from the hospital an hour later. Mr. Macerena had to be escorted from the premises by the police after threatening the doc that he was going to get his papers filled out and get his money back for the visit he had with me two days ago even if he had to wait for her shift to be over in order to do it.
If some people spent as much time working as they did trying to get out of doing work, productivity in this country would double.
I know that guy! I saw the exact same dude yesterday. He must get around more than Sumdood who always attacks people who mind their own business!
It is worse when I’m working sick and I have people that feel better than me begging to be declared too ill to work. I’m sorry you feel rotten but be a man! The males are actually worse about this than female patients.
We need a return of stoicism in this country–or at least a little less wimpiness.
I just tell patients like this that “they” won’t accept papers signed by an ER doc and that they must have their regular doc sign them. Works really well for all of those stupid WIC prescriptions I’m handed (my baby spits up the WIC stuff, I need the GOOD formula!).
Yesterday I had the pleasure of being in a large medical office in the bronx that does mostly disability and social security exams (I was there for an ROTC exam).
One guy sitting next to me, starting telling the woman next to him how he had hurt his back and cant work any more. He wanted to go back to school and get a job where he doesnt need to lift things.
Very admirable, right?
Not to the woman sitting next to him. She says “Nah, whatchu need is get on worker’s comp. Here, I gots the forms in my purse. Make sure you calls this doctor, he does the forms the best”
Watch it WC, you might incur the wrath of the paineurs for not being more sympathetic.
I had a patient fire me for not filling out her Family Medical Leave Act papers for free. Good riddance.
-Steve
Jeez those *&**&$&% FMLA papers. Why should it takes 5 pages of BS by the doc to fill out to request time off for a patient’s loved one? Clearly, paperwork written by a lawyer in government. Frankly I have never filled one out in under 30 minutes. Of course unreimbursed.
Sad. And at 22yo, you’re only beginning to join the workforce
I hate how you have to get a doctor’s cert to be away from work for more than 2 days sick, mainly because I feel ridiculous going to the doctor with a bad cold/no voice/what have you and having to tell the doctor “yeah I have a bad cold, all I need is a cert”. Bleh. If I could just opt to work from home when I have a cold it would have been awesome. I could sleep in, work in my pjs, have an endless supply of hot drinks, not have to answer the phone with my lack of voice…
Your imaginations that run through your brain when you’re ticked amuse me greatly.
I am sorry though that you have to go through things like this with patients. So frustrating and a waste of time.
Macarena pain and fretching – very funny!
send him to the nonvitriolic, morally and intectually superior human being — Lawyer Matt to solve this dispute.
Please don’t dump the papers to the toilet, shred and use it as a cushion for packing glasses, gift items, etc. You can sell the shredded paper to the recycling company/person for re-use. By doing so you can save many trees and hence the environments and our universe.
Isn’t this spam? “the environments”? We have more than one? Recycling paper saves the universe from what exactly? Hilarious.