33. THIS IS LIKE AN EPISODE OF HOUSE
I’m a 4th year med student seeing patients on clinical rotations. A patient comes in with a laundry list of chronic conditions he suffers from — fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome, etc.
Guy is wearing over-the-counter braces on all of his fingers and both thumbs, as well as both wrists, forearms, knees, and shins because of a rare bone disorder he has that I’ve never heard of.
“Well that doesn’t surprise me,” he says. “Doctors go to med school to learn how to prescribe drugs and make money, not heal people.” Okay. Patient tells me that he suffers from a rare disease that I’ve probably never even heard of called myalgic encephalomyelitis. True, I’ve never heard of it.
Again: “That’s because doctors don’t care about educating themselves about illness and healing, they just care about giving patients drugs and getting money from big pharma.” Okay, I don’t have a vested interest in this patient thinking I’m smart, so it doesn’t really get to me.
He continues “educating” me throughout the appointment, and I just make conversation with him. The third time he tells me about how all doctors just go to med school so they can put all their patients on drugs, I just say, “Lucky for you, pharmacology was my weakest subject!” That actually gets a laugh out of him, and I listen to his explanations of all of his rare diseases and disorders. Appointment ends, and he leaves.
I look up myalgic encephalomyelitis. It’s the British term for chronic fatigue syndrome, which the patient also had. He has a weekly standing appointment with my predecessor, which is the only thing that keeps him from visiting the local ER every day, sometimes multiple times a day.
His diagnosis is Illness Anxiety Disorder, although he would tell you it’s 800 other things you’ve obviously never heard of. He swears that my preceptor is the only honest doctor in the country, because he basically just has him come in once a week and talk about all of his various illnesses for 20 minutes, after which the patent returns home feeling validated.
The ER docs love my preceptor. The patient is mentally ill, so I’m not insulted by him or anything, but you’d be surprised how many people come to the doctor to be treated for something, all the while telling the doctor how horrible they are and why all doctors are evil puppets of big pharma.
It’s like when I worked fast food and people would say “every time I come here you guys screw up,” and I’d just think… Why do you keep coming back?!
Eshlau