Wit'n'wisdom - 24 April 2012

Dr Roger Smith of Berwick, Vic, had a patient who attended for several matters and then at the end of the visit enquired, “Also, should I be taking euthanasia for my cold?”

Realising she meant echinacea, Dr Smith decided to have some fun with her and suggested that this was somewhat unnecessary –  if she were to simply wait a week, all would be well without such drastic treatment for a self-limiting illness. 

Dr Mike Munroe of Bunbury, WA, had a patient come back to the surgery looking very worried after being told he had a Barrett’s oesophagus following a gastroscopy. Their local funeral directors are William Barrett and Sons. The patient jumped to conclusions and figured this was a local term for being on the way out.

Later, a female patient with multiple sclerosis came in with her husband to discuss her snoring. They discussed the various options and concluded that if the husband really found it too much, he could sleep in another room. 

He quickly chimed in that, due to his wife’s illness, he had to do most of the housework and that there was no way he was going to make two beds in the morning if he could get away with one.

Dr Kat Ritchie of Strathfieldsaye, Vic, was feeling a woman’s neck. The patient asked if she had found any “nymph lodes”. Sadly Dr Ritchie had to tell her the river fairies hadn’t mined any gold from around her neck but the good news was there weren’t any lymph nodes either. 

On another occasion, Dr Ritchie sent a young woman for a CT of the brain to investigate her intractable migraines. When the patient came back for results, Dr Ritchie nearly had an apoplectic fit when she looked at the screen and saw abnormal white lines scattered throughout the scan. 

“You have clips in your brain –  you didn’t tell me that,” she said to the patient. 

“Oh no! Those are my hair extension clips,” she blushed. 

Dr Ritchie now always asks about hair extensions in addition to clips and aneurysm repairs.