It is not nice to laugh at your patient's expense...

I started off the morning with a doozy of a consult. As specialists in pulmonary medicine and critical care, our practice is consulted on a large majority of the patients in the hospital. Some of these consults are genuinely needed others are more mindless. This one was a DOOZY.

I walked in the room and was told by the patient (before I even introduced myself): "I do not have Munchausen's Syndrome". (For those of you unfamiliar with the disease, the patient makes themselves ill for attention...). Right off the bat, I am thinking that this is going to be, at the very least, amusing. We continued with the routine questions about shortness of breath, cough, fevers, chills, chest pain- and then got to the social aspect of her life. I asked her what she did for a living (I had read the chart and knew she was disabled and had been living in a motel because her mother had kicked her out of the house). She told me she was a clinical psychologist (REALLY!). This woman has had more admissions to psych units than I can count on two hands but I played along.

What type of patients did you treat?
Famous people.
Really, hmmm.
I have counseled every age- children, adolescent, adults, couples, inpatients, inmates...
That is a wide range, you must have gotten many degrees.
Duhhhh. I also counseled the OJ Simpson jurors but that burned me out and I had to leave the state of California. Actually the state asked me to leave for my own health.
Mmmmhmmm.
I also was on staff at General Hospital.
What hospital?
General Hospital- I was good friends with the Quatermaines.

Ladies and Gents I had to leave the room to stop shaking I was laughing so hard. The sad thing is she was dead serious....