I thought I would add a work story today. Since I spent most of today, think of being creative but not actually getting off the couch.
I work in medical office - a pain clinic. We give patients spinal injections to help relieve their pain.
Working with this type of patient population can be very rough as many of the days are filled with angry patients. Their pain level is so high, they can't help but lash out. Often what they say does not make sense because of the pain, the frustration of nothing tried, has relieved the pain or even the medications the patient is taking.
Here are some of the cute things patients have said:
~ A patient listed she was allergic to bee stings. Her reaction was redness and swelling at the sting site. Hello! EVERYONE has redness and swelling where they got stung by a bee.
~ Another patient called yelling into the phone, demanding he wanted to have his neck extracted. Thankfully he laughed when the scheduler explained to him he really did not his neck extracted, because this would be REMOVING his neck! What he really wanted was an epidural which is an injection of steroid into his neck, to relieve his pain.
~Yesterday I had an elderly women explain to me that while she was SLEEPING she was THINKING. That was very cute, but scary, because I knew what she meant! She also told me she did not want to have the injection because she was afraid if she stopped her aspirin, she would have an MRI - a radiology test. Scarier yet, I knew what she meant -a TIA, which is a stroke. And no, I did NOT correct her.
~I also had a patient yesterday when asked what her pain level was between 0-10?
Her answer...December. Yep! That is a number between 0 and 10!
It can also be very rewarding when a patient who has a hard time walking across the waiting room after a car accident who can now return to work or play with their children/grandchildren.
