The profession generally regards patient confidentiality as inviolable. In fact, my sieve, no, make that colander like memory for names usually ensures my own patients' confidentiality.
Sometimes, though, it’s very tempting to break the rules, especially when an episode involves what can only be described as unbelievably mind-boggling stupidity. So, Mr Whoever-you-were, (we’ll call you “Jack”) prepare to be blogged.
Jack, aged about 65 years, was playing bachelor for a bit. Mrs Jack had gone overseas on a (I would say) well-earned ‘holiday with the girls’: a cruise to Thailand, to be precise.
I first met Jack on a medical ward at the very moment he was vomiting over my intern, who, at only three days into his first job, had not yet developed adequate foreign-bodily-fluid-projectile dodging skills (as in, ‘use the force, Luke’).
[You know, medicine in a tropical climate must be the only occupation in the world where one can expect to see real shit hitting a real fan on a semi-regular basis. In-coming!!! But I digress.]
Jack had been left to fend for himself. The mates, hearing of Mrs Jack’s departure, had turned up fairly swiftly and had eaten, over a few good footy matches on the telly and a slab of ice cold stubbies, most of the pre-prepared meals that Mrs Jack had left in the freezer for her husband to eat over the ten days she would be away.
Jack was crook. He disembarked at both ends for three days. Finally, the exodus settled and I was able to send him home. I said to him before he left, “Jack, sometimes people who have food-poisoning can think of something they ate that might have been suspicious”, letting my voice drift up hopefully at the end of the sentence.
“Well,” he said, “after the boys left, all I could find to eat was a plastic pot of mung bean sprouts that had been in the fridge for a while. They were a bit slimy at the bottom.”
Not typical, I thought, but possible. So, off Jack went home. The next day, there he was, back again, sick as a dog.
“Jack! What happened?” I asked, mentally listing a Hugh Laurie-style differential of obscure diagnoses I may have missed.
“Well, you know those slimy mung bean sprouts I told you about?”
“Yes, Jack.”
“Well, I know you said they might have caused my food poisoning but I wasn’t sure, so I ate the rest of them last night to see.”
Sometimes, though, it’s very tempting to break the rules, especially when an episode involves what can only be described as unbelievably mind-boggling stupidity. So, Mr Whoever-you-were, (we’ll call you “Jack”) prepare to be blogged.
Jack, aged about 65 years, was playing bachelor for a bit. Mrs Jack had gone overseas on a (I would say) well-earned ‘holiday with the girls’: a cruise to Thailand, to be precise.
I first met Jack on a medical ward at the very moment he was vomiting over my intern, who, at only three days into his first job, had not yet developed adequate foreign-bodily-fluid-projectile dodging skills (as in, ‘use the force, Luke’).
[You know, medicine in a tropical climate must be the only occupation in the world where one can expect to see real shit hitting a real fan on a semi-regular basis. In-coming!!! But I digress.]
Jack had been left to fend for himself. The mates, hearing of Mrs Jack’s departure, had turned up fairly swiftly and had eaten, over a few good footy matches on the telly and a slab of ice cold stubbies, most of the pre-prepared meals that Mrs Jack had left in the freezer for her husband to eat over the ten days she would be away.
Jack was crook. He disembarked at both ends for three days. Finally, the exodus settled and I was able to send him home. I said to him before he left, “Jack, sometimes people who have food-poisoning can think of something they ate that might have been suspicious”, letting my voice drift up hopefully at the end of the sentence.
“Well,” he said, “after the boys left, all I could find to eat was a plastic pot of mung bean sprouts that had been in the fridge for a while. They were a bit slimy at the bottom.”
Not typical, I thought, but possible. So, off Jack went home. The next day, there he was, back again, sick as a dog.
“Jack! What happened?” I asked, mentally listing a Hugh Laurie-style differential of obscure diagnoses I may have missed.
“Well, you know those slimy mung bean sprouts I told you about?”
“Yes, Jack.”
“Well, I know you said they might have caused my food poisoning but I wasn’t sure, so I ate the rest of them last night to see.”
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