350+

The people in the town where I work are not the brightest in the world, especially when it comes to their health. This is a source of both unending frustration and endless amusement. As an example of the former, yesterday I was awoken by the consulting nurse at 430 AM.

"Your patient is calling. She says she was hit hard on the head yesterday. She had a severe headache all day and then in the afternoon she passed out and didn't wake up until just now. I told her she needed to get to the emergency room right away but she says she hates the hospital and refuses to go."

"Ok, my first question, when she decided to call me, what did she expect I would do?"

A much more amusing but no less tragic situation arose the other day when Mr. X, a short, extremely round middle aged man, came in to see my friend Chris.

"Mr. X, I noticed my nurse forgot to get your weight, do you know how much you weigh?"

"Sure, I weigh exactly 350 pounds, my weight hasn't changed in years."

A little skeptical, Chris asks "How do you know that?"

"Well, they have this scale at work, I check every day. I step on the scale and I slide the little thing all the way to the end until it stops. 350 pounds."

"Maybe we better check on our scale."

The guy steps up to the digital scale and the numbers roll way past 350 and stop at 546.

Mr. X is flabbergasted. "546?! That's really bad, isn't it?"

Comments

Dr B said…
Should have left him at 350! It's all about quality of life and now he is gunna get all OCD about how he got to 546 and then he'll need paxil, but that will give him ED, then you will try an SNRI, but that won't be covered. Call the bariatric surgeon now!

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