Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Really kid?

Patient number 21 for the day today was a 14 year old with a cold....and an attitude.
So as I'm examining this snot filled snot, my stethoscope on his chest, he opens up and coughs phlegm all over my face. Not bothering at all to cover his cough or turn his head, just coughs all over me.
Now, I'm kind of used to this behavior from children under the age of, oh, say four but a 14 year old???? Come on.
His mother scolds him. "Patient 21*, don't cough all over her." *Name changed to save my my husband tracking him down and throttling him.
Patient 21 replies, "If she didn't want to be coughed on all the time she wouldn't have been a doctor."
Now back in the day I might have kicked this kid in the nuts (No, I don't regret that at all, creepy guy at Aerosmith concert if you are out there), or maybe I'd have made a comment about his pizza face acne resembling leprosy (OK, so I'm a little sorry about that one, kid from Chilean night club the night Pisco Sours were free for the ladies)
But I didn't I just moved around him and listened to his lungs, checked his ears and prescribed him something for his nasty sinusitis.
Why didn't I say anything? Because he's kind of right. I knew what I was signing up for when I went into pediatrics. It's why I don't mind wresting a kid to the floor to look in his ears, I don't flinch when someone else's two month old vomits on my sweater first thing in the morning. It's why I love to talk about poop and snot and even acne.
And lets face it, that kid ain't got nothin' my immune system hasn't seen ten times before.

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