Doctors Favorite Patients

If you want your doctor to hurt his frontal lobe by rolling his eyeballs too far into his skull, just say "Dr. Oz says . . ." or "My friend's sister's friend said I probably have. . . ." My friends and I fall into that "Not My Favorite Patient" category.

When I was sick recently, in the course of 24 hours, I started trying to figure out what was wrong with me. I first diagnosed myself as having heartburn and went out to purchase a large package of antacids. When that didn't work, I remembered reading in People magazine about all of these stars doing colon cleanses and thought that might be my problem, so went back out and found one better - a whole body detox cleanser. Still no relief. Alka Seltzer seemed like the next best option and I was lucky to have found a neighborhood-sized box - on sale. Still no relief. Finally, my daughter told me that her husband told her that my symptoms sounded like his previous symptoms; I probably had appendicitis.

By day 2 of my symptoms, I decided to check with a professional - so I went online to check wikipedia. My symptoms were too general to choose one diagnosis. Feeling that I had at least eliminated many diagnoses - I decided to see if an emergency room doctor could figure it out. He could and after a week in the hospital, I came home to enough over-the-counter medicine that I now have plenty of things to give out on Halloween.

I'm not the only one who self-diagnoses. One woman finally headed to her doctor with the sound medical conclusion that her problem was that her liver hurt. Now, of all the various parts we have in our body, that was one I totally forgot about. Yes, you hear about people who drink too much having liver problems but I've never heard anyone complain that their liver hurt. And now I know why - the doctor said that there are no nerve endings in the liver so it couldn't "hurt". And he determined that it wasn't her liver, but her broken ribs that hurt. I guess it was in the vicinity.

I'm sure that the only saving grace for doctor's having to deal with people who self-diagnose is that it gives them things to talk about at cocktail parties and during surgery. I just hope they weren't laughing so hard that they dropped a small pointed medical tool into an open wound. That is the only thing I can come up with that could be causing the pain in my side.