It Takes All Kinds

I love people, plain and simple. I love listening to their stories, understanding them, connecting with them through common history. I love all ages, all experiences, and all walks of life.  And I most certainly appreciate the laughs we share ...


For many reasons, one of my favorite patient groups to care for are the grumpy, old men --- and the grumpier, the better, as far as I'm concerned. During my last inpatient rotation, I took care of an 80-something-year-old man who had fallen and broken his hip in his adult family home. Along with orthopedic surgery and his two doting sons, we literally got him back on his feet within days of his accident. Every morning when I entered his room to see how he was doing, he eyed me with suspicion and answered most of my questions with a grunt or two. A fairly staid individual, he grew the most animated when I asked him how he was enjoying his meals.  


"Terrible!" he would reply, wrinkling his nose and flicking out his tongue. Believe me, I became quite adept at swallowing chuckles pretty darn fast.


On the morning of his discharge, I walked in to his room in my normal fashion and found him scrunched in his bed, sporting a green stocking cap and off kilter glasses, the label on which the nurses had applied jutting perpendicularly from his face. Before I could launch into my routine of questions, he squinted his eyes at me and grabbed my name tag, slowly drawing it back so he could get a better look.


"Oh," he said. "It's you again," promptly releasing my badge and sending it hurtling back toward my chest.


I couldn't help the laughter this time.


When I turned to leave, I bent down and told him it had been a pleasure to take care of him.


He smirked, "Yeah, right."


I shook his hand and grinned all the way out the door.

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Depending on my rotation of the month, I work one to two half days at my outpatient clinic right around the corner from the main hospital. I typically see 3 - 5 patients per clinic and occasionally see walk-ins, particularly if my regular patients do not show.


One recent morning, I was handed a chart for a walk-in patient, a man with abscesses in his groin. After not disappearing on their own as he had hoped, he decided it was best to have them evaluated. My attending physician had briefly stopped in to see him before me, and we discussed the most likely definitive treatment of incising and draining the abscesses, especially if they were large and tender. An understandably painful procedure, I nodded my head in agreement and headed in to greet the patient.


"Good morning, sir," I began. "How are you today?"


"I'm all right," he replied. "I've sure been better ..." he paused, looking me up and down. He shook his head ever so slightly.


"What's wrong?" I asked.


He smiled. "You sure aren't the ugly man I was hoping for!"


(I tell you ... you never know what is waiting for you behind that door!)