Okay, so I just had to share this work story… I have been laughing ALL day!
I’m on my dermatology rotation right now and while I don’t see how people could do this all day, I did have my first bright spot today!
Picture it: Chicago November 2005 (I watch too much Golden Girls, I know):
A 26 year old man from another country, a tropical country shall we say. So he comes into the office with a thousand and 1 questions (which I don’t usually mind, this is why I like clinic).
Question number 1: I have lots of moles. Answer: they’re pretty normal, just keep an eye on em.
Question number 2: Am I too old for acne? Answer: no not really, pretty common in the 20s and sometimes 30s.
But then it went downhill from there. The third question was… I have this rash on my legs and butt, what is it?
So we had the young man undress and put on a gown (that required an entire block of instruction but okay… he’s not really from here). I come back into the room and WTF??!!!
This dude looked like he was wearing a pair of gray sweatpants!!! I mean nashy (just ashy and nasty)!!!!!! This young man is bright, he’s an engineering grad student for goodness sakes!!! But dude couldn’t have put on a drop of lotion, cream, nothing for at least 2 or 3 months! This was beyond ec.zema (a truly annoying medical condition that lots of people, including this young man, have). This was just body neglect. I know he couldn’t ever expect to lay up with some woman leaving body dandruff all up in her bed! We asked him if he moisturizes.. dude said no, never! We asked how often he bathed (remember my meme???) because too hot showers can aggravate the skin and cause excess dryness and what did this dude say???
I bathe every other day or so in the winter since I’m not sweating!
Hold the phone, stop the presses, call the law!!!! Did he really say he didn’t warsh (and yes I said warsh) his arse every day! He just lays up in the nastiness until he deems necessary! Hot Damn Mess I tell ya! It took everything in me to keep from falling out laughing when he said it. And the sad part is… the first thing I thought… “Oh this must go into the blog!” Sad, I know!
So needless to say, we gave the young man some prescriptions for the ec.ze.ma and PLENTY of free samples of lotions (to which he responded, “now how do I use these”)
And I swear to you, every bit of this story is true…. I’m not at all creative enough to make some shit like this up!
