Navonim - The Ramblings of Garnel Ironheart

Navonim - The Ramblings of Garnel Ironheart
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Thursday 5 March 2009

A Doc Hollywood Moment

In Michael J. Fox's 1991 film, Doc Hollywood, the actor plays a newly-minted plastic surgeon who, while travelling cross country to a Hollywood clinic, crashes in a small midwestern town. In order to pay for the damage his reckless driving caused, he takes on a temporary role as family physician, assisting the town's aging general practictioner.
In one scene, he is assessing an elderly woman who complains she has spots in her field of vision. He looks at her, carefully removes her glasses and then cleans them. After putting them back on her face she smiles and say "Oh they're gone now. Thank you doctor."
I thought of that scene this morning when I had an elderly woman come into my office complains of how the skin on her face was burning. It had all started when she bought some new shampoo which seemed to irritate her face when she rinsed it out of her hair. She had already gone to the pharmacy and picked up some low strength cortisone cream which helped but was now wondering if there was something better I could prescribe.
I suggested that she try a different shampoo. And she thought about it and smiled. "Wonderful idea, doctor. I never thought of that!"

4 comments:

David said...

Patient: "Doctor, doctor! It hurts when I do this!" [holds arm in funny way]
Doctor: [holding arm in funny way] "Don't do this."

All that education and training... how often is the answer something along the lines of "stop doing that"?

Anonymous said...

Too damned often!

It's said that in emergency, 99% of the training is for 1% of the patients but if you miss that 1%, it won't matter that you got the other 99% of the patients right.

Anonymous said...

If people every figured out that smoking and physical inactivity kills and that the common cold doesn't, we'd be out of work.

Anonymous said...

I've seen your arguments with SJ. Check out my blog at http://theatheistjew.blogspot.com/