AND NOW SOME COMMENTS

     I wrote about bad things that happened to patients.But if I would write about patient getting in the hospital for pneumonia and gets treatment and gets better and goes home , no one would read it . So what sticks in my mind is the worst cases or unusual outcome , either good or bad . But on a lighter note , we do see patients that tell jokes and sometimes say things that turn out to be funny .
     I happen to be a lung specialist , and so listen to the lungs of every patient. Most of the patients do acceptable breathin' style ' But some make it funny . Some take deep breath and exhale for long time .It almost feels like they are preparing for diving deep under water. Some do short and rapid breathing , while some continue to breath normally . So I have developed a habit of telling patients to ,'breath in and out ', when I am ready for listening to the lungs.No one usually asks me any thing, when I say this line . But one time when I said this to one patient, he said,"is there any other way ?(than breathing in and out ).I had no answer.
     When I see new patient I usually ask for  routine questions first,like high blood pressure, diabetes, TB, heart attack or stroke etc . When I am done with this I ask , 'so tell me why are you here?' Some say,'my doctor send me , I don't know,'or the symptom,like cough or shortness of breath etc. But one time when I asked , so why are you here, the patient asked me if I had electric outlet . When I showed him one in our exam room , he took a tape recorder and plugged it in . IT was recorded by his wife while he was asleep and it was recording of his snoring..He was in my office as the snoring was so loud that the wife could not take it and as he had refused to accept it she recorded it . Needless to say that he had sleep apnea.
      One of the common reason why patients come to me is chronic cough. (I often say in joking way that your cough and cold id my bread and butter.)So when I asked this new patient about the complain, she told me about the chronic cough. Interestingly enough , she did not cough at all in my office . So I was not too sure as to how bad was the problem . Then the daughter who was with her made  a statement, "she is coughing for so long and so much that our parrot has started making coughing sound . (thinking that she was trying to teach parrot the sound of coughing .)I had to believe it .