Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Pain-a-doodle

During my Spine rotation in residency, I had the joy of answering messages from patients. This was one of my favorites (click to enlarge):



In case you can't read it, it says that the patient is requesting a pain medication called Oxzydodole, which I can only imagine is pronounced "oxy-doodle". No such medication exists. (Also, the second scribble says the patient was too sick to show up to their appointment.)

I called the patient and asked them about it and they insisted that this was the spelling of the medication. Insisted. I told them there was no such thing as oxy-doodle. I finally looked in their chart and saw that last time we had given them a prescription for Mobic (an anti-inflammatory), so I called that in for them. (That's my handwriting, saying "Called in Mobic".)

(Yes, I know they probably meant oxycodone. But we specifically were not allowed to prescribe narcotics in that clinic for reasons that I don't have the energy to contemplate here. Possibly in order to enrage all the patients who came in.)

5 comments:

  1. Oxydoodles! New! From Frito-Lay! Why have ordinary cheese doodles, when you can get high as a kite with Oxydoodles!

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  2. Thanks for almost killing me just now. I was chuckling throughout the whole thing but the "oxydoodles" totally got me. I barely survived choking on my sandwich; but, I'm not out of danger yet...the people in the nearby library cubicles don't look too pleased with my inability to stop laughing...

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  3. I'm disappointed in the form designer. Under "barriers to learning", there isn't a tickybox for "Idiocy NOS". I suppose you could write it in under "Other", but you'd spend all your time writing it in...

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  4. Oxydoodles: Witness the combined might of the pharmaceutical companies and the fast food industry. We'll all be addicted within a year. ;)

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