Shortly after the start of class, a kindergarten teacher became dysphasic, fell to the floor, and experienced seizures, before arriving at my hospital.
An oncologist at my hospital, Dr. W., tried to convince me to treat the teacher, but I dismissed him, believing that the case would be boring because she already had a diagnosis with a brain tumor. When W said that the patient was his cousin, I obviously couldn't say no. My hospital administrator Dr. C approached me in the elevator to attempt to persuade me to spend some hours in the clinic (seriously it's horrible - everyone who comes in is an idiot and everything is simple). I said no, and claimed I couldn't be fired for not doing clinic hours because of tenure.
When I attempted to perform an MRI on the teacher, I discovered that my authorization for diagnostics has been revoked; my administrator restored my authorization in exchange for clinic hours. Ridiculous. Jeopardizing patient health.
During the MRI, the patient's throat closed up due to an allergic reaction to gadolinium, prompting two members of my team, Dr. Ch and Dr. Ca, to perform a tracheotomy. Of course I was wasting my time in the clinic at the time.
While normally clinic work is terrible, my first patient is a man who is orange because of an over-consumption of carrots and mega-dose vitamins (niacin). I also treated a ten-year-old boy whose mother allows him to use his asthmatic inhaler only intermittently instead of daily as prescribed, because she's an idiot. Of course, I scolded the mother for making such a drastic medical decision without first learning more about asthma. During my rant, though, I stumbled on an idea and left quickly to treat the teacher. I diagnosed her with cerebral vasculitis, mostly on a strong hunch which is most of what diagnostic medicine is anyway. I treated the patient with steroids, which improved her condition greatly for a time, until she starts seizing and has heart failure. My team brings her back with a defibrillator.
On my insistence, a neurologist, Dr. F, and Dr. Ca, broke into the patient's house to find anything that might account for her symptoms—seizures, dysphasia, and airway constriction. They find an opened package of non-kosher ham in her kitchen, leading Dr. F. to reveal that Dr. W. had lied to me to convince me to treat the patient (Dr. W. is Jewish). I didn't care about the lie and concluded that she was suffering from cysticercosis due to eating undercooked pork; when the tapeworm inside of her reproduced, its larvae were absorbed into her blood stream, infesting her brain.
The patient was an idiot and refused to accept more treatments, wishing to die with dignity, unless there is evidence that the diagnosis is correct, but I attempted to persuade her otherwise. During the conversation, the patient asked me for the cause of the limp in my right leg. I said I had an infarction in my thigh muscles that led to muscle death, which could have been avoided if my doctor had made the correct diagnosis. I continued, claiming that death is ugly and that the patient cannot die with dignity, but she still refused treatment. I was ready to dismiss the case and move on when Dr. Ch. gave an idea for noninvasive evidence of the patient's tapeworm infection; by taking an X-ray of her leg, I proved that she was infested with tapeworms and her condition was treatable. After seeing the evidence, the teacher agreed to take her medication to kill the tapeworms.
Just another day in my line of work, though.