I have a few health issues. I’m seeing a new doctor for sigh a new health problem and he requested the files from some of my other specialists. A file from my neurologist was sent to my home, to my attention, so I read it.
For the most part it is a record of my tests, the conclusions, and conversations the doctor and I had. Some of the records are letters between doctors.
In one letter the neurologist stated in part to another doctor “. . . to follow up with this very interesting patient”.
I’ve seen the Seinfeld episode wherein Elaine is called “difficult” in her chart and subsequently no doctor will see her. Is “very interesting” a code of some sort about me personally, or is it more likely the neurologist is commenting on my “case”?
I agree with Nava, he/she is commenting on your case. I have a couple ‘interesting’ conditions, and have had parts of me used in lectures as examples of some ‘interesting’ issues.
Surely “interesting” is simply a shorthand way of saying “this patient’s condition is not a textbook situation, so don’t treat it as such.”
But it’s funny how things can sound when they’re in that context. I noticed once on the diagnostic sheet I get a copy of after each office visit that in a mostly empty space near the top were the words “RESEARCH CASE.”
It really unnerved me, until I checked one of my (then) wife’s similar sheets and saw that hers said it, too. I’m guessing they’re actually headings under which little codes can be placed and not indications that we are somehow secretly being monitored for a journal article.
Yes, Nava I am a special case, I think. I used to say I’m part of the 5% club. You know, if within the entire population only 5% suffer from a particular condition, I’d be one of those.
For example: 5% have no frontal cavity? That’s me. Only 5% reject a dental implant after 5 years. Yup that’s me. And on and on. Now, however, they think I might have shifted into the 1% club. I guess 5% was too crowded for me.:rolleyes:
I was amused to read a doctor’s report where I was described as being two years younger than my actual age and “well nourished”. Nice way of describing me being overweight! LOL
From what I’ve seen on patient records, it’s just one doctor being polite to the referring doctor. Almost every entry I ever read from a referred physician ended with something like, “Thank you for the interesting referral.”
I looked at my doctor’s notes one time and he wrote down that I was “labile.” Not an insult, but I was insulted. (He was talking about my blood tests, not my personality.) Still, hmmmph.
Heh, I got the term “well developed” back in the early eighties when I was overweight. (all of me was bigger, not just my boobs, so I guess that’s not what he meant!)
Ha, when I was a teen I broke my foot during the summer and had to wear a cast. Boy did that ever stink. When he removed it, he said my foot smelled ‘mature’.
Regarding “well developed, well nourished”, I did transcription for a doctor who said that for every single patient that she saw. Every single solitary one.
IANAD, but in my former job I had occasion to see a lot of doctor’s reports, and many of them started or ended with a reference to “this interesting patient”, which leads me to believe that it’s a common convention in the profession.
My wife was all bent out of shape when the fertility doctor we went to described her as an “elderly nulligravida” in the chart.
I thought “well developed, well nourished” just meant that none of my limbs were stunted or shriveled or anything like that.
I had a problem with my rotator cuff a while back. The doctor tested it by pushing on my arm, found it was weak, and gave me a cortisone shot and some exercises. Six weeks later, I returned, and he held my arm again and said, “Push as hard as you can”. I threw him across the room.
He marked the chart, “Patient has regained function in the limb.”
I used to work for lawyers so I got to read a lot of medical records. One that stood out was a doctor’s description of an attractive female patient as “sensual”. Hmmmmm.
