July 8, 2011

• What You Say/What We Hear

  What you say: “I take my pills almost every day.”
  What we hear: “I almost never take my pills, and probably don’t even know where they are– if I even filled the prescription to begin with.”

  What you say: “I think I followed up with the specialist, yeah.”
  What we hear: “I did not follow up with anyone, and only now remember that I was supposed to.”

  What you say: “You told me not to eat anything before I came in, so, yeah, I basically didn’t eat anything.”
  What we hear: “I had breakfast, but I ate it quickly.”

  What you say: “I probably don’t exercise as much as I should.”
  What we hear: “The walk from the parking structure to the clinic is the longest walk I’ve taken since my last visit.”

  What you say: “Do I need to get that test done today, or can it wait?”
  What we hear: “Am I actually going to drop dead on the way out of the clinic, or can I forget all about this, forever and ever?”

  What you say: “But what I really want to talk about is this other symptom that I’ve been having for the past twenty years, unchanged.”
  What we hear: “Here is an irrelevant distraction I’m going to mention, that’s been going on so long that if it were important, it would have killed me already.”

  What you say: “And I read online that–”
  What we hear: “I am now going to prove that I have access to the Internet.”

  What you say: “No, that’s okay, I’ll call for a follow-up appointment.”
  What we hear: “Goodbye, forever.”

  • 11:17 pm
  • 3 Comments