July 5, 2012

• A Doc who will really get your goat

  My patient got paid in goat.

   

  Let me back up for a moment. I am back on wards, overseeing interns and calling consults and all the associated workflow that comes with the rotation. I am at the beginning of my six months of probation, working under people I cant stand, spending every waking moment trying to prove to them that I dont make any mistakes in an effort to graduate and return my life to it’s original track, achieving a fellowship in gastroenterology, preferably in Chicago. I am in the midst of re-applying for said fellowship, scrounging up letters of rec, attempting to publish a case report or get involved in a research project, and pounding my head to come up with a new personal statement to bring back to the program who originally accepted me; show them how much I have grown, and play off this series of unfortunate events as an advantage. All said, I have rather a lot on my plate at the moment…now back to the story

  One of my recent patients is a family practice physician who runs a donation clinic out in unnamed city nearby. The clinic will take medicare and medical, but due to the population this physican serves, will also take anything else patients can afford to spare. The physican always jokes with his patients that he takes cash, card, concert tickets, cookies, chips, or chickens, whatever the patients feel is a fee for service rendered. Mostly he gets food for the office staff: tamales, vermicelli, eggrolls, tacos, etc.

  One day however, a patient calls him up and asks if he is at home. He responds in the affirmative, and they say they will be over in 15 minutes with a goat for him. Thunderstruck, and yet secretly thrilled, he informs his wife, who kindly tells him he is out of his ever-loving mind. However, when the patient arrives shortly after, they tell him they are moving away, and remembered how he always says they can pay him in farm animals, and this goat is “too cute to eat” so they figured they would give it to him.

  Well one look at the goat, and in fact, it is too cute to eat, so a doc in downtown LA now has a goat in his backyard that he doesnt know what to do with. I am helping him look for a good home for the goat, as he has told me his gardener offered to take it, but would eat it. Apparently the gardner has no problem eating cute animals.

  I came home, and thought to myself, I would like to be that doctor some day. Have my own practice on the side once a week, just for kicks, and maybe get paid in goat.

  After all, my current backyard is big enough for chickens…hhmmm, I wonder…

  -Farmer J

  • 11:45 pm
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