This question was originally posted on Quora.com and was answered by Darrell Jonas, studied Medicine and Healthcare Absolutely. If a patient tells me about something that is clearly only a piece of the iceberg, I often look them up to see if the story is true , but also to see if knowing more might help with his or her situation. There is also the intrigue associated with certain stories. I had a patient once that fit this situation perfectly. He was a nice Romanian gentleman about my age. He came in with general medical issues. He was quite talkative, with every question leading to an answer and a story. Early on , I realized that with every answer , he was implying something insidious . After one conversation, specifically , about his high blood pressure , he commented that people in his profession all tend to have high blood pressures. Now previous conversations made it seem as though he was a financial wizard . He led me to believe he worked for the United States government and had been sent to Romania to work on their financial issues. This seemed to be his focus until on a follow up exam, with his pants down , he began to discuss the risks in his profession, and the likelihood that one day he might be killed. Now as a doctor with a peaceful internal medicine practice, I surely did not have the most exciting career in the area , but I also pretty much knew that I was unlikely to get killed. So I began to question him about his fear of being murdered while attempting to stabilize the economics of Romania. With that I got a chuckle , and a further anecdote that pointed to the risks of wearing a fur lined hat in Romania. With that, came the risk of being targeted by a sharpshooter connected to the Romanian secret police. After another chuckle we went back to discussing his knee pain during tennis , at which point he mentioned in a progressively lowering voice the fact that he kept his diary of daily events and near misses within his tennis locker. A place where no one would look. Visit after visit my patient would make these quietly voiced statement about his visits to Romania. His career as an economist that was sprinkled with near death episodes , if the wrong outfit was worn , a recent kidnapping which he hated , and the need to travel in a car with darkened windows . All this made me question his career as an economist and enforce the possibility that he had some 007 in him. He was convinced that his diaries contained the makings of another James Bond series. Never did he mention the term spy. As much as I pushed him to admit that he was not just a mild mannered economist, he would rebound into discussions of the central bank. Always with a chuckle. His diabetes was stable. His Blood pressure low. His tennis game , adequate. And did I look him up on Facebook. You bet. And what did I find. Absolutely nothing. Hmmmm Dr J. Source
