Doctors, What Is The Most Unorthodox Thing You've Said To A Patient And Don't Regret?

This question was posted on Quora.com and was answered by Robert Frantz, B.S., M.D. Zoology & Medicine and Healthcare, The University of Oklahoma (1996)



She had small lesions all over her body, and she had shaved all the hair off as well. Her eyes were sunken and hollow and she had run out of options. She calmly told me that she hadn’t slept in days. She said that every night, after she tried to go to sleep that some sort of parasite that lives inside her body would makes its way to the surface of her skin through the many “sores” I could see all over her visible skin. Obviously, she was psychotic.

I called our on-call psychiatric service, but they said they couldn’t see her until the morning. It was about 10pm and I didn’t feel comfortable sending her home for another night of torture. So, I devised a plan.

I got some lotion and placed it into a urine cup. I then put biohazard stickers all over the cup and put on a blue gown, mask, head covering and gloves. I then got some medical Q-tips and went back to see her. I told her “this lotion is a powerful topical parasite medication. I’m going to put it on every single lesion on your body and whenever the parasite comes out these holes it will touch the medicine and die.” I then proceeded to apply a tiny spot of lotion/parasite medicine on each little lesion by hand. Then, I placed her in a negative pressure room for the night with a camera and told her I would be watching her from my desk all night. She curled up on a bed and went to sleep.

I woke her up the next morning at 7 right before my shift ended. She was ecstatic. She told me this was the first good night of sleep she had had in weeks. She felt so good she wanted to leave before her psychiatric consult but I talked her into staying. She hugged me and asked if she could have more of the parasite medicine to take home “just in case”. I went and retrieved the urine cup with the lotion and the biohazard stickers, and gave it to her with gloves. I told her it was extremely important to use a Q-tip when applying and to always wear gloves. She thanked me and then I went home. I slept like a baby.

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