Things Patients Tell Us That Are Almost Never True, Part 1

“I need something stronger….”

It’s common sense that if a drug isn’t working, the doctor should prescribe a better drug. In fact, the usual reason a drug doesn’t work is that you have a problem a drug won’t solve. Mostly, when hotel guests make this statement, they’re taking an antibiotic for their bronchitis. A week or two has passed, and they’re still coughing. I have to explain that these illnesses last a week or two no matter what medicine you take. Similarly most “pinkeye” doesn’t respond to drops, and doctors still debate whether antibiotics help middle ear infections.     

“I’m allergic to….”

As I wrote on March 23, almost everyone who believes they’re allergic is wrong. Another large group claims that they’re allergic to a drug that upsets their stomach. In fact, this is not an allergy – meaning that it’s never fatal. This is important because you should never take a drug to which you are (genuinely) allergic. If a drug upsets your stomach but an alternative is more expensive or less effective, you might choose to feel sick for a while.

Always Pack a Flashlight

A guest searching for the bathroom at night stubbed his toe. Pain was excruciating.

Vomiting at 2 a.m. is good housecall. Chest pain at 2 a.m. is usually not a housecall. But some decisions when the phone rings at 2 a.m. are tricky.

Nothing about an injured toe is urgent except for the pain. Even if it’s fractured, the only treatment is to splint the toe by taping it to its neighbor.

Having told this to the guest, I hoped that he wouldn’t insist on a housecall. Once in the room, there is no problem, but I often never get there. After half an hour, while I’m still on the freeway, the guest may realize that the pain is tolerable and that he is on the hook for substantial cash (hotel doctors charge more during wee hours).

As often as not, the guest goes back to bed after asking the hotel operator to phone me and cancel. If I’m lucky, the operator makes the call.

Irritating Things that Movie Doctors Do

Give miracle shots. Whenever a movie character is crazy or really upset, a doctor delivers a shot that calms him. I wish I knew what it contained… Movie doctors are always putting characters to sleep, but no shot does that. An anesthetic delivered intravenously makes you unconscious, but that’s dangerous outside an operating room as Michael Jackson’s doctor learned.

Livesaving pills. I see this less often today, but in older movies a character would suddenly be dying. He wouldn’t have “his pills.” Everyone would look frantically for “his pills.” Someone would find them. He would take one and recover. I can’t think what disease does that.

Movie doctors are always saying “You have six months to live.”  We can predict average life expectancy for a fatal disease by tracking a few hundred victims, but that’s meaningless for an individual who could live a week or years.

“Tests show that you have incurable cancer.” Movie doctors who say this are never portrayed as incompetent, although they are. Delivering bad news is a skill no different from diagnosing a heart murmur. A movie buff will explain that the screenwriter can’t spend the time required for a realistic interchange, and I agree on the problem. But here’s the solution: a better writer. A bad writer uses these dumb shortcuts.

“You need plenty of rest and absolute calm.” This is so Victorian…. Bed rest is wildly unhealthy. Bones dissolve. Blood clots. The bowel falls silent. Today patients are dragged out of bed a day or two after major surgery. Doctors once believed that excitement damaged the heart. Intense emotion might cause a heart attack, so people with heart disease should stay calm. We don’t believe that anymore.

The Yearning for Drops

“I’ve been using them for a week, and the eye is getting worse.”

Hearing this over the phone, I’m usually not concerned. While there’s always the possibility of severe disease, the odds are that the eyedrops themselves have begun to irritate the eye.

Sure enough, that was my diagnosis. If you see a doctor with an eye problem, he’ll prescribe drops whether or not you need them. Many types of “pinkeye” don’t require treatment, but doctors believe (correctly) that patients with eye problems take for granted that they need drops.

Most people will not argue with a doctor, but it was clear (in retrospect) that the guest didn’t like what he heard. I told him to stop the drops and that the eye would feel better in a few days.

He was thinking:  “I have pinkeye, but this doctor says I don’t need drops. Obviously that’s because he doesn’t know what drops I need. I have to find a smarter doctor.”

When I phoned the next day I learned that he had gone off to an ophthalmologist.

This happened a long time ago. Nowadays I tell guests to use a harmless over-the-counter drop until the eye feels better.

More Perils of Common Sense

Fifteen years ago, I broke my leg. After I recovered, the doctor ordered a bone scan that revealed osteoporosis. That’s more frequent in women, but anyone skinny and elderly is at risk.

I began taking a drug for osteoporosis. Every year, I had another bone scan. Sometimes it showed a little improvement, sometimes a little deterioration. After ten years of not much change and a few different drugs, I grew discouraged.

“It looks like this isn’t working,” I said.

The doctor could have been honest (“these drugs usually help, but sometimes they don’t; we’re doing our best”) but instead I heard –

“If you hadn’t taken them, you’d be worse.”

That’s common sense. As I write regularly, if you hear common sense from a doctor it means he doesn’t understand what’s going on. 

It’s no different from the famous ad for a quack remedy: “Cures all but the incurable!”

Real Money

Foreign guests take time counting out my fee because all American bills look alike. Around the world, denominations vary by color, so a quick glance reveals their value. I think America is the only nation with monochromatic money.

When guests mention their difficulty, I explain that we consider colored bills frivolous, like Monopoly money. Real money is green.

I Know It's Not Broken...

“I can walk on it, so it’s not broken…” “I can move it, so it’s not broken….”  Never forget that popular health beliefs are generally wrong. I walked on a painful foot for a week before an X-ray that revealed the fracture.

My greatest service to injured hotel guests is not in diagnosing fractures which is usually impossible but saving them the misery of spending hours in an emergency room. Doctors do little for cracked ribs and broken toes except to relieve pain, so X-rays aren’t necessary. All bets are off with the elderly, but it requires a good deal of violence to break a young bone. Lifting a heavy suitcase won’t do it; experts urge doctors in vain not to order spinal x-rays for minor injuries.

Most injuries are not emergencies, even if a bone is fractured. If guests are willing to wait, I can send them to the more civilized atmosphere of an orthopedist’s office. 

Unable to Check Out of the Hotel

“There’s an emergency with my eye. Can you come right away?”

Hotel doctors don’t like to walk in on emergencies, so I asked him to elaborate.

“I’ve been to the Mayo Clinic where, it’s sad to say because they’re wonderful doctors, they performed the wrong MRI, so the eye is now looking to the right, but it’s not right because I’m a right-thinking citizen who looks both ways before crossing the street….

If a schizophrenic checks into a hotel, I hear about it.  

In its dictionary derivation, schizophrenia comes from the Greek meaning “splitting of the mind.” Hollywood, as usual, gets it wrong in movies featuring entertaining characters with multiple personalities. In fact, split personalities are so rare, some psychiatrists believe they don’t exist. The “split” in schizophrenia doesn’t involve personality but reality. Schizophrenics don’t know what’s real and what isn’t. They find this confusing, but it’s surprisingly uninteresting to observers. Holding a conversation is frustrating.

Like any disease, symptoms wax and wane. Victims with enough connection to reality to check into a hotel may deteriorate and become unable to check out, so employees ask my help. Everyone (the movies again…!) think an injection will fix things. Antipsychotics eliminate delusions, hallucinations, and disordered thinking but do nothing to restore a sense of reality. In any case they may take weeks to work. 

Anxious to relieve themselves of a demented guest, hotels often offer to pay my fee. I once spent an hour in a room with a naked, incoherent man, and since then I try to solve these problems over the phone. Hotel employees may believe they can’t call the police unless there’s a danger, but I assure them that if someone is too helpless to care for himself, the police will take him to the appropriate social agency. It’s OK to call the police for crazy people.    

Cookbook Medicine

Last month, I discussed an educational campaign to persuade doctors to stop doing things that don’t work. Readers wondered at the fuss. I mean, if something doesn’t work, why not forbid it? If penicillin won’t cure your toe fungus, the pharmacist couldn’t fill your prescription. If you arrived at the radiology suite for a CAT scan of your brain, the technician would inform you that CAT scans for migraine are rarely helpful, so he couldn’t do one.

This will never happen. It’s “cookbook medicine” which everyone agrees is bad. Medicine is a science, doctors emphasize – except when someone tells them to do something they don’t want to do. Then medicine is an art, and everyone knows there are no rules in art.

We know from the movies that the hero never follows the book. That’s for fuddy-duddies.  

Here’s an example. Preparing a patient for surgery is a complicated process. It requires dozens of tests, procedures, and reminders. But no one is perfect; nurses and doctors often forget a few. It turns out that the consequences are disastrous. In one study where some surgeons followed a checklist and others didn’t, the death rate dropped by almost half -- from 1.5% to 0.8% with the checklist. Complications dropped from 11% to 7%. Other studies agree.

As a result some nations and many states passed laws requiring checklists for operations.. Hospitals hand them out. Some surgeons take them seriously. Some ignore them. Some consider them more bureaucratic paperwork; they check the boxes whether or not they’ve obeyed. It turns out that commercial airlines also require an elaborate checklist before taking off. Pilots probably obey more often than surgeons, but, for your peace of mind, don’t Google either topic.  

Low Back Pain

Finishing at a hairdresser, a guest at a West Hollywood hotel had bent over and thrown out her back. Now she wanted “a shot” so she could stand and get back to the hotel.

I’ve cared for several hundred guests with back pain. These are fairly satisfying visits. I deliver an injection which makes the patient giddy, so time passes more quickly. By the following day, the pain is not so bad. Back pain slowly improves even if not treated.

Hotel guests are already in bed, and that’s where they stay. This lady would have to move, and over the phone I warned that the injection would not make that easier. Powerful narcotics work best against “deep” pain such as a kidney stone or heart attack, not so well when it’s sharp and acute. If I were to give you a huge dose of morphine and then touch a lit match to your fingertip, you’d feel the usual amount of pain. These warnings rarely work, and they didn’t work this time.

Beverly Hills treats residents kindly. For example, parking is much easier than in surrounding Los Angeles. If you’re just passing through, Beverly Hills shows no mercy. Traffic lights along Santa Monica Boulevard change simultaneously, so there’s no hope of getting through even when streets are empty. During the rush hour, traffic proceeds a few streets at a time. I cultivate tranquility, listen to my CD book, focus on the car ahead, and never look at my watch.  

Fortunately, the beauty shop closed at five, so I encountered only the patient, her companions, and a few employees. I examined her and then delivered the shot, gave pain pills for later, and assured her that she’d feel not-so-bad after a night in bed. Groaning and supported by friends, she hobbled off.

Doctors Should Keep Their Mouths Shut

A teenager at a downtown hotel had strep throat. Unlike most other bacteria, strep remains as sensitive to penicillin as it was seventy years ago. This is good news because penicillin is a terrific drug. It doesn’t upset your stomach, it has few side effects, it’s cheap….

“He’s allergic to penicillin,” said the mother.

“How do you know?” I asked.

She thought for a while. “The doctor told us. I think he had a rash…”

Once you’re branded as allergic to penicillin, no doctor in his right mind will prescribe it. This was bad news because I carry amoxicillin, a form of penicillin, and hand it out gratis. I don’t carry a substitute, so the mother had to find an open pharmacy and pay about twenty times amoxicillin’s price.

Ten percent of the population believes they’re allergic to penicillin and almost all are wrong. Ninety percent wrong is the usual figure, but some studies find almost zero genuine penicillin allergies.

What happened in this case? Chances are, years earlier the doctor prescribed a penicillin either to treat an infection or as a placebo, and the patient’s mother noticed a rash a few days later. Everyone knows that chicken pox and measles and rubella produce a rash, but any viral infection, including the common cold, can produce a pink, spotty eruption. To make matters worse, five or ten percent of everyone who takes amoxicillin or Augmentin (which contains amoxicillin) develops a similar rash. It’s harmless and disappears in a few days. Stopping the antibiotic doesn’t speed this up.

Experts agree that none of these are allergies.  

But why take a chance? Laymen worry. It’s 100 percent safe (and much quicker) to diagnose an allergy.

If a doctor had told you to flush $1000 down the toilet, you’d object, but that’s the equivalent if you go through life with a nonexistent penicillin allergy. If you’re lucky!... Rarely, you could be in serious trouble.

Skin tests are accurate, so you might want to see an allergist. It costs a few hundred dollars which insurance might not cover. 

Drugs that Cost a Lot

New drugs for Hepatitis C, leukemia, and several rare diseases can cost $50,000 per month. Companies that sell them stress that developing a new drug is expensive and that these are superior to previous drugs. This is true although it’s hard to judge if their profits are excessive. They might be.

Old drugs once cost slightly more than nothing. A single Lomotil, the leading diarrhea remedy once cost a few cents. It’s now thirty cents for the generic (that’s wholesale; you’d pay more). Colchicine, an excellent gout remedy that doctors have used for several thousand years, cost a nickel a pill. A few years ago it jumped to $5.00. Everyone expressed outrage, including our elected representatives. But it’s still $5.00

How do you explain that?

You may be surprised to learn that Medicare Part D, launched in 2006, which pays for prescription drugs, was a Republican program. Anxious to protect the free market, Republicans included language forbidding Medicare from negotiating drug costs. Doctors and hospitals must accept what Medicare pays but drug companies set their own prices. The Veteran’s Administration (which has the power to negotiate) pays much less. Drug companies are not required to sell to the V.A., but they do, so they’re not losing money. They’re not required to sell in foreign countries where the government regulates drug prices. But they do.   

Unquestionably, hanky-panky is going on. I would not be surprised if a bottle of aspirin jumps to fifty dollars in the near future. You can expect our elected representatives to express outrage.

Being Sick, and French

If you are French, in Los Angeles, and want a housecall, you call a French lady, Veronique Mastey. How she acquired this business is a mystery, but it is not trivial because I’ve made dozens of visits for her.

This year I returned to a mansion in Pacific Palisades to care for a member of Johnny Hallyday’s entourage. I doubt if the name rings a bell, so I must add that Johnny Hallyday is the greatest rock star you have never heard of. He’s been an idol in France since the 1960s, selling over 100 million records, 18 platinum.

We Work Miracles But Not All the Time

Practitioners of complementary medicine (alternative medicine, herbal medicine, homeopathy, naturopathy, acupuncture, etc.) always know what to do. That’s because all follow a theory that explains (1) what causes illness and (2) the proper treatment. This is very satisfying.

Doctors like me don’t have a theory of disease. I hate to say we use science because many people – some with college degrees – believe “scientists” are like “Episcopalians” or “Republicans.” They hold certain opinions, but it’s OK to have other opinions. It’s a free country.

Rather than say doctors are scientific I like to say we search for the truth. We try to find out what makes people sick and then what works to help. This is hard. Throughout history everyone assumed that the best doctors were wise, but this isn’t so. Wise doctors throughout history answered big questions, but they were usually wrong. Hippocrates came up with a few gems that everyone quotes, but most of his advice is garbage or the usual platitudes doctors deliver when they don’t understand what’s going on (avoid stress, eat nutritious food,…).

By searching for the truth (remember that’s another word for science) doctors have turned up miracles. An appendectomy or a kidney transplant is a miracle. The same is true for antibiotics, vitamin B12, immunization, anesthesia, even the discovery of germs (no wise man in any other culture came up with the idea that tiny bugs cause disease).

Doctors work miracles but not all the time; surgeons do better than medical doctors. I help most patients, but I don’t save lives often. When I do, I write about it here.

A Useful Technique

“It sounds like a stomach virus. These usually don’t last long. You’re healthy, so vomiting for a while isn’t life-threatening, but it’s definitely miserable. I make housecalls, so if you’d like me to come….”

“It sounds like a stomach virus. These usually don’t last long. Here’s what I want you to do. Don’t eat anything. Don’t drink anything. Get some ice from the ice machine. Lay quietly with a piece of ice in your mouth. Don’t chew. Keep sucking on the ice. I promise to call back in two hours. If you want a housecall, I can come.”

I’ve given these two pieces of advice thousands of times. If, after hearing the first piece, a stoic vomiter decides to wait, I deliver the second, but sometimes I go straight to number two.

“The fish tasted funny, and I’ve been throwing up since two. Can you give me something?”  The caller was at the Beverly Garland in Universal City. It’s an easy fifteen mile trip but not at 6 p.m. on a weekday. I try not to drive long distances when the freeways are jammed. To avoid this, I use a technique we in the medical profession call “stalling.”

At least half have improved when I call back, so I lose a good deal of money, but I wouldn’t have it any other way.