Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
So I’m on teevee tomorrow
I have this patient with an uncommon (and serious) condition. Next thing I know, local news wants to interview me. Don’t get too excited — it’ll be local teevee.
“When’s this gonna air?” I asked.
“Morning news,” the reporter said.
“What, like 8, 9 AM?”
“Try 5, 6 AM.”
Fine. It’s not like I want to see this. It’s not like I want anyone to see it. I’m still trying to get my head around the whole thing: why the local news is interested in my patient, but more to the point, why my patient agreed to have such an invasion of his privacy.
I realize this probably makes no sense to you . . . and the irony is, while my patient can (and did) reveal personal details of his medical history to the TV News (and thus all of Kern County, potentially), I can’t breathe a word of it without violating patient confidentiality. Which is as it should be, but I still find the whole thing very, very weird.
D.
I blame reality TV; everyone (even if it’s for a medical condition that maybe shouldn’t be known by strangers)seems to want their minute of fame even if it’s at 5 or 6 a.m. This patient can take comfort in the fact that if the local news gets a lot of responses about it, they will bump it to the later morning news and maybe the 5 o’clock news
You may be right. Anyway, it aired today, and they did replay it for the 6:00 news (in the evening). I couldn’t bear to watch the later one, since Karen says they cut it to make it look like we didn’t know shit about what we were doing.
As uncomfortable as I felt doing this, I think my patient looked even more unhappy. I suspect this wasn’t his idea.
Damn, if we’d known sooner, you could have held all our books we’re pimping up as you spoke. 🙂
I agree about the weird thing. I’m keeping the third leg I’ve grown secret. Oops.