We'll call her "DermaLady"
10. Useless history lessons
DERMALADY: I'm a nurse practitioner. Do you know what that is?
ME: (who worked at a hospital for 4 years) Well--
DERMALADY: The position was created in (insert history of nurse practitioner...ism).
9. Apparently, she was afraid I had been hiding something dark about my IRA past.
DERMALADY: What nationality is that first name?
ME: Irish.
DERMALADY: (angrily, after a pause) Well, "Martin" isn't Irish!
8. She explained to me that, due to the lack of a vagina and uterus, the fact that the medicine she wanted to give me could cause birth defects wasn't a factor. Big sigh of relief there. Nothing gets past those nurse practitioners.
7. The open sarcasm and overall asshole-ism portrayed in House, M.D. hasn't had ANY IMPACT AT ALL on how health providers speak to patients.
DERMALADY: Do you pick at them? (i.e. my zits)
ME: When they turn into whiteheads, yeah.
DERMALADY: Do you like scars on your face?
ME: No.
DERMALADY: Don't pick at them.
6. After suffering from, and being treated for, Sleep Apnea for 8 years, DermaLady realizes that no one has ever told me...
DERMALADY: If you lose weight, it will help your Apnea.
I'm glad my dermatologist was there to teach me about Apnea. I would have talked to an ENT doc, but I was too busy making appointments with chiropractors for rectal exams.
5. It's clear she fell back on Dermatology after a successful career as a detective. She had this incredible strategy. The less information I knew, the more details she asked for.
DERMALADY: When's the last time you used antibiotics?
ME: I'm not sure.
DERMALADY: Who prescribed it?
ME: I honestly don't remember.
DERMALADY: What was it for?
ME: I don't know.
DERMALADY: How long did you take it?
(and at this point, I just start making shit up)
4. In her defense, she refrained from doing something my last Dermatologist did.
After walking into the room and introducing himself, he noticed I had skin tags on my neck (I had only come in for acne). Without even hinting at his intentions, without even mentioning the skin tags, he told me to hold still, grabbed a little metal rod, and started burning the fucking things off my neck.
3. Like a detective, she had some good strategies to see if I was lying - to try to trip me up in any falsehoods. It was intense and cunning.
DERMALADY: Are you oily?
ME: Yeah.
DERMALADY: Do you have acne on your back?
ME: Yeah.
DERMALADY: Are you oily?
ME: Yeah.
DERMALADY: You know you have a cyst here, right?
ME: Yeah.
DERMALADY: Are you oily?
2. The booklet about the medicine she wants to give me, made by the people who made the medicine who, I'm guessing, want to SELL their product, very specifically says that the medication has caused depression, psychosis, and suicide in some patients.
DermaLady assures me this is not true. She used this opportunity to brag about her son, who apparently gave the commencement address at his high school after using the medicine. I am just now realizing that she didn't tell me what the commencement speech was about and that it may have been titled "Why The Future Is Filled With The Government Implanting Things In My Ass While I Sleep."
Or, considering her reaction as documented in #9, the speech may have been recited in German.
1. She told me I should have a yogurt with every lunch.
Pfft. "Yogurt."
That is SO a made-up word.
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