Lying To Your Doctor Is A Stupid Thing To Do

This is a boxer's fracture (see double arrows).

It is called a boxer's fracture because you get it by punching something.

It is not called a "I fell on it" fracture.

Or a "I caught my hand in a door" fracture.

It is not a "I twisted my hand" fracture. I do not know how you would be able to twist your hand to such a degree as to give you a fracture of a very specific bone in your hand that usually only occurs when your hand is in a fist. The last I checked, when you make a fist, the only thing you can twist is your wrist.

It is not a "I don't know how it happened" type of fracture.

Or a "I slipped on ice and I must have hit it" fracture.

This, ladies and gentleman, is a boxer's fracture.

Do you think we are stupid?

Maybe you do.

Read on and see what happens to patients who presume their doctor is stupid.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a "fight bite".

It is called a "fight bite" because you get it from punching someone and grazing your knuckles on their teeth.

It is not called a "cat bite" or a "dog bite" or an "insect bite".

It is called a fight bite.

Usually, punching someone in the teeth is associated with fighting.

You do not get this from grazing your hand against something.

Or from spiders, grass, allergies, wood, diabetes or eczema.

If you stick to your story, we'll give you a prescription all the same for your "fight bite" even though some of us might be too polite to tell you that you are full of shit.

If you decide that you managed to hoodwink your doctors so well and you think that we are treating you for the "spider" bite that you don't have, you might decide not to take your antibiotics and ignore our instructions to come back to the ER in 12hrs for a recheck. You might decide that the doctors are stupid and full of shit and not bother because hell, they swallowed your story whole!

It's always good to remember this, though:

It's Not Our Hand. It's Yours.

Unfortunately, there are some of us who are not graced with triple-digit IQs.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens to a fight bite that goes untreated. Because the human mouth is the dirtiest part of the entire body teeming with bacteria of all sorts.

You would do better to punch someone in the anus than in the mouth. I am of course unable to say this to patients as it seems to bear some very suggestive connotations, but I mean this purely from a medical point of view.

In any case, I provided this little lesson to my patient yesterday, who initially said he had caught his hand in a door. Upon which he finally told me the truth, and the truth was that he had punched a tree.

Tsk tsk. I should win awards for public health education.