Head Banging

It's one of those days where it seems like my job is to bang my head against a wall. All. Day. Long. Is this why our country is having a primary care provider shortage? Somehow today the schedulers conspired to book all patients (of other providers, mind you - these are new patients to me, such fun!) with unsolvable problems. Such as... - 80 year old female with 5 years of dizziness. Seen last week for... dizziness. And many many weeks prior to that. She says she is worried it is her blood pressure. I assure her the bp is normal, and her response is "but my face was so red when I first got here." Sometimes it is hard to discern if communication issues are from interpretation, cultural barriers, hearing impediments, dementia, or plain ol' non sequiturs. And only 15 min to sort it all out! - 58 year old male with diabetes, hypertension, wheelchair bound (for reasons unclear, I didn't have time to get to that since it took about 14 min to weed through the bag of prescription pill bottles he brought for me), with knee and and ankle pain for years. Seen last week for... ankle pain. And the week before. And then the one before that. Honestly. - 9 month old female with itchy rash all over her body. Here for "well child check" but mom really just wants to talk about the rash. The whole family has the same rash and scabies treatment didn't help (though I'm doubtful the treatment was done properly. Mom doesn't speak English and is also quite hard of hearing). It still looks like scabies, but mom refuses to repeat the treatment. She wants "the cream that helped". This apparently is some magical cream given to her by a previous provider that is not in the medical record (or might be - mom doesn't know the name). Note to patients: if some medication works for you, write down the name. Or tatoo the name to your arm. Mom is frustrated with me for not knowing about this magical cream. And then we can add the occasional (but actually pretty rare in this clinic) 36 year old male with back pain (but seems fine to me on exam and walks pretty darn normally), desperately seeking the magical pills ("perco... perco something") to the mix of today, and it is a volatile cocktail of a day.