Legendary Patients, vol. 1

One of the things that I love most about my job is some of my unusual patients.  Obviously, I'm not about to name names or even give away anything even so much as which contract area I was working in, but there are some stories way too good to not share.  This is one of them.

I had a patient that came in, small little guy, that complained that he never felt rested, his partner said that he moved alot in the night, and that he had an odd problem with his breath / taste in his mouth in the morning.  Now, usually any time that someone comes into the sleep lab that is skinny, athletic, and twitchy at night, I'm not thinking they have a breathing problem, I'm looking to see if there is something else, usually neurological, at work.

So I hook the guy up, he heads to bed and he falls asleep fairly quickly.  As I'm watching, he all the sudden lifts his arm, scratches further and further down his back and in one brief moment, all the sudden jams a finger into his ass.  Not just the ass area, not just into the crack, but YAHTZEE, right in the bullseye, more than knuckle deep.  A few minutes later, he snores or moves a little and whips his hand out of his ass and in one of those hand movements that most of us know from frustrated people, he wipes his hand on his face.

I was both horrified and vastly amused.  This didn't happen once, this happened every 20 minutes or so ALL night long.  I mean, in the morning, the white tape on his face wasn't so white any more.  This easily explained the foul smelling breath and bad taste in the morning.  (oh, trust me, I know - I went there).

Now, as a traveler, and only having been there for a few days in that area, they had the chief tech going through the study in the morning and the next day I came to work and everyone bust out laughing.  "I see you had a crappy patient last night" and "Seemed like they had a shitty night" and "I bet he feels like crap".

Now, the mockery was fun enough, I mean, I would have done it.  But what did fascinate me would have been to have been in the Dr's office when he had to tell the patient what kind of issue he had in his sleep. "Well, sir, on a good note, you don't have sleep apnea.  You do, however, have an easily treated condition of medical Asshat syndrome."  I mean, think of the horror when the guy gets told what he does, possibly shown a video of his actions, and then he remembers that one of his major complaints was the bad taste in his mouth in the morning...