Sex, Drugs, and Public Health

Guest editorial by World – famous psychiatrist to physicians, Dr. Pannikatakus

I hear from physicians what, to no one else, they tell. Their secrets. Their fantasies. Their failures. Their sick little ideas.

Case # 69

“I was sent,” he snarls, this doctor. He is not a physician, I learn, but a surgeon. In this country, they license them the same. “Physician AND Surgeon” says the license. It’s confusing. But I digress.

“Ordered to come here,” he spews. “For the Public Health. Three sessions. So let’s get it over with, and you write to the Authorities that I came, and we’ll be done. Understand?”

“You are,” I say calmly toward his face, so flushed and hot I see steam rising from his sweat, “accustomed to giving orders, no?”

“Damn right. I’m a – ”

“Sit down, please,” I interrupt him. “On the couch. In this office, the orders I give.”

“It all started,” he begins, eventually, after a few more exchanges where, to him I make clear who is boss, “in the hospital. Late. Midnight, I think. I’d just finished an emergency torsion of the testicle, and was in the cafeteria, getting coffee from the machine. You know, for the drive home.

“The place was deserted. Except for this one guy. He was pushing an I.V. pole, his ass flapping in the breeze.”

“Asses can flap?” I blurt.

“The gown,” his eyes rise up and roll like exasperation. “The gown flaps. Don’t interrupt me. So, just as he’s passing me, he collapses. I look around for a doctor. An anesthesiologist. Even just an Intern. Hell, I’d have taken an E R nurse – if she was cute. But no one. The place was like a morgue with dispensing machines. This guy drools some saliva on the floor and his I.V. line pulls over the pole.

“Shit ! I think. Now I’ve gotta see if I remember any of that CPR crap. You know, this is not like on the table in the O.R.”

“No,” I say to fill the brief silence. “It is not like that. Continue.”

“So, he’s not breathing. No pulse. It’s – what do you guys call it? Cardiac arrest. So I can’t do CPR alone there until the 7 A.M. shift comes in, can I?”

“You said you don’t know CPR, did you not?”

“Well, there was that problem, too. So anyway. No way to call someone. Hours until someone might stumble by. So I get this brainstorm.”

Oh, oh, I think.

“Brilliant idea. Which makes sense ‘cause I’m a brilliant surgeon, you know.”

“Continue,” I say during the silence he creates, waiting, I assume, for applause.

“Anyway, I slice open his chest, reach in, massage his heart and, Boom! He wakes up!”

“Good,” I say. “You save his life.”

“Not yet. Every time I take my hand out, it stops again and his brain goes back to sleep. I need help, but there’s no one around. So, here’s the really brilliant part – – – .”

Another silence.

“Continue,” is all I say.

“And do you think he appreciates my brilliance? That I saved his life? No. After he recovers, he goes and gets a lawyer and sues me for mental torture or some such. Reports me to the licensing Board. So here I am.”

“Tell me,” I say, into the silence, “tell me your greater story of this brilliant idea.”

“I squeeze his heart until he wakes up again, then I take his right hand, put it down into his chest, around his heart, and I tell him to squeeze. Once a second. I tell him I’m going to get the E.R. doctor. And I warn him not to stop squeezing, or he’ll black out and die.”

“What did he say?” I ask.

“Say? He said what I told him to say. He said ‘thank you, Doctor’.”