Sunday, November 28, 2010

Saturday night, 10:54 p.m.

Dr. Grumpy: "This is Dr. Grumpy, returning a page."

Mr. Tech: "Yeah, I'm calling from Local Lab about your patient, Hugh Neverheardofhim. His sodium is 114, and his potassium is..."

Dr. Grumpy: "This isn't my patient."

Mr. Tech: "Well, your phone number is on the order. Aren't you Dr. Grumpy, the nephrologist?"

Dr. Grumpy: "No, I'm a neurologist."

Mr. Tech: "Whatever. I'm just notifying you of your patient's abnormal labs."

Dr. Grumpy: "It's not my patient! You've got the wrong doctor!"

Mr. Tech: "Okay, who should I call now?"

Dr. Grumpy: "His kidney doctor!"

Mr. Tech: "Do you know his number?"

Dr. Grumpy: "No! I don't even know who it is."

Mr. Tech: "Can you look it up for me?"

23 comments:

Anonymous said...

My home phone number is one digit away from three different doctors phone numbers. Every day I get many calls for these doctors, and messages from pharmacists, labs, etc. on my answering machine; many including full names and very private info. I can't tell you how many people want the right number, want to be connected, want to leave a message, or are mad at me that I'm not the doctor's office. Hello? I'm not getting paid for talking to stupid people. And, no one cares that I'm not the right party. They want instant access.

webhill said...

An emergency facility I refer patients to frequently has had an ongoing problem whereby their fax machine calls my personal mobile phone repeatedly over the course of an hour or so. I've spoke to them about it & they can't figure out why it happens. It is crazymaking because of course I can't block their number (the caller ID of the fax = their regular outgoing line)!

I also once had a home phone number one digit away from a local takeout Chinese joint. I got orders left on my voicemail! I eventually just started saying "ok, 20 minutes" and hanging up rather than argue with the idiots who called.

My first personal phone number (I got it at age 12) was the old number of a hair salon. women would CRY when I refused to make an appt!!

Anonymous said...

606-0842. there is a message for you. (b-52's ca.1980)

Stephanie said...

You should have given him Dr. Pissy's number.

Anonymous said...

I had a friend in college who's dorm phone was 1 digit off from the school's courtesy "drunk bus." She would get some pretty hilarious calls at 3am.

The Mother said...

Once hubby got caught in the middle of a spitting match between a surgeon and a GI doc, who kept turfing it to him so they wouldn't have to talk to the other guy. It was funny until about 2 AM.

Anonymous said...

I have a number similar to an italian restaurant and I used to have an answering machine that just said "leave a message". I can't tell you how many people try to leave reservations, change reservations or get take out. What I don't understand is if the restaurant it open why they thought it would have an answering machine!

Who doesn't like arguing over who has the wrong number!

watercolordaisy said...

egad.

Anonymous said...

What? Korsakoff's?

Anonymous said...

My grandmother's phone number was one digit off from a liquor store. My in-laws phone number is one digit off from a juvenile detention home. Ahhh, the phone calls they've received.

I once had a doctor call me and start telling me all about the test results he had received from another doctor who he thought I had been referred to. I know it was the doctor because at the time he was my doctor and I knew his voice. Scary thing was, I wasn't the person he was trying to get a hold of and I had never been referred to the other doctor. This guy, though, was telling me about the results! Ack! I interrupted him 3 times to tell him he had the wrong number. He finally said 'you're not Mrs. Jones?' and when I replied that I was not, he hung up on me.

Ari said...

I hate to say it, but I can kinda see the logic. If he's calling a hospital number for "Smith", and really wants "Smithe" (or whatever), Smith probably *would* be the most likely to know Smithe's number, at least assuming he worked at the same hospital. Also, at most hospitals I've worked at, the intranet homepage has directory info that isn't easily accessible to the outside world, meaning Smith really would be more easily able to find Smithe's number.

Crazed Nitwit said...

Funny, but not funny. Gotta love the techs.

Bonnie said...

Are you sure this guy wasn't one of your patients?

Anonymous said...

We once moved into a house and kept the telephone connected, just changing the listing to our name. One time the local doctor called to speak to the husband/father of the previous household, and apparently didn't listen to our answering machine message, in which we clearly identified ourselves, before leaving a message. The message was long and detailed and was all about the man's acute case of venereal disease!!

Barb said...

On our wedding night, my new hubby and I were in room 801. To make an international call from that hotel, you had to dial an 8 to get an outside line, then apparently a 0 and a 1. So in the middle of the night the phone rang "Hong Kong?" the voice said. "No. This is room 801." "Hong Kong?" the voice said. "No! This is room 801." This happened about 4 times before we called down to the front desk and had them turn our phone off for the night!

ERP said...

Gee, don't you give a crap about central pontine myelinolysis?

Anonymous said...

My fax number at work is one digit off from the fax number at the probation office. It's amazing what they send via fax without a coversheet.

Anonymous said...

Okay, so yeah it sucks to get random calls/pages at all hours...but isn't anyone else curious about Hugh's K+ level..or the crazy hypoNa++..even if it is chronic, it's still 'less than ideal' (my er doc code for kinda fubar, w/ 'special' or 'interesting' saved for completely fubar).

Come on Doc Grumpy, there you go ruining our fun by not letting Mr. Tech finish the story. ;)

Anonymous said...

What an awesome weasel!
How to get someone to find a phone number for you for free, 303!

Diana said...

I once had a phone number 1 digit different from a local hospital. That was not fun. Now there is a phone number for the Port of Houston that if you transpose a couple digits it becomes my cell phone number. It's amazing how many people do not listen to what is said when the phone is answered. One man kept calling my number (evidently redialing) and left nasty messages. When I finally called him back to tell him his error he hung up on me. I finally found out the number of this place and automaticallyl give it out now when I get those calls.

Doris said...

I finally gave up my land line because someone was faxing things to me at 2:00 in the morning. Of course, when the fax would not go through, the call would auto redial...

I decided that it was not worth keeping my land line (which cost me about $45 a month) just so people I didn't know could annoy me.

NEVER thought I would be without a land line.

>:p

ER Murse said...

My phone number for years was one digit different from the local bus station's. It was my own fault; I'd asked for a vanity number, as I was running a business out of my home and wanted something easy to remember. I do remember one woman who would perpetually call for a pickup each morning at about five AM, and argue with me to the point of swearing and cursing at me, when I told her she had a wrong number. I think she'd programmed it into speed dial... I finally started taking her reservations, then taking the phone off the hook for a while around the scheduled time. Eventually (over a year) she got the message.

Anklebuster said...

I was going to comment on another post but kept laughing too hard to do much more than click the scrollbar.

Val, from Absurd Old Bird, told me to read everything, so i gotta run.

Nice to me you, LOL and all that!

Just kidding. I'll bet you're not really grumpy, but you do have your finger on the pulse of stupidity. I love your blog's tagline.

I'm adding you to my morning humor dose.

Cheers,

Mitch

 
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