Adjusting My Volume

Get the reference??

Something quite humorous happened to me in clinic the other day. I am currently seeing patients on a daily basis at the VA - the hospital for the veterans, for those who don't know. This is largely a population of patients 60 years old or older, usually with a list of medical problems with accompanying medications longer than the LOTR roll call.

At any rate, one day I seemed to get a particularly long stream of near-deaf patients in my chair. So over and over again I was doing nothing short of yelling at my patients, probably driving the patients and physicians in neighboring rooms to question my ability to establish good rapport. The patients in my room, however, knew no different. In fact, for some of them, I was doing little more than whispering.

Then a patient with normal auditory function stepped in. But I didn't know this at first. I had found myself stuck in volume-to-eleven mode and began yelling to him.

"HOW ARE YOU TODAY, SIR?"
"Fine. By the way, I may be near blind, but I'm not deaf."

I couldn't help but look at the floor and silently laugh. It's not like he could see me anyway. (Actually, he was nowhere near blind).