TOPEKA, KANSAS—General practitioner Kenneth Overton is reportedly impressed that one of his patients, 28 year old Mark Grisham, did a bit of research on his own before his annual physical.
“Most of my patients just stumble in here blindly, totally lost without my authority as a doctor to guide them,” said Overton. “But not Mark. As soon as I walked in to the examination room, I saw a look of confidence on his face the likes of which I had never seen in my 25 years of practicing medicine.
At first Overton was somewhat skeptical of Grisham’s claim that he had “a lump on his shoulder that [he was] a little worried about.” However, as soon as Grisham justified his concern by saying, “I made sure that I didn’t have the same thing on my other shoulder too, because everything should age symmetrically, you know?” Overton was hooked.
“At that point, Mark didn’t need to do anything else,” Overton said. “But then he said he checked Wikipedia about the possible causes of his headaches. Right then I knew I wasn’t dealing with any ordinary patient.”
“I realized that I was in the presence of an equal whose medical knowledge essentially paralleled my own,” Overton continued. “When I told him that we should do some blood tests, he suggested we use the cubital vein at the crease of the elbow because it’s a superficial vein as opposed to deep. Imagine the world we would live in if Mark had decided to go to medical school. It gives me goosebumps.”
Overton was able to complete Grisham’s physical and dismissed him with a clean bill of health. The duration of the appointment was significantly shortened because Grisham assured Overton that he had checked his own reflexes at home using an online quiz. “I deferred to his expert judgment,” Overton said.
“Of course I wasn’t worried in the first place,” he continued. “I knew not to look for anything too serious because Mark had already ruled out those possibilities. And on his own time too! If everybody researched their health as diligently as Mark does, I’d be out of a job.”
At press time, Grisham’s skimming of a Wall Street Journal article on stocks was greatly impressing his financial advisor.
