and so ends my career in medicine

I think I just lost the only patient in my practice.

Andrea's ear was bothering her yesterday so she asked me to take a look at it with my otoscope.

I was more than happy to oblige, since she is the first person to actually *request* my services since I purchased my $9 diagnostic tool at Walgreen's.

I've been locating at healthy eardrums whenever people will let me (mostly Andrea, the boys are completely uncooperative), and I've been studying pictures of infected eardrums on the internet.
With this substantial training supporting my diagnosis, I insisted that Andrea go to the medicenter on her way to work (since Walgreen's will not let me prescribe antibiotics).

Well, apparently the "professionals" at the medicenter did not find an infection. They said there was just pressure and she should take a decongestant. To add insult to injury, Andrea took their word over mine.

And so ends my medical career.

Thankfully, I didn't go down like the surgeons who sent this patient home with the pictured souvenir:



(full story here.)

>tomorrow I'll make another hiatus from my "day job" when I fill in for my friend Jerry at his church. Hope that goes better...