Egyptian patients!!

As people from various cultures differ in many aspects in life, they also differ in how they deal with illness and death. The Egyptian variant of patients come in a distinct and strong flavour, a mixture of comedy, ignorance, drama, misery, background and care. A mixture no physician can help but recognize. Now I am referring to the whole population of course, only the common middle to lower social class, the portion of society we are fortunate enough to deal with at El-Demerdash.

To elaborate:

Almost every patient & his/her relative come to the ER complaining of not being well for a while "howa ta3ban ba2alo shwaya", really, I truely thought you were coming to say hi and that everything is fine!

or the other obvious complaint, he is as what he appears to be "ba2alo keda zay manta shayef kam youm"!! Hold on, I have to take out my magic 8 ball and in 5 secs I promise I will figure out what's wrong!

Then you get the patients that make you feel ignorant by saying something like " ba2alha 3 ayam 3amla zay el batta el 3arga eli betrog fi el ard"

Or "meraty lamma tesees tennada3 men 7egraha 7annokah", what the ...?!

Or something like "bo2i fi barabee2 nar we 3andi 7omodey good mekhaleni 3andi fak el teneen"

Or "gozi lama beyeshrab sodya beyetkara3"

Then you get the more articulate and educated ones throwing words at you like "camula, malasma otherwise known as el dam el asfar, or mostawa el teneen fi el dam (creatinine), and finally el mastara beta3et el bool"

Then you get the more aggressive vairent of patients who spit at, swear and even sometimes hit the doctors.  Unfortunately most of the time it's not called for, or it's because of some misunderstanding between the patient and the doctor.

Just this last year, one of the patients strangled an intern with his stethoscope just because he told him that his relative has passed away.  Others have literally torn down the whole ER, damaging everything and hitting all of the doctors.

Then you get others who call you "ya ostaz, ya captin or ya bash mohandes", but last week I was called something I have never heard a doctor called before by anybody.  The patient's son called me "ya 7adret el zabet"!!

Other patients, when you are done with your job try giving you money.  The lowest I have heard of was 5 pounds and the highest I heard of was 100 pounds.  Again, last week I was offered a cigeratte as if I was a valet or a car cleaner.

It is a prestigious job, don't get me wrong!!

These examples are only part of the patients we see.  It's not all that bad.  We do get praised and thanked a lot by other patients and their families and in the right ways.  It's just the weired things we like to pick out.

If you have any other similar stories please post them