I've alluded to my hospital job like, a million times in these posts. However, I think I've neglected to mention one teeny, tiny, insignificant detail:
I am not a doctor. Nor am I a nurse, LPN, ortho tech, patient care tech... nothing that involves physically helping sick people.
If you get hurt, I'm one of the least useful people in the world, even though I can sew pretty well by hand, and I'm unwarrantably confident in my suturing ability.
My hospital job is kind of too dull to relay in detail, so just know that I deal with insurance, litigious tedium and patient name stickers. If I think someone's contagious, I try to keep my distance. If they have a gruesome injury, I try to get a good luck. When I'm tired, I sit in a cubicle.
None of these responsibilities qualifies me as a "medical professional." I haven't even learned how to tell if someone's blood pressure is good or bad, unless they're actually dead. Coincidentally, death is the one thing I can diagnose almost 100% of the time.
Maybe it's because the specifics of my job are so painstakingly dull, I've adapted a succinct, end-of-discussion summation of my job-- by saying that I'm a doctor.
This is the one lie I never, ever tell patients. I'm pretty sure that would be against the law, and girls like me don't do well in jail. However, I would love to be the basis for a Lifetime movie.
This lie is reserved for complete strangers, who are usually impressed by my Doogie Howser-esque rise in the medical field.
"Yeah, you can totally get an MD by the time you're 22, and you don't have to be a 10-year-old college freshman, either. Being a doctor's like anything else-- if you're naturally good at it, you kinda breeze through classes. I have a friend who's also like that, except instead of medicine, he can play guitar like, preternaturally well."
The lie also works when someone, such as one's mother, starts to fret about a cough/ sneeze/ low-grade fever.
"Mom, I'm a doctor. I have allergies, if I drink tea it'll go away."
Even though that response is usually met with rolled eyes and a "heaven help us," it ends the discussion.
And if you have hypochondriacs as friends, nothing makes then shut up about their imaginary ailments faster than saying, "I'm a doctor. That thing you're bitching about can't kill you."
It also works if, for a random example, you fall down a mountain while hiking. There's no nonsense about getting X-Rays or CT scans or stitches, if you can very calmly explain to your companions (usually the same ones as the aforementioned hypochondriacs) that, as a doctor, you're more than capable of diagnosing your own concussion, and suturing up your appendages.
In that scenario, instead of a "heaven help us," you're usually met with an "Ohmigod, I can't watch this."
Your friend may think that that's hard to watch, but the truly painful part comes later, when you're using the money you didn't spend on hospital bills to buy fab stilettos to wear to work.
Someone's definitely dying.... of jealousy.
Also, to confess another lie: a friend recently asked me who sings the "Pretty Baby" song that was so ubiquitous on 90's radio stations. I told her it was Billy Joel. I knew, perfectly well, that the Spin Doctors sing that song. In fact, I know more about the Spin Doctors than any normal person ever should, unless they're Chris Baron's mother.
I don't know why I lied, except I've been home sick with the plague (which I'm totally capable of curing, obvi), and haven't met any strangers worthy of a decent yarn.
Sorry (more for the pointlessness of the lie as opposed to the act of lying).
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