Thursday, July 21, 2011

"What's a libido?"

Patients have this uncanny ability to come up and surprise you. Sure, you need to go through hundreds before you can garner enough tales worthy of a blog, but this next one takes the cake. You'll find these people when you least expect them, when your brain is at its dormant best, figuratively twiddling its olfactory lobes & definitely not in a state to process what's about to present itself.

I was sitting peacefully in my OBGY clinic yesterday when a tame looking 45 year old woman was brought by her husband. It was almost lunchtime & this hubby had a look of serious concern on his face that made my heart sink; I was expecting a long history. So, he starts off & then suddenly trails, feeling uncomfortable discussing his wife's *cough*cough* reproductive prowess. My resident came by and sat herself down, telling him that he needn't be embarrassed. For my younger friends out there studying medicine, I'd rather describe the complaints in usual 'case format':

Patient, ABCD, 45 year old married female, G3P3L3A0, living in Mumbai, hailing from XYZ, was brought by her husband, who is also her informant, with chief complaints of:
  • Excessive libido since 6 months
  • Unusual need to experiment in bed, especially positions
  • Insatiable urge to seek sexual satisfaction with other men in absence of husband
  • Severe exhaustion & dehydration of husband intermittently
Patient claims, "There's nothing bothering me, it's my husband who's worrying too much". 
Husband claims psychological distress at seeing her with strange men when he comes home. 
There's no past history of heart disease (Thank God!), hypertension, diabetes, TB, asthma, psychiatric illness or surgeries

Diagnosis: Refer to psychiatry

2 comments:

  1. How could you let such a patient go without a detailed history?

    ReplyDelete
  2. @mkk: was flabbergasted on figuring everything else out, albeit a little later than the residents. The entire history was much longer, have mentioned only gist of it

    ReplyDelete