I don’t know if it is from growing up around people who sawed off their own casts because they got in the way or how in my extended family putting stitches in or taking them out was done at home all the time… I don’t know if it was the general mentality of basically never seeing a doctor unless you were dragged there.
It could have developed as I racked-up millions of frequent flier miles at hospitals. I knew the check-in procedures so well I was often asked if I worked there. I know the drill, go here, do this, wear this, blah blah blah for most of the procedures I have the pleasure of enduring often. The nurses generally get frustrated with me because I also know their little lists of “this patient is most likely here because of x,y,z” and I tell them nope, I am not. One male nurse in particular got pretty feisty with me over a test to rule out “y” and I told him I’d only do it if he did, too. (Little note to any health-care provider: anyone whose chart has to be hauled in on a hand truck probably knows when it isn’t “y” and don’t be surprised if they are ready for you.)
The advice they give is usually the same: reduce stress, exercise, eat well, blah blah blah. I’ve been on bedrest I don’t even know how many times now. Bedrest as a mom, especially of infants or toddlers, is a joke.
Speaking of jokes though, I think I have been a fun patient for a few of my doctors. Don’t get me wrong, either; I love my doctors. They are awesome. I have a great time joking around with them. After watching an episode of “House” where someone wrote “not this leg” or something similar, my husband thought it was funny to draw on me before surgeries. Sometimes he’d label my left and right side, draw arrows that said “this end up”, silly things. The latest was a huge scene of an island with palm tree and an X, “Here there be buried treasure!” was written above. The Doc got a big kick out of it and said he’d never seen anything like it. He said his first thought was that he’d just seen me two days before and I didn’t have a tattoo that big. LOL So he and the scrub team tried to wash it off only to discover it was done in Sharpie. So the Doc added “Arggghh!” to my pirate scene in Sharpie as well. It didn’t come off for weeks but it was a fun way to make light of a crappy situation.
But back to me being a bad patient. After the pirate surgery I wasn’t supposed to lift or do much of anything for a while. Ooops. I popped a couple stitches from doing too much and had to have them redone. That wasn’t the first time, either. I have a hard time being on light duty. Kinda like the splint/brace thing I decided to take off my hand tonight. I just want to be able to do more again. And taking a power tool to the tree that was at the crux of this current injury felt pretty cathartic, too. 
So to my doctors, I love you guys and I love joking around with you. I just have a hard time sometimes on the “take it easy” portion of the discharge slip. 
