Me: What’s a minute? An hour, a day, a week?

Patient (rolling their eyes because they are frustrated with my lack of telepathy): Uh, I don’t know. But, it’s been a good little minute.

At this point I am seriously thinking of impaling myself with my pen to stop the insanity.

I realize that “a minute” is likely a long time, but that is only relative to the patient. If your stomach has been hurting for three hours versus three months, my list of possible causes is very different. So, let’s try to be more precise, Mmmkay?

I could go on and on. I don’t mean to sound like I don’t like my patients, but I’m pretty sure everyone reading this probably has a similar list. I know patients aren’t trying to be difficult, but when they are uneducated about the state of their own health, it makes it challenging to determine what is going on.

Most of the time, we are racing against the clock to diagnose and treat. We are always on the edge. Medicine is a partnership, and when patients can’t or don’t volunteer a good history, you start out handicapped. As Jerry Maguire said, “Help me, help you!” This imagery makes me think of the patients laughing at me like Rod Tidwell.

So as a tip to my patients, there are some really easy things you can do to make your ED visit as quick and painless as possible. Write down your medicines, give your little guy some Tylenol, and be relatively clear when telling me what the heck is going on with you. Even Sherlock Holmes would have trouble without clues. And Lord knows, I am no Sherlock Holmes. I’m probably a little more like Dear Dr. Watson. Without the mustache.

Dr. Bundy is an attending physician at ERMed, LLC, in Montgomery, Ala., and a former photojournalist, who not only sing in the car, but talks to herself, is addicted to diet drinks and shoes, and thinks emergency medicine is the greatest specialty.