The Cockamamie Case of the Tail Wagging the Doc

"Yep. Easy to see what your problem is, ma'am. I'm a doctor so I know these things."

So perhaps by now you suspect - as regular readers of the Paramedic Heretic - that when it comes to clinical cretinism, you've heard it all.

No you haven’t. Sit back and appreciate this unexaggerated beauty:

It was July, 2012 when Los Angeles County Sheriff detectives raided an urgent care clinic in the city of Glendora. After a two-month investigation they were convinced the clinic’s drug prescription patterns were, well, just a bit askew. The good news one day was that Doctor Rolando L. Atiga was able to interpret the x-ray one of his patients had brought along, well enough to prescribe pretty much any narcotic painkiller she wanted. He could tell by the x-ray she was honestly in agony.

“Do you want to try some Vicoden?” he asked. “Roxicodone? Maybe Valium? Xanex?” He was really quite accommodating.

The caring physician even pointed out a hip bone area of inflammation as the probable cause of the patient's suffering.

Of course the bad news was that the patient was an undercover cop and the x-ray was the skeletal image of her German shepherd. You'll kindly note the tail.

So just between us, which aspect of modern healthcare makes you feel better? That your personal physician might lie to you; falsify patient records and push drugs?

Or that he might be incompetent enough to actually think this is an x-ray of a human being?

Alas, Doctor Rolando L. Atiga was escorted from his urgent care office in handcuffs. He was charged with multiple counts of Felony Prescription Fraud. And do you care to know what the good doctor said to the police as they tucked him carefully into the backseat of a patrol car?

“I don’t know if I did something wrong or something right.”

Yes, this lab coat genius really did utter those very words.

We don’t call modern maniac medicine the Twilight Zone for nothing.