The doctor had heard thousands of complaints during his career.
Headaches.
Back pain.
Strange rashes.
Unexplained fatigue.
Symptoms so unusual they sent him searching through medical references long after the patient had gone home.
But the woman sitting across from him that afternoon described something he had never encountered before.
And she described it with complete sincerity.
He looked down at her chart, hoping the familiar columns of medical information might provide some clue.
Nothing.
Her history appeared ordinary.
Her vital signs were normal.
There was no obvious condition explaining what she insisted she was experiencing.
“Can you describe the problem again?” he asked carefully.
She did.
The doctor listened without interrupting.
Part of him wondered whether there had been some misunderstanding. Perhaps she was using the wrong word to describe a sensation. Patients did that all the time.
A strange feeling might actually mean itching.
Pressure could mean pain.
Burning might describe irritation.
So he began asking questions.
“When did you first notice it?”
She answered.
“Does anything make it worse?”
Another perfectly serious answer.
“Any pain?”
“No.”
“Fever?”
“No.”
“Changes in appetite?”
“No.”
The doctor leaned back slightly.
This wasn’t getting easier.
If anything, every answer made the situation stranger.
Still, medicine required patience.
Embarrassing symptoms were still symptoms.
People often delayed seeking care because they feared being laughed at, and the last thing he wanted was to make a patient regret asking for help.
So he maintained the same calm expression he had practiced throughout years of medicine.
“All right,” he finally said. “Let’s examine you.”
The woman nodded.
A few minutes later, with appropriate privacy and clinical procedure, the examination began.
The doctor immediately forced every distracting thought from his mind.
This was a patient.
Nothing more.
He checked for anything that might explain her concern.
Inflammation.
Swelling.
Tenderness.
Skin changes.
Signs of infection.
Anything unusual.
Nothing.
He checked again.
Still nothing.
The woman watched him expectantly.
“Do you see anything?”
“Not yet.”
That answer sounded more hopeful than he intended.
He continued.
Perhaps there was something subtle.
A minor condition.
A reaction.
Some obscure symptom he’d forgotten from medical school.
Anything would have been preferable to admitting that he had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.
Several increasingly uncomfortable minutes passed.
Finally, the doctor stepped away.
He removed his gloves and stared thoughtfully at the chart.
Everything was normal.
Completely normal.
The patient waited.
“Well?”
The doctor cleared his throat.
“Medically speaking, I can’t find anything wrong.”
Her face fell.
“But I know what I’m feeling.”
“I believe you.”
That seemed to surprise her.
He sat down again.
The easiest response would have been to dismiss her.
Instead, he went through the possibilities one more time.
Could medication be responsible?
Apparently not.
Hormonal changes?
Nothing obvious.
Stress?
Possible, but it didn’t explain everything.
Some unusual neurological sensation?
Perhaps, although the examination gave him no reason to suspect one.
The doctor rubbed his forehead.
He had entered the room expecting medicine to provide an answer.
Medicine, apparently, had decided to abandon him.
The woman repeated her complaint once more.
This time, something about the way she phrased it finally made him understand.
He froze.
Then he looked at her.
Then at the chart.
Then back at her.
The clinical mystery suddenly wasn’t mysterious at all.
The problem was that there wasn’t actually a medical problem.
Human beings occasionally experienced sensations and desires that had nothing whatsoever to do with disease.
Unfortunately, explaining that while maintaining the dignity of everyone involved required considerably more tact than diagnosing the flu.
The doctor tried.
He really did.
He began with a careful explanation about normal physiological responses.
Then he stopped.
It sounded ridiculous.
He tried another approach.
That sounded worse.
The woman continued staring at him, waiting for the confident medical conclusion she’d expected when she walked through the door.
Finally, the doctor’s professional composure cracked just enough for a tired smile to appear.
He closed the chart.
“I have good news,” he said.
Her eyebrows rose.
“There’s nothing physically wrong with you.”
“Then what is it?”
The doctor hesitated.
After all his training, all the textbooks he’d studied, all the examinations he’d performed, he found himself completely defeated by the simplest possible explanation.
He sighed.
“Whatever you’ve got,” he said, “I’m beginning to think it’s contagious.”
For a second, there was absolute silence.
Then she understood.
Her eyes widened.
The doctor’s face reddened.
And suddenly both of them were trying desperately not to laugh.
The appointment that had begun like a baffling medical mystery ended without a prescription, laboratory test, or complicated diagnosis.
Just one thoroughly embarrassed doctor.
One equally embarrassed patient.
And a reminder that sometimes the human body creates situations no medical textbook can prepare anyone to explain gracefully.
