Who needs a degree?

Now I've heard it all.

A woman rang up today to ask for some advice. She had "diagnosed" a heart "arrhythmia" in her dog (the nurse forgot to ask if she had a stethoscope or had just pressed her ear against the poor animals chest) and had been treating it with her father's medication (goodness knows what he now had to use). But wait, there's more. Now the dog was bleeding from its nose and she wanted to know if it was related to the medication!

As you have probably figured out by the fact that she had self-diagnosed and self-treated the dog, she was NOT a client of ours and was probably a few sandwiches short of a picnic. As she was using a human drug that we had never heard of before, we told her that she would need to ring the pharmacist who had prescribed the medication and ask them. The receptionist also suggested she try Googling the drug (which is what I do all the time). "Oh no!" she replied, "the Internet is full of rubbish!" She then proceeded to lecture the poor receptionist on a book called "MIMS" which is a drug book used by medical personnel and which I have sitting on my bookshelf. The receptionist refrained from asking her where she had got her medical degree (this is why I don't deal with the "difficult" clients) and said, "That's nice, we suggest you call the pharmacist or bring the dog in for us to check out." Now I could do a bit of research and find out but to be honest I had a busy morning clinic full of people who had bothered to take the time to bring their animals to the vet and I really did not have time to waste on someone who thought they knew best.

The receptionist later came in to tell me that the woman was on the phone again, having ascertained from the pharmacist that the drug in question would indeed have an anti-coagulant effect (i.e. it can cause BLEEDING!!) BUT, and here's the kicker, she thought that the dog may also have an "aneurysm" in its nose. By now I realised that we were dealing with a level 5 crazy person and told the nurse that unless we EXAMINED the dog, there was nothing we could do and I was not prepared to give advice over the phone because if anything else went wrong it would be my arse on the line. She came back to tell me that the woman did not want to bring the dog in, she just wanted to know what she could do at home. Surprise, surprise.
Apparently the chemist had told her to "hold the dog's nose shut."
Oh for the love of all that is small and furry! How long are you planning on sitting around blocking the poor animals nose shut? Not to mention the fact that the blood can just go down the OTHER WAY into the throat and you're not actually dealing with the fact that there is something potentially serious going on to cause the bleeding!

The nurse had already advised the woman that this was not going to deal with the underling problem (which was HER, I commented), but she still refused to bring the dog in to see us. I thought that was the end of it when the nurse said that before she could hang up the woman just had one more question and I was going to love it.
"Sooo, should I skip her dose tonight then?"

I....GIVE...UP!!!