March is the time of spring mood and gifts. Do you want to please your doctor with some present this positive month? Then decide for yourself what to give and whether to give at all, but for now I’ll tell you what funny gifts we happen to receive.
Of course, alcohol in all its pathological forms: Kizlyar cognacs poured from under the floor into one and a half liter plastic bottles with Coca-Cola labels, vodka bought in a store on a promotion and smelling similar to a windshield washer, wines with re-glued labels, like in Ostrovsky’s «Dowry».
- Are you good at giving gifts?
Some foods also deserve caution: the undisputed leader in this regard is expired red caviar. How many of my colleagues poisoned her! By the way, it is interesting that the caviar brought by patients from the Far East is always fresher than the one bought in the store next to the clinic. Such is the marketing observation.
There is another extreme: a quality product in excess. For example, a centner carcass of a farm pig, still warm and bleeding, at one time posed a difficult question for us: how to dispose of such a volume of meat before it spoils? However, the problem was successfully solved. Much more difficult was the decision of one of my former classmates, and even a strict vegan, regarding two live chickens from a patient after an ophthalmic operation. The squawking animals were released in the village a week after the valuable gift — history is silent about their fate.
- The art of giving gifts: how to avoid mistakes?
One young lady, pretty, but scandalous, a couple of days after being discharged, collected all the VHS-cassettes in the house and gave them to me. It was a year in 2012, when the VCR in my environment was already in short supply. The patient’s taste also left much to be desired: tearful melodramas and shabby comedies awaited me. Cassettes later ended up in an orphanage — however, I do not exclude that most of them were not allowed to be viewed by strict educators for censorship reasons.
I remember the amazingly beautiful flowers presented to our nurses from an operated patient from India. There was, however, a catch: the exotic flowers turned out to be insectivorous, and therefore, by the end of the day, they began to exude a cruel stench, trying to attract hypothetical flies. The bouquet had to be hastily removed so that the visitors would not accuse us of hiding the dead body.
In general, doctors love gratitude, even verbal. But it is even more pleasant when the patient thinks hard before giving something special, individual. Or does not think, but simply gives his sincere human smile.