Long time, no see

Here are a few of the tough questions I have faced in the last few days:

• What do you do when you walk in an exam room and a patient hands you a newly removed body part? And then another, from a different part of the body?
• What do you do when you run out of pretzels and you're running an hour late, and your coffee gave out several hours ago when you stopped drinking it because if you kept drinking it you'd never sleep and you hardly sleep as it is? And your next patient is on 24 medications?
• With what do you follow when you're trying to establish that mythical rapport with a new patient when you ask, "Where are you from?" and the patient answers, "Yes, yes, I work very hard."
• When a very large woman says to you during a discussion about her weight "I never eat candy" and you can see the Reese's Cup in her purse AND you're out of pretzels, what do you do?

Extra credit points:

Your answering service informs you that you need to call a radiologist for an abnormal result. The radiologist screams at you for about 3 hours (okay, it was two minutes) because, he says, your answering service hung up on him. You call your answering service to see what happened and they play the recording of the radiologist screaming at the patient and polite operator. His screed ends with "USELESS!" and he hangs up. Now, the service has his direct number and so do you. What do you do? Harass him, or let him enjoy the money he got for reading the CT while you spend the next hour negotiating with the patient to go to the hospital for the serious abnormality said radiologist told you about, all of which you do completely for free?

Spoiler alert: These questions ARE NOT on the Family Medicine board certification exams.