The Demon Dentist of Fang Rock

Hail,
Apparently I am to inherit a new patient, and this is not good. The story goes thus:

Over the last few months, on and off, SMACHEAD has been treating Mr Papadopolis, a cheerful, extroverted market gardener in his thirties with a regrettable morphine habit. He was one of those truly unfortunate people who had had become addicted to opiates after nursing a sick relative - his mother had died after a long battle with mesothelioma and had left a grieving man with a big hole in his life and a plastic bag full of morphine capsules. He had been in for the occasional detox, had fallen on and off the program a few times (i.e.: had used heroin while on the methadone program), but was generally seen as a try-hard, decent enough fellow who was doing his best to get his life back on track after a series of unfortunate mistakes.

Or so they thought....

Because somehow, and this is a small city, and we liase closely with the northern, eastern and western organisations who work with people who use "drugs of dependence", someone found out the truth. Or rather, a truth - the truth that he had turned up earlier to one of the other organisations, and had told them a completely different story.

Mr Papadopolios was in fact, not Mr Papadopolis at all. He was, in fact, completely non-Popadopolan. He was Dr Rynch, a successful dentist-about-town (and no, Virginia, there had been no dying mother either). A few years ago, in an uncharacteristic lapse into honesty, he had described to the northern service a story of five year of heroin use, primarily recreational, to counter what he called "unutterable boredom". A much less heart-breaking story.

Well, once this was discovered, he got a lot less bored, because this confession opened up an entirely new kettle of worms. He wailed. He denied. He gashed his breast and beat his teeth. He begged Dr Durrie (sixties, grey hair, saintly looking) not to report him to the dental board (and presumably to just take the ten thousand dollar fine and the appearance before the medical board). When that didn't work, he threatened her.

"I know where you live" he said to her. And this, sadly, as true, because Dr Durrie is practically the only doctor I know who has her home address in the phone book.

So anyway, he's been handed over to me, and he doesn't know where I live, and I anticipate little trouble from him, because the people who threaten sixty year old women are often not the same people who threaten irritable looking men. And presumably because first thing in the morning, after the traffic jam but before the coffee, I look (and possibly feel) a damn sight more antisocial than he does.

I suspect that antisocial or aggressive patients often tend to end up with male doctors, in the same way that the one woman in a GP practice ends up seeing all the "woman's problems" in town.

Anyway, later on (we have some kind of virus on the computer at home that has disabled the virus protection system - some ghastly electronic immune disease) I will reply to comments and also bang on about the glorious weekend I just had. Also maybe something about giant gorillas.

Thanks for listening,
John