I was the 'is there a doctor on the plane' twice. First time, I was flying from LAX to JFK, and it was pretty simple - a woman with a cramp in her leg worried about a blood clot in her leg, but mostly I think just anxiety. (you would be OK for a couple of hours even with a clot) The second time was a little more nerve wracking - the man passed out, was sweaty and pale. He woke up, threw up, then said he felt OK but just tied. The on-board stethoscope is a useless prop since it's a cheap one, and you can't hear over the noise anyway. He had a good radial pulse, which means his systolic pressure is at least 90, and he was breathing OK without chest pain. He didn't have any obvious cardiac risk factors. There's not really anything you can do - the only decision is 'ground the plane' or not. My instinct told me he was OK and I was 95% confident that there was nothing seriously wrong. We were about 45 minutes from our destination, and when the flight attendant asked me what to do, I asked her how fast we could get there - she said we could get there sooner. The pilot got us there in 20 minutes, and we went straight to the gate. It was pretty cool, because we had been behind, but we wound up getting in on time, even with getting him off the plane first. I stayed with him for a while, an he was OK - happily he and his wife went on to have a great vacation. It was nice that a whole planeload of people were happy with me - probably because we got there early. I've had friends who made a plane land for someone with chest pain, who turned out to have a massive MI, and wound up with an entire plane load of people pissed off at them.

This was most recent embarrassing doctor visit, as I’ve had pretty terrible luck with medical professionals in general. I had a recurring/constant ear infection for probably around 8 months last year. I did a televisit with a new primary and he prescribed antibiotics and said if it didn’t clear up that I’d have to go to the ENT. I finished the round and my ear cleared for a little bit but then returned to fully messed up. Ended up on another round of antibiotics for an unrelated incident and same story.

We have a long wait time for doctors and specialists where I live, so many months after my ear infection had started, I go to the ENT. He takes one super quick look in my ear and leads me to another room. He has me lay on my side and pulls out a hearing aid dome that apparently had fallen off and gotten stuck in there. He also waited to pull the thing out before telling me what the problem was; I’m guessing for the drama/amusement factor.

I was embarrassed since I had lost a dome but figured it had fallen out somewhere and not into my ear. The timeline of the two incidents never connected for me, so I never pieced it together as an option for what might possibly be wrong. He tried to reassure me that it happens pretty often, but then he had to throw in that usually it happened to elderly patients and I was probably the youngest person he had pulled one out of. All this could have been avoided if I didn’t have a telehealth appointment in the first place.