Yesterday I called to tell our patient about his polysomnogram (sleep test) results. He had sleep apnea, and they wanted me to set him up for a CPAP titration study, which is when you get fitted for the CPAP machine, a rather large and awkward mask you wear at night to make sure you breathe. I called him and started to read him his results:
"And it says that you've got sleep apnea, so I'm gonna set you up with a new test that will get you fitted for your CPAP."
"No, I'm not wearing that damn thing. What are my other options?"
I say, "Yeah, a lot of people have to get used to them for a couple weeks, but after that you'll be used to it and it won't be so bad."
He's unrelenting. "I won't wear it. What else can I do?"
"Well, it says here that you could also have surgery."
"Let's do it. I want the surgery. What are they gonna do? Do they go up through my nose?"
"I don't know.: Thinking, People don't GET surgery when they can just wear a machine at night! "But I'll refer you to someone who will tell you. Um, okay, here are some numbers for some ENTs."

I don't know if the transcript of it does it justice. It was so unusual and unexpected.

And, my total blond moment, I was reading through his test results before I called him and it said "Patient can also work on not sleeping supine, as a lot of the episodes happened in this position." And my first thought was, "How is he supposed to work on sleeping without lying down?"
(Supine means laying down, just specifically on your back.)