The Patient Who Cries "Hemorrhage!"

There seems to be a common misunderstanding among patients of the term, hemorrhage. Frankly, to hemorrhage means to spew blood, internally or externally, from a bodily orifice or laceration so heavily that the flow cannot be stanched, thus requiring the sufferer to seek immediate, emergent care to avoid bleeding to death. That’s BLEEDING TO DEATH, people! Not a trickle, not bleeding that’s been occurring off and on for many days or months, definitely NOT bleeding despite which you can go about your daily business, including work and pigging out at your neighborhood barbecue joint, while your husband calls to tell me you’re presently hemorrhaging, and can I please call you. Say, what? And, if you’re truly hemorrhaging, you need to call 911, not the physician’s office. We aren’t equipped to care for hemorrhaging patients, so for those of you who like to use this term because you’ve seen how it snaps heads to attention on ER and Grey’s Anatomy and you think that uttering it will result in a same-day appointment at 3:30 on a Friday afternoon, let me be clear—say “hemorrhage,” and you’ll buy yourself an immediate directive to the ER. It’s at this point you usually concede, perhaps you’re not actually hemorrhaging, but you need to be seen because you’re off work today or you’re going out of town tomorrow. Too bad, you already said the magic word, and we do not negotiate with hemorrhaging patients.