- Well hello there.
My inbox just got bombarded because
Conan O'Brien vlogged his doctors visit.
So I thought I'd watch it
and react to it.
Perhaps even a good learning opportunity.
Let's get started.
Elevator Music)
- Anyone notice yet today that my voice
sounds a little different?
Does it sound a little different to you?
A little sexier?
A little lower?
Thanks a lot.
(Laughter)
There's a reason for that.
I hadn't actually felt well today.
(Awww)
(Wah Wah)
- You bastards.
Yeah, womp womp.
(Laughter)
We're talking about my physical health.
- And little does Conan know,
his physical health is intimately tied in
with his mental health.
So if he's not performing well physically,
it can make him quite upset,
which can lead to feelings of worry,
anxiety,
even depression in some cases.
- I just have some kind of virus or something.
And last night I was up all night.
Really sore throat.
I woke up today achy.
Just don't feel well.
Come to work cause the show must go on.
- What is sounds like that he's describing
could be either a viral illness
or it could be bacterial illness.
The fact that he's saying body aches
and sore throat.
He's putting all of these systems together.
Sounds like I'm leaning towards viral.
But it's hard to know from his limited description here.
The one thing I will tell you that some of the most
painful sore throats happen as a result
of a viral illness,
not strep throat.
So don't jump to concluding that
because your throat is really sore,
it must mean you have strep throat.
Actually it's not that case.
It's actually the other way.
- A lot of Nyquil.
(Laughter)
I woke up with my pants around my ankles.
- Did you feel better?
- I felt better.
So did the guy I was with.
- Oh!
He just threw in one of those didn't he?
Please don't take a lot of Nyquil folks.
Cause Nyquil is actually a combination medicine.
It has what is the equivalent of Benadryl in it
and Tylenol.
So it not only is a pain reliever,
but it also puts you to sleep.
However Benadryl,
or Nyquil for that matter,
if you take it and you don't go to sleep
and you stay up,
it's actually worse for you in terms
of concentration and ability to perform tasks
than alcohol.
There's actually been a study done
that tested people who were under the influence
of alcohol in comparison to those
who took benadryl,
And those who took benadryl were worse drivers
than the alcohol group.
Isn't that crazy?
- Do you feel comfortable talking
about the stomach stuff that was going on?
Like was it nausea,
diarrhea?
What was that symptom?
- You really want me to talk about diarrhea
on television?
- When we're seeing the symptoms
of an upper respiratory infection
start spreading to the GI tract,
what that points my mind to is to a specific virus
called Adenovirus.
Now this is one that affects both
upper respiratory and GI tract
and can cause diarrhea.
In fact diarrhea and upper respiratory
symptoms point you to the direction
of thinking that this could be caused by a virus.
Because if you have just an infection
of bacteria in your throat,
it's very unlikely that it's gonna start
spreading into the GI system right away.
So the fact that he's having multiple
system involvement here really makes me
lean towards the idea that this is a virus.
- Do you ever find yourself talking to patients
and they mention that they've had diarrhea
and you start laughing?
- Not anymore.
- Oh.
That's sad when all the joy goes out of your life.
- I don't think I've ever laughed
when a patient tells me diarrhea
unless they describe it in a funny way
where they're trying to be funny.
Then we can share a laugh.
I try and do some kind of humor
with it.
Like are you just constantly running?
Are you basically having diarrhea in your pants?
The patients and I both get a good laugh
and they understand that this is very disarming.
Functions as a way to break down this barrier
that often exists between patients and doctors
where we have to be very strict
and very proper.
We can have a good time.
We can laugh.
- If this somehow could all end with you saying
well you're an amazing male specimen,
and I had that on camera,
that would be great.
But that's you decide.
- An amazing male specimen.
Can you imagine if like a doctor does
a prostate exam and then afterwards he's like
you're an amazing male specimen.
I think that would be really weird feedback to get.
We're trained not to use weird language like that
during our practicals.
Like for example,
if I'm listening to someone's heart,
I'm looking inside their ears,
I'm doing a vaginal exam.
I'm always trained to say everything looks normal,
or everything sounds normal.
Instead of saying good.
When you say everything looks normal,
that's less provocative,
there's no real wrong way to take normal.
- Let's start with taking your temperature.
- Why'd they have the Scrubs poster right there
that's even hanging crooked for effect?
That's awesome.
(Laughter)
He looks so miserable.
(Laughter)
(Beeping)
- [Doctor] Right on.
97.5 you're actually cold.
- A lot of wax in there.
- I wonder if he's wincing cause she's putting
it in deep,
or he's just trying to be funny with it.
Cause generally that procedure shouldn't
be that uncomfortable.
You can get a good view of the tympanic membrane
or the eardrum without pushing too far
and causing discomfort.
It's actually one of the mistakes
that a lot of my medical students make
that I have to tell them why are you
pushing in so deep?
Think about how uncomfortable that feels
to the patient.
And when they realize that sweet spot,
then you can do it consistently over and over
again without causing discomfort to a patient.
- Stick your tongue out.
Ready?
- [Conan O'Brien] (gagging)
- The best thing you can do when a doctor
is trying to look into the back of your throat,
keep your tongue out the whole time
and consistently say the sound ah.
(Ah)
The reason why we say say ah,
is cause it lifts your pallet.
And when it lifts your pallet,
we have a really good view of the back
of your throat.
I'll say to my patients open up,
they'll open their mouth,
they'll stick their tongue out,
and I'll say say ah,
and they'll go ah.
I didn't get any view of anything.
- What're you feeling there?
- Feeling for swollen lymph nodes,
glands.
Anything tender?
- Not yet.
- If they were swollen and enlarged,
that would be indicative of a form of infection
or inflammation.
Glands do get swollen during that time,
but they should return back to normal
after a period of time.
If your glands don't return to normal
and they stay swollen,
that's a reason to go see your doctor.
- There's a tattoo there.
It says REO Speedwagon rules.
(Laughter)
I got it in 1978.
I thought that band was gonna go the distance.
- [Doctor] Oh my God.
Two more.
- One of the most important things
that you wanna tell patients
when you're listening to their lungs
using a stethoscope,
is to make sure they take deep breaths
through their mouth.
This is the largest airway.
There's no mucus in there unlike the nose
which is a smaller airway,
there's mucus in there,
and you can get upper airway sounds
like (sniffing).
That sound gets transmitted into your lungs
and you'll hear it,
and you won't be able to decipher
is that coming from the nose
or from the lungs?
- I want as much medication as I could
possibly have.
- Really?
- A lot of my patients come in asking
for medication.
Its a common misconception that if you have
a virus or if you have a strep throat,
that unless you get antibiotics,
you're not gonna get better.
This is not the case.
If you're otherwise healthy,
you're always gonna get better.
In fact if you have strep throat,
for which we give antibiotics for,
we are only shorting the course of strep throat
illness by 16 hours.
It normally lasts 7 to 8 days.
And we're saving you 16 hours of symptoms
by giving you the antibiotic.
The antibiotic is not for your symptoms,
ladies and gentlemen.
The antibiotic is there strictly to prevent
the complications of strep throat.
- You know,
sometimes you hear about like there's a cool
Tylenol that they only sell in Sweden,
that has weed in it,
a little bit of cocaine.
- (Laughter)
- I don't think it'll help you.
- No?
- No.
- Can I have it anyway?
(Laughter)
- I've had patients say that they heard about
some cool supplement that promises
to shorten the duration of a cold
if they take mega doses of it.
No.
There's no magic fix.
There's no magic vitamin.
Its about getting the proper rest,
hydration,
getting the right amount of calories in,
and allowing your body to do its job.
(Laughter)
- Nervous?
- A little bit.
You haven't said anything for a while.
- The reason why we don't say anything for a while
is cause there's a few areas we have to listen to.
We have to listen to on the right side
of your chest.
Then we have to move over to the left side
of your chest.
And there's 4 places that we listen to
on the left side of the chest.
So unless we do all this,
we have to take a few seconds to actually hear
the rhythm,
make sure we don't hear a murmur,
cause that's what we're listening to,
and to make sure the rate is normal,
not only in terms of how fast it's beating,
but the rhythm as well.
A heartbeat should be boom boom,
boom boom,
it should keep a proper rhythm.
If all of a sudden you're getting
(sporadic boom)
that could be a sign of atrial fibrillation
which is it's own cardiac arrhythmia
and all sorts of other issues
in which case we would then wanna get
extra testing like an EKG,
perhaps an echocardiogram,
depending on what we're suspecting.
But the biggest reason we listen to
is for murmurs.
When you have something wrong with the valves
of your heart,
or actually the chambers of your heart,
we hear turbulent flow.
Meaning that if you ever hear fluid move
through a pipe and the pipe is nice and clear,
you're not gonna hear anything.
It's silent.
But if something all of a sudden gets
in the way and the water has to move around it,
that turbulence creates a sound.
That's what we're listening to in your chest.
- Do you have Mitral Valve Prolapse or anything?
Has anyone told you that?
- What's a prolapse?
- It's one of the valves in the heart
is just a little bit floppy.
- I just came here to shoot,
I came here to shoot like a silly little
I've gotta cold and we're gonna just
screw around.
You're telling me something real?
- Yeah but it's nothing.
You don't have a murmur or anything.
- So Mitral Valve Prolapse,
what she's talking about here
is technically floppy heart valves.
But we're specifically talking about
the left side of the heart
in between the lower portion,
which is the left ventricle,
and the left atrium.
There is something known as the Mitral Valve.
And it's two little leaflets.
And sometimes they do get floppy
and they don't sit evenly with each other
and they actually prolapse to the left atrium.
And when that happens is you can have a little
bit of leakage of blood that goes
into the left atrium when it's not suppose to.
Most of the time,
patients are asymptomatic,
meaning they don't even know they have it.
And we just find it kind of on a
routine physical exam and no treatment is needed.
That's why she wasn't so worried about it.
[Conan O'Brien] I have a floppy heart.
(Laughter)
I have a lot of tension with my job.
I have a lot of inner rage.
I'm Irish Catholic stock.
I'm worried we don't do well in the long run.
We're not people that live a long time.
- I think it's really important to talk
about someone's mental state.
Because if they're not in a healthy mental state,
they're gonna take longer to recover
from their symptoms.
They're gonna have worse symptoms on average.
So I like to get that in the open
and see if there's anything we can offer
this patient.
[Conan O'Brien] A little fatigued.
- Those are bad pushups.
(Laughter)
- What do you think?
I'm a pretty good male.
- Yeah.
Really fantastic.
I think maybe,
- Look at the camera, please.
- Male specimen.
- You think maybe I'm a male specimen?
(Laughter)
[Doctor] This is the sort of wimpy Sudafed,
cause we can't really get the real Sudafed
anymore because of the crystal meth problem.
- So I can't make crystal meth out of this?
- Conan O'Brien is a fantastic male specimen.
- He got her to say it!
(Laughter)
- Conan was awesome for showing this.
Showing his medical visit,
joking about it,
talking about his symptoms.
This is how we make changes
in the medical community.
By opening it up.
By being more transparent.
By showing doctors have a sense of humor.
I have two videos that you have to watch.
First is right here,
Untold Stories of the ER.
This one is fun.
And then the one that is really unique
is this woman who can smell Parkinson's Disease.
Yeah she can actually smell it.
Click on one of these bad boys now.
And stay happy and healthy.
(elevator music)