For a while, I did work as a biostatistician at U of Illinois (UC). It was a part time gig as essentially a post doc of sorts. There was this admin/secretary girl that worked with some of the patients/test subjects who came into the lab. Unfortunately she had cotton balls for a brain.

My work space had a little name plaque that said [TheWanderer], PhD. For some reason, the medical doctor that was over the lab introduced me to the admin girl as "Dr. [Wanderer]" While technically correct, this poor girl from then on thought I was a *medical* doctor. I'm not. Despite my repeatedly telling her I was not a licensed physician, she didn't quite pick up on the difference.

One day I found out that this girl lived in the same apartment complex my wife and I did. About two weeks later she came running to our door and told us to come look at her boyfriend, that he couldn't breathe and was in pain, etc. They only lived a few doors down, so I went to look at the guy and just make sure that his girlfriend wasn't overreacting. I assumed that on the scale of indigestion to cardiac arrest, this guy had just eaten something spicy and had a stomach ache. Or that he was super drunk (this is Big 10 country after all). He was like 22, and I was pretty sure it wasn't something serious like a heart attack.

Anyway, he's in way more pain than I expected and I tell the girlfriend to take him to the ER. At this point she mentions that he had been in a car accident earlier that day and his car had been towed and so I might have to drive....Not sure why she didn't mention that before. I notice that he had a lot of the signs of a collapsed lung in terms of the chest pain, blue-hued skin, and neck vain distention. I tell this to the girlfriend as we drive him to the ER and sure enough, he ended up having a collapsed lung. (Thanks Dr. Mike from YouTube!)

This stupid cotton head girlfriend told a bunch of people at work that "Dr. Wanderer treated my boyfriend for a collapsed lung and saved his life." She brought us a $100 bottle of wine a few days later, so I "practiced medicine" and was paid with a nice bottle of wine that I gave to my FIL for Christmas. Win win.

In retrospect, it may have been better to just call 911, but we only lived 5 minutes from the hospital, so who knows. Maybe a real medical doctor could pipe in.

My wife was also so traumatized by the whole experience that she ate half a carton of Tilamook ice cream that night, which, in my medical opinion, was not healthy.

Oh, and this cotton brain girl is now in PA school in Michigan, so....steer clear of any PAs in Kalamazoo with names that start with T.