Patient: “So what’s up, doc?”
Physician: “Bugs.”
Patient: “Very funny.”
Physician: “Sorry. It is the day after Easter, I’ve got bunnies on the brain. And, begging your pardon, but I wasn’t the first to quote Looney Tunes.”
Patient: “Touché. And yes, he was a turtle. I’d laugh, but it hurts when I laugh. So what’s buggin’ me?”
Physician: “Just a cold.”
Patient: “Just, he says. I’m sitting here drowning in my own sweat, I’ve got so many sharp pains shooting through me, I feel like a dart board at the national championships, and he says ‘just a cold.’ I don’t suppose you have ‘just’ the medicine for it?”
Physician: “Believe me, I’d love it if we did. But the rhinoviruses that cause colds mutate too quickly …”
Patient: “The what?“
Physician (under his breath): “Not again …”
Patient: “Rhinoviruses? Are you telling me that I’ve got all these miniature pachyderms running through my body? So every time I feel a twinge, they’re sticking their big hard pointy snouts into me? Huh?”
Physician: “Calm down …”
Patient: “And they’re mutating?!? Are they going to turn me into a rhino??“
Physician: “Well, then, I suppose your girlfriend would be right to call you hor …”
Patient (crashing his way out of the office): “AAAAAAAAHHH!!!”
Nurse (pokes head in office, surveys damage): “Another cold?”
Physician (shaking head ruefully): “‘Fraid so.”
Nurse: “Doc, I wish you’d learn to just say germs. This is costing us a fortune in furniture.”