insane chinese parents!

on wed last week, i had this 30yo asian male in my clinic for a pre-op appt to fix his torn pectoralis major muscle (he tore it bench pressing). the crazy thing is BOTH his parents were at this appt, and they were SOOO overprotective it was quite amusing! his dad was wearing a full business suit, his mom was in her white coat (she's an EKG tech at Kaiser) and introduced herself as "cardiology" clinician. when they saw me, they were like, "hrm, why is this inexperienced girl seeing my precious son?" you could see it on their faces! i asked the son to move his arm, and it was ask if i asked the son to jump off a cliff!! both parents lunged forward to grab the son's arms, and panicked, "DONT MOVE!! YOU'll HURT IT!!" the son was calm and said, "dad, mom, i think she knows what she's asking." the mother kept throwing in information about the son's injury/previous medical history ("no you hurt it 1/18, not 1/19." "no you had appendectomy when you were 12, not 10!"). eons later, i finally got my paperwork done, and the mom requests me to sign a work-release form for HER to take care of her son for 2 weeks!! i was like, "hrm...your son is 30, he's getting an outpatient surgery, i think he can take care of himself..." but i didnt' want to cause family trouble, so i agreed.

anyhow, so fastforward to day of surgery this Fri. the family was sooo indecisive about who should operate (they insisted on the chief of orthopedics, but if they only knew the chief rarely operates anymore as they are so busy with admin stuff, hahahha), and what kinda of anesthesia, and how they DEMAND the son stay overnight at hospital that it took so long to talk to these parents the case was delayed til 5pm (12:30pm was scheduled time)!!! any later and we'd have to cancel the case! the case went fine, couldn't fix it as well as we'd like as he hurt it 3 weeks ago and the tendon was hard to distinguish by now, but we did a good job. (the family delayed the operation for 2 weeks as they were searching for the "best" surgeon!) We finished quickly, went out to speak the family, and the last question the father asked was, "who was your assistant?" Our chief put his hand on my shoulder and said, "Nancy!" once again, the looks on the parents face was one to remember! hahaha, such worrywarts! i am sooo glad i don't have such nutty parents! oh, and i forgot to mention the most crazy part--the son is MARRIED!!! his wife looks very young, perhaps fresh out of college! i have no idea how the allowed his son to be wed off, and how that poor daughter-in-law handles it. oh well, it's not my fam, thank god!!