A 'head' case

I'm a speech pathologist and at work I often work with people who have swallowing problems. Actually that's about 75% of my day -- working with people who've had strokes or pneumonia or just general deconditioning that in turn affects their ability to swallow. We do a fancy test called a video swallow study in the xray department and take pictures of people (who have problems swallowing) eating and drinking barium. About once a month I get a real doozie of a patient that I like to call a 'head' case:

me: "So, what kind of problems do you have swallowing?"
patient: (about 50 years old) "I choked on the flavor of the day at work" (she didn't feel the need to explain more)
me: (knowing ice cream like the back of my hand, I knew what this meant, but I played dumb) "Where do you work?"
patient: "At Culver's"
me: "Oh, what happened?"
patient: "I was eating the flavor of the day and it had little pieces of chocolate in it and I started choking. Jason had to get Dave to help me."
me: (thinking this 'head' case is starting to get interesting....don't you think you could explain a bit better who Jason and Dave are --she's witholding some information here) "How long ago was this?"
patient: "about 4 months ago."
me: "What sorts of swallowing problems are you having now?"
patient: "I choke on chocolate, caramel and watermelon juice."
me: (yeah right, this is ridiculous that you're sitting in my exam room and going to drink barium because you choke on chocolate, caramel and watermelon juice?) "okay, we'll take some pictures of you swallowing and we'll see what we find."

Of course the exam was normal and the patient was shocked beyond belief that she has a 'normal' swallowing. After I told her she was 'normal', she proceeded to tell me about the phlegm in the back of her throat and the gallstones that are bothering her. I put on my fake smile and my fake voice of concern and told her I was sorry and that I recommended that she talk to her doctor about those issues.

And all of that cost her (or at least her insurance) about $600. She could have put that money to better use seeing a shrink!
It's never a dull day at work....