Cathy Free reports A Virginia woman was feeling sad. Her doctor prescribed her a cat (‘Her doctor, Earl D. King, said he wrote it down ‘because people sometimes don’t follow your instructions’):
Robin Sipe’s eyes filled with tears as soon as her doctor entered the examining room.
“My cat had recently died and I was feeling really sad and depressed,” Sipe said she told her pulmonologist, Earl D. King, whom she’s known for 15 years.
King has treated her for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, a condition that blocks airflow and makes it difficult to breathe. Sipe said he’d saved her life three times in an intensive care unit at Sentara RMH Medical Center in Harrisonburg, Va.
So when he asked her what was wrong, Sipe, 67, opened up to him about her loneliness since her beloved cat died over the summer.
“I was really going through a bad time,” she said she told him during her appointment in September.
Then Sipe’s eyes lingered at the item at the top of the list: “Get a cat,” the doctor wrote.
King, 63, has been a doctor long enough to know that “people sometimes don’t follow your instructions,” he said. In fact, patients don’t take medications as prescribed by their doctors about half the time, according to the American Medical Association.
King wrote down his advice so there would be no mistake about what he told Sipe during the appointment.
And so Sipe followed her doctor’s prescription:
When she got home, she said there was no question as to what she should name the frisky 7-week-old feline.
“I decided to name her Earlene after Dr. Earl King,” Sipe said. “He helps with more than just my breathing. He’s always taken the time to look after my entire well-being.”