First, it was the rubber duckies, now fishing holes. The pothole campaigners sure know how to get attention for their cause. Noel Rodgers saw this one between Taupō and Tokoroa. "Just got another wheel alignment
Sideswipe: August 9: Fishing spots popping up all over NZ
![Ana Samways](https://s3.amazonaws.com/arc-authors/nzme/63c08bb6-77fe-46c1-831a-1f605b413cdd.png)
Patients are the worst
In a 1978 article in the New England Journal of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital psychiatrist James E Groves categorised the patients "whom most physicians dread": Healthworkers of New Zealand, does this seem harsh, or accurate?
"Dependent clingers": Escalate from normal requests for reassurance to "repeated, perfervid, incarcerating cries for explanation, affection, analgesics, sedatives and all forms of attention imaginable".
"Manipulative help-rejecters": Appear almost smugly satisfied, returning "again and again to the office or clinic to report that, once again, the regimen did not work". When one symptom is relieved, another appears in its place.
"Self-destructive deniers": Show "unconsciously self-murderous behaviours, such as the continued drinking of a patient with oesophageal varices and hepatic failure". These patients "seem to glory in their own destruction. They appear to find their main pleasure in furiously defeating the physician's attempts to preserve their lives."
(James E Groves, "Taking Care of the Hateful Patient", New England Journal of Medicine, 1978.)