why's a patient called a patient?

Well, my fellow passengers on this journey called life, today I had an appointment to get my kidney stone crushed by ultrasound. I got to show up by nine o'clock which I did, and also get plenty of water with me, which I also did. I was slightly shocked by the fact that they couldn't provide drinking water in a health center. But anyhow, I remembered that there was a little shop on the opposite corner, so I planned to buy it there. Also some food, as I wasn't supposed to eat before the operation took place.

Now, the shop wasn't there anymore, so I had to go back some corners to another one, and do the shopping there. Still I turned up in good time, and asked to make sure if I only had to wait and would be called by name. After another hour I walked up to the reception again to double check if I was at the right place. I was told not to worry, and why they'd already told me wait.

And I'll be darned if they didn't call for me in only yet another hour's time, and we were done and ready. It's another thing that I still had to chase the assistents and the doctor for another two hours, just to get my papers, and a time for a check-up. But then it was probably for the best, as they told me beforehand, I should stay after the op for a while, to see if there was some result. No, not yet.

Maybe the funniest part I left out for the first time I published this, was when the nurse came in just as I was sitting up on the bed, and asked me 'And who are you?' I felt that it was now getting really somewhat like a comedy, so tried an answer fit to the situation, and said 'Just a patient.' Then she might have got herself a bit together, realizing that to ask this from someone who's just gone through an op, is a bit weird. So she said, now with a little smile on her face 'I didn't mean it like that. What's your name?'. Turned out she was responsible for these kind of ops, but the other assistants forgot to tell her I was already on the bed.

Unless I consider that I got pretty tired of all the fuss that took to get me on the bed, and out of the place. I saw a lot of folks there, all of them totally confused, both patients and staff. I wonder if the doc printed out one paper for me next door to the surgery room, and sent me up two floors to get the rest - that he'd just typed in there, while asking me about possible causes and history - out of tiredness or being a bit mixed up, or just to get me going, and so help to get out of me that had to come out.

But after all is done and said, I found everyone and they were done with me, though on the papers there's another doc's name on the stamp, as mine couldn't find his. Let's just hope the rest goes on all natural and without further help, so no more cuts will be needed. Somehow I feel that I had more than enough of all that, from my childhood through my adolescence up to the recent years. After all, why's a patient called a patient...

P.S. Yesterday I read about a doctor who got a call from a friend that pissed blood... Today I had another book with me, but there also mentioned the protagonist, a man in his eighties something about his urinating issues. Then I came home and found this on the main google page...