Communication

I'm sitting in my office with an elderly lady with Alzheimer's disease and her devoted son.


Dr. Grumpy: "So how's she been doing?"

Mr. Son: "Better, at least a little. I mean, her memory is still pretty bad, but she's calmer, and the nurses tell me she's more cooperative and isn't yelling since you started the new medication."

Dr. Grumpy: "Has she..."


Mr. Son's phone rings and he looks at it.


Mr. Son: "I better answer this, it's Casa DeMentia, her memory-care place. I'll put it on speaker phone in case you want to ask them anything... Hello? This is Mr. Son."

Susan: "Mr. Son, this is Susan. I'm the charge nurse at Casa DeMentia. I'm calling to let you know that your mother isn't in her room, and we've searched the building and grounds thoroughly and can't find her. We're afraid she somehow wandered off..."


Mr. Son and I both look at the patient, who's calmly sitting in my office leafing through an upside-down magazine.


Susan: "... so our security people are going to review video to see what happened, but I wanted to make you aware. I'm going to call the Grumpyville police for a Silver Alert, too, and..."

Mr. Son: "Um, my Mom is right here with me. We're at Dr. Grumpy's office. I signed her out at the front desk when I picked her up."


Pause.


Susan: "Cindy, before you told me Mrs. Memory was missing, didn't you check the sign-out book first... WHY THE HELL NOT? You (expletive)."


Pause.


Susan: "I'm so sorry to bother you Mr. Son. Will she be back for lunch?"

Heading out

It's summer vacation time, gang.

I'll be heading out for a few weeks with my wild bunch.

Back sometime in the second half of July.

Until then, have a great summer. Or, if you're reading this from the southern hemisphere, have a great winter.

And so it begins.

Seen in a chart

Thank you, K!

Patient quote of the day

"I was watching health news on TV this morning. Did you know you can die if your heart isn't working right?"

Humor

Three elderly ladies are sitting on a bench outside the nursing home when an older gentleman walked by.

One of the ladies yelled out, “Hey, I bet we can guess how old you are!”

The old fellow said, “There is no way you can guess my age! I look great for my age.”

One of the women said, “Yes we can!”

“No, you can’t!”

“Can! Just drop your pants and undershorts and we'll tell your exact age.”

The gentleman was embarrassed, but wanted to prove they couldn't do it. So... he dropped his drawers and let it all hang out.

The ladies asked him to turn around a few times while they looked from different angles, then had him jump up and down twice.

They then whispered back and forth for a minute, and finally one said. “You're 87-years-old.”

The fellow was stunned. Standing with his pants down around his ankles, he asked, “You’re right. WOW! How in the world could you tell?”

There was a pause, then one woman answered “Last week we were all at your birthday party.”


Thank you, Webhill!

Seen in a chart

Annie's desk

Annie: "Dr. Grumpy's office, this is Annie."

Mrs. Faa: "Hi, this is Mrs. Faa. I was hoping you'd be able to help me."

Annie: "Sure... let me just pull your chart up... Okay, what's up?"

Mrs. Faa: "How do I get blood out of my carpeting?"

Annie: "Uh, well, hydrogen peroxide, or..."

Mrs. Faa: "No, I mean, do you know a good carpet cleaning company in my area? I broke a glass in the kitchen, and then stepped on a big shard while trying to clean it. So there's blood everywhere from when I walked to my bathroom to get a band-aid. It's a mess."

Annie: "Well, I don't know who's in your part of town, but let me look some up."

Mrs. Faa: "I bled A LOT. I mean, literally, all the blood has been drained out of my body. I have no blood left in me at all. It's all on the carpet."

Annie: "Do you need to go to ER?"

Mrs. Faa: "Why? Will someone there help me clean it up?"

June 6, 1944

"There have only been a handful of days since the beginning of time on which the direction the world was taking has been changed in one 24-hour period by an act of man. June 6, 1944, was one of them.

"No one can tell the whole story of D-Day. Each of the 60,000 men who waded ashore that day knew a little part of the story too well. To them the landing looked like a catastrophe. Each knew a friend shot through the throat, shot through the knee. Each knew the first names of five hanging dead on the barbed wire offshore, three who lay unattended on the beach as the blood drained from the holes in their bodies. They knew whole tank crews who drowned when their tanks were unloaded in 20 feet of water.

"There were heroes here no one will ever know because they're dead. The heroism of others is known only to themselves.

"What the Americans and the British and the Canadians were trying to do was get back a whole continent that had been taken from its rightful owners. It was one of the most monumentally unselfish things one group of people ever did for another.

"It's hard for anyone who's been in a war to describe the terror of it to anyone who hasn't. How would anyone know that John Lacey died in that clump of weeds by the wagon path as he looked to his left towards Simpson and caught a bullet behind the ear? And if there had been a picture of it - and there weren't any - it would've shown that Lacey was the only one who carried apples for the guys in his raincoat pocket.

"If you think the world is rotten, go to the cemetery at Saint-Laurent-sur-Mer on the hill overlooking the beach. See what one group of men did for another, D-Day, June 6, 1944."

- Andrew Rooney (1919-2011)

Phone

Betty Tau: "Hello?"

Dr. Grumpy: "This is Dr. Grumpy, returning a page."

Betty Tau: "Dr. Grumpy isn't here."

Dr. Grumpy: "Hi, Betty, this is Dr. Grumpy. Did your daughter call me?"

Betty Tau: "Dr. Grumpy isn't here. You have a wrong number."

Dr. Grumpy: "Betty, is your daughter there?"

Betty Tau: "No, but I think she was trying to reach Dr. Grumpy. Do you know him?"

Dr. Grumpy: "This is Dr. Grumpy, returning a call for your daughter. Why don't you put her on the phone?"

Betty Tau: "I told you, Dr. Grumpy isn't here. You'll need to ask my daughter what his phone number is. She handles those things. If you want Dr. Grumpy you should call his office and leave us alone."

click

"Grandma, what did you bring me?"

This fellow was being handed out at the recent immunology meetings.

Thank you, M!

Criswell predicts

Dr. Grumpy: "Okay, so I'll have Annie set up the MRI for you, and then..."

Ms. Dixon: "What do you think it will show?"

Dr. Grumpy: "It's hard to say. I don't think there's anything of alarm, but with your symptoms I'd like to make sure I'm not missing anything."

Ms. Dixon: "So you really aren't sure?"

Dr. Grumpy: "No, that's why I want to get the test."

Ms. Dixon: "This is kind of disappointing. I thought you'd be able to tell me what it would show, that way I wouldn't need to have it in the first place."

One of these things is not like the others

Short visit

Seen in a chart:

Cancellation

Mary: "Hello, this is Mary from Dr. Grumpy's office. I wanted to confirm Mr. Lumbar's appointment tomorrow with Dr. Grumpy."

Mrs. Lumbar: "Oh, he won't be coming in. The back pain doesn't bother him anymore."

Mary: "Oh, okay, well I'm glad to hear that."

Mrs. Lumbar: "He's dead."