Memories

Dr. Hurricane was an attending where I trained.

He was one of these people who lived at warp speed. While he was a good teacher, and had an excellent fund of general neurology knowledge, it was all limited by his frenetic manic speaking style of rattling off facts, statistics, and teaching points at an insanely high speed on rounds. In fact, he reminded us of John Moschitta, the star of FedEx commercials in the 1980's.

Yeah, and that was what Dr. Hurricane sounded like on a slow day.

I carried a clipboard and notebook with me on rounds, and would frantically, if unsuccessfully, try to keep up with his teaching points. This only resulted in severe hand cramps and my notebook bursting into flames.

Another resident, Karl, made the immortal comment that "Dr. Hurricane doesn't talk. He has lip fasciculations."

In clinic, patients were terrified of him. Not for him actually being threatening, but for his ability to rapidly give them the entire diagnosis and treatment plan in about 10 seconds, at a speaking frequency far beyond the ability of others to discriminate individual words. Dr. Hurricane blew into the room, Dr. Hurricane blew out of the room, leaving a prescription behind, fluttering gently in the breeze.

And, of course, I (the resident) was left standing there as the patients asked "what did he just say?"

Damned if I knew. Their guess was as good as mine.

 

Taking a break for a few weeks

 See you next year!

Up front

Several months ago Mary and her family got a new puppy. He's still a puppy, but these days he's a 70 pound puppy.

He has a lot of energy.

She and her husband both work, and the kids are in school, so for a few hours each day Monster puppy and his den mates have free run of the kitchen and family room, with a doggie door when they want to venture out. The other dogs are older and sedate. Monster is anything but, and began randomly destroying things he found (toys, clothes, furniture, wall hangings, light fixtures, Amazon drivers, etc.).

So, since Mary spends her office day staring at a screen scheduling my victims patients, she hooked up some cameras and a speaker in the dog area at home. So now she sits at work and keeps an eye on Monster, occasionally telling him to get off the couch or stop mangling the postman. The other 2 dogs don't care, but the effect on Monster is hysterical. He looks up and around in terror, like people in old movies when God speaks to them.

Anyway, one afternoon last week Mary was doing her usual thing. She'd just checked in a new patient, who'd picked up a copy of "Good Housekeeping" and sat down in the lobby. She was then rescheduling another patient when she happened to glance up at the corner of her screen and saw Monster in the process of destroying one of her kid's toys.

Without thinking she grabbed her microphone and yelled "YOU DROP THAT RIGHT NOW AND GO OUTSIDE!!!"

The elderly woman in the lobby startled, dropped the magazine on the floor, and ran out of the office in terror.

She hasn't come back.

Research

 "What should we name our stroke study? Something positive, scientific sounding, helpful..."

Up front

Mary: "Okay, on Tuesday Dr. Grumpy can see you at 11:00, or on Thursday we can do 4:15, or on..."

Mary took a sip of too-hot coffee and began coughing.

Ms. Miasma: "I'm hanging up. Can someone else call me back? I don't want to catch whatever you have over the phone."

Be prepared

Body armor? Check.

Taser? Check.

Pepper spray? Check.

Marie riding shotgun on the cart with a baseball bat and tranquilizer gun? Check.

Heading to Costco for pies.

Dynamics

Dr. Grumpy: "Any major illnesses run in your family?"

Ms. Daughter: "My dad had cancer. That's about it."

Ms. Mother: "I have high blood pressure."

Ms. Daughter: "No you don't."

Ms. Mother: "Yes, I do. I take Petrolololololol for it."

Ms. Daughter: "You have high blood pressure, and you take medication for it? How come I never knew this?"

Ms. Mother: "It's not a big deal. Most people my age are being treated for high blood pressure."

Ms. Daughter: "It's like my whole fucking life I'm living a lie."

Sigh

Dr. Grumpy: "Are you allergic to any medications?"

Ms. Sesame: "I'm allergic to all medications that have a letter 'D' in them, regardless of whether it's the brand or generic name, or both."

Math

Dr. Grumpy: "What have your blood pressures been running at home?"

Mr. Decimal: "They average 127.384 over 73.879"

Vivisection in the headlines

 

Happy Halloween!

With the costume party season upon us, I'd like to remind everyone of what was probably the single greatest newspaper headline ever.

Six Degrees

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

Mr. Bacon: "Hi, Dr. Grumpy, I need to get in to see Dr. Needle urgently, and she's booked out for 3 months. I was hoping you could call her office and ask them to work me in?"

Dr. Grumpy: "Did I refer you there? Are you one of my patients? I'm not finding you in the system."

Mr. Bacon: "No, but I'm a friend of one of your patients, Heddy Paine."

Dr. Grumpy: "Look, I really can't help you... She's not in the system either."

Mr. Bacon: "Well, she says she saw you a year or two ago. She was visiting her uncle in the hospital, and says you were talking to a nurse outside the room of the patient next door."

Thud

Dr. Grumpy: "So... this visit is to follow-up on how you're doing with the medication - Fliniberzap - that I prescribed about a month ago."

Ms. Headdesk: "Yeah."

Dr Grumpy: "It's been a month, so how are you doing?"

Ms. Headdesk: "I'm not any better... I mean, I filled the scrip, but then I left it in a rental car and returned the car."

Pause

Dr. Grumpy: "So you haven't started it?"

Ms. Headesk: "Not really, I mean... no."

Dr. Grumpy: "Why didn't you just call so we could send a new script in?"

Ms. Headdesk: "I left your phone number in the car, too."

Touché

Mary: "Okay, Mrs. Humor, I have your follow-up down for next Tuesday, at 8:15 a.m. I should warn you that Wednesday's test of the national Emergency Alert System activated our microchips and turned Dr. Grumpy and all of the staff here into zombies."

Mrs. Humor: "Like anyone would notice."