Open to interpretation

I got dragged in to see a hospital consult this morning. The admitting physician's note featured this:

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Back to the Future

This afternoon we took the kids to see Toy Story 3. And, of course, the obligatory previews.

Watching the previews (and the movie), there were 2 themes that seemed remarkable:

1. Digital animation and special effects get more awesome every year.

2. Our music tastes in movie soundtracks are still living in the 1970's and 1980's.

It's not like they've stopped making music since the mid-80's. Maybe using these soundtracks increases the appeal to adults (I'm not complaining, believe me. Just making the observation). Maybe it's all they can think of. Maybe it's cheap. But consider:

Toy Story 3 (itself a franchise 15 years old, which is really hard for me to believe) features the songs "Dream Weaver" (Gary Wright, 1976) and "Le Freak" (Chic, 1978).

Movies shown in the previews included the upcoming animation flicks:

Alpha and Omega, about 2 wolves, featuring "Hungry Like the Wolf" (Duran Duran, 1982).

Megamind about a superhero and his arch-foe, featuring "Highway to Hell" (AC/DC, 1979)


Not only that, as if the 1980's revival thus far of 2010 (The A-Team, Clash of the Titans, Nightmare on Elm Street, and The Karate Kid) isn't enough, movies coming out in the rest of 2010 include:

Tron- Legacy (original Tron, 1982) which will feature Bruce Boxleitner and Jeff Bridges again.

Red Sonja (Original Red Sonja, 1985) which I'm assuming will not feature Arnold Schwarzenegger this time.

And even more frightening, 2011 is bringing us a new Smurfs movie.

Saturday afternoon, 12:37 p.m.

"Um, hello, I need to see a neurologist. I have seizures, caused by seeing red and blue flashing lights. So I need some sort of note saying that cops can't ever pull over a car that I'm driving, no matter what, because it would be bad for my health. It should be, like, something that should be in the police database so that all cops everywhere know that they can't pull me over. I also sometimes have seizures triggered by being near cops, and they need to know that, too. No one else will write these notes for me, and this is really urgent, so I need to get in right away, before my court date. Please call me back."

So if the walker is there, where's the patient?

I'd like to thank my reader Boris for submitting this picture. It's of a walker, bike-locked to a street sign. He says he took the shot last week in front of a pharmacy.

Patient quote of the day

"I have blood pressure spontaneously. I mean, I don't always have blood pressure, because most of the time I don't, but sometimes, out of the blue, it occurs."

Blatant Plagiarism

Okay, gang, my esteemed colleague The Frantic Pharmacist wrote a post yesterday about life in the pharmacy biz that was so awesome I just have to share it here.

When Will Other Businesses get their act together and run like a pharmacy?

by Frantic Pharmacist

When you think about it, retail pharmacy is sort of a unique undertaking, and after a long day filled with customers' inattentiveness, strange requests, weird questions, lack of information, non-English speaking interactions, half-believable stories and total guesswork as to what THE HELL they really want I keep wondering what other retail businesses would do if faced with our average day.

For instance, I tried to imagine, the......

TOP TEN THINGS OVERHEARD IN A FURNITURE STORE THAT RUNS LIKE A PHARMACY

1. "I need to get a dining room chair -- well, maybe more of a bar stool or a recliner.... I got one a while ago, it may have been blue or green, but it's some sort thing you sit on, anyway, made by company starting with 'S' or "W".....could you check your computer to see if I've ever bought anything like that before and can I get another one? Go ahead, read me the list and I'll see if anything rings a bell."

2. I talked to someone in your Chicago store who said they would figure out what it was and then call you and have you put it aside for me. I don't know who I talked to . Can you call them?

3. if I describe my dining room to you can you tell me what I might need or what's missing? -- and then how much it (whatever it is) will cost?

4. I have a discount coupon for some kind of chair or table but I didn't bring it with me. Can you look me up on your mailing list to prove that I did get one in the mail so you can give me the discount price? Or, can you call my wife/husband at home and they will read it to you? How long will that take?

5. My neighbor's' going to pay for it. You'll have to call him to get his credit card number.

6. I think I bought a sleeper sofa back in 1989 that was only $200. Why is it more now? It's always been $200.... or maybe it was a desk......anyways I know I bought it here.

7. I'm having company tonight -- can you give me a couple of chairs to get me through the weekend and I'll (maybe) come back next week and get the rest.

8. I need six of them, but once you get it loaded in my car and the paperwork is totally complete I'll probably change my mind and only decide to take three.

9. I lost that lamp I bought 2 days ago... is there some way I can get another one without paying for it again?

10. You know what? ---maybe it's actually a rug I'm looking for......

And remember, furniture can't kill you. I think the average furniture store employee would walk away from this pretty fast, but in pharmacy it's just another day.

Damnit, Jim, I'm a neurologist, NOT a marriage counselor

Mrs. Patient: "You can be so difficult."

Mr. Patient: "I'm difficult? Your first husband died at 48 of a heart attack."

Mrs. Patient: "I didn't have anything to do with that."

Mr. Patient: "No. You only stressed him to death."

Mrs. Patient: "Bullshit. Your first wife committed suicide. That says something about you."

Mr. Patient: "Don't give me any ideas."

Mary, come shoot me. Now.

Mrs. Labz, a PET scan looks at brain metabolism. As you've read in that bastion of medical science, Reader's Digest, it can be helpful in diagnosing a few neurological diseases.

It has it's limitations. For one thing, it cannot tell me if you have one of these illnesses by doing the test on your dog.

PET stands for Positron Emission Tomography. It does not mean we can learn things about you by testing Fluffy.

Fluffy is cute, but you didn't need to bring her to your appointment. She's scaring Ed.

Have a nice day.

Acronyms From Hell (AFH)

Medicine is full of acronyms and abbreviations. Our long words, ancient Latin names for just about everything, and mix of chemistry phrases, results in many things that are too long to say or write. So we shorten them to a few letters.

Some acronyms are better than others. While catching up on some reading, I stumbled upon this one for Psychogenic Non-Epileptic Seizures. While the acronym makes sense, the writer probably didn't think about how it might sound when spoken.

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Mary's Desk, June 30, 2010

Mary: "Can you come in on Tuesday?"

Mrs. Queens: "Of course not. I'm from New York."

(If any New Yorkers out there can explain this logic, I'd appreciate it)

June 30, 1908

One of the most remarkable events in history happened on this date. And it's mostly forgotten.

At 7:14 a.m. a MASSIVE explosion occurred near the Tunguska river in Russia. I'm not exaggerating. The force was somewhere between 5-30 megatons. Think about that: an explosion between 150 to 1000 TIMES the power of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb. And it happened 37 years before the nuclear age began.

And, purely by chance, it happened in a fairly uninhabited part of the Earth.

To this day it's exact cause is unknown, and it's simply called "The Tunguska Event". It's generally believed to have been a meteorite or comet that exploded before hitting the ground.

The shock wave it sent through the ground was a 5.0 on the Richter scale. Every tree in an 8 km (5 mile) radius from the center was killed, and the force of the explosion covered a total of 830 square miles (2,130 square km). An estimated 80 million trees were knocked over by the force- all of them pointing away from the center. A few were left standing, scorched black, with all their branches stripped off. People were knocked off their feet, and windows shattered, hundreds of miles away. The pressure wave was measured as far away as England. For the next several months there was a change in the density of the planet's upper atmosphere.

An eyewitness 40 miles south of the explosion, reported that "At breakfast time I was sitting by the house at Vanavara Trading Post, facing north. I suddenly saw that directly to the north, over Onkoul's Tunguska Road, the sky split in two and fire appeared high and wide over the forest. The split in the sky grew larger, and the entire northern side was covered with fire. At that moment I became so hot that I couldn't bear it, as if my shirt was on fire; from the northern side, where the fire was, came strong heat. I wanted to tear off my shirt and throw it down, but then the sky shut closed, and a strong thump sounded, and I was thrown a few yards. I lost my senses for a moment, but then my wife ran out and led me to the house. After that such noise came, as if rocks were falling or cannons were firing, the earth shook, and when I was on the ground, I pressed my head down, fearing rocks would smash it. When the sky opened up, hot wind raced between the houses, like from cannons, which left traces in the ground like pathways, and it damaged crops. Later we saw that many windows were shattered, and in the barn the iron lock had snapped."

There have been other impacts in recorded history, but none this powerful. And, over 100 years later, the scars are still there.



1921: 13 years after the event.





2008: 100 years after the event.

Afternoon patient neologism

"My spine is curved sideways. They said it's skeletonosis."

Marital Counseling

Mr. Joyful came in to follow-up on his back pain today. A few minutes into the appointment his cell phone rang. He reached over and pushed the speaker-phone button.


Mr. Joyful: "This is Ed."

Lady Joyful: "Are you at the doctor's yet?"

Mr. Joyful: "I'm here right now. You're interrupting. What do you want?"

Lady Joyful: "I'm reminding you to talk to him about your anger problems."

Mr. Joyful: "I don't have anger problems. YOU'RE the one with the problems. Like that's anything new!"

Lady Joyful: "Look, Ed. You've been an ass recently, and he needs to give you some happy pills or something."

Mr. Joyful: "No, bitch, you have the problems. I'm fine, except for having to deal with you."

Lady Joyful: "Oh, like it's a pleasure to have to deal with a prick like you. If I have the problems, how come everyone else says you're the one with the issues?"

Mr. Joyful: "By everyone else you mean your dirtball mother?"

Lady Joyful: "Don't bring my mother into this! At least she's not serving time, like your mom!"

Mr. Joyful reached over and hung up the phone.

Mr. Joyful: "Anyway, Doc, the physical therapy didn't help my back at all."

Patient quote of the day

"I worry constantly about my son. I always have, for my entire life. Ever since I was born, I've worried about him. And I'm 38 years old now. That's 38 years of worrying about a 10 year old."