Crazy mixup #6

Finally (no! I hear you cry out in anguish), one last poor unfortunate came to my hospital with a tummy like a bowling ball. Once more unto the breach, my registrar found me and patient engaged in a stimulating discussion of the mystical philosophy of Martin Buber.

"What are you doing?" shrieked my registrar, "I asked you do do an ascitic tap!"

"Oh!" said I, "I thought you said a Hasidic tap."

I think we're done here now.

Crazy mixup #5

Just like before, only this my registrar came into the cubicle to find me blissing out to the Grateful Dead on my iPod.

"What are you doing?" shrieked my registrar, "I asked you do do an ascitic tap!"

"Oh!" said I, "I thought you said an acidic tap."

Crazy mixup #4

Blah blah blah an unnecessarily complex setup story involving somebody with free fluid in the peritoneal space, which ends with my registrar finding me lying in the patient's cubicle, my only visible movement being the feeble drumming of one of my fingers upon the floor.

"What are you doing?" shrieked my registrar, "I asked you do do an ascitic tap!"

"Oh!" said I, "I thought you said an asthenic tap."

Crazy mixup #3

So this elderly man came into the Emergency Department with a bloated abdomen.  To cut a long story short, vis-a-vis the diagnostic process involving the necessity of analysing a sample of the fluid within his abdomen, my registrar walked into the cubicle a bit later on to find me in the process of cracking open a big barrel of wine, only to find it had gone sour.

"What are you doing?" shrieked my registrar, "I asked you do do an ascitic tap!"

"Oh!" said I, "I thought you said an acetic tap."

Crazy mixup #2

A little old lady turned up at the Emergency Department not long ago with a grossly distended and tense abdomen.  We were pretty sure that her underlying problem was severe right heart failure but the fly in the ointment was that she did have hereditary angioedema.  I was halfway through working her up when my registrar walked into the cubicle to find me doing a beautiful soft-shoe shuffle in front of a bemused patient.

"What are you doing?" shrieked my registrar, "I asked you do do an ascitic tap!"

"Oh!" said I, "I thought you said an asthetic tap."

Crazy mixup

I admitted a guy to hospital a little while back.  He had liver failure and severe abdominal distension, probably due to his alcoholism but possibility of an intrabdominal malignancy couldn't yet be excluded.  A little while later my registrar walked into the cubicle to find me whipping the patient's stomach with a leather thong and making him wear a hair shirt.

"What are you doing?" shrieked my registrar, "I asked you do do an ascitic tap!"

"Oh!" said I, "I thought you said an ascetic tap."

Hooray for rationalisation

Day off - yay!

Compulsory grand round and tutorial - booo!

Decide to skip them - yaay!

Realise that I've also missed a scheduled meeting with my supervisor - booo!

Rationalise it by pretending that the meeting was just to tell me that I had to attend these things and not skip them - yaay!

The frogurt is also cursed - booo!

I did it for you

youTube.com is an amazing site.  Not only does it contain hilarious videos of cats, it also enables you to see children falling off bicycles.  Before youTube I used to have to fling cats at children on bicycles, but no longer.  It's win/Win/WIN!  Part of its genius is the name - it starts with "you" so it makes everyone feels like it's relevant.  The principle could be used to start up a bunch of other websites which I think could end up being just as big.  Here's a partial list - feel free to register and develop them yourself - I just don't have the time to give them all that they deserve.

youThyroid.com - This site would be handy for people to upload pictures of their goitres or of their Mel Brooks googly eyes.  They could trade stories about their pretibial mixoedema, and swap tips on how to use the internet effectively despite a severe tremor and a heart rate of 160.

youVolaemia.com - This site would be dedicated to enabling people to share hints, tips and tricks to do with their fluid balance.  How to best assess your jugular venous pressure.  The controversy over mucus membranes.  Skin turgor and the elderly.  The osmolality conspiracy.

youRopeanUnion.com - A fan site for European communalists of all stripes!

youClideanGeometry.com - Do your external angles sum to 360 degrees?  This could be the site for you!  Or perhaps that's just hyperbole.

youKaryote.com - Too long have plants and fungi been excluded from the internet.  This site would serve as a portal for all organisms with nuclei.

youPhemism.com - This site would have a lot of the you-know-what, eh!  Eh!  Especially for you-know-who!

youLersNameIsPronouncedOilerNotYoulerSoThisJokeDoesntWork.com - A site for looking up the names of dead mathematicians and the mispronunciations thereof.

Just give three

Nurse

You've charted 450 mg of clindamycin for this patient.

PTR

Yes.

Nurse

Well we only have 150 mg tablets.  How are we supposed to do that?

PTR

...

Got bicycle clips?

Fat in food is like salt. It's yummy and healthy and generally great. But its also something that you tend to become accustomed to having present at a certain level and major deviations from this can cause distress.

We had some friends in a previous life, when I was a woodsman in Depression-era Illinois, who would invite us round for dinner every now and then. We would secretly dread it because their fat barometer was set way below ours.

We generally like fatty foods. This is because my Smaller Half is Chinese and as for me, I am a greedy bastard. So we tend to load up on butter and oil when we cook. Perhaps the bed sheets do accumulate a yellowish tinge over time but we aren't too out of control.

Anyway, these friends were on a mission to cut down on fat. They would buy the leanest piece of pork they could then roast it at 4000 degrees on a rack so every molecule of fat was drained or destroyed. Then just before serving it on a delicious bed of shredded sandpaper they'd give it a light dusting with, well, dust, to really dry it up.

Not really our style.

Tonight we were eating out with friends and I ordered some roasted pork belly, an extremely fatty cut at the best of times. When it came it was quivering on the plate. There were pieces of meat the size of my hand which seemed to be nothing but fat.

Even I quailed somewhat. But not wanting to waste good food, I found that if you had equal parts fat and rice that it was great. Fatty and smooth and flavoursome and packed full of vitamin F. I really enjoyed it, somewhat to the horror of my friend opposite who is a cardiologist and knew that I should know better.

But nature has a way of interfering with mankind's fun. Just like drinking gallons of water is fun until you get cerebral oedema and die, just like bungee jumping is fun until your retinas detach and you get atlanto-axial dislocation and your skull falls off - there's only so much belly pork you can eat before your liver and pancreas stop playing along and you develop anal leakage. Not so fun now eh?

So the next time you try to show off by eating your own body weight in lard, remember my tragic tale and think to yourself, what do I value more: the smooth moist fatty feeling in my mouth or the smooth moist fatty feeling in my pants? Because you may end up with both.