Candystore

Doctor

So you have you ever taken risperidone? 

Patient

No.

Doctor

Quetiapine?

Patient

No.

Doctor

Olanzapine?

Patient

No.

I tried marzipan once.  I got it from a friend. 

A prescriber's guide to cephalosporins

Antibiotics - they're confusing.  Especially the cephalosporins (Greek for "mushroom-head", or maybe not) which all have very similar names but quite different properties.  I keep having to look them up to make sure I get it right, so I decided to put together this quick guide to the main cephalosporins in use today in Australia's public hospitals.

Cefazolin - a first generation cephalosporin.  Acts by disrupting synthesis of the cell-wall of Gram positive bacteria.  Limited efficacy against Gram negative bacteria.

Ceftriaxone - a third generation cephalosporin.  Like other 3rd gens, has narrowed efficacy against Gram positive species, broader spectrum activity against Gram negatives, and has hi-speed Wi-Fi, BlueTooth, and data network connectivity.

Cefameme - protoypical Gen Y cephalosporin.  Has little activity or efficacy against, like, anything.  Known to be useless but still frequently indulged due to its vocal complaints of unfairness.

Cefalopithecus - the original ancestral cephalosporin, known only by recovery of several fragmented tablets in the Rift Valley, Kenya.  Acts by carrying a pointed stick and a flat rock.  Known to be effective against nuts, grubs, and berries but with little action against cave bears and hence seldom used.

Cefapene - only prescribed by dickheads.

Cefexazaxxayaxx - a potent 9th generation cephalosporin, with both broad and narrow-spectrum activity against Gram positive, Gram negative, anaerobes, fungi, cave bears, and students, depending on which magic words you speak as you take it.  Versatile, powerful, safe, and packaged in an attractive tangerine box of 13, its only side effect is to cause the patient to excrete delicious creamy chocolate instead of stool.  Never yet successfully prescribed in Australia due to the overly fashionable and difficult-to-spell name chosen by the marketing department of Pharma-Jim, the company that discovered it.

Floater

A nurse remarked to me recently, "Mr Surname has been particularly appreciate of his floater over the last few days."  Eh?

For those of you not in the know, a floater is a hot meat pie floundering in a mire of mushy peas, strongly associated with winter and football.  Mr Surname must have been ringing in the festive season in style.

But no - not that type of floater.  Surely he wasn't referring to a leftover bit of poop that resolutely refuses to flush?  Why would you be appreciative of that?

Or perhaps the floater he meant was the body of a drowned person, bobbing gently under the buoyancy of its internal gases.  Something to appreciate, surely, if only because of a schadenfreudesque relief - "There but for the grace of God go I..."

Aaaah - I have it!  He was referring to the perception of irregularities in the vitreous humor of his own eyeball.  He spends his days staring at the sky marvelling at the drifting, dancing angels always just beyond his reach.

Again - no.  The floater in question was a dose of oxazepam, an anxiolytic, available to be taken at any time as Mr Surname saw fit.  That would certainly make a trip to the football much more bearable.

New adventures in cheese

Like you, I bought a big block of Nimbin cheese today.  No, "Nimbin cheese" is not some kind of euphemism for psychoactive substances.  (For those of you not from Australia, Nimbin has the widespread reputation, rightly or wrongly, as a hive of hippies with heaps of hemp.)  Nimbin cheese is in fact a cheese produced in Nimbin.

I was so surprised to see it right there in the stupormarket that I bought it without really thinking about it.  I don't even know what type of cheese it is.  Presumably it's a tasty cheddar or something similar.  Gets up to look in fridge ... oh my god - it's something called "Elbo style cheese". Eurgh.  I know that Elbo cheese must be a real and delicious thing, but the name is very unappealing, sounding like the consequences of a long-neglected personal hygiene regimen.

Anyway, I think that the reason I bought it was because of its colour.  Sitting there on the shelf amidst the other (non-elbo-style) cheeses it really stood out.  Yellow, dark yellow, yellow, pale yellow, green, yellow ... wait - green???

Yes, Nimbin cheese is green.  I was so enraptured that I threw it into my basket without a moment's further thought.  I thought about it all the way home though.  This cheese, from the home of the hippie, is a triumph of marketing.  Distinctive name, distinctive colour, colour has multiple connotations directly linked to the distinctive name (green = eco & green = dope).  The only comparable idea I can come up with right now would be to sell a Tony Abbott blue.  But the idea of somehow extracting milk from Tony Abbott to make it is an even worse concept than Elbo cheese.

Which is why I was so bitterly disappointed when I got home and unpacked the shopping and found a plain old boring block of pale yellow cheese in my bag.  Had I grabbed the wrong cheese off the shelf in my excitement?  Was the green colour just a product of my fevered imagination when I read that it was Nimbin cheese?  Was I stoned out my mind?

No, no, and no.  It turns out that Nimbin cheese is not green at all.  It's just ordinary looking cheese inside a wrapper which is green on the front and clear on the back.  Man...  I've obviously read Green Eggs and Ham one time too many.