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."

Plan D

So I finally came up with a plan for what to do when I drop out of medicine.  I'm going to start my own garden improvement business, specializing in building those latticed structures that you put in gardens and train plants over, as shown in the picture.  They'll be the best ever, renowned throughout the land!

I'll call the business "Hypergolae".

Baked egg challenge

At the moment my Smaller Half is working on a paediatrics ward.  Like all wards, there's a big board on the wall listing all the patients and the reason for their admission.  While looking at it, she noticed that one kid was admitted for "baked egg challenge".

When she told me this, my first thought was that this kid had been dared to swallow an egg whole and in doing so had ruptured his oesophagus, which actually happened to a friend of mine (by which I mean I just made that up but it sounds like it could happen).  But then I realized that the board would just say, "ruptured oesophagus", not "baked egg challenge".

My next thought was that maybe he'd won some kind of competition, the baked egg challenge!  Why that would lead to him being hospitalized is not obvious.  Maybe the runner-up clocked him with the trophy or something.  It brought to mind my salad days as a newly minted graduate in the public service when I had nothing better to do (apart from defending the nation) that initiate themed punning competitions with my peers over email.  After one spectacular run on the theme of bread, I anointed myself the Inaugural Baked Grain Challenge Cup Holder and proudly put the title in my email signature for the next few months.  Apparently it caused a bit of amusement in some of the other organizations that I would email from time to time.  However, the likelihood of this kid's own Baked Egg Challenge victory ending up on the medical status board seemed pretty slim, and if it did it would "annoying twerp" rather than "baked egg challenge".

It turns out (as my Smaller Half so kindly let me know after I had explained my previous theories to her) that he is allergic to egg.  He's been admitted to hospital so that he can be provoked with an egg (an interesting notion in itself) under medical supervision in order to find out just how bad his allergy is.

Which is interesting, but not as interesting as it could have been if I was king.