House cancelled today

15 lines in four and a half hours. Actually an average speed for us. Glad we're done for today though.

Oh and .. "thank you very much in advance for your time and efforts. Sincerely, ..."

Creative congestion as usual

So much for this week's House club it seems .. three hours and we have 8 lines of e-mail to our landlord in New York to show for them. Skriehma is chugging down some Loperamide complaining about spare ribs he ate today and Caro is lying on the bed hardly moving a muscle .. something about swimming for 30 mins this afternoon .. oh well. Still want to write another e-mail to the head of the ED.

Lately, in #halloalzey ..

12:13:44 < Iccy> oh man
12:14:48 < Iccy> if on a CAT scan we have established we see parts of the liver and of the lungs at the same time - how can you raise the question "oh, so the diaphragm isn't on this image, is it?"
12:15:02 < Iccy> some real brainiacs in my class
12:15:07 < Iccy> especially this Graf guy
12:15:25 < Iccy> he has a history of excelling at insanely brainless questions
16:00:52 < skriehma> graf?
(...)
20:36:00 < skriehma> but...you still owe me some gossip about "graf" (name, heritage, insult?
20:36:02 < skriehma> )
20:36:43 < Iccy> Graf = name
20:36:47 < Iccy> dunno last name
20:37:03 < Iccy> heritage .. no idea .. not sure where people that look like him come from
20:37:12 < Iccy> not germany anyway
20:37:28 < Iccy> what do you mean by insult though?
20:37:53 < skriehma> i thought graf like nobility
20:38:16 < skriehma> well...insulting nickname....like "verarmter landgraf" and therelike
20:38:19 < Iccy> no Graf like first name (not that I heard that before ..)
20:38:48 < Iccy> I won't honor him by thinking of a designation for him ..
20:39:55 < skriehma> emm....well....he didnt do modul 1 with us....
20:40:05 < Iccy> figures
20:40:08 < skriehma> at least his name dos not surface in the list
20:40:23 < Iccy> I can see if I get a glimpse at his last name
20:40:29 < Iccy> in the days to come
20:40:34 < skriehma> curious as i am
20:40:45 < skriehma> but hes so bad?
20:41:06 < skriehma> btw...what speciality do you have atm?
20:41:50 < Iccy> radiology
20:41:57 < Iccy> he really, really sucks.
20:42:01 < skriehma> ahh...i could have known
20:42:24 < Iccy> whatever he asks, he manages to display the greatest amount of ignorance possible in the few words he uses.
20:43:06 < skriehma> great guy it sounds like
20:43:08 < skriehma> ;)
20:43:25 < Iccy> his designations of organs usually being "thingy" and "that there", precluding any clues to what he actually things those organs might be for
20:43:28 < skriehma> but i guess every group has one of that kind in it
20:43:34 < Iccy> things=thinks
20:43:37 < Iccy> interesting typo
20:43:56 < Iccy> I guess only talking about him makes me go to his level
20:44:06 < skriehma> lol
20:44:13 < Iccy> he's their role-model I'm sure
20:44:15 < skriehma> his greatest weapon
20:44:21 < skriehma> hehe
20:44:23 < Iccy> the prototype all idiots are carved from
20:44:24 < skriehma> i doubt it
20:44:39 < Iccy> do you really
20:44:43 < skriehma> i want to remind you of m***** b********
20:44:46 < Iccy> you should have seen this guy in action in the notfallkurs
20:44:55 < skriehma> you too
20:45:08 < Iccy> I'm so afraid
20:45:14 < skriehma> hell yeah...lets put them in the ring together and bet on it
20:45:26 < Iccy> what are these people doing to the reputation of our profession
20:45:35 < skriehma> "idiots deathmatch" sort of
20:45:41 < Iccy> lol
20:45:47 < skriehma> dont worry...
20:46:05 < Iccy> if one of them gets reanimationspflichtig it'll get ugly
20:46:07 < Iccy> very ugly
20:46:23 < skriehma> being a physician is still ranked #1 in the list of social prestige
20:46:38 < Iccy> phew
20:46:50 < Iccy> guess we'll have to get rid of those two somehow though
20:47:06 < Iccy> they alone will be able to make that rating plummet to a miserable low
20:47:11 < skriehma> hehe
20:47:19 < Iccy> and I think we should post this discussion on the blog ;)
20:47:34 < skriehma> so you wanna do something for the benefit of whole germany...hell....the whole world?
20:47:42 < Iccy> like what?
20:47:48 < skriehma> i dont know
20:47:53 < skriehma> dont wanna say it
20:48:03 < Iccy> chicken :)
20:48:08 < Iccy> you mean kill the bastards
20:48:10 < Iccy> off them
20:48:22 < Iccy> make em dead
20:48:39 < Iccy> give em toetags
20:48:51 < skriehma> maybe it will be interpreted as conspiracy to commit a crime
20:48:52 < Iccy> OD on the potassium
20:49:05 < Iccy> what crime
20:49:13 < Iccy> benefit of the whole world, remember
20:49:13 * skriehma waves at the US-homeland security guys reading this
20:49:23 * Iccy waves at Stoiber
20:49:27 < Iccy> say hi to angela
20:49:28 < skriehma> like preemtive strike?
20:49:51 < Iccy> like first, one and only good deed if ever
---
15:07:11 < skriehma> hmm....dont you have to do a lot of nitpicking with nip/tuck?
15:38:17 < Iccy> nitpicking nip/tuck is like correcting Graf .. futile, boring and you might as well try to talk someone out of smoking
___
note: names altered so we don't get our heads blown off at uni

Did you ever wonder ...

... why doctors call what they do "practice"?

And welcome to the blog, Phèdre!

I wonder whether we actually ever do get to intubate .. I guess not from what I heard. While it's not that big a deal over here, I suppose if you crack a few millimeters off someone's tooth you end up paying your ass off for life in the States. Never mind any other "complications". That's why we may have to confuse ourselves with the ones actually handling the trauma when we tell stories of our heroic deeds afterwards. Oh well. It could be worse. We could live in a country where they order double cheeseburgers, large fries and a diet coke, where they buy hot dogs in packages of ten and buns in packages of eight, where they have lemon juice made with artificial flavor, dishwashing liquid made with real lemons, where they have drive-up ATM machines with braille lettering and where they sterilize the needles used for lethal injections.

See, and I thought ..

.. it was the "getting blood drawn" part, not so much the needle part. I'll admit there may be some blood involved though if you puncture an aorta with a 12G-needle. Point taken.

And who ever said lying on the floor with no BP and dreaming of a better world was a bad thing.

Unless you do it in the ER and it's my shift. Harr. Harr. Harrrrr.

Dude ..

.. of couse you have to worry.

I mean if you want those parts intact. Your spleen will be the first to go. It will rupture in the first brawl on the streets of the Bronx. Next should be your kidneys, acute renal failure from dehydration, since you'll be so swamped with work you'll not only have no time to drink fluids, you'll have no time to think about it. And next one to go will be your aorta, secondary to high BP in turn caused by all the 36-hour-shifts. Whether that will produce an aneurysm that'll soon dissect or whether you'll just get a plain old heart attack - that's the real question. Not whether you should worry. Especially not about the little 12G-needle stuck in your back.

Sue the bastards!

I'm starting to wonder what my malpractice insurance is worth without any legal expenses insurance. What if I do, say, take bad aim on a lumbar puncture and skewer the poor guy's aorta, kidney and spleen in one swift shish-kebab? Who is going to win my case then? Who is going to make the big company pay because they didn't put "do not use for kidney biopsies" on the package of the cannula?

Problem is .. they probably did put that on there.

May contain peanuts.

You have to love Americans.

I don't care if you think you hate them. You do have to love them.

For example. Even if you hate kids, you can't help but love them because they are so charmingly, disarmingly, naively stupid. Like the pull-on-the-cable-of-the-telephone-until-it-falls-on-your-head kind of stupid.

I was served a plastic bag of peanuts on my last flight into the States. Big yellow letters and a very unmistakable photo on the front side left little to the imagination of what I was going to find inside. Peanuts. You know this thing was made in the US of A when you turn the package around.

May contain traces of peanuts.

What can I say. That's pretty much my definition of charmingly, disarmingly, naively stupid. And from what I heard, these "warnings" are usually there because somebody at some point was able to sue. "There was no way of knowing that there were peanuts in there that could cause my allergic reaction." Like when McDonalds fails to tell you that you shouldn't spill hot coffee in your lap since that may hurt. Or when car manufactures fail to tell drivers that the so-called "auto-pilot" that is actually a cruise control shouldn't lead to drivers taking a nap at the wheel.

It's things like these that give Americans the Kindchenschema.

Do you seek to enter the United States to engage in export control violations, subversive or terrorist activities, or any other unlawful purpose? Are you a member or representative of a terrorist organization as currently designated by the U.S. Secretary of State? Have you ever participated in persecutions directed by the Nazi government of Germany; or have you ever participated in genocide?

You get to check "yes" or "no" to this question in your visa application. I wonder why that is. Why don't they just write in the same plain words that you cannot be a terrorist if you want to enter the US of A. Why do you actually have to answer the question? Did any terrorist ever fall for this?

I would really like to know who that was. And if he/she ever got convicted, given he/she's probably too stupid to distinguish a real gun from a waterpistol.

The US embassy is printing money ..

.. 80 euros just to apply and a total of about 60 euros just for calling to set up the appointment - the embassy might as well be printing money instead of visas.

And of the three of us that went there to apply, two received their passports two days later in the mail. I kid you not. We went there on Wednesday and they proudly found their visas in the mail on Friday. Guess who did not. Yours truly. More than two weeks later I dared to call them and was quickly disposed of with a "it takes three to four weeks normally" and an "We couldn't look it up even if we wanted to". Was it because I had been to the states four times before? Was it because I had been to Mexico? Was it because I hadn't paid enough tuition in one of their high schools? Was it because my name was too difficult? Was it because the two others were in line in front of me and America was now full? I started to think the best case scenario would be that my passport was "simply" lost in the mail and I would have the honor of getting another passport (and visa) in the two months that are left until the trip. The worst case would be them declining my application. And since - thanks to our odyssey to Frankfurt - they now have my fingerprints on file it would be quite hard to sneak by customs then.

But who would'a thought .. an innocent little envelope with my precious little passport and even more precious little visa was in the mailbox a few days after my call.

And that's it, things settled, I'm going to the Bronx in the summer. Scary.

We'll celebrate tomorrow.