Greetings All...
There are so many medical miracles these days that you
sometimes get the feeling that doctors can cure you of most
anything. What with the fancy surgical techniques, exquisite
pharmacology and factory-made body parts, you'd think that
doctors would be able to fix about any problem you are ever
likely to have.
But we know better. For all of the time and effort put into
it, medical research hasn't really gone all that far. For
example, while researchers are pretty clear on why we sneeze,
they are sort of vague on why we yawn, and haven't clue one on
why we hiccup. For that matter, why do so many men have hair
growing out of their ears as they get older? The medical
literature is no help. From serious research in the various
medical journals all I learned is that the pointy bit of
cartilage at the front of the ear canal - the source of most of
the ear moustache - is called the tragus. Unfortunately, since
hairs growing at the entrance to the ear are also called tragus,
what we have there is a case of tragus on the tragus.
How can we expect the medical profession to find a cure for
cancer when they haven't even got the terminology for such simple
problems down yet?
Folks critical to the operation this week include: Jerry
Taff, RJ Tully, Bernie & Donna Becwar, Carol J. Becwar, Yasmin
Leischer, Joshua Brink, Nnamdi Elleh, Brian Siegl, Ken Josephson,
Bruce Gonzo, Chuck Maray, Kerry Miller, Tim McChain, Helen Yee,
Charles Beckman, Susan Will and Jan Michalski. Thanks for all of
your support and contributions to keep this SUNFUN thing healthy.
There is one disease that doctors never can do much about:
old age. It is, however, the one disease you hope you never get
cured of.
Have A Healthy Week,
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"Five years ago, my grandfather started walking two
miles a day for his health. We figure he must be a
little over 3,500 miles away by now..."
- bbb
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LITERARY AILMENTS...
-----------------
No matter what medical misfortune lands you in the hospital,
you'd better watch what you say.
That's what a 51-year-old high school teacher in Boston
found out recently. Hospitalized after a heart attack, the
teacher was placed in a busy and crowded emergency ward hooked up
to various IV's and monitors that almost filled the room. His
mistake was making the casual comment that the constraints of all
the equipment made him feel like he was "in Peter Coffin's Inn."
The nurse heard the word "coffin" and thought he might be
suicidal. Psychiatrists were called and the patient was forced
to explain himself repeatedly.
The reference is to Herman Melville's "Moby Dick" and the
overcrowded Spouter-Inn, run by Peter Coffin, where Ishmael must
share a bed with the strange character Queequeg.
In a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine, Dr.
Howard Fischer of the Detroit Children's Hospital said the
psychiatrists eventually concluded that the teacher was not
really suicidal. But they also concluded that "no one seemed to
recognize the reference to 'Moby Dick'; no one had read the
novel."
Fischer said the incident showed medical personnel should
listen more closely to what patients say and ask about unfamiliar
references. The good doctor suggested it also meant that
"physicians and nurses need a broader education in the
humanities." (Reuters)
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PSYCHED OUT DEPARTMENT...
----------------------
[Click] Hello, and welcome to the mental health hotline.
Your call is very important to us. Please listen to the
following instructions so we can better direct your call...:
- If you are obsessive-compulsive, press 1 repeatedly.
- If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2
for you.
- If you have multiple personalities, press 3, 4, 5 and
6.
- If you are paranoid, we know who you are and what you
want. Stay on the line so we can trace your call.
- If you are delusional, press 7 and your call will be
transferred to the mother ship.
- If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and the
voices will tell you which number to press.
- If you are a manic-depressive, it doesn't matter which
number you press; no one will answer anyway.
- If you have a nervous disorder, please fidget with the
pound sign key until a representative comes on the
line.
- If you have amnesia press 8 and state your name,
address, phone number, date of birth, social security
number and your mother's height, weight, maiden name
and shoe size.
- If you have post-traumatic stress disorder, slowly and
carefully press 000.
- If you have bi-polar disorder, please leave a message
after the beep. Or, before the beep.
- If you have short-term memory loss, press 9. If you
have short-term memory loss, press 9. If you have
short-term memory loss, press 9. If you have
short-term memory loss, press 9.
- If you have low self esteem, please hang up. All our
operators are too busy to talk to you, anyway."
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TIME OUT...
--------
A man had been feeling sick for quite some time and finally
decided to see his doctor. The doctor did some tests, then
rejoined the patient in the examining room and said that he had
bad news.
"You are going to die," the doctor said.
"When?" the patient asked.
"Ten," the doctor replied.
"Ten what?", the patient demanded. "Years, months, days...?
Tell me doc, I gotta know!"
"Nine," the doctor said.
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"[At my age] It's no longer a question of staying
healthy--it's a question of finding a sickness you
like.
- Jackie Mason
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WELL, THAT EXPLAINS IT...
----------------------
One of the biggest multi-level marketing schemes of "health"
products is a little item called Herbalife, which contains the
highly controversial ingredient ephedra, recently banned by the
NFL. Adverse reactions to this "natural" product include such
minor problems as: sky-high blood pressure, stroke, irregular
heartbeat, psychosis, heart attack, dizziness, sudden death, etc.
The Herbalife Company is also the prime source for the
approximately 30 billion "Lose Weight" and "Work From Home" signs
that adorn phone poles from coast to coast - 70-90%, according to
one study. Not one of which mentions the name of the company or
the product they are selling. Sounds almost as legit as a
WorldCom executive who wants to sell you his Enron stock, right?
So, why are they so popular? This exchange from NETCOM
between a Herbalife "true believer" and Scamwatch subscriber
might be instructive:
True Believer: Yes, it is legit. 17 years, 32 countries,
over 20 million written testimonies and over
$1Billion in sales last year. Sounds pretty
solid.
Scamwatch: Proving that PT Barnum was right.
True Believer: What/who is PT Barnum? And how is he/she/it
connected with those facts about Herbalife?
----------
"There's a sucker born every minute."
- Quote widely attributed to Phineas
T. Barnum, American showman and
hoaxster
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DO IT YOURSELF DEPARTMENT...
-------------------------
In 1999, police in Ohio were astonished to see an
unidentified man in his late twenties calmly walk into their
police station with a 9-inch (23cm) wire protruding from his
forehead. The man calmly asked officers to give him an X-ray to
help him find his brain, which he claimed had been stolen.
Even more shocking was the fact that the man had drilled a
6-inch (15cm) deep hole in his skull with a Black & Decker power
drill and had stuck in the wire to try and find his missing
brain.
[ Any way you look at it, the guy's not exactly a brain
surgeon... ]
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YOU MIGHT WORK IN AN EMERGENCY ROOM, IF...
---------------------------------------
- You've ever had to contend with someone who thinks
constipation for four hours is a medical emergency.
- You have four categories of patients; urgent, emergent,
non-emergent, and S.I.O. (Sleeping It Off.)
- You refer to motorcyclists as "organ donors."
- You feel that you can diagnose passersby at the mall based
on physical presentation.
- You've ever thought "as long as he's got a pulse, I won't
worry about that rhythm."
- You've had a patients with nose-rings tell you "I'm afraid
of shots."
- You've ever referred to a body bag as a "To Go" bag.
- You can identify the "Kidney Stone Squirm" at a half dozen
yards.
- You think that the announcement of the arrival in five
minutes of two adults from a serious car wreck on back
boards with sirens on and anxiety at level 10 means it's a
great opportunity to eat lunch... (And you know that this
is more time than you usually get.)
- You have learned to keep a medically serious straight face
as a patient responds "I just had two beers."
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AND NOW, ROBONURSE...
------------------
Back injuries suffered by nurses from lifting heavy patients
is a serious problem. Every year more than 3,000 nurses in
Britain take time off because of back problems, according to the
Royal College of Nursing. But that could soon be a thing of the
past thanks to a bionic suit invented by Japanese scientists.
The computer-operated Power Assist Suit was designed by
scientists at Japan's Kanagawa Institute of Technology and
strapped onto the nurse's body. It provides a power assist and
eases the strain of lifting patients.
"Sensor pads taped to the major muscle groups calculate how
much force you need to pick up a patient," New Scientist magazine
reported last year.
The sensors trigger air-powered actuators on the knees,
elbows and waist of the bionic suit, allowing the wearer to lift
patients with their forearms, while strengthening their back and
legs.
Early tests of a prototype allowed a nurse weighing 141
pounds to lift a patient weighing 154 pounds by herself. A
commercial version of the suit will cost about $1,700 and could
be available in two years. (Reuters)
[ So when the nurse says, "Thank you for your...
cooperation", you'd better darned well be nice. ]
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SHALIT'S DRUGSTORE OBSERVATION:
"These pills can't be habit-forming; I've been taking
them for years."
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TRUE NURSE STORIES...
------------------
Nurses are on the front lines of modern medicine, which
certainly explains why they have the best "war stories." Here
are a few collected from around the web:
- "A man ran into our Emergency Room yelling 'My wife's going
to have her baby in the cab!' The ER physician grabbed his
bag and rushed out to the cab, lifted the lady's dress, and
began to remove her underwear.
Too late, the ER doctor realized that there were
several cabs, and he happened to be in the wrong one.
-------------------------
- "At the beginning of my shift I placed my stethoscope on an
elderly and slightly deaf female patient's posterior chest
wall. 'Big breaths,' I instructed. 'Yes, they used to be,'
the elderly woman replied wistfully."
-------------------------
- "One day I had to be the bearer of bad news when I told a
wife that her husband had died of a massive myocardial
infarction [Heart Attack, to us civilians]. Not more than
five minutes later, I heard her reporting to the rest of the
family that he had died of a 'massive internal fart.'"
-------------------------
- "I was performing a complete physical, including the visual
acuity test. I placed the patient twenty feet from the
chart and began, 'Cover your right eye with your hand.' He
read the 20/20 line perfectly. 'Now your left.' Again, a
flawless read. 'Now both,' I requested. There was silence.
He couldn't even read the large E on the top line. I turned
and discovered that he had done exactly what I had asked; he
was standing there with both his eyes covered. I was
laughing too hard to finish the exam."
-------------------------
- "During a patient's two week follow-up appointment with his
cardiologist, he informed his doctor that he was having
trouble with one of his medications. 'Which one?' asked the
doctor. 'The patch,' he replied. 'The nurse told me to put
on a new one every six hours and now I'm running out of
places to put them!' The doctor had him undress quickly and
discovered what he hoped he wouldn't see... Yes, the man
had over fifty patches on his body!
" Now our instructions include removal of the old patch
before applying a new one."
-------------------------
- "While acquainting myself with a new elderly patient who was
unable to get out of bed, I asked, 'How long have you been
bedridden?' After a look of complete confusion she
answered, 'Why, not for about twenty years-when my husband
was alive.'"
-------------------------
- "A nurse caring for a woman from Kentucky asked, 'So how's
your breakfast this morning?' 'It's very good, except for
the Kentucky Jelly. I can't seem to get used to the taste,'
the patient replied. The nurse asked to see the jelly and
the woman produced a foil packet labeled 'KY Jelly.'"
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© 2002 by Bill Becwar. All Rights Reserved.
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