FOBT

Me: Do you know what FOBT stands for?  It's actually Fist Occult Blood Test
Dude resident: Yeah, it was recently changed
Me: You have to use your fist, your whole fist, and nothing but your fist
Dude resident: So help you God
Female resident: Ugh

Diabetes pimping

Attending: How do you store insulin?
Other student: In the refrigerator
Me: Uh...in the pancreas...

Back at starbucks

I find myself at Starbucks today, sipping on coffee while eavesdropping on undergrads complaining about how their meager 20 year old lives are ruined because there is actually nice weather outside right now and they're at a Starbucks sipping on coffee while not eavesdropping but rather studying for peasant undergrad things.

I also started thinking about how the fahrenheit system and british imperial units should be phased out and the few countries left in the world still holding on to the idiotic method of measurements should change their ways.  I concluded that the easiest way to do this in the least bloody and geopolitically headache-free way is to build a time machine, go back in time, kill Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit as well as the entire country of England circa whenever.  Sorry England...you came up with a bad system of measurement (so bad that the denizens of the countries that use the british imperial system don't even quite understand how it works...so bad that you are single-handedly responsible for the explosion of a space rocket)

Screening test

So during my general medicine months (Family medicine, Pediatrics, Internal Medicine), every attending I've worked with has not failed yet to ask/pimp about what makes a good screening test.  For those of you who don't know, it's

• Cheap test
• Enough of the population is affected by the problem you're screening for
• Good at ruling in disease (high sensitivity)
• There has to be fix to the problem you're screening for, and it must be available
• Some other stuff that I don't remember/care about but probably should

ANYWAY, I've decided yet again, with a stroke of my genius mind, to apply the principles of medicine (aka magic) to real life...

Screening test questions for a solid future mate

• Do you like me?
• Do you think you'll continue to like me for a while?
• Will you be immunizing your children?
• Do you like animals?

And that's it.  The only thing that makes my screening test a bad one is that the people are really difficult to change (can't fix the problem...easily anyway).  In any case, my future wife must answer yes to all of the above in order for me to propose to her.  No exceptions.  NONE.

(What brought this idea on?  During my week on neonatology, my attending told me a story of how his wife is an OBGYN and she was on call one night at the hospital and he was sleeping at home.  His wife called and woke him up at 4am and out of the blue to tell him, "David, I don't think I want to vaccinate our children," to which my attending replied "What?!"  to which he got the reply "Okay, now that you're really up and awake, I'm just kidding.  Have a good rest of the night not being on call.")

Clinic day

I had pediatric GI clinic in the AM, then adult internal medicine clinic in the PM today.  Usually, clinic is pretty uninteresting, but today...

Me: (seeing a failure-to-thrive patient) how many times do you feed the patient?
Pt's mom: Well...you see...I used to feed him every 3 hours, but people were telling me that's not good.
Me: Okay, so how often do you feed him?
Pt's mom: So now I feed him every other 3 hours
Me: So...like every 6 hours?
Pt's mom: No...like every other 3 hours
Me: Okay, so what times did you feed him today?
Pt's mom: 5, 8, and I'm going to feed him again at 11
Me: That's every 3 hours
Pt's mom: No, that's every other 3 hours

Later on in the day...

Me: So does anyone else in your family have the type of cough that you have?
Pt: Yeah, my nephew does
Me: Oh, okay
Pt: He's my son's son
Me: Excuse me? Your nephew is your son's son?
Pt: Yes
Me: ..................Okay (writes CONSANGUINOUS FAMILY in all caps on note)