Humor

Over my three plus decades of primary care, I’ve come across some strange folk remedies. Most have a kernel of truth, or at least, a plausible origin. Some have fascinating ethic components. Some are harder to understand. And some…well, you decide.

It was January and there were several inches of fresh snow on the ground and no shoveled path to the car. The temperature in the teens. I had an errand to run with a child who INSISTED on going barefoot.  The following brief conversation between a seriously sleep deprived post-call parent and an articulate three year old. 

“Do you want to put your shoes on yourself, or do you want help?”

"I don't NEED to wear shoes. My feet aren't cold."

"They will be. It's cold out."

"My feet aren't cold."

"Put your shoes on."

"No."

"Fine."

Things are changing so fast that the Future happened last week and I missed it.

Eczema had been her only real health problem, but what a problem it had been. 

The small balcony of our motel in Port Angeles afforded me a fine view. Sitting there, I enjoyed spectacular sunsets, a wide range of shore birds, and the ferries coming in and leaving from Victoria across the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

The Grand Rounds presentation that week was in the form of a Clinical Pathological Conference (CPC), a medical tradition where a case is presented to an expert or panel of experts in front of an audience of clinicians. The presentation is usually done in the order the information became available during the patient’s hospital course and the experts ask questions, discuss what they think is going on and why, are given more data based on the questions they ask, and ultimately try to come to the diagnosis that was proved at surgery or autopsy.

The simplest toy, one which even the youngest child can operate, is called a grandparent.  (Sam Levenson)

"Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the universe trying to build bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning."

Robert Cringley (columnist, author, host of "Triumph of the Nerds")

I found this on a scrap of paper tucked inside an old version of the Appalachian Mountain Guide. I suspect I copied it from a Hut register, though I do not remember. My note indicates it was written by Poetry Man in 1993.

At morning work rounds the attending suggested we start with a patient I had seen and admitted through the Emergency Room the night before.