Things you don't want to hear after you wake up from surgery
"were you accustomed to using both arms?"
"hey, you're not supposed to be awake yet"
"how would you feel about setting off metal detectors from now on?"
"what the . . . ?"
"would you mind tidying up a little? the janitorial staff is on strike this week"
"hey, what are you doing down there on the floor?"
"you've been asleep for 20 years. your wife left you, remarried and has 3 kids with her new husband"
"did you drool uncontrollably before the appendectomy?"
"we went ahead and threw in a free gastric bypass because we figured you needed it"
"i've got killer malpractice insurance so take your best shot"
posted by Brent @ Sunday, April 10, 2005
1 comments
1 Comments:
One of the most interesting things I remember hearing about surgery, or just medical practice in general, was from Anthony Edwards (from ER fame) in a tv interview. He was saying how doctors can't say things like "Oh my God" or "oops!" when they are working on a patient and some kind of mishap occurs, for the obvious reason that it would freak the patient out, should she or he be awake and hearing it. Anyway, he said that for the show ER he had to get used to saying "there" instead, because that's what doctors do in real life. So if they drop an instrument inside an opened thoracic cavity, for example they wouldn't say "Oh, S*HIT, I just dropped the tweezers in there!", they would just respond with a curt "there" and skillfully reach in and extract it.
I asked my Mom's boss about this. He's a cardiologist and thoracic surgeon. He laughed and told me that if any little mishap occurs like that he pretty much just says "Oh, man, how bout them Dodgers?!"
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