Friday Night Notes

A few quick thoughts from the wee small hours of Memorial Day weekend...

We’ve come up with two new lab tests for ED use:

The serum acorn level is used to assess patients who are nuts.

The serum conjugate acorn level is used to assess those who are f…..g nuts.

And two new clinical signs:

Chester’s Sign: If you’re eating a bag of Cheetos, your nausea and vomiting can’t be that bad.

The Burgos Summer Sign (named for the pediatrician who taught it to me): If a child’s headaches, stomach pains, or other vague non-diagnosable symptoms improve during the summer, they hate going to school.

Please send royalties. Thank you.

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Last night we had a quiet moment at work. Silence in the ED is scary thing, because we’re not accustomed to it. So when it gets that way we literally band together, if only to hear the shuffling of feet. Of course, we don’t talk about it, because if we do everything will go downhill immediately.

So during our quiet moment last night, we were introduced to a medical song on You Tube by The Giggles entitled “I’ve Got the Clap.” The lyrics go something like this:

“I’ve got the clap and I’m giving it to you.
I’ve got the clap and I’m giving it to you.
I’ve got the clap and I’m giving it to you.
Who’s got the clap? I do ! I do!"

(Back in the day, we could establish this diagnosis without a word. We would walk out of a patient room, the nurse would ask what was wrong, and we would start to applaud. The nurse would then fetch the penicillin.)

It’s a very cheery tune, and before long Holly the Disco RN and I were clapping to the left and then to the right in time with the song. But sometimes we forget that there’s a clear generation gap, even in medicine. So we probably shouldn’t have been surprised when one of our younger staff members asked, “So what’s that song about? Is it that thing that helps you turn on the lights?”

Ah, for simpler times.