The emergency room

So my daughter was recently working at a "haunted forest" near where we live and had a bit of an accident...while trying to scare the patrons on a hayide she fell from the outside of it, slipped, fell under the trailer and got her foot run over, which ultimately resulted in a broken ankle.

I have a bit of an aversion to the medical profesison, and see a visit to the doctor as something to be reserved for very special occassions, like a severed carotid artery. As my daughter and I drove from the forest to the emergency room, I did gently suggest that if she wasn't in that much pain we could just go straight home and bandage it up ourselves....at which point she reminded me that such, "old folk" medicinal thinking once resulted in her walking around for two days with a broken wrist before someone (not me!) decided to take her to seek medical professional help (true story, of which I'm oddly proud).

So we had to go to the emergency room. On a Friday night. Have ya been to one lately? Sheesh....going into the emergency room on a Friday night is kind of like finding yourself in Hotel Rwanda - everybody is black, it's very loud, most people are in some sort of distress, and they all just kind of sit there waiting for something to happen...either bad news will be delivered or some white person will come along and help them.

So after you sit forever they call you back...and I just don't understand why the medical profession, from a records standpoint, is stuck in the 1950s. SIX PEOPLE are going to ask you if you have any allergies or are on medications.... the last one being the doctor. Now, as far as I'm concerned, he's the only one who needs to know this. If the first five people who ask you aren't conveying it to him then he's really the only one you need to tell. I think I'm just going to start saving everything up for the doctor. (There's a great scene in the new movie Ghost Town where Ricky Gervais' character does what we'd all like to do on a doctor's visit....to questions such as "Profession?" he replies, "Irellevant!" "Do you drink alcohol?" - "Why do you need to know this?")

So after looking at my daughter's ankle for a bit, the doctor asked to check her lungs. WHAT ON EARTH is the medical profession's obsession with checking lungs? I think the first two years of medical school are spent on two topics and these things are presented as paramount to anything else...if you remember two things when you start your practice you will remember this:

Topic 1 - make your patients get naked. It matters not the reason for his visit, make him take off all of his clothes and put on that paper thing.
Topic 2 - check lungs.

I envision the brilliant young minds paying scores of thousands to learn about curing cancer and advancements in bioengineering and they get two solid years of this. It must be frustrating, but apparently it sticks. Every test they take reads like this:

Your patient says his toe has fallen off and he has it in a jar of ice. You should first:
A. triage, stat
B. cleanse wound, begin reattachment
C. Investigate if his "El Insuranceo de Pedro Loco " insurance card of crayon on construction paper is legit
D. Get him naked; check his lungs

(answer: D)

Patient says he needs a scopolamine patch to prevent sea sickness for an upcoming boat trip. He merely wants this and nothing else. He had a complete physical three days ago and is an olympic decathlete. Two months prior he set a world record for lung capacity and was declared by the International Commission on Breathing as "World's Best Breather" and has been given the Golden Lung Award by the American Lung Association. He has entered your office naked. You should first:
A. Give him his scrip and send him on his way (he will strongly want you to pick this option...do you take the bait?)
B. Get him dressed, check lungs
C. Keep him naked
D. Check lungs
E. Both C and D

(answer: E)

What mysteries of the universe exactly are unlocked by listening to someone's lungs? Why should we think that all key elements of human biology are funneled through the lungs as opposed to, say, the right elbow? It's just a trick! And they try to throw you by saying stuff like, "okay now breathe real deep....okay, now normal....now real deep and hold it...." THIS MAKES NO DIFFERENCE! However, I will say that they must be doing something right...they can charge $500 for 10 minutes of getting you naked, squeezing your balls, sticking something up your ass and sending you on your way, whereas a prostitute gets paid half that for the same stuff and has to do it for a whole hour (and when I do it myself I get no [monetary] compensation at all!).