The Fight Going on in My Head

I spent way more time than I want to admit reading about Dr. Flea this afternoon. Hours. Right now, OLBG* and Medblog Addict are duking it out in my brain over who is going to write this post. The lawyer in me wants to rant, perhaps bruising a few feelings in the process. But that would mean revealing the "work" side of me to y'all, which is something I have hesitated to do here.

The medblog addict in me wants to rant for an entirely different reason—I am pissed that this is going to affect my beloved medblogs.

I guess for now, I will just sit back and observe how the medblog world reacts to the Flea problem.

* Obnoxious Lawyer Bitch Girl

Video Wednesday -- Funny Deposition

I know, this is the third time I’ve posted this deposition. But it’s funny and I like it. And I need to start posting more frequently, so I’m starting Video Wednesday.

I Think My Control Issues Are Showing

My aunt is dying. I am just waiting for the phone call. She was a strong, independent woman who loved life. She has been in a nursing home for about a year. I saw her three months ago. She didn’t know who I was. She was in pain and miserable. Her family had asked that she just be made as comfortable as possible until the end.

It’s weird but I keep wondering why it’s taking so long. If death is inevitable, do people hang on like that because they are fighters and don’t want to give up? Is it a conscious decision? If she wanted to die, would the end come sooner? I guess I’m asking because if I were in that position, I would be using every ounce of strength I had praying for the end to come quickly.

Fantasy Stock Market for Blogs

I stumbled across this the other day:

"BlogShares is a fantasy stock market where weblogs are the companies. Players invest fictional dollars on shares in blogs. Blogs are valued by their incoming links and add value to other blogs by linking to them. Prices can go up or down based on trading and the underlying value of the blog."

Players get a fictional $500 to invest in the blogs. I didn't spend much time there, but did notice that ATM and some other familiar blogs were listed. I've avoided going back to learn more about it. No way I can afford another time killer.

Medical Joke Week hasn't exactly cheered me up, but it's not from lack of jokes. Here's some more jokes from my comment section and e-mail. Thanks y'all. (Yes, I'm taking the easy way out again by posting jokes. I tried writing a post, but no matter what the topic, everything I wrote ended with "fuck you and the horse you rode in on." Blogging should not be done while dazed and confused.)

From MD/PHD Student:

A neurosurgeon, fresh out of residency, was driving down the road in his 1995 Honda Accord when he sees a genie bottle on the side of the road. Having paid attention in 4th grade he decides to give the bottle a rub and sure enough a genie magically appears. The genie grants him three wishes but declares that whatever he ask for every lawyer in the world gets double. After thinking for a moment and considering how much he had just paid for malpractice insurance he decides that he can live with that for three wishes.

For his first wish he ask for a Black Ferrari and poof he gets a black Ferrari. But, now every lawyer in the world gets 2 black Ferraris. For his second wish he ask for 100 million dollars and poof he gets 100 million dollars. But, now every lawyer in the world gets 200 million dollars. After thinking long and hard about his third and final wish… The generous young neurosurgeon says, “I’ve always wanted to donate a kidney.” And poof, out comes one of his kidneys…

“That should take care of all the lawyers” he says to the genie while climbing into his new Ferrari with $100 million sitting in the passenger seat.

From 911Doc:

a man goes into the doctor as he has been feeling ill. the doctor runs some tests and tells him to come back in a week. a week passes and the man, still feeling ill, comes back to meet his physician. "well sir, i've got some good news and some bad news for you, which would you like to hear first?" the doctor asks.

"uh, the bad news i guess," says the patient."

"okay," the doc says, "you've got a particularly aggressive form of pancreatic cancer and you will be dead within a month no matter what we do... i'm sorry," says the doc.

"wow," (sob, whimper), says the patient, "i guess i could really use some good news now... what is the good news?"

the doctor replies, "well sir... did you notice my secretary out front? the one with the very large melons and the legs that go on forever?"

"uh... yes... i did notice her... what's the good news?" asks the patient.

"i'm fucking her," says the doc.

From Lynn Price:

A doctor, an architect, and an attorney were dining at the country club one day, and the conversation turned to the subject of their dogs. A wager was placed on who had the most intelligent dog.

The physician offered to show his dog first, and called to the parking lot, "Hippocrates, come!" Hippocrates ran in, and was told to do his stuff. Hippocrates ran to the golf course and dug for a while, producing a number of bones. He dragged the bones into the country club, and assembled them into a complete, fully articulated human skeleton. The physician patted Hippocrates on the head, and gave him a cookie for his efforts.

The architect was only marginally impressed, and called, "Sliderule, come!" Sliderule ran in, and was told to do his stuff. The dog immediately chewed the skeleton to rubble, but reassembled the fragments into a scale model of the Taj Mahal. The architect patted his dog and gave him a cookie.

The attorney watched the other two dogs, and called, "Bullshit, come!" Bullshit entered and was told to do his stuff. Bullshit immediately sodomized the other two dogs, stole their cookies, auctioned the Taj Mahal replica to the other club members for his fee, and went outside to play golf.

Cheering Myself Up

This is going to be a very tough week for me and I will be spending a lot of time trying to find ways to cheer myself up. I thought I’d start by announcing this will be “Medical Joke of the Day” week (no, I haven’t run out of lame lawyer jokes yet).

I’ve also received some funny jokes via e-mail and comments that are too long to put on my sidebar and I will be posting them this week. (yes, I am avoiding writing).

This is from my favorite blogging doctor:

A man was at the country club for his weekly round of golf. He began his round with an eagle on the first hole and a birdie on the second.

On the third hole he had just scored his first ever hole-in-one when his cell phone rang. It was a doctor notifying him that his wife had just been in a terrible accident and was in critical condition and in the ICU.

The man told the doctor to inform his wife where he was and that the he'd be there as soon as possible. As he hung up he realized he was leaving what was shaping up to be his best ever round of golf. He decided to get in a couple of more holes before heading to the hospital.

He ended up playing all eighteen, finishing his round shooting a personal best 61, shattering the club record by five strokes and beating his previous best game by more than 10. He was jubilant... Then he remembered his wife. Feeling guilty he dashed to the hospital. He saw the doctor in the corridor and asked about his wife's condition.

The doctor glared at him and shouted, "You went ahead and finished your round of golf didn't you! "I hope you're proud of yourself! While you were out for the past four hours enjoying yourself at the country club your wife has been languishing in the ICU! It's just as well you went ahead and finished that round because it will be more than likely your last!" "For the rest of her life she will require 'round the clock care. And you'll be her caregiver!"

The man was feeling so guilty he broke down and sobbed .

The doctor snickered and said, "I'm just fucking with you. She's dead. What'd you shoot?"



(There are a couple of unanswered questions in my comment section--I am not ignoring you. I will respond to those tonight. Thanks for stopping by.)


10/20/07 9:00 p.m. Thank you Dr. Kevin for putting ATM back on your feeds page. That put a smile on my face. And if you have never checked out the KevinMD feeds page you should. It is very useful for keeping up with your favorite medblogs. That is how I keep up with my favorite surgeon at Surgeonsblog.

Eight Things About Me

Here are the rules: Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves. Write a post about your own random things. Post these rules. At the end of your blog, tag 8 people and post their names. Don't forget to leave them a comment and tell them they're tagged.

Okay, I said I wasn’t going to do another meme thing after the “5 weird things about me” meme, but I am so desperate for something to post about, I am going to accept DisappearingJohn’s challenge. Here are 8 random facts/habits about me.

1. I love to watch television, only I can never find time to sit down and watch an entire show. So I have over 50 hours of shows recorded and waiting to be watched. Not only that, I have had the same three movies from NetFlix since January. I know, I know. I just hate to send them back unwatched.

2. Tulips are my favorite flowers. Every day during tulip season, I have a vase of tulips in my office and my bedroom.

3. I have a real garden now, but when I lived in an apartment, I grew corn, brussel sprouts, watermelon and pumpkins on my patio. They weren’t for eating, I just wanted to see if I could grow them in containers on my patio. They never really blossomed into real fruits and vegetables, but they did pretty good.

4. I am not the type to get anything pierced or tattooed, so when I get in one of my restless moods, I usually do something to my hair. I am now a blonde, thanks to my recent case of spring fever. Okay, not exactly earthshaking, but the partners would frown on anything more colorful.

5. I never buy greeting cards more than 1-2 days in advance. This goes back to the 8th grade, when my boyfriend dumped me for that slut JoAnn two weeks before Valentine’s Day. It would have been my first Valentine’s Day with a boyfriend and I bought cards weeks in advance. I am now superstitious and will not buy cards early, believing that something will happen to the relationship or the person I am buying the card for.

6. If it were practical, I would have a house full of cats and dogs. We do not have any pets right now, but I am looking for a kitten to adopt. I have had two puppies (at different times) since leaving my parents’ house. Both puppies ended up being raised by my parents. Not because I was a bad dog mother, it’s just that I wasn’t home enough to give them the love and attention they deserved. My parents have already said that I can’t do that with my kids (if I ever have any).

7. I do not sing in public. EVER. I have the world’s worst singing voice.

8. My nails (fingers and toes) must be perfectly manicured at all times. I hate it when they don't look nice. I never wear nail polish on my fingernails; they are always buffed. Toenails are always a shade of red; never any other color. And since I never mastered the art of the home manicure, I spend an inordinate amount of time and money at the “Nail Place”. (ok, I cheated. I ran out of things to say so I borrowed this from my weird meme post).


Umm. Would anyone like to volunteer to be tagged?

5/18/07 9:00 p.m. Okay, there seems to be a misunderstanding. Leaving a comment doesn't mean you are volunteering to be tagged. Gees, I wouldn't do that. But I am now "officially" tagging Amanda.

5/20/07 9:30 p.m. Consider yourself tagged Lynn Price. And congratulations on the IPPY award!

And thanks to MomWTTM for volunteering to be tagged.

Your Lawyer is Wandering Through the Medblogs

Speaking of search terms. My blog came up this morning when a firm concentrating in med mal defense was researching a popular blogging doctor (Flea) currently involved in litigation. It kind of makes me wish that I would have blogged about something a little more substantive than "Are Surgeons Really Better Looking?" and positive Throckmorton signs.

[And in defense of my blog, I disclosed from the beginning that it was meant to be a guilty pleasure. But I think I may have deleted that post.]

5/16/07 1:17 It looks like we've lost both Flea and Fat Doctor. This sucks.

5/17/07 10:00 Today ATM got a visit from the plaintiff's firm; then another visit from the defense firm. Which isn't unusual, I guess, but I was curious about what else turned up in their searches, so I went to their Google results page via Site Meter. This is how ATM appears in the plaintiff's search results:

Addicted to Medblogs: Learning to Link (revised)
Thanks to Dr.Flea’s latest post, the feelings of anger mixed with ... "Asshole lawyers" is a category, like "trial lawyers" or "lawyers who like babies. ...medblog-groupie.blogspot.com/2006/11/learning-to-link-revised.html - 78k - Cached - Similar pages - Note this

I thought that was kinda funny. What a disappointment though, when they saw my actual post. Like I said, I never promised y'all quality blogging.

Go Flea.

Rescued by a Nurse

Last week, a very kindhearted nurse came to my rescue in a non-medical, non-emergency situation.

I left work around 8:30. BF was out of town and I was driving his car (way more fun to drive than my SUV). It was raining, but I didn’t think it had rained enough to be worried about street flooding. Boy, was I wrong. I was driving along, and then WHAM! I was in high water. I thought I would be smart and take a shortcut through a nearby neighborhood to get to our house. Big mistake. The water only got deeper. I am in BF’s very low-riding car. The rain is now pouring down, lightening everywhere. I can’t see. The car in front of me stalls. The water is up in people’s yards and I can’t see the driveways but I have to get to higher ground so I just turn and hope for the best. Fortunately I hit the driveway and pull up close to the house. Then I just sit and wait in the middle of the rain and lightening.

I call BF to let him know what’s going on, i.e., his car is okay, and oh, by the way, so am I. Then the hail starts. Hail so large BF can hear it hitting the car and asks “what’s that noise?”. Umm, I don’t know, I think I need to get off the phone now and save the battery.

I’m tired, hungry, have to use the bathroom, and stuck in the middle of a thunderstorm with nowhere to go. The rain dies down a little and I think about walking home, but its dark and I’m not that familiar with the neighborhood.

Then the homeowner comes out to the car. She invites me in out of the rain, and offers me her bathroom, food and drink. Her husband is stuck somewhere and can’t get into the neighborhood. Instead of watching the weathermen tell us it’s raining outside, we watched movies on her giant screen television all night while we waited for the rain to stop. Her husband came home around 5:00 a.m. bearing warm doughnuts. I definitely pulled into the right driveway that night.

Turns out she is a nurse at a nearby hospital. Thank you, Nurse Nancy.

Atrophied Testicle? Sorry, Wrong Blog

Wait, not so fast.

I just found out that last week, my blog came up during a search for “atrophied testicle hernia surgery”. Why me?

Then I remembered the Oops case. I had written about a med mal case where the surgeon admitted that he said “oops, I cut in the wrong place” during an operation to repair a double inguinal hernia.

So, while the searcher (I’m not a doctor, but I’m assuming it was a he) didn’t receive any helpful medical advice, he may not have walked away from here empty-handed. If he read the post, he could have learned:

1. The name of a surgeon he might want to avoid. Although, I'm sure the surgeon learned from his mistake (and I’d be willing to bet the farm that the surgeon learned never to say "oops" again during surgery.); and

2. The name of a Plaintiff’s lawyer. Not that he should hire one unless it is absolutely, positively, 100% warranted. Remember, bogus med mal cases affect me too. I don't want to have to lie to my doctors when they ask me what I do for a living. No CYA tests needed for me, thank you. I'm easy (uh, you know what I mean).

(I wanted to post something tonight, but have nothing to say, so I went through my blog closet and found this. I wrote this last December but "unpublished" it after a few hours. I think I was just surprised ATM came up in a "medical" search. Since then, ATM has appeared in the results of quite a few "medical" searches. There are a surprisingly large number of people out there who are interested in butt pus. But the all time most popular keyword search phrase for ATM remains "stitches or staples". You know, just from the few searches I have seen on ATM that contain the word "nurse", I have a feeling that nurses must see some really strange search keywords with respect to their blogs. People have some bizarre thoughts about what nurses do.)