Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
What am I getting myself into . . .
So I volunteered for this “Hippocrates Circle” thing . . . it’s an activity for junior high school kids who are interested in medical careers. They’re going to tour our facility, and there will be demos or stations. In pulmonary, the kids will get to check their peak flows (how fast can you exhale?) In ortho, someone will have to break an arm or something, because they’ll be demonstrating casting. And I’ll be scoping my throat for the greater good.
It’s not the first time I’ve scoped myself for educational purposes, but today I learned something new. Something disturbing. These thirty kids? They’re coming through my station in six groups of five.
“Oh, well,” I said, trying to put the best face on things. “Once I’m numb, I’m numb, so six scopes can’t be that much worse than one.”
One of the other docs at the meeting suggested I volunteer for a Foley catheter demo. “Once you’re numb, you’re numb.” And from there, it wasn’t too far a leap for another doc to suggest that the general surgeons warm up their sigmoidoscopes.
The things I’ll do for kids.
D.
Bwahahaha!
Sorry, I shouldn’t laugh…you get to rummage your throat six times in succession…But I think the sigmoidoscope would not have the desired effect of piquing their interest in medicine…Or any food for a while…
Incidentally and apropos of nothing-I discovered as a patient it distracts me from how much getting my sinuses scoped hurts if I can see the view of sinus-cam…because one time the surface of an x-ray reader happened to reflect the screen.
I wish they’d either run a feed to a second monitor or just stick a mirror up.