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Calm down Mr. Tourist-Man

7/27/2016

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Upon checking in to our flight on Angkor Air from Saigon to Siem Reap we noted that we were seats "E" and "G." :( Are we not sitting next to each other?

We were delighted to note that we actually were. There was no "F" seat.

Jess: Oh, I bet that's cause in Khmer there is no letter "f." Vietnamese is like that too.
Camille: Oh, interesting.
Jess: Yea, cause every time I do that MOCA dementia test I have to tell the interpreter to just use a different letter.
Mr. Tourist-Man, overhearing us: Wait, why are there no "f's"?
Jess: Vietnamese and Cambodian don't have the letter "f."
Mr. Tourist-Man: Oh that's why! I've been like, there are no fucking "f's" anywhere!!

Just calm down Mr. Tourist-Man. Surely the disappearance of the letter "f" does not need to cause that much distress.

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Best of... pager malfunctions

2/16/2013

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The only thing between an intern on night float and panic is their senior resident. The only way the senior resident can communicate consistently is through their pager. So when this started happening to my senior resident's pager, there was silence. In moments of panic we tend to revert to our basic instincts. First we tried turning it around to try to read it better. Then we pressed on buttons randomly. I shook it.

But when we got a text page from someone, presumably important and related to a patient, that we could make no sense of, we started panicking. Was it simply a mirror image? I tried to pull out my phone and see if we could use it as a mirror. Was this a mirror image or the were the letters rotated in some weird way? I couldn't be bothered to figure it out by actually looking at it with any thought. I was too busy fumbling with my phone. I couldn't get it to unlock.

And then it beeped and went blank.

I started rambling about how there must be some IT guys on call, if only we knew how to call them. Meanwhile my senior was occupied with taking the pager apart. I looked over and he had removed the battery and was was using a pen to pry at the battery connectors. He got a new battery and miraculously, it started to correct itself, strangely, letter by letter.
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The next night it happened again. I calmly went through the steps we had the night before and the problem was fixed.

The next morning we got a replacement pager.

And this is why in any moment of crisis in medicine, as lame as it sounds, we use a basic algorithm. Because otherwise we panic and do stupid things like press buttons randomly.

This also makes one wonder why, in one of the most technologically advanced medical systems, we still use pagers.

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to each their own

9/13/2011

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In Michigan the health epidemic seems to be overweight, middle-aged folks with hypertension, high cholesterol, and diabetes.  In the Asian Health center that I'm currently rotating in, I actually see very few obese patients. However, there has been a rash of little, old Chinese ladies with a one inch strip of numbness on the insides of their ankles.
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Gay Butts of Eagles

8/23/2011

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I've been attempting to come up with a more clever and inclusive name for my LGBT medical student group. In the process I have learned an important part of LGBT group naming history:

Em: the name at einstein is GAAE. It's pronounced "gaaaaaaaay" and stands for gays and allies at einstein.
Jess: hmmm
Em: though apparently the one before it was worse
Jess: how could it possibly be worse?
Em: it was called eaglebut.
Em: like EGBLT - einstein GBLT
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Best of... sign-out

6/27/2011

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Today's patient sign-out to the resident on call overnight: "when mad or in pain, patient is racist"
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