C9 fracture

When I was in residency, a co-resident came up to me one day and said, "Hey, I saw your patient with the C9 fracture.  I guess he was a giraffe."

"Huh?" I said.  (The human cervical vertebrae only go up to C7.)

He filled me in that in a consult note I'd dictated on an inpatient several months earlier, a C9 fracture had been noted among the patient's many injuries.  I did a little research and realize I had said "sphenoid fracture."

Except the funny part (or not so funny part) is for the next several weeks of the patient's hospitalization, multiple physicians noted that the patient had a C9 fracture.  Some were clearly copied and pasted from my note, but others actually broke down the injuries one by one, still noting the C9 fracture.

The moral is either that people in medicine sometimes don't think, or else maybe it's that I should check my damn dictations better.

Transcription error

This one made me laugh for like five minutes:

"Ice cream was applied to dry feet."

Worthless

Most useless family history I have ever seen in a chart:

Wife had gestational diabetes.

69

Me: "I have to give my dad a call. It's his birthday today. He's 69."

Husband: "69, huh? I guess we know what he's going to be doing with your mom tonight. Heh."

Me: "..."

Buh bye

I really have trouble ending phone messages to patients and their family members.

Usually I say something like: "this is Dr. fizzy calling from session such and such. I'd like to speak to you about such and such."

And then what do I say? Goodbye just seem so abrupt.

"Hope to hear from you soon!"

"Byie!"

"Laterz!"

No matter what I say, it always so awkward in my ears.

Typos

Here's something I don't get:

My third book, Baby City, was professionally edited for typos and grammar issues. However, more than any other book, I have gotten nonstop comments about how many typos there are in this book.

One reader commented that he lowered his rating of the book from 5 to 4 because of how many typos there where. He was kind enough to send me those typos. There were five. Out of 80,000 words.

So I fixed all of those typos, yet I still get complaints. See this review I recently received:

"just could not get past the lack of editing. If I could print this out, I would take a red Sharpie to it."

I don't get it. Even the person who read the book for audiobook said she didn't see many typos. Where are these typos that are upsetting people so much????  I'm sure there are a couple that got missed, but no more than in my other books, which nobody has complained about.

Furthermore, I have seen other books that were littered with typos. There were literally typos on every single page. Yet they had dozens of reviews without one mention of the copious typos. I really just don't get it.

Tax Guy

Right now, we do our taxes with TurboTax. My husband actually does it. It doesn't seem that hard or that big a deal. He claims not to mind doing it.

However, we've had some tax issues recently due to my extracurricular activities. That is, I moonlight at a place that doesn't remove taxes when they pay me. And also, last year I earned close to $20,000 from book sales from Amazon. So between those two extra incomes, we ended up owing a lot of money and I think even had to pay a penalty. We donated quite a bit to charity, but it didn't really balance things out.

A friend of mine was telling me that having a tax guy would help us find more deductions, and ultimately, we would end up saving money. My husband says that's bullshit. That all they really do is plug the data into TurboTax.

What do you think? Should we pay for a tax guy?

I don't get it

So I don't write a whole lot about politics on here. But I have to say one thing:

I don't get how anyone is voting for Donald Trump.

Putting aside the fact that he's been a joke in this country for my whole life. Putting aside the fact that this guy has beaten and probably raped at least one of his wives. Putting aside the fact that he knows nothing about foreign policy and seems to have no interest in learning. Putting aside the fact that he's encouraging white supremacists. Even putting aside the fact that his economic plans would probably result in economic disaster...

I'm terrified of Trump being President.

The guy has expressed extreme willingness and even eagerness to resort to use of nuclear weapons against ISIS, and even apparently in Europe, if need be. He does not want to work with NATO and will scrap all the diplomacy that we've built over the last century. He wants to tell our allies to go fuck themselves. He'll stand by and watch while our former enemies invade our allied countries. That's why Putin has endorsed him.

It doesn't matter if you're Republican or Democrat, because even his own party is turning against him. How can you not be terrified of this man having our nuclear codes???

From a note

The funnies way I've ever heard anyone state code status:

"Patient states if she is found already expired in her bed, she wants to be left there."

I hate paperwork

One of my responsibilities as a physician is to sometimes fill out paperwork for disability or medical leave. I know, very glamorous.

Recently, I was filling out a form for the husband of a woman who had a significant stroke to take a family leave. I started filling it out, but I got really frustrated midway through the questions like these:



How the hell do you fill this out in any sort of accurate way? What sort of medical condition would result in a flare is that I could remotely estimate in an hourly way and describe exactly what care is needed during those flareups? And the page before it asked me in three different ways what sort of care exactly would be needed. The guy's wife had a freaking stroke. He wants to take an unpaid leave from work to take care of her. That should be all I have to say! Why is so much stupid paperwork required?

Who wrote this form? Certainly not a person with any medical knowledge or experience.

Career

Preparing for career day at school:

Me: "what do you want to be when you grow up?"

My daughter: "maybe an author. But definitely not a doctor. Definitely not. Anything other than that."

Um. Okay....