Humor in medicine

The other day one of my residents got a call from a pharmacist... apparently someone stole one of her prescriptions, filled it out themselves, and attempted to fill it at a pharmacy. What was the prescription for?

"Mofeen, 1 gallon"

For anyone confused, "mofeen" = morphine, and it is most definitely not dosed by the gallon :)

(just a little tidbit to fill the gap since my last post... one to come soon with pictures of our two sweet Norris nieces!)

Reviving Old Furniture

So we picked up this old piece of furniture pictured below.  The piece came from my Great Aunt's house.  And yes, it screams 1970's.  So we had the idea to try to revive the old lady and make it useful as we move into a bigger house.  In a picture by picture slideshow below, I'll explain how we did it.

The before picture.

As you can see below, there were sweet 1970 like grooves that not only were stylish but also doubled as handles.  Sadly enough, we had to pull out the grooves in order to make the drawers flat all the way across.

After removal of outer groove.

Next step was to fill in the holes in the drawers with puddy.  Once the puddy dried, we sanded it down.  This step was repeated a couple of time in order to make sure that the hole was completely filled and smooth all the way across the drawer.

Once the holes were puddied.

Before starting to paint, we sanded down the entire chest along with the drawers with an 80 grit sandpaper.  This removed all of the original wood coating.

Furniture sanded down.

Our next step was to paint a base coat.  This base coat would be the color that would come through when we later distressed the chest in order to give it an antique look.  We used a bluish gray color and put on two coats.  Below is a picture after the base coat was applied (along with a great shot of my knee).

Base coat.

We then painted the top coat which was an off white.  We ended up using three coats of the white.  Once it all dried, we then used a 120 grit sandpaper and slowly distressed certain parts of the chest.  After we had distressed the piece to our (Emily's) heart's desire, we applied a glaze over everything to give it a smooth finish.  We also went to Lowe's and picked up some handles that we thought would go along well with the style and color.  Below is the finished product.  It's kind of hard to really see the full look in the big picture.  The first one will give you an idea of what it truly looks like.

Up close shot of the drawers, handles and distressing.

The whole piece...its not great lighting in this shot.

We're no professionals, but hey, it was fun and we learned some interesting things in the process.

Memphis

This past weekend we headed to Memphis for my cousin Cate's wedding. It was so fun to get away for a few days for a mini-vacation, and much needed after the exhaustion of preparing for my Internal Medicine Shelf Exam last Friday morning. The wedding weekend was beautiful, and the wedding/reception were one of the most unique and personal I've ever been to. We ate at a  delicious restaurant downtown on Friday night (Majestic Grill... if you are ever in Memphis we definitely recommend it!), Rendezvous on Saturday for lunch, and enjoyed a delicious post-wedding brunch Sunday morning (apparently good food = fun). As usual, time flies when you are having fun, and before we knew it, we were back in B'ham and preparing to start another week.

The view from our room...

Beale Street...

With mom...

The first dance...

Cousin Austin once again dominated the dance floor...

With the bride and groom...

There are lots of exciting things happening in our families these days (including a new niece due VERY soon!)... More on those later....

Flashback...

Anyone else been bowling lately? Sometimes its fun to do something active you haven't done in a long time...

(warning: exercising uncommonly used muscles results in some peculiar patterns of soreness)

Weekend with Family

We spent last weekend in Montgomery and it flew by entirely too fast. Walker helped his mom do a few things to prepare for her upcoming move (she bought a house and closes at the end of the month!), and we celebrated my mom's birthday on Sunday. Lele, Matt, and his girlfriend Anne were also in town for the weekend (along with all the dogs) which made the weekend that much more enjoyable!

Happy Birthday to my wonderful mom!!

The [rainiest] village on the plains...

Guess who we visited this weekend?

We ate at Amsterdam...

Stopped by Chick-Fil-A on our way to tailgate (reason #1372 why it is one of my favorite places to eat - an employee saw us sitting outside with Bella and brought her a little bowl of treats)...

Tailgated with wonderful college friends (congrats to Riley & Caroline on their recent engagement!)...

And endured a downpour in Jordan Hare with 80,000+ other loyal fans (no game photos as my camera would have surely drowned)...

The rotten weather spoiled any chance I had of documenting the weekend in beautiful photos - rain + mud + heat + humidity + sweat does not bode well for photography.

Back to the real world...

People are interesting...

In medicine, a patient's "chief complaint" is the reason that the patient has decided to seek medical attention, in the patient's own words. It is usually whatever the patient says in response to, "So, Mr. X, what brings you to the hospital today?"

On night's when I am on call, I will occasionally troll the ER chief complaint list on the computer to see what kinds of patients/medical conditions might be admitted to the Internal Medicine service (my current rotation) that night. Chief complaints like "My chest hurts and I can't breathe" are likely to earn a quick hospital admission. Other complaints are just downright entertaining. Here is a glimpse of what I saw last night in my trolling (none of these got admitted, so I can offer no further explanation/clarification of their complaint)...

Disclaimer: these have in no way been altered. I felt changing the wording (i.e., making them less crude), would take away from their entertainment value. Read on at your own risk...

-"I got hit by a broom handle"
-"I have a boil on my butt"
-"I punched a wall and my hand hurts"
-"I got tased by the police"
-"I need you to cut off my finger"
-"My nuts are too big"
-"I fell off a garbage truck"
-"My wife got too frisky and hurt me"
-"I passed gas twice today"
-"My pants keep falling off"

Just a little taste of a Birmingham ER on a Friday night...