Obama Bedtime Story

Time for your bedtime story everyone.

Once upon a time there was a brave and powerful leader named Barack Obama that told a mean and evil country named Syria that if they ever used chemical weapons against their own people that this would cross a “red line” resulting in serious repercussions. Syria then used chemical weapons against their own people.

President Obama then told Syria that this was very mean and that he was going to attack them to teach them a lesson. Then out of nowhere popped out a Russian leader named “Pooty poot”. The Russian leader said “Please don’t attack Syria… I will make them promise to destroy all of their chemical weapons by February 5th”. President Obama said “Ok Pooty Poot, but if they don’t have all of their weapons destroyed by February 5th then they are GONNA GET IT!”

February 5th eventually came and went. Inspectors then went into Syria and announced to the world that only 11 percent of Syria’s chemical weapons had been destroyed. The brave and powerful President Obama then responded to this defiance by hosting a steak dinner with the President of France and talking with various Senate Democrats regarding the need to increase the federal debt ceiling… and everyone lived HAPPILY EVER AFTER.

Planning For Life After Medicine

Mad Max

When I decided that I wanted to be a family doctor back in the 1980s, I was unfortunately not very forward thinking. I pictured how great it would be to practice medicine as it was in the 1980s without anticipating all of the changes that would happen in medicine within my lifetime. As I embark on this new chapter in my life, I need to do a much better job predicting what the world will look like another 30 years from now as a foundation for my new set of life goals. Based on all of the information currently available to me, I am considering the option of becoming the American version of “Mad Max”.

Deep Freeze

boat frozen

A group of scientists who were out on an expedition to study the effects of global warming are currently trapped in a block of ice near Antarctica. It turns out that their research is going to focus on the deleterious effects of irony on nerds.

My Interesting Life

I have had an interesting life…

– I have held a 10-year-old child’s beating heart in my hand.

– I have built a robot that could dance and pick up trash off the floor.

– I have jumped out of a third story hotel window into a palm tree.

– I have hiked to the top of volcano.

– I have performed CPR on a woman at the bottom of a waterfall.

– I have delivered a baby on a helicopter.

– I have greeted the victims of Hurricane Katrina with food and medicine.

– I have been escorted out of an Eric Clapton concert by four police officers.

– I have been on the set during the filming of an episode of Adam-12.

– I have cut off a man’s leg.

– I have woken up underneath an automobile at a Motel 6.

– I have walked through the ruins of Pompeii, Italy.

– I have presented my research regarding the isomerization of isoxazolidinylmethyl tosylates to the American Chemical Society.

– I have knocked a guy’s teeth out with one punch.

– I have won an election as State Land Commissioner at Arkansas Boys State.

– I have created my own iPhone app.

– I have dressed up and sung a song as Mighty Mouse in front of hundreds of my peers.

– I have cracked the chest of a golden retriever.

– I have written an entire functional computer program using only assembly language.

– I have been “that guy” when a stewardess requested a doctor on an airplane in mid-flight.

– I have gotten my ear pierced in the French Quarter of New Orleans.

– I have assisted with an autopsy for a homicide at a U.S. Air Force base.

– I have stood next to my fiancée’s ex-husband as we witnessed the birth of my future stepson.

– I have been in a submarine off the coast of Hawaii.

– I have gone for a ride on the back of a fire engine wearing only my underpants.

– I have achieved the Field Marshal battle rank with my druid in World of Warcraft.

– I have acted as pediatrician while my wife performed a caesarean section.

– I have finished a complete marathon.

– I have vomited repeatedly while packed into a full stadium at a football game.

– I have journeyed to the top of a glacier in Alaska.

– I have cut a dead person completely in half through the midline using only a hand saw.

– I have assisted in brain surgery.

– I have been just a few feet away from a cluster of humpback whales that were bubble feeding.

– I have had my birthplace converted into a tourist attraction and museum.

– I have sat across the dinner table from Bill and Hillary Clinton as we all ate raccoons.

– I have placed an endotracheal tube in a person’s airway while my pants were around my ankles.

How many people can say they did all of that?

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Code Blue

I have had many funny things happen to me in my life. The general consensus among most of my friends is that one particular story stands out as the single most absurdly funny thing to ever happen to me. The incident occurred in the first year of my medical residency and against my better judgment I have decided to share this story with the rest of the world.

The evening began innocently enough. Little did I know that by the end of this evening, I would be setting a state record that would still stand to this day. I was a 26-year-old medical intern on call at the hospital on Thanksgiving night. One of the other resident’s wives was nice enough to bring me a home cooked Thanksgiving dinner because she knew I was stuck in the hospital for the night. Unfortunately, this delicious meal had a little “extra something” that in retrospect was probably Salmonella. Within a few hours, I began vomiting uncontrollably. I was up in the call room, actively vomiting when I suddenly discovered that my intestines had another surprise for me. I started shooting from both ends like a water sprinkler and both my underwear and the lower half of my scrubs ended up in the trash.

This is where the real fun begins. Standing in the call room completely naked from the waist down, I realized that I had no other change of clothes available. I was working that night with a very nice young female resident as my supervisor. She was a tiny doctor who weighed about 90 pounds soaking wet. I called her for emergency back-up. “Hey, I need you to come up to the call room and bring me some scrubs…” I could tell that she was sitting one floor down in the Labor and Delivery area among a room full of nurses. “Why?” she asked. I hesitantly told her that I had become sick and had to throw my pants in the garbage. “YOU POOPED IN YOUR PANTS?” she asked loudly. “Damn it, you don’t have to advertise it, just bring me some clothes”, I barked.

I was in the call room bed under the sheets when there was a knock on my door. I told my upper level to come in and she barely stuck her head through the small space in the door frame. “Did you poop in your bed?” she inquired. “No, I did NOT poop in the bed. Do you have my scrubs?” I replied. She handed me the pair of scrub bottoms and exited the room. I realized quickly that I did not give my friend enough information. She had brought me a very petite sized pair of scrubs that she would probably wear for herself. I could not even pull these up over my knees. I immediately got her back on the phone, “These scrubs are too small”, I grumbled. “What size do you need?” she asked. “I don’t care. Just something bigger than these”, I answered quickly not knowing at the time that this simple statement would end up being the biggest mistake of the evening and perhaps even my life.

My upper level resident arrived back in the call room a few minutes later. As the intern, I had been holding the code pager and was responsible for any Code Blue emergency calls that evening. I had decided that I was in no condition to run a code and asked her if she would take the code pager for me. It apparently had been quite a while since she had actually run a code on her own and she looked at me as if I had handed her a dried up dog turd. “I guess so…” she said reluctantly while taking the pager. She left me alone once again to try on my new pants.

What I had been brought could not really be described as “pants”. They appeared to be something made by Omar the Tentmaker. I usually wore size 30 pants at that time and these were easily over the size of 50. Given that it was already 3:00 AM and I had gotten rid of the code pager, I decided that I did not care that I was wearing clown pants and decided to finally go to bed and try to get a few hours of sleep.

“CODE BLUE!” shouted a frightened voice on the other end of the phone about thirty minutes into my sleep. It was my upper level resident on the other end of the line. “Your code pager went off. Room 513! You have to go!”. “Damn it”, I thought to myself, “That is not what I meant when I asked you to take the code pager…” I bunched my giant scrub bottoms in both hands and began running across the hospital to meet with the code team.

As I entered the patient room to assess the situation, I kept my hands clutched firmly on my pants as I remembered that I was going “full commando”. The nursing supervisor maintained her professionalism as she described the patient’s sudden respiratory arrest. Many of the other fifteen people in the room must have noticed my grotesquely oversized scrub bottoms but said nothing. I quickly determined that this unconscious and critically ill patient was going to have to be intubated as soon as possible and placed on a ventilator.

As I positioned myself at the head of the patient’s bed, I realized that I was in a situation best described as a conundrum. I was the only person in the room that was qualified to perform the endotracheal intubation which is a two-handed procedure: One hand uses a tongue blade to lift the soft tissue structures and visualize the vocal cords while the other hand gently guides the ventilation tube into the trachea. Unfortunately, my pants required at least one hand to hold them up at all times. Time was of the essence and I had very little time to work out my strategy.

I quickly decided that if I spread my legs as far apart as humanly possible instead of stooping over, this would allow my pants to stay up long enough to perform the procedure. I spread my legs as far apart as they would go and picked up both instruments to perform the procedure. My scrub bottoms immediately fell to my ankles.

I was standing in a room full of women whose ages ranged from about 25 to around 65. There was a brief second of silence followed by an audible gasp. A young woman working as a respiratory therapist was stooped over right next to me while manually bagging the patient’s lungs. She looked up to discover that she was just a couple of feet from my manhood. I thought to myself briefly, “We are all medical professionals here. I can just quickly intubate this patient and then pull my pants back up”. I made a move towards the patient and the respiratory therapist’s eyes said it all, “Oh hell no, I am not working with that thing so close to my face…” She looked me directly in the eyes in order to avoid looking anywhere else. She gently shook her head and mouthed the word “no”. I placed the endotracheal tube back on the bed and pulled my giant pants back up to my waist. I leaned back toward this young woman and whispered, “Could you, maybe” I hesitated, “Could you hold my pants up for me?” She answered under her breath with a quick but decisive “No”. Her parents must have raised her to hold herself to a very high standard and I am sure they would have been proud of her. This was obviously never part of her job description.

Usually when running a code, the doctor will often ask the nurses to move the patient bed farther away from the wall to allow for more room. The nurses appeared to look confused as I asked them to move the bed towards the wall pinning me against it. I pushed my backside as hard as I could up against the wall in an attempt to hold my pants up. I once again picked up my instruments and moved towards the patient. As I lifted the patient’s head with the tongue blade, I could feel my pants fall to my ankles once again. I thought to myself “Screw it! I am finishing this right NOW!” I visualized the vocal cords and successfully placed the endotracheal tube in the patient’s airway in under three seconds, all while completely naked from the waist down.

The patient was eventually stabilized and was transferred to the ICU. He went on to make a full recovery.  Word quickly spread about the fastest pantless endotracheal intubation ever performed in the state.  The respiratory therapist and I both mutually decided that it would be in our best interest if we never spoke to or looked directly at each other ever again.

I Told You So: The Obamacare Remix

I have had a difficult time expressing in words regarding exactly how I feel about this current Obamacare rollout.  I have decided that my feelings would be best expressed in song.  The result:  “I Told You So: The Obamacare Remix”.  I hope you all enjoy it.

The Perfect Day

One day when my son was about six years old, I decided that I wanted to give him the perfect day. I wanted to give him a day that he would remember for the rest of his life. He has always been a really great kid and I have always been a bit of a hard-ass and strict parent, so I decided to shake things up. We got up early that morning and I took him fishing. I then took him riding on a four-wheeler. After that, I took him to the arcade and followed that up with a trip to Toys-R-Us where he could pick out any toy that he wanted. I took him to the park and pushed him on a swing. I then let him pick out where we would go eat lunch. While sitting in his favorite restaurant, I asked him if he wanted to go out for ice cream when we were done eating lunch.  My child hesitated then asked, “Am I okay?”  Taken aback by his question, I asked “Why are you asking me that, buddy?” He then asked, “Am I gonna die, Papa? Why are you doing all this?”  I laughed and answered, “No, you aren’t going to die… I’m just trying to be nice.” My son then responded, “Well, it’s kind of freaking me out a little bit”. At that point, I decided to tone it down just a little and bring him back home before he ended up in therapy.

Miss Utah Decrypted

miss utah

 

Miss Utah was recently asked to explain why women continue to earn less money than men in the workplace and here is her most interesting answer:

“I think we can relate this back to education and how we are continuing to try to strive to figure out how to create jobs right now. That is the biggest problem and I think especially the men are seen as the leaders of this and so we need to try to figure out how to create education better so that we can solve this problem.”

Now these are two sentences that I would never want to diagram, but the answer is very intriguing once it becomes deciphered. The first sentence points out how that as a society we clearly are not producing enough qualified economists. The second statement explains that as a society, we have not reached the intellectual level to produce schools to educate our economists properly and this can only be done by men. So women need to give birth to smarter men who can then lead schools to educate better economists to inform society how to provide women with equal pay! Brilliant! Why do we continue to depend on our beauty pageants as a resource for all of our great ideas? Many people don’t know this, but the “Manhattan Project” that lead to the research and development of our first atomic bombs in the 1940s started out as a wet T-shirt competition.

He Stopped Smoking Them Today

I dedicate my new song to everyone who has ever struggled to drop a nasty habit.

 

I have also included a status post-laryngectomy version for you as well.

What is an “African-American”?

Theron

This lady is an African-American? That’s correct, boys and girls. Charlize Theron is a South African born actress who is now an American citizen. This is one of the many examples why the phrase “African-American” is a poorly thought out term that should be abandoned. I am officially announcing that I plan to go back to the term “black”. It is quick and easy word to say and should not be any more offensive than the term “white”. Neither are completely accurate but both give you the general idea if you need to describe someone as an eye witness or in a patient’s chart. I don’t plan to change again regardless of which way the politically correct winds are blowing, unless of course the media comes up with something cool like “melanin-riddled”.