Who's your doccy?

Here's some more Thursday link-up lovins coming your way! I'm linking up with DJ at Medicine: A Love Story to share more med-love antics. Click on the icon above to visit her blog and to view this week's link up posts.

Today's topic: Which fictional doctor is your significant other most like?

If you aren't in a relationship with a medical significant other (let's hereafter refer to them as med sig-O's, shall we?), allow me to let you in on a little secret: all these medical shows they've got on tv nowadays, while admittedly pumping up the drama and sex a bit for ratings, can actually come pretty close to portraying the different doc personalities you might come across at your local hospital.

Say whaaaat?! They've got McDreamys up in that biz?

Yes. And McSteamys, people. Just check out the hottttay I married.

(The one exception I'll make to this is that we've yet to come across a Doogie Howser, although sometimes attendings treat med students like 14 year olds.)

That being the case, when I started to think about today's topic, it wasn't too tough to pinpoint things in on-screen docs' personalities that reminded me of D. The trouble was, there wasn't any one fictional doc who fit the bill completely. So I did what any reasonable person faced with such a conundrum would do: I made a love-child.

The heart, soul, and gosh-I-could-just-sit-here-on-this-gurney-in-the-basement-eating-potato-chips-and-waxing-poetic-with-you-all-day-ness of George O'Malley. Wit, humor, and elevated probability of finding himself in the thick of some whacky hijinks akin to J.D. That's my guy.

But Neil Patrick Harris will totally play him once we sell our story to FX (it has be a network that can air the word "sh*t").

The 'schmerz

It's that time again, folks! Today I'm linking up with DJ at Medicine: A Love Story to share more med-love antics. Click on the icon below to visit her blog and learn how to take part as a blogger, or at least see what everyone else has to say about today's topic.

The prompt: What's the most interesting medical fact you've learned vicariously?

 
Since Dr. D and I are going on five years of the medically graphic over-sharing dinner conversations (four years of med school and over half of intern year), there isn't much that shocks me anymore. Oh, to be again the wide-eyed innocent who nearly spit out her cereal after moving the Sunday morning paper only to uncover a textbook page full of diseased penises (penisi? I really feel like that should be penisi... can someone with some clout in med linguistics get on that?).

If you've been with me from the beginning of this blog--just Mom? okay, cool, no worries--then you may recall me blogging about a few medical facts that I learned and deemed traumatic enough to warrant infliction upon others. Like discovering that I didn't drink enough urine as an embryo, or that death-breath is a thing, or even what it's like to inhale the smell of burned flesh.

But I think that out of all of the medical knowledge I've unwittingly amassed, my favorite factoids tend to be the ones regarding medical terminology. I'm a fan of words. Always have been. Give me a medical phrase that sounds like a Harry Potter spell, and I will be entertained for hours. Seriously, hours, if not days.

So imagine my glee when D came home one day and said, "You know what's a fun word?

"Mittelschmerz."

Um, yes. Yes it is. Particularly when attempting to say it three times quickly, a la Beetlejuice. I loved this new word! I took to that sucker like a toddler who just learned her first curse word, and he let me walk around the house jabbering about it for a solid half hour before telling me what it actually meant. Why didn't I inquire about the meaning, you ask? Because I. love. words. and I was too distracted.

Too bad it means "the abdominal pains occurring between menstrual periods." Way to take a fun word and assign it to something that is NO JOKE, Germans.

Are you high??

Let's be honest: if I'm going to participate in my first blogging link up, who better to link up with than one of my first blogging friends-who-is-also-a-stranger-but-not-really-because-yay-internet? DJ writes a blog I visit every day, and I follow it because she makes me laugh and generally feel like I'm not the only one whose life has kinda flown the cuckoo's nest because I'm in love with a guy in the medical profession.

Imagine my glee when, after a prolonged blogging hiatus, I returned to find that DJ had just set out on a new blogging endeavor called Medicine: A Love Story. The only thing better than experiencing our own shenanigans at home related to being in residency is reading about other people's shenanigans during residency. It has a normalizing effect, and I love it.

So, on to today's link up.

The prompt: What's the craziest/funniest conversation/experience you've had as a result of sleep deprivation?

 
There have been plenty of screwball conversations between Dr. D and I that have been tinged by Step-study dazes and post-call sleep deprivation. To wit, this particular text exchange between us as D went to get drug tested (chillax! D hasn't developed a drug habit. Testing is a required procedure for all interns rotating at our children's hospital) after being on an overnight shift:

I'd like to think this illustrated two things rather nicely: (1) We're super mature about drugs, and (2) D was too tired to even remember where he lived. I really hope they didn't attribute his blood-shot eyes and disorientation to something else.