October 31st, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Humor, True Stories
Tags: costume, Dr. Val Jones, Halloween, Jackie O., Party, Photos, Underworld, Vampire
1 Comment »
Doug and Heather
True story: three years ago in New York City I decided to attend a Halloween costume party dressed as Jackie O. My husband dutifully accompanied me as a secret service agent. I wore a mauve, tweed suit with a three-strand pearl necklace, large sunglasses, a pill box hat, white gloves, and a brown wig. We entered the party with much fanfare. I was quite pleased until someone approached and said,
“Great costume. You look JUST like Monica Lewinsky!”
I started a new diet the next day.
This year I decided to be something that no one would mistake – a vampire from the Underworld movie series. My husband was supposed to join me as a co-vampire, but this year he dug in his heels and decided to do his own thing. What could be better than a vampire escort?
Steve chose to be “Lad Armstrong,” Lance’s older brother. He wore bicycle shorts and a helmet and wrist guards, with an ankle bracelet. He claimed to have taught Lance everything he knows about cycling, but is still sore about him stealing his anklet idea and developing it into a livestrong bracelet cult.
Anyway, I thought you’d enjoy some photos from the party. Someone’s dad dressed up as a flasher. I thought it was pretty clever. Unfortunately my camera was not fast enough to capture the goods during a flash. So I’ll leave that up to your imagination.
I did have a friend help me with my vampire look. Hope you all had a safe and entertaining Halloween! What did you dress up as?
Vampire Val & Lad Armstrong
October 30th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in Humor, True Stories
Tags: Beauty, Dermatology, Dr. Val Jones, Laser, Los Angeles, Rock Star, Skin, Tattoo, Tattoo Removal
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True story: As a fourth-year medical student I spent a summer working with a dermatologist in Los Angeles. In addition to all the skin cancer removal, sun damage, and Mohs surgery patients, my preceptor had a thriving laser tattoo removal business.
One day a rock band electric guitarist came into the office requesting help for an incident he’d had the night before. Apparently he’d gotten terribly drunk (+/- stoned) and made an impulsive tattoo decision that he regretted deeply in the light of morning.
The gaunt, long-haired gentleman entered the dermatology suite with his head hung low. He sat down in the exam chair and explained that he was there for a tattoo removal consultation. “Man, I can’t believe I did this to myself,” he muttered as he unbuttoned his shirt.
I wondered what on earth could be so terrible…
And then I saw it.
It was an 8 inch by 4 inch, bright yellow and black tattoo…
On the left side of his neck…
An exact replica of…
The periodic table of the elements.
September 18th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in True Stories
Tags: Humor, Nuclear Medicine, Radiology
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I had the pleasure of interviewing the former president of the Society of Nuclear Medicine recently about the financial challenges threatening his specialty. (Reimbursement is not keeping up with the cost of technology).
As I prepared for the interview, I called in to the general society number to be transfered to his line.
The receptionist answered:
“SNM”
I paused for quite a few seconds as my cogs and wheels turned, wondering if I had misdialed. Nope, that’s just how they answer their phones over there. Ahem.
September 18th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in True Stories
Tags: Emergency Medicine, Family Medicine, Humor, Internal Medicine, Medical Art, Pathology, Urology
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I love my new blog web designer. She is incredibly talented, and has the uncanny ability to capture concepts with images. In fact, if you’d like to comment on this post to offer her a “high five” for this website design, I’m sure she’d appreciate it. Her name is Beata.
When Beata and I sat down to try to figure out how to express my “style” she asked me what kind of visuals I was drawn to. I showed her the Medi-mation website since I have a soft spot for 3-D science animation. She said she’d like to start with some microscopic images and stylize them for me so that they were suggestive of medical images, but not too literal.
Beata offered me a series of background patterns to choose from for my landing page. I did an abrupt halt over this one though: Read more »
August 12th, 2008 by Dr. Val Jones in True Stories
Tags: HIV/AIDS, Hospitals, Infectious Disease, Medical Ethics
4 Comments »
Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.
–Mark Twain
I am out of town for the week and will be blogging sporadically. I hope you enjoy this true story/repost:
***
I remember a case where a young internal medicine intern was taking care of a 42 year old mother of 3. The mother had HIV/AIDS and had come to the hospital to have her PEG tube repositioned. Somewhere along the way, she required a central line placement, and as a result ended up with a pretty severe line infection. The woman’s condition was rapidly deteriorating on the medicine inpatient service, and the intern taking care of her called the ICU fellow to evaluate her for admission to the intensive care unit.
The fellow examined the patient and explained to the intern that the woman had “end stage AIDS” and that excessive intensive care management would be a futile endeavor, and that the ICU beds must be reserved for other patients.
“But she was fine when she came to us, the line we put in caused her downward spiral – she’s not necessarily ‘end stage,’” protested the intern.
The fellow wouldn’t budge, and so the intern was left to manage the patient – now with a resting heart rate of 170 and dropping blood pressure. The intern stayed up all night, aggressively hydrating the woman and administering IV antibiotics with the nursing staff.
The next day the intern called the ICU fellow again, explaining that the patient was getting worse. The ICU fellow responded that he’d already seen the patient and that his decision still stands. The intern called her senior resident, who told her that there was nothing he could do if the ICU fellow didn’t want to admit the patient.
The intern went back to the patient’s room and held her cold, cachectic hand. “How are you feeling?” she asked nervously.
The frail woman turned her head to the intern and whispered simply, “I am so scared.”
The intern decided to call the hospital’s ethics committee to explain the case and ask if it really was appropriate to prevent a young mother from being admitted to the ICU if she had been in reasonable health until her recent admission. The president of the ethics committee reviewed the case immediately, and called the ICU fellow’s attending and required him to admit the patient. Soon thereafter, the patient was wheeled into the ICU, where she was treated aggressively for sepsis and heart failure.
The next day during ICU rounds the attending physician asked for the name of the intern who had insisted on the admission. After hearing the name, he simply replied with a wry smile, “remind me never to f [mess] with her.”
The patient survived the infection and spent Mother’s Day with her children several weeks later.
This post originally appeared on Dr. Val’s blog at RevolutionHealth.com.
