so I tried to practice an eye exam on my mom with my ophthalmoscope and as soon as I had it trained on her eye, bandaid went nuts and jumped all over her.  


apparently he LOVES chasing the small light circle...guess that's one thing I will never be good at.

so I've been in the medical field since 2004 and still haven't heard some of these slang terms...


404 moment - The point in a doctor's ward round when medical records cannot be located. Comes from HTTP 404 error "Not Found"
ATS - Acute Thespian Syndrome (faking illness)
CNS-QNS - Central Nervous System - Quantity Not Sufficient
DBI - Dirt Bag Index - multiply the number of tattoos by the number of missing teeth to give an estimate of the number of days since the patient last bathed
Dermaholiday - dermatology department
GOMER - "get out of my emergency room"
LOBNH - Lights On But Nobody Home
Panmetabolopathy -a state wherein many (or all) metabolic parameters are out of bounds
Polybabydadic - The state of having illegitimate children by several fathers, known or unknown
TEETH - tried everything else

Man hoping to see 'ghost train' hit, killed by real train

excerpt:

"The group of people did not immediately run from the real train because they believed the train was -- in fact -- the 'ghost train' and posed no real threat, sheriff's officials said."

"Anyone can achieve their fullest potential; 
who we are might be predetermined, 
but the path we follow is always of our own choosing. 
We should never allow our fears 
or the expectations of others to set the frontiers of our destiny. 
Your destiny can't be changed, 
but it can be challenged. 
Every man is born as many men 
and dies as a single one."

56 percent of MBA students acknowledged cheating according to bloomberg

so I was hoping there was a bandaid halloween costume for bandaid...no luck so far, but some of my favorites from the search:

sign on wall at bandaid's kennel:

unattended children will be given an espresso

and one free puppy

the diacritical mark on the "n" in habanero (considered a tilde) is considered "hyperforeignism..." it isn't correct, and may be a result of words like jalapeno which are correctly spelled with the tilde on the n

Franko loses Cow-milking competition

Even before the first pitch was thrown out Sunday evening there was a hard fought battle on the field.

Joey Frisco, of 95.9 WIOP - Charleston's Greatest Hits, took on Brad Franko, the morning anchor on WCBD-TV, in the RiverDogs' annual cow milking competition prior to Sunday's game vs. the Savannah Sand Gnats.

The contest was all part of Dairy Day at the ballpark, which was presented by The Southeast Dairy Association in conjunction with Coburg Dairy and Piggly Wiggly.

Franko came in the contest with an air of confidence around him, and for good reason, the NBC News 2 anchor had previously won the competition three times. In a show of good sportsmanship, the former champion allowed Frisco to go first.

Frisco was able to coax a sufficient amount of milk from Butter the cow, provided by Terry Thomas.

Franko faced a daunting task in topping Frisco's milk total. The three-time champ responded with a strong showing, but was unable to top the WIOP DJ's total.

As Frisco accepted this year's crown, the look of disappointment and disdain on the former champion Franko's face was evident. But ultimately, the two personalities shook hands, posed for a quick photo op with Butter and went on to enjoy the rest of Dairy Day's activities and the ensuing RiverDogs game.

Game four of the RiverDogs series against the Savannah Sand Gnats is set for a 7:05 p.m. first pitch Monday night.

habanero peppers and mung bean casserole are WIC-approved items...

bell peppers and cucumbers are not

news typos, part I


the quality of news in charleston is absolutely embarrassing..."breaking news" is usually from a day or two ago, and apparently none of the writers finished 8th grade english class...


here are some I've been saving: (ok some I included because the topic is just ridiculous)

did you know...

• firefighters are 200-300% more likely to have a heart attack than other public safety workers (who are probably still more at risk than the general population)
• heart attack is the #1 cause of death among firefighters, not burns or toxin/smoke inhalation
• NEJM reported that firefighters are 136x more likely to have one while fighting a fire than when they are on "non-emergency duty"
• it's attributed to the fact that many are overweight, out of shape, and not very healthy-- they're at higher risk for coronary artery disease, so the increased stress of work increases their risk for heart attacks immensely

what's interesting to me is that their job doesn't seem to be the proximate cause, it's their lifestyles.  many have high cholesterol, heart disease, etc, which are all preventable/treatable with healthy lifestyle choices.  conclusion: if you have a high stress job, you should be extra careful about how you live your life to prevent developing those risks...

yet no one is making this connection, so fire departments aren't making more stringent restrictions regarding the health of their personnel. 

when I was a medic, I found out that a fd allowed a firefighter to complete a strenuous agility test even though he had come with extremely high blood pressure.  he nearly passed out halfway through and we ended up taking him to the hospital because they allowed him to do the course anyway...

makes no sense.

I think pretty much every pharmacist in charleston wants to strangle me today.  who knew...10 tablets of generic imitrex (thanks, sc, for my barometric migraines) costs $200????  and my insurance company is trying to find a way to prevent me from filing...agh.

I'm reading a book called south of broad by pat conroy, a fictional book set in charleston in the 1960's.  delicious!!!  even on my best day I wouldn't consider reviewing a book- I couldn't do it justice- but here's one of my favorite passages so far (and I might include some later, I love the beautiful descriptions of the city I've fallen in love with!):

because of its devotional, graceful attraction to food and gardens and architecture, Charleston stands for all the principles that make living well both a civic virtue and a standard.  it is a rapturous, defining place to grow up.  everything I reveal to you now will be charleston-shaped and charleston-governed, and sometimes even charleston-ruined.  but it is my fault and not the city's that it came close to destroying me.  though charleston can do much, it can't always improve on the strangeness of human behavior.  but charleston has a high tolerance for eccentricity and bemusement.  there is a tastefulness in its gentility that comes from the knowledge that charleston is a permanent dimple in the understated skyline, while the rest of us are only visitors.

white cats with one blue eye are likely to be deaf on that side