My roommate, a first year med student, tells the story about learning about fecal-oral transmission of HepA. A classmate leaned over to him and whispered, “I got the Hep A vaccine…so I can eat all the poop I want!”

Oh to be a first year again.

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I think the Product(RED) stuff is kind of lame, and it seems like more has been spent on its advertising than it’s actually going to generate for HIV and AIDS treatment in Africa. Maybe I’m wrong.

But I’m still one to do my part. Introducing the newest Product(RED) line, Product(MEDRED):

And for my Spanish-speaking colleagues:

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While reviewing infections of the neck and complications of strep throat, I read about PANDAS , which stands for Pediatric Autoimmune Neuropsychiatric Disorders Associated with Streptococcal Infections.

I hereby decree that all new Pediatric Syndromes must have similarly-cutesy acronyms. Like BUBBLEGUM or DUCKY or KITE or BINKY or BUNNY. Alternative spellings, like ELEFUNT, are acceptable.

(Not trying to offend anyone here, the name of the disease is cutesy, obviously the disease itself nor the patients it affects are being joked at.)

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Curse ye, Lords of HIPAA! We had a patient with the funniest name ever, but I obviously cannot mention it. Le suck.

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Just moved up to San Francisco, and already beginning to call it home.

I swear this is not Photoshopped–I saw it driving by me last week:

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Now I could go for this. Playing video games before surgery reduced a laparoscopic procedure time by 11 seconds . 11 seconds is a long time if you’ve got a bad bleed.

How long do you scrub in? Longer than your attending. How long do you play Mario Brothers? Longer than your attending.

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I humbly present, for your approval, evidence that most spammers are really, really schizophrenic and need to get back on their meds. We’ve got some serious derailments, thought blocking, and loose associations going on. Some recent messages:

with lower spurs of the Mountain. Two of these here thrust forward west
from the main mass in long steep-sided ridges that fell ever downwards
towards the plain. On this western side there were fewer signs of the
dragons marauding feet, and there was some grass for their ponies. From
this western camp, shadowed all day by cliff and wall until the sun
began to sink towards the forest, day by day they toiled in parties

if they saw him stoop; and even grownup he had still spent a deal of his
time at quoits, dart-throwing, shooting at the wand, bowls, ninepins and
other quiet games of the aiming and throwing sort-indeed he could do
lots of things, besides blowing smoke-rings, asking riddles and cooking,
that I havent had time to tell you about. There is no time now. While
he was picking up stones, the spider had reached Bombur, and soon he

mommy porterhouse kulak remorse attrition chimeric callahan drophead studio pigtail
permitted salaried cityscape whelan daphne concession secretary bella liturgic
impregnate antagonist bandit coed cognitive nude trudy afterglow cordite lens stoichiometry
angling thetis polecat birthday mattson coachmen mackerel serendipity
booky obeisant spartan carfare percent elect amplitude adagio
phlox ferocious kite plight sandpile leper typesetter ciliate

You see, when some schizophrenics are really sick, their speech gets all garbled up. People start speaking circumstantially –you ask a question and they’ll eventually answer it, but only at a very roundabout way. If they’re speaking tangentially , they go off on a tangent, and never actually answer your question. Even worse, they might start to have a flight of ideas –they start saying phrases that are somewhat related to each other, perhaps the last word of one sentence starts the next sentence: “All around the mulberry bush, the monkey chases the weasel… Weasels are great pets!” (Sometimes if it’s all rhyming words together, that’s clanging .) The most confusing are phrases using loose associations –the sentences don’t even relate to each other anymore. Thought blocking occurs when patients stop talking mid-sentence, and report having their train of thought totally disrupted.

I’d say the spammers need some Haldol, stat.

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