Doctor Curmudgeon® From the Odd Mind of A Dinosaur Doc
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By Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D. FAAP Doctor Eisman, is in Family Practice in Aventura, Florida with her partner, Dr. Eugene Eisman, an internist/cardiologist
It is indeed a busy thoroughfare…the mind of Doctor Curmudgeon.
At any hour of the day, her assiduous corpus callosum is sending signals to each side of her brain. Doctor Curmudgeon is fond of her corpus callosum. She recognizes that the term means “tough body” in Latin. It would really have to be tough to serve the physician; because although this bundle of nerve tissue has more than 200 million nerve fibers carrying impulses, it needs each and every one of them; to continue its work of enabling both sides of her brain to communicate. It is pleasant to think about her corpus callosum, that wonderful bridge, that wide nerve tract between her right and left hemispheres.
Her overactive brain is now grousing about disparate thoughts, as her corpus callosum madly sends messages so each side of her brain is aware of what is going on (apologies to neurologists and neurosurgeons).
CURMUDGEON to Hero Doctor (her husband and cardiologist/partner, whose nose is buried in a newspaper, while he sips his coffee) “There’s a plane. You can see it out the window.”
HERO DOCTOR: “Mmmph.”
CURMUDGEON: “Do you think about the Bernoulli Principle?”
HERO DOCTOR: (munching on toast and still with nose in newspaper, but now on the comic page) “Mm-mm”
CURMUDGEON: “You mean no?”
HERO DOCTOR: (now on editorial page) “You mean the principle wherein aircraft is lifted due to the shape of their wings…based on one of Isaac Newton’s laws of motion?”
CURMUDGEON: “Yes, that’s it! Wings are shaped so the air moves faster and therefore has a lower pressure on the top of the wing and slower air is underneath and has higher pressure. I was just thinking about it when I saw that plane. Do you think about it much?”
HERO DOCTOR: “Not since college.”
And with that last pithy comment, Hero Doctor rose from the breakfast table, said ‘open can,’ and threw the now empty almond milk container into the trash can.
By now, the smaller physician was on the speaker phone with a friend who said, “I could hear Hero Doctor. Is somebody else in your kitchen?”
Earlier in the day, when she was in another room, Doctor Curmudgeon had heard her husband talking to the trash can…’open can’ ‘close can’ ‘stay open.’
At first, she thought he was talking to somebody and then realized with the help of all the impulses running back and forth in her corpus callosum, that it was their trash can.
Realizing that for the sake of sanity, the can must be named…she decided that Jeeves was appropriate.
And so, without having to explain to her friend that her husband was speaking with the trash can, she was able to explain:
“He was just speaking to Jeeves!”
Dr. Curmudgeon suggests “Bitter Medicine”, Dr. Eugene Eisman’s story of his experiences–from the humorous to the intense—as a young army doctor serving in the Vietnam War.
Bitter Medicine by Eugene H. Eisman, M.D. –on Amazon
Doctor Curmudgeon® is Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D., a physician-satirist. This column originally appeared on SERMO, the leading global social network for doctors.
SERMO www.sermo.com “talk real world medicine”
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