Overheard at the hospital,

or "What not to say to patients."

Before I recently sedated a patient for his endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography (henceforth ERCP), the gastroenterologist was reiterating the logic of the plan to the 80-year-old patient.

"We have to put in the biliary stent first. If we were to place the duodenal stent first and then your biliary system becomes obstructed, that would be the straw that broke the camel's back. I mean, that would be the final nail in your...(awkward pause)...roof."

Probably best to stay away from death metaphors in the hospital setting.

Another subway poem

A Little Tooth by Thomas Lux is a very short one I noticed today on the subway after a post-call breakfast with Justin and his brother Nick.

The only thing I didn't like about it is that the meter is a bit uneven...usually there are four iambs per line, but sometimes more, and other times the feet aren't iambs at all. The subway car was in a near uproar about it this morning.

Another visitor

My brother David came to visit for a few days this week during his spring break. Even though I had to work while he was here, I still managed to arrange a few fun things, including:

• Friends over (my "mistress" small group with Dustin and Mavis) Sunday night for snacks and a Chinese movie Hero, which reminded me of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon only with a little less martial arts and a better plot.
• Dinner with Justin and Wen at a Chinese-Peruvian restaurant on Monday
• The Leipzig Orchestra's performance of Mahler's Fifth Symphony on Tuesday night at Carnegie Hall with Hansen
• Some of my own small group members--Ezer, Jan, William, & Katherine--over for apple crumble on Wednesday night.

Saturn

This was a cool photo I found on CNN.com (article here). It's amazing that with everything humankind can do (e.g., gathering information from the far reaches of the universe), it took this long to get a photo like this.

Return of the comma

From the February 24, 2007 edition of The Economist, in an article about "off-shore" financial centres, er, centers like Dubai and Bermuda:

"Those that [become tax havens], they found, are overwhelmingly small, wealthy and, especially, well governed, with sound legal institutions, low levels of corruption and check and balances on government."

I count seven commas. I'm told that standard English is moving toward less and less punctuation; if this example is any indication, however, I'd have to disagree. On the other hand, I do note that in the constructions of a series with a first, second and third item in the list, the comma has been omitted after the second.