For a few weeks now, I’ve been thinking about a pseudonym for my new sister in law. She and Super Cop got married a few months ago, but I haven’t gotten around to adding her to my cast of characters on this site. While I don’t want to scare her (and it may be too late for that), she’s not getting off the hook on the blog thing. No one in my family gets immunity from being exploited in blogland. Sorry, that’s just the way it rolls around here. I do try to be considerate in my exploitation, though.
Since she’s a nurse I thought I’d come up with a name reflecting her career. I pondered famous nurses but didn’t come up with anything appropriate. Florence Nightingale doesn’t lend itself to catchy aliases. Margaret Sanger is a little obscure. I thought about Hot Lips Hula-han (Get it? HULA-han?), but that would give strangers stumbling onto this site the wrong impression about her. She’s a very nice lady. So I did what any good internet piddler does, I hopped on over to Google and checked out nursing terms. That didn’t yield anything promising, so I researched nursing slang. It didn’t really turn up a name, but Lordy, it gave me some laughs. You people have no idea what the medical profession is saying about us, the general public when we are sitting in the ER or laying in a hospital bed. Now, every profession has its slang terms, some of them not too kind to the drunken and ignorant. People who work in stressful jobs like medicine and law enforcement have to relieve the tension somehow. They deal with so much death and dysfunction that they’d cry on their way to work every day if they didn’t laugh at the crazy stuff that happens to them on the job. It was that way in journalism. We used to laugh at some sick stuff, but we never had the repertoire of slang terms that nurses and doctors do. Oh, I had already heard a few of them like:
· Baby Catcher - an obstetrician
· Doc in a Box - a small health-care center, usually with high staff turnover and
· Donorcycle - nursing slang for a motorcycle, so named due to the amount of head trauma associated with motorcycle accident, but less so with the body, making the perfect candidate for organ donation
But some of these were new to me and left me snorting onto my keyboard. For example:
· Code Brown - a fecal incontinence emergency. Often used by nurses and medical technicians requesting help cleaning up an unexpected bowel movement.
· Code Yellow - a patient who has lost control of his or her bladder
· CTD - "Circling The Drain" May also mean "Certain To Die"
· DBI - "Dirt Bag Index", multiplies the number of tattoos with the number of missing teeth to give an estimate of the number of days since the patient last bathed. (In television news these are the viewers most likely to talk on camera following a tornado or train derailment.)
· Departure lounge - geriatric ward
· Digging for Worms - varicose vein surgery
· Freud Squad - the psychiatry department
· Gas Passer - an anesthesiologist
· Handbag positive - confused patient (usually elderly lady) lying on hospital bed clutching handbag
There were several related to inebriation:
· Hasselhoff - A term for any patient who shows up in the emergency room with an injury for which there is a bizarre explanation. Original Source: Baywatch actor David Hasselhoff, who hit his head on a chandelier while shaving. The broken glass severed four tendons and an artery in his right arm.
· UBI - "Unexplained Beer Injury"
· DFO - Drunk and Fell Over
· Two beers - the number of beers every patient involved in an alcohol-related automobile accident claims to have drunk before the accident. Hubby and I have a game we play while watching Cops. Every time an officer asks a driver how much he’s had to drink, we shout “Two beers” in unison with the driver. Sorry, we’re easily amused.
· Incarceritis - becoming dubiously ill when arrested or in court
· Chrome Induced Ischaemia - patient that develops inexplicable chest pains when arrested and handcuffed.
My favorite slang terms, though were the ones related to the colon and kidneys, because…well…I’m just immature enough to enjoy a good constipation joke.
. Bobbing for apples - unblocking a badly constipated patient with one's finger.
. Chocolate Hostage – constipated
. Coffee and a Newspaper - Patient is Constipated (i.e. long time sitting on toilet with drink and reading matter)
. Cranial rectosis – butthead
. Grapes – hemorrhoids
. Guts and Butts - general surgery
. Penal Colony - renal ward
. Stream team - urology dept
There were many others that were just not family friendly enough to include here. Oh, what the heck! Here’s one of them.
. Brothel Sprouts - Genital warts. Sorry, I couldn’t stop myself.
A few were just down right crude like:
. Pumpkin positive- refers to the idea that a person's brain is so tiny that a penlight shone into their mouth will make their empty head gleam like a Halloween pumpkin.
. Cockroach Factor - a patient's ability to survive trauma or serious treatment is inversely proportional to his contribution to society
. Loose Change - dangling limb in need of amputation.
. Q-Tip - Elderly person (white haired old person)
. Callbellectomy - minor operation, sadly not permitted, to remove over-used call bell from patient's hand/reach!
. Rapid Lead Infusion - obnoxious patient ought to be shot
But my very favorite, aside from Chocolate Hostage, was this one:
. DFO-SFJ - Done Fell Out - Screaming For Jesus
That just cracks me up. So, here I sit with a belly full of laughs, but still no name for the new addition to our family. If you have any ideas let me know, and in the meantime, if you’re sitting in the hospital and someone mentions bobbing for apples, run….like the wind…or try a DFO-SFJ.
