What?

Saturday was my day off. I decided to spend part of it catching up with my brother who recently ventured off on his own and began a startup internet price engine. We spoke about the business and the general state of the market.

During the two hour conversation he told me about how "spiders” were “continually crawling his site” and “indexing pages” into the search. How he had to track “IP address” and other “browsers” to determine charges that would be incurred. This incomprehensible soup was spewing out of him like honey. Had I the guts to explain I understood but a simple portion of our initial conversation and nothing else (Specifically, when we exchanged goodbyes) I would have endured an hour long lecture. But the experience truly shocked me, the exploration of my internet age ignorance that is.

When did it get to this? We speak English mostly everywhere but even our English is divided into Spanglish, Slang and Rap. Then there's Ebonics and Spanish and in certain areas you can't get along if you don't speak the local vernacular.

I am so glad that as a part of the medical community we are not privy to these types of miscommunications, everything is plain and simple. Our vocabulary, an example of brevity and clarity.

So, the other day when a Surgery consult came to ask me to clarify what was written in the chart of a patient I had recently admitted I stared at him in sudden disbelief. Why it’s clear as night and day. The chart read, "64 y/o m was in USOH 2 d/ PTA, BIBEMS w/ c/o pain in LE and SOB, please r/o DVT/ PE. Obtain duplex, get a V/Q, D-dimer and spiral CT/ PE Protocol".

Where did this guy come from, Mars?

An oldie but goodie from the archive. Check the comment section for an explanation of the chart.