News that shouldn't be
So I'm supposed to be finishing a presentation on Cecal Volvulus for grand rounds tomorrow. Last year when I was supposed to present at Grand Rounds, I woke up 15 minutes before I was supposed to be presenting. That is about how long it normally takes to drive to work. Fortunately I arrived just as they were getting ready for me to start, and the presentation went well other than the fact that my mouth felt like chalk the whole time. It did leave me feeling frazzled the rest of the day too. I guess that's all a result of the sympathetic system on overdrive.
Anyway, I'm hoping to avoid a repeat of that tomorrow. I have some great intraoperative pictures showing a huge cecum and a necrotic transverse colon. Pictures enable the audience to feel like they were right there, thereby making the presentation more interesting. In case it wasn't already one of your life goals, I would recommend putting not ever being an "interesting case" right up there with some of your top priorities.
So I was reading over some news stories as a way of procrastinating my work on this project. I ran across the headline "World's Oldest Woman Dies." Somethings just shouldn't be news. I think I've seen that headline every week or two the past year. The world's oldest person is supposed to die. Its what the oldest person does, usually fairly imminently. Its kind of like running the headline, "Worlds Youngest Person Born." You could run that story every day and talk about what genetic/environmental factors caused them to be youngest person alive. You could throw in some cute baby pictures (you could even use the same picture every day since babies generally look the same), and your newspaper would sell like hotcakes. I will give it to you that a life lived 116 years should be celebrated, but still, a 116 year old person dying should not be news. So anyway, the next time that you see a headline proclaiming that the world's oldest person has died, write a letter to the editor asking when the story about the world's youngest person being born is going to run.
Anyway, I'm hoping to avoid a repeat of that tomorrow. I have some great intraoperative pictures showing a huge cecum and a necrotic transverse colon. Pictures enable the audience to feel like they were right there, thereby making the presentation more interesting. In case it wasn't already one of your life goals, I would recommend putting not ever being an "interesting case" right up there with some of your top priorities.
So I was reading over some news stories as a way of procrastinating my work on this project. I ran across the headline "World's Oldest Woman Dies." Somethings just shouldn't be news. I think I've seen that headline every week or two the past year. The world's oldest person is supposed to die. Its what the oldest person does, usually fairly imminently. Its kind of like running the headline, "Worlds Youngest Person Born." You could run that story every day and talk about what genetic/environmental factors caused them to be youngest person alive. You could throw in some cute baby pictures (you could even use the same picture every day since babies generally look the same), and your newspaper would sell like hotcakes. I will give it to you that a life lived 116 years should be celebrated, but still, a 116 year old person dying should not be news. So anyway, the next time that you see a headline proclaiming that the world's oldest person has died, write a letter to the editor asking when the story about the world's youngest person being born is going to run.
posted by The Mad Hatter at 6:59 PM
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