Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog

I seldom link to Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog, but I subscribe to in my RSS reader so I never miss a post. Kevin is a practicing primary-care physician, and he has a knack for finding interesting medical related stories that I’d never hear about otherwise, served up Instapundit-style. He is also the go-to guy for links and information about what national health care socialized medicine would really be like if we implement it here - from both the patient and the physician point of view.

Here’s a couple of his posts that caught my eye this week -

From doctor to typo-squatter
Wondering who’s behind the misspelled domain names like “google.cm” and “paper.cm”?

When you mistype google.com and spell it google.cm, you end up on a website owned by a doctor; one of tens of thousands that he owns. It’s a very interesting story. He’s a devout Christian, and just sort of stumbled into this business after he became fascinated with the internet in the late 90s. Imagine making $70 million a year on typos! In case you didn’t know, you can type the middle of the domain name, i.e. “google” (without the quotes) and hold down the Ctrl key while you press Enter. That will automatically fill in the http://www. and the .com parts of the address. Shift + Enter to get .org addresses, and Alt + Shift + Enter for .net.

This next story made me laugh, because it took me back to something that really did happen to me. While working on renovations at my mother’s house, I managed to sprain my ankle. After soaking it in a bucket of ice water, it was still swollen to about double it’s normal size and the pain when I tried to put weight on it was excruciating. I was reluctant to go anywhere, because I was wearing faded gray shorts that had started life as black sweatpants, and a tee shirt with holes in it. One hole was just above my heart, and for modesty’s sake I had “sewed” it up with duct tape. (Hey, I was dressed appropriately… we were installing crown molding, painting, and laying tile!) Finally my husband dragged me off to the ER, where I waited for about an hour, suffering as much from mortification as from the injury. Another woman was in the waiting room, evidently waiting for a ride. With her was her toddler, an absolutely precious and well-behaved little girl, and the mother was pointing at various items and doing the “Can you say…?” thing. The one that got me was “Can you say amboolan? AM-boo-lan. We took the amboolan because I had a sprained toe. Aaaaambooooolaaaan.” I didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.

As hilariously bad as that was, this story that Kevin linked to topped it.

“My insurance will pay for it”
A woman takes an ambulance to the ER for a pregnancy test.

Because, hey! when it’s “free,” you might as well use it, right? “Universal healthcare” is going to be fabulous - what could go wrong? Here’s a bit to whet your appetite:

Me (after reading triage sheet and rolling my eyes): Hi, I’m Dr.____. I’m the doctor in charge of the EMERGENCY Department tonight. I see that you came by AMBULANCE. What was so bad that you had to call 9-1-1 at 3 AM to be rushed to the EMERGENCY ROOM by AMBULANCE? What is your MEDICAL EMERGENCY? What is your LIFE OR LIMB THREATENING problem??
Patient (clueless to the sarcasm): Oh, I think I’m pregnant again.
Me (thinking that this clueless girl still don’t get it): You must be in a lot of pain or bleeding severely to come in by ambulance, huh?
Patient: No. I just didn’t have a ride.
Me: So you’re not having any pain or vaginal bleeding?
Patient: No, no pain. No bleeding.
Me: Did you take a home pregnancy test?
Patient: I didn’t have one.
Me: You know they sell them at Walmart. They’re open 24 hrs.
Patient: Well I couldn’t go to Walmart in the middle of the night.

My outrage-ometer pegged out but I also couldn’t help but laugh. So go have a look - you don’t need to be a medical professional to enjoy the blog, and I’ve actually learned some very interesting and helpful things. For example, I don’t get as furious as I used to when, after waiting in the doctor’s office for an hour, I see a drug rep sashay right back because now I know more about how that whole process works. Kevin, M.D. is well worth the read.

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