No Method, Just Madness

I have this distinct memory of sitting in a GI lecture in medical school.  We were learning about different anastomoses (pleural for “anastomosis”, the medical term for the surgical joining of  two organs or spaces that are not normally connected).  As one who has performed countless numbers of these since med school, the term “anastomosis” is now part of the language that I speak routinely…but at the time, it was a shiny, brand new word.  My friend, E, was sitting next to me in lecture, scribbling furiously in his notebook.  He wasn’t predisposed to feverish note-taking so I leaned in to see what he was up to.   He’d drawn his loose interpretation of an anastomosis, an image that I will never likely forget.  Behold, my dear three readers…below is my recreation of E’s original drawing: 

That shit still makes me laugh.  (Thanks for that, E.)

I’m not sure how we arrived at the topic but I was telling my colleagues about E’s drawing today while we were scrubbed in on a case.  The attending surgeon I was working with chuckled and then mentioned this one time when he was proofreading a transcribed operative report that he’d dictated.   He’d made mention in his dictation of the incidental finding of “fibroids in the uterus” of the patient.  But that’s not what the transcriptionist heard.  Below, I give you my schematic recreation of the transcriptionist’s interpretation…

Fireballs in the Eucharist.  That was actually transcribed into a patient’s medical record.  And she thought her biggest problem was a few benign tumors in her uterus?  Little did she know that what actually sprung forth from her loins was ARMAGEDDON!