Текст книги "Dude, Where's my Stethoscope?"

Автор книги: Donovan Gray

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Текущая страница: 4 (всего у книги 14 страниц)

“Stretch the truth a little bit?”

“Okay, I’m going to lie.”

Switchboard puts the call through.

“Hi, this is Luba at the Pink Elephant Detox Centre speaking. How may I help you?”

“Hi Luba, this is Dr. Gray calling from the ER. I have a patient here I’d like to transfer to your facility.”

“Certainly. What’s your client’s name?”

“Rocky Emesis.”

“ Rocky Emesis?”

“Er, yes. Are you familiar with him?”

“Extremely. When was his last drink?”

“Um… I don’t think he’s had anything so far today.”

“What condition is he in right now?”

“Not too bad.”

“Would you mind holding for a minute, doctor?”

“No problem.”

The instant I’m put on hold, some god-awful Perry Como-esque lounge lizard tune starts playing. Whoever invented muzak should be drawn and quartered. My mind drifts. Luba must be discussing the case with someone higher up the food chain. Does that mean she suspects I’m bullshitting her? I cross my fingers and continue holding.

Nearly a minute later she clicks back on.

“I’d like to speak to the client, please,” she says.

Oh crap. Is the Rock Man coherent enough to pass a detox phone screen?

“Um, I think he’s in the bathroom right now.”

Pretty lame, but it’s the best I can do on the spur of the moment.

“He’s not vomiting, is he? We definitely do not accept clients who are actively vomiting.”

How about if they’re passively vomiting?

“Oh no, he’s not vomiting, he’s just having a pee.”

“So he’ll be out shortly, then. I’ll wait for him.”

I jog over to Rocky’s stretcher. He’s fast asleep.

“Rocky! Wake up!”

“Eh?”

“I’m trying to get you a bed at the Pink Elephant. Come talk to the nice lady and tell her you’re okay.”

“Feel kinda pukey.”

“Just tell her you feel all right!”

“Okay, okay.”

I drag him over to the phone.

“Hi, Luba. This is Dr. Gray again. Here’s Rocky.”

I hand Rocky the phone. Is it just my imagination, or does he look a little green? Must be the fluorescent lights.

“Hello?” I hear Luba say.

“Huurr… .”

“Hello?”

“Huuurrrraaaalp!” replies Rocky as he covers the telephone with more Pop Tarts and Big Macs.

I guess I’ll be admitting him after all!

Alanna’s Birth

On the evening of June 2, 1993, Jan went into labour. The next morning our eldest daughter, Ellen, was born. Everything went smoothly.

On September 3, 1994, our second daughter, Kristen, arrived. Once again there were no complications.

By mid-October the following year Jan was two weeks away from the end of her third pregnancy. Over the preceding two weeks she had noticed a slight reduction in fetal movements, but it hadn’t been enough of a decline to concern us. On the morning of October 21 the baby stopped moving altogether. We contacted Miles, our family doctor. He was partway through a 24-hour shift in the emergency department. He asked Jan to come in for a non-stress test. To our relief, during the test the baby stirred a little. There wasn’t much beat-to-beat variability, though, so Jan was admitted for induction of labour.

By suppertime the Syntocinon drip was producing regular contractions and active cervical dilatation. At about 7:00 p.m. we started to see a few late decelerations. They made me jittery. I don’t do obstetrics, but I know late decelerations can sometimes be a sign of fetal distress. Half an hour later an artificial rupture of membranes was performed. The amniotic fluid that gushed out was nearly black with meconium. Our baby was in trouble.

Switchboard was asked to put the OR team on alert. As Miles deliberated over whether or not to proceed directly to a C-section, one of the ward nurses rushed into the room to show him a rhythm strip from an inpatient who was complaining of feeling light-headed. His heart rate was only 30, and his blood pressure was 75 systolic. Miles and I looked at the tracing together and concluded he was in complete heart block.

I knew exactly what he was thinking: This can’t wait. Now he had a second critically ill patient to deal with, and we were the only two doctors in the building. On the monitor behind Miles I could see our baby’s heart rate was taking an extraordinarily long time to recover from the last uterine contraction. I caught Jan’s eye. She looked scared.

“How about if you take care of Jan and the baby and I’ll go treat this guy in heart block?” I offered.

“Good idea,” he said. He turned his attention back to the fetal heart monitor. I abandoned my wife and followed the nurse back to the cardiac patient’s room.

First we started him on a dopamine drip and titrated it up until his pulse and blood pressure improved. We then attached the external pacemaker to his chest and tested it to make sure it would work properly if we needed it in a hurry. Once that was finished I got on the horn to the internist on call at the Timmins and District Hospital, which was our closest referral centre. He agreed to insert a transvenous pacer as soon as we got the patient down to their ICU. I called our ambulance attendants and asked them to start working on transfer arrangements. When I hung up the phone and turned around, Miles was standing in the doorway. The look on his face said bad news. He gave it to me straight: “The baby’s heart rate dropped down to 60 and stayed there. I’ve scrambled the OR team and we’re setting up for an emergency section.” My guts went ice cold.

I went into the operating room to spend a few minutes with Jan before the surgery. My colleagues were bustling about setting up equipment, but the only thing I could hear was the beep…beep…beep… of the fetal heart monitor. It was agonizingly slow.

Our regular anaesthetist was out of town that day, but fortunately for us a retired GP-anaesthetist in the community bravely volunteered to put Jan under. When he was ready to begin the induction, Trish the charge nurse shooed me out of the room.

“Go on now. Today you’re a dad, not a doctor. I’ll call you when we’re done.” It felt strange leaving the OR and hearing the sliding doors snap shut behind me.

This I learned later: Dr. Hill quickly cut through the layers of tissue until he got to the uterus. He opened it up, reached in and began to pull. Several seconds passed and still no head emerged. He kept working at it. Nothing.

“What’s wrong?” someone asked.

“Stuck.”

He continued struggling. Sweat beaded on his brow. Eventually he muscled the head out. It was purple. The baby’s eyes were closed. She wasn’t breathing.

“Cord’s around the neck. Damned tight,” he muttered.

He strained until he was able to pry the noose-like cord encircling her neck and wriggle it over her head. She remained limp and unresponsive.

“Another loop,” he said as he removed a second strangulating coil of umbilical cord from her neck. “And another. And another!”

The cord had been wrapped around her neck four times, choking her every time she tried to move. He hauled the rest of her flaccid body out of the uterus and cut the cord.

Miles grabbed the Ambu bag and started ventilating her. While he bagged, Catherine, a nurse who often helped with neonatal resuscitations, listened for a heartbeat. It was barely detectable. She immediately began chest compressions. They worked together feverishly. Moments later the Ambu bag shattered into half a dozen pieces. Catherine and Miles stared at each other, wide eyed. This was unprecedented. The equipment is tested regularly.

“We need another Ambu bag, stat!” Miles yelled at Trish.

“That’s the only one for newborns we have in the OR! I’ll go get one from the delivery room on unit 4!” She darted out of the room. Our child lay inert on the table. Catherine started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Miles took over chest compressions.

I was standing in the hallway just outside the OR when Trish burst through the sliding doors. Arms and legs flailing, she looked like the devil himself was chasing her. When she saw me she stopped running, said “Hi” nervously, and speed-walked over to the door to unit 4. She went in and shut the door quietly behind her. The instant it closed I could hear her sprinting down the hallway. I leaned against the wall and tried to breathe. I didn’t know what to do. Should I go inside and try to help? Would I be able to make any sort of meaningful contribution, or would I just get in the way?

Trish came thundering back. As soon as she came through the door she glanced at me furtively and slowed to a walk. She was carrying a neonatal Ambu bag. I wanted to scream, “For God’s sake, Trish, run!” When she disappeared through the operating room’s opaque sliding doors she started running again.

Roughly 20 minutes later Miles came out to see me. He looked grim. I steeled myself for the news that our child was dead.

“It’s a girl,” he said. “The cord was wrapped around her neck four times and she came out flat. Her one-minute Apgar was only one. We ventilated her and did chest compressions…”

…but she didn’t make it…

“…and she recovered.”

“What?” I couldn’t hear anything over the blood pounding in my ears.

“She’s okay, Donovan, at least for the time being.” He smiled.

“Oh, God. Thank you, Miles.”

“I’m going to transfer her to Timmins because I’m concerned she may develop delayed respiratory problems.”

“Okay.”

I went into the OR to meet my new daughter. She had beautiful brown eyes and a shock of curly black hair. Aside from her rapid respiratory rate she looked remarkably well, considering what she had just been through. Catherine and Trish let me hold her for a little while. I wanted to talk to Jan, but she was still deeply anaesthetized. I asked Trish to tell her I’d call at the first possible opportunity. After that I raced back to our house, sent the babysitter home and arranged to have a neighbour stay with Ellen and Kristen until Jan’s parents could fly in from Winnipeg. Once all of that was done I packed an overnight bag and began the long drive down highways 11 and 655 to Timmins.

I arrived at the Timmins and District Hospital to find our EMTs unloading the patient with heart block from the ambulance. He and my daughter had travelled together in the same rig. The attendants informed me they had already taken my daughter to the neonatal unit. When I got there a pediatrician named Dr. Inman was examining her. Her breathing seemed to be more laboured than it had been earlier, but it was hard for me to be sure – it’s difficult to maintain any semblance of objectivity when the patient in question is your own child. When he completed his evaluation he told me she was stable for the time being, but that he intended to keep a close eye on her over the next several hours. He felt that due to the asphyxia and meconium it was possible her respiratory status could worsen, and if that occurred she might require intubation. The word intubation made me wince – I had visions of barotrauma, collapsed lungs, chest tubes, chronic pulmonary disease… . He patted my shoulder.

“Try not to worry,” he said. “She looks like a fighter. I think she’ll do all right.”

I had planned to rent a room at a nearby hotel, but the pediatrics staff kindly arranged for me to use one of the hospital on-call rooms. I telephoned Jan to let her know what was happening. She described how awful it had been waking up after the C-section to find the baby and me both gone. I tried to reassure her and promised I’d call back soon. After that I went to bed. It took a long time for me to fall asleep. A few minutes later the telephone rang. It was Dr. Inman.

“You’d better come back to the unit. Your daughter’s getting worse. I think we’re going to have to intubate her.”

“I’ll be right there.”

I hung up the phone and cried.

She looked ghastly. Her respiratory rate was well over 70, and her chest and abdomen heaved with each breath. Despite maximal supplemental oxygen her blood oxygen saturations (sats) were only in the low 80s. Dr. Inman explained that although it still wasn’t clear whether the problem was transient tachypnea of the newborn, respiratory distress syndrome or meconium aspiration, if she wasn’t put on a ventilator soon she’d tire out and stop breathing. I gave my consent for the procedure and left the room. I wanted to stay with her, but I couldn’t bear to witness my own child being intubated.

When I returned the tube was in place and a respiratory therapist was bagging her. Her oxygen sats had climbed to 90 percent and her colour was better.

“The procedure went well,” Dr. Inman said. “Right now she’s heavily sedated. You’d better go get some sleep. You have a long day ahead of you tomorrow – we’ll be flying her down to the neonatal ICU at McMaster first thing in the morning.”

The Medevac jet arrived at 10:00 a.m. The transfer team consisted of two NICU nurses. Like everyone else who had treated our daughter (now named Alanna) thus far, they were real pros – meticulous, skillful, and caring. They reviewed the entire case, examined her thoroughly, started two more IVs and switched her over to their own infusion pumps. After communicating with their base neonatologist they adjusted some of her medications. They then detached her from the hospital ventilator, put her in their specialized transfer isolette and reconnected her to a portable ventilator. Once all that was finished they pulled out a Polaroid camera, snapped a picture of her and handed it to me. I thanked them and put it in my knapsack. I later found out that in cases where critically ill infants die shortly after Medevac, oftentimes the pre-transfer snapshot is the only photograph the parents have of their baby taken while the child was alive. I asked the team how I’d find McMaster Children’s Hospital when I got to Hamilton. They said as long as there were no other patients requiring air ambulance evacuation they’d make room for me on the jet. I could hardly express my gratitude. An hour later we were in the air.

A ground ambulance met us at the airport in Hamilton and drove us to the hospital. Alanna had held her own during the transfer. It was beginning to look like she might survive this ordeal. As we navigated the hospital corridors on our way to the NICU, thoughts I had been keeping tightly caged broke free: Did she go too long without oxygen? Was she brain-damaged? Would she develop cerebral palsy or be profoundly handicapped? The uncertainty was maddening.

The NICU was a brightly lit sea of chaos. Each isolette was like a life raft bobbing in the turbulence. Some of the infants within the isolettes weren’t much bigger than the palm of my hand. It was hard not to stare. I tried to stay out of the way as the transfer team got Alanna settled in. Once the changeover was complete I had a brief meeting with the attending neonatologist. He said he planned to keep Alanna on her existing ventilator settings for the rest of the day. If she remained stable, they would start trying to wean her off in the morning. He asked me where I’d be staying in Hamilton. I had no clue. He gave me the phone number and address of a nearby Ronald McDonald house. I called them and secured a room. I then pulled up a seat and spent the rest of the day watching my daughter’s fragile little chest rise and fall in synch with the mechanical bellows.

To everyone’s surprise, Alanna tolerated weaning exceptionally well. After two days of respiratory support she graduated to breathing on her own. Shortly after she was liberated from the ventilator her nurse wrapped her in a warm blanket and let her sit with me in a rocking chair. It was wonderful. I wanted to cradle her in my arms forever.

That afternoon I asked the neonatologist if he had any idea how she was doing cognitively. He said it was difficult to predict such things this early in the recovery phase, but that NICU infants who were able to breastfeed successfully had a significantly higher likelihood of being neurologically intact. He recommended Jan be brought to Hamilton to bond with Alanna and initiate breastfeeding. I spoke to Miles about it. He worked some phone magic, and two days later Jan was admitted to one of McMaster’s postpartum wards.

The ink hadn’t yet dried on my wife’s admission papers before we were on our way to the NICU. Alanna’s nurses knew Jan was coming and that she’d be trying to breastfeed, so there was hint of excitement in our little corner of the room. Jan and I were both nervous. The words of the neonatologist weighed heavily on our minds: NICU infants who were able to breastfeed successfully had a significantly higher likelihood of being neurologically intact. Jan picked up Alanna and hugged her for several minutes. It was their first encounter.

When we felt we were ready, a nurse led us to an adjacent room and closed the door so we could have some privacy. Jan sat in a chair, slid part of her hospital gown to the side and undid one of the flaps of her nursing bra. She then put our daughter to her breast.

Alanna rooted around aimlessly for what seemed like an awfully long time. Our hearts sank. We put her mouth closer to its target. She fussed and fidgeted a while longer, then suddenly latched on and began gulping milk down at a furious pace. When the breast was completely drained she fell asleep, content. Jan and I were delirious with joy. Our baby was going to be fine.

Alanna hit all her milestones early. She’s a crackling ball of energy who enjoys gymnastics, trampoline, volleyball, piano, art and reading. She has never exhibited any ill effects related to her traumatic birth. We consider ourselves to be extremely lucky.

Snip, Snip

When I was single I always said I wanted to have eight kids. Eight kids! Can you imagine? I got a serious reality check when our first child was born. Ellen was a wonderful baby, but caring for her was a lot more work than I had anticipated. Feeding, burping, bathing, changing, rocking, walking, entertaining – it was a full-time job.

Kristen arrived 15 months after Ellen. She was equally marvellous, but following her birth our workload seemed to triple rather than double.

Alanna made her dramatic debut 13 months later. Suddenly we were up to our eyeballs in dirty diapers. Jan started using the word “vasectomy” a lot. Naturally, I pretended not to hear her.

One frisky night about two months after Alanna’s birth, Jan and I forgot to take appropriate precautions. The next morning I went to my office and returned with the morning-after pill. The first dose left her feeling queasy, so that evening when it was time for the final set of pills Jan considered not taking them. She telephoned her mother in Manitoba for her opinion on the matter. My usually demure mother-in-law mulled it over for about one-tenth of a second before hollering: “For God’s sake, Janet, take the pills!”

Jan took them. The next day I visited Miles and requested a vasectomy.

When you’re an MD in a small hospital it sometimes feels weird shedding your lab coat and morphing from doctor into patient, but what’s the sense of driving hundreds of kilometres to undergo procedures that can very capably be performed by your own colleagues? On V-Day I arrived at the hospital bright and early. After registering at the front desk I went to the patients’ locker room and changed into one of those ridiculous Barbie-sized gowns that always leave half your backside exposed. Who designs those things, anyway? As I walked to the operating room, a trio of ER nurses I work with passed me in the hallway.

“Snip, snip,” they cackled.

“Yeah, I love you guys, too. Say hi to Macbeth for me!”

I stepped through the sliding doors and into the OR.

Irene the head OR nurse was a cheerful, matronly type.

“Dr. Gray, I see you’re here to get ‘fixed’ this morning! Har-har! Come, lie down!” She patted one of the operating room tables. I reclined on the cold table and tried to relax, but it’s hard to unwind when you’re minutes away from having the family jewels carved up. After Irene finished setting up the surgical accoutrements, Dr. Hill arrived. The quintessential man of few words, he pulled on his gloves and padded over to me.

“Ready?”

“I guess.”

Irene lifted up the front of my gown to expose “the field.” The room was chilly, and as a result “the field” had shrunken considerably. Fortunately for my self-esteem, there were no gales of hysterical laughter. After scrubbing the area with antiseptic solution, Dr. Hill picked up a syringe.

“Freezing,” he said. The injection wasn’t nearly as painful as I had expected, but I broke into a sweat nonetheless.

“It’s all right, Dr. Gray,” said Irene. “Here’s a cool cloth for your forehead.” The cloth was surprisingly soothing. I closed my eyes and felt my body begin to loosen. A few seconds later Dr. Hill began cutting.

I daydreamed.

Hey, this isn’t so bad…  .

“Gauze,” said Dr. Hill.

My afternoon office is pretty reasonable today, so with any luck I should be home by 4:30… .

“Forceps,” said Dr. Hill.

That’ll work out well, because we have a 5:00 appointment for a family portrait at the photo studio.

“Sponge,” said Dr. Hill.

As long as I don’t have to lift the kids, I’ll be fine… .

“Cautery,” said Dr. Hill.

What’d he say? Cautery? Down there?

Zzzzt! Zzzzt! ZZZZZZZZZZT!

The world’s biggest lightning bolt crashed into an exquisitely sensitive part of my anatomy. I arched so rigidly, only my heels and the back of my head remained in contact with the table.

“Yaaaaaaaaugh!”

Dr. Hill looked sideways at me.

“Did you feel that?”

“YES!”

“Oh. Sorry. Irene, could you get me some more freezing please?”

Even though the rest of the procedure was completely painless, I was so paranoid about the possibility of another close encounter with Thor that I wasn’t able to relax. When everything was finished I thanked Dr. Hill and Irene and gimped back to the locker room.

Due to a few last-minute add-ins, my office didn’t finish until 5:00. I raced home to get ready for the portrait. While I changed into fresh clothes Jan asked me if I was sore.

“It throbs like hell,” I replied. “I’ll take some Tylenol when we get back.” We rounded up the kids and drove to the studio.

“Okay Janet, move Ellen a little bit closer to you. Donovan, could you please lift up Kristen and Alanna and put them on your lap?”

“But – ”

“Trust me, it’ll make a great shot.”

“But – ”

“I’m telling you, it’ll be perfect. That’s right…now Alanna… good. Um, Donovan?”

“Yes?”

“Are you okay? You look like you just got kicked in the you-know-whats… .”

Last Call

Recently I was paged to the emergency department at 3:00 a.m. to stitch up another Jethro. This guy was totally hammered. The story was that he was drinking peaceably with his honey when all of a sudden she up and smashed him in the head with a beer bottle. Damn! Second time she’s done that this month! Funny how these guys fall prey to so many unprovoked attacks. I’ve had several drinks with my wife over the years, and I honestly can’t remember her ever bashing my head in with a beer bottle.

Anyway, I set up all of my suturing material, cleaned off his shard-filled forehead and was just about to begin stitching when he yammered, “Hey! W-w-w-wait a minute!”

“Why?”

“I gotta take a leak.”

He rolled off the stretcher, staggered to the adjoining bathroom and slammed the door shut. Moments later I was treated to the sound of a torrential stream of used beer. Within a minute he was finished.

Watching him navigate his way back to the stretcher brought to mind images of a sailor trying to walk across a ship’s deck in the middle of a typhoon. He plopped back down on the gurney and promptly fell asleep. It wasn’t long before he was snoring like a hippo.

I quickly sewed him up (no need for local anaesthetic this time, folks), peeled off my gloves and got up to make arrangements for him to be observed in the department for a few hours.

I was halfway out the door when I heard a slurry, nearly unintelligible, “Heyyy doc, hang on a shehcond…come ovah here… .”

I turned back, intrigued. Was this guy actually going to thank me? That’s a rarity at 3:00 a.m. Most times I consider myself lucky if I don’t get barfed on.

“Heyyy doc… .”

“Yes?”

“Can you lend me 20 bucks?”

Drug Charades!

Anyone who’s worked in an ER knows about drug seekers. They’re those incredibly annoying chuckleheads who are forever trying to con us into giving them prescriptions for certain drugs. OxyContin is their Holy Grail, but Percocet, Dilaudid, fentanyl patches, or just about any narcotic will do. Sedatives and stimulants are also welcomed with open arms.

Drug seekers all seem to have cribbed notes from the same manual. They come to the ER after regular clinic hours because they know it’s harder for us to crosscheck their hinky stories when other doctors can’t be reached. It’s not uncommon to hear tales of woe involving pills that have been misplaced, stolen or eaten by the family pet. To improve their odds of getting something high on their wish list they usually claim to be either allergic or immune to all non-narcotic analgesics.

Most of these characters hobble to their allotted cubicle so melodramatically, you’d think they were on the brink of death. They’re quick to display any old wounds or surgical scars they might have. Those with no physical evidence of disease to bolster their credibility usually complain of disorders that are difficult to quantify objectively such as headache or back pain. Most seasoned ER docs come to automatically suspect malingering whenever unknown patients present with symptoms of this ilk. This attitude is unfortunate, because it undoubtedly causes us to treat some bona fide sufferers with less compassion than they deserve.

Some of the more inventive drug seekers can really put on a good show. A few years ago one fellow suckered me into giving him intravenous morphine for presumed kidney stones several times until I clued in to the fact that he only writhed about in agony when he had an audience. When I tiptoed back to his room and observed him surreptitiously he was humming a Def Leppard tune while leafing through an old People magazine. As it turned out, he had been covertly adding blood to his urine samples to trick me into thinking he had hematuria. Why on earth would someone with that much drive and creativity waste his time slumming in my ER? He should be down in Hollywood making millions alongside DiCaprio and Depp.

The list of popular swindles and scams is as long as your arm, but an exhaustive review of them all is not what I had in mind for today. No, today I just want to talk about a small subgroup of highly entertaining drug seekers: the Charaders.

In regular charades one player pantomimes a role or phrase while the others try to guess what it is. A correct guess results in jubilation and a strong feeling of camaraderie. In Drug Charades, the patient ropes the unwitting doctor into a game of trying to guess the name of the medication they’re after. Although they don’t mind dropping Godzilla-sized clues to facilitate the process, they usually try not to say the actual name of the drug themselves. Why? They’re hoping the fleeting euphoria the physician experiences when he or she finally guesses correctly will help generate a big, fat prescription.

A game of Drug Charades involving a novice physician and a veteran drug seeker might go something like this:

“Good evening, sir! I’m Floogie Howser, Doogie’s younger brother. How can I help you?”

“Well, this morning I accidentally dropped my pills into my neighbour’s aquarium and his guppies ate them all.”

“My goodness! Are they okay?”

“What?”

“The fish! Are they okay?”

“Oh, yeah, they’re fine; just a little sleepy. Listen, is there any way you could refill the prescription for me? I’m not supposed to go without my pills, and my regular doc’s on vacation in Antarctica.”

“No problem, sir! What kind of pills were they?”

“Painkillers.”

“Do you remember the name?”

“Not really, doc – I don’t pay much attention to that sort of thing. I think it started with a P, if that’s any help.”

“P?”

“Yes.”

“Gee, I can’t recall the names of any painkillers that start with the letter P.”

“P-e-r, I think it was.”

“P-e-r?”

“Yes.”

“Per, per… I’m awfully sorry, but I’m drawing a complete blank.”

“Per-co-something. They were round and white.”

“Per-co, round and white, Per-co… Hey! Could it have been Percocet?”

“That’s it! Wow, doc, you’re incredible!”

“Thanks!”

“So… can I get some?”

“Certainly! Will 200 be enough?”

Once in a while I like to have a little fun with Charaders:

“Hi Mr. Pinkman, my name is Dr. Gray. How can I help you today?”

“Well, doc, last night someone broke into my lab, ah, I mean apartment, and stole all my pills. Do you think I could get a prescription for some more?”

“Well… .”

“Just enough to tide me over until my regular doc gets back.”

“What type of pills were they?”

“Painkillers.”

“Hmm. Do you remember the name of the medication?”

“I’m not sure, but they were round and white.”

“Aspirin?”

“I think the name started with an O.”

“O?”

“Yes.”

“Orudis?”

“No, that’s not it.”

“Hmm… .”

“It might have been Oxy-Something.”

“Oxygen?”

“No.”

“Oxymoron?”

“No! Come to think of it, the last three letters were t-i-n.”

“Oxytin?”

“Nine letters… .”

“OxyBontin?”

“There’s a C in it… .”

“OxyContin?”

“Yes!”

“Never heard of it.”

Haute Cuisine

A few weekends ago Jan and I were scheduled to return to Hogtown to try our luck at another show and fancy restaurant, but our flight got snowed out. Undaunted, we decided to give one of our little town’s newer eateries a try. After securing a babysitter we donned our finest and headed out.

The moment we entered we knew it wasn’t going to be a five-star culinary experience. For starters, the oversized television set above the bar was broadcasting a WWF wrestling match at teeth-rattling volume. Some steroidal goon in a lucha libre mask and a velvet cape was whacking a similarly attired Cro-Mag over the head with a metal folding chair. The other immediately obvious problem was that there were only five people in the entire restaurant – a group of four chatty snowmobilers plus a waitress who didn’t look much older than the babysitter we had just left behind at our house. So much for ambiance.

Our waitress led us past dozens of empty tables only to stop at one right beside the garrulous quartet. The stench of gasoline was overpowering.