So Funny, Yet So Horrifying

Recently Michael (whose teenage rants and raves can be found here, whose conversation with me can be found here, and whose whose Photoshopped image of the Berlin Wall can be found here)^* sent me the following image:


I was a little surprised that he appreciated the allusion to this panacean method for fixing all the little bugs and glitches that afflicted the old NES game cartridges (I pegged him as more of a Super NES, or N-64 generation-type-person). Michael says you can find more of the same sort of cartoons here, if they're your cup of tea.

Anyway, among my friends and acquaintances who graduated in 1998, I can think of at least five who are practicing physicians, in residency, or will soon finish medical school. The scary part is, I can imagine at least four of them elbowing the operating nurse or surgeon beside them and whispering those very lines—followed thankfully(?) by a chuckle indicating that they were spoken in jest. Some of you may be thinking that a little humor never harmed anyone, that everyone is entitled to some workplace levity, especially on a job so fraught with stress. To those people I say, "there are certain on-the-job luxuries one must forsake when the lives of his customers are, quite literally, in his hands. Moreover, people whose income is in excess of $100,000 per annum can consider an injunction against joking as a fair trade-off for their hefty salaries." Honestly, are there any readers out there who want their surgeons' attention divided between properly maneuvering the angioplasty balloon and practicing their stand up routines?

So comic doctors may be unsettling, but what's more frightening is that I can honestly say—without joking or exaggeration of any sort—is that two of those five doctors-in-waiting might actually consider using NES therapy to treat their patients. But wait, there's more: the truly horrifying part is that I wouldn't put it passed one of those two to actually employ the remove-the-heart-and-blow procedure on a patient after deliberating whether it would work.

This is what makes that cartoon (as all great cartoons must be, to some extent) so funny, and yet so true.


*By the way, is this not the most self-referential blog you've ever read? Why do I feel the need to insert a link to a previous post at every available opportunity? Seriously. Do I just like getting the credit? Do I have some sort of psychotic subconscious delusion that it's self-plagiarism if I don't credit myself as the source of something? Or do I just hope that readers new to my site will click back to older entries to find evidence of the continuity and consistency of my insanity?