MEDICALESE: A Humorous Medical Dictionary, Peter Meyer, MD, 1994.
Medicalese: A Humorous Medical Dictionary is an irreverent, tongue-in-cheek look at everyone and everything in medicine, from patients to nurses to doctors.
Medical personnel who utilize humor as a coping mechanism in dealing with the stress of patient care will find solace in Medicalese.
The following terms are a few of the zany definitions found in Medicalese, a Humorous Medical Dictionary:
o Appointment - the time you are scheduled to show up in the doctor's office to begin a two-hour wait to see the doctor.
o CPR (Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation) - really stands for “Cracking Patient's Ribs,” when the chest and ribs are repeatedly squashed in an attempt to wake a patient up.
o Dietitian - person responsible for making sure that food reaching patients is without salt / sugar / fat / carbohydrates / calories, and is cold / soggy / unpalatable / tasteless. Dietitians strive to ensure that hospital food has the consistency and taste of Play-Dough.
o Dose - the amount of medicine it takes to quiet a patient.
o Egomegaly - personality disorder common among surgeons, involving extreme self-appreciation (massive ego).
o Eternal Care Unit - the only thing above the Intensive Care Unit. Where patients end up after the "beaming up" process.
o G.O.K. - sophisticated diagnosis made on extremely difficult cases. Stands for "God Only Knows!"
o Inpatient - where the sponge is left, when the surgeon messes up.
o Laparotomy - the “I don’t know what’s going on, but maybe if we cut in here, we’ll find something” operation.
o Midwife - doctor's second wife, coming after the first wife (who was dumped after putting the doctor through long years of schooling), and before the last wife (the young pretty thing the doctor marries in his declining, senile years).
o Pharmacist - highly-trained professional who spent five years in college learning how to read doctors' prescriptions and count pills from a big bottle into a little bottle.
o Pneumocrania - Airhead.
o Radiologist - doctor who prefers to deal with pictures of people rather than the people themselves.
o Terminal Flatulence (TF) - the production of large amounts of flatus (intestinal gas) from ingestion of beans, onions, cabbage, greens, etc. Signs
of TF include loss of friends, cracked toilet seats, dying house plants, and rapid emptying of elevators. TF is not a good thing to see written on a
roommate's chart when sharing a room.
o Wallet Biopsy - most important procedure done in the hospital, whereby all dirty green paper and loose silver is extracted from the leather object in a patient's pocket or purse.
5 1/2" x 8 1/2", 84 pages, softcover, ISBN 0-9628186-1-5, BM5660 / $11.95