Mars

Saturday was my day off. I decided to spend it talking to my brother who very recently ventured off on his own and started an internet price engine. We spoke about his new business and the general state of the market. During the two hour conversation he told me about how "web crawlers” were “hitting his site” and “indexing pages”, therefore he had to track “IP address” and different “browsers” to decide what charges would be incurred. Of course, I knew my brother was cursing at me. Foul words in a language of I had no knowledge. This truly shocked me, my ignorance that is.

Although I smiled and laughed I understood NOTHING. Who's “browsing”? What's a "crawler"? Is it a night float resident walking through your files? Why is he “indexing” files, shouldn’t he be sleeping?

When did it get to this? We speak English mostly everywhere but even our English is divided into Spanglish, Slang and Rap. Then there's Ebonics and Spanish and in certain areas you can't get along if you don't speak the local vernacular.

I was so glad that as a part of the medical community we are not privy to these types of miscommunications, everything is plain and simple and written in crystal clear language.

So, when a Surgery consult came to ask me to clarify what was written in the chart of a patient I had recently admitted I stared at him in disbelief. Why it’s clear as night and day. The chart read, "64 y/o m was in USOH 2 d/ PTA, BIBEMS w/ c/o pain in LE and SOB, please r/o DVT/ PE. Obtain duplex, get a V/Q, D-dimer and spiral CT/ PE Protocol".

Where did this guy come from, Mars?