Wednesday 27 February 2013

1+1+1=20

After reading the title of this post, I'm sure your first thought is, "Wow, Doc sure is bad at maths!"  Well you should know by now that there's a point to my poor arithmetic skills.  So that begs the question - when does 1 + 1 + 1 not equal 3?  When could it possibly equal 20?  When addition isn't commutative, obviously.

When it isn't what??

You obviously weren't paying attention during your elementary arithmetic classes.  Bear with me.  I'll get there eventually.

Trauma at 2AM is never good.  It isn't good for me, because I need to drag my ass out of bed and find out what this latest idiot did to land in my trauma bay, and it isn't good for the patient, because he (or she) should have been in bed, but wasn't.  Of course I understand that some people who work at night need to be awake at that time, but the vast majority of the population should be asleep in bed at 2AM, just like I should be, instead of out and about wreaking havoc.  And when stupid people do stupid things in a stupid way in the middle of the stupid night, bad things happen.  Ok, the night isn't stupid, I just threw that in there for effect.  Sorry.

A woman was brought in at 2 AM smelling like...well, you know those drip trays that run around a bar to catch the alcohol that spills?  She smelled like that.  According to the medics, she had run her car off the road, hit a tree, and then flipped her car several times.  After they showed me pictures of her mangled wreck, the fact that she was still alive seemed miraculous.

An extensive workup revealed only bumps and bruises and a very large, ugly-looking 10 cm  (that's 4 inches - dammit US, will you just adopt the damned metric system already!?) laceration going from her lip halfway across her face from where her face had impacted her cell phone.

Her what??  Surely you mean 'where her face had impacted the steering wheel', right?

No, I would  have said that had it been true.  Unfortunately for her and her face, this rocket scientist had decided that it would be a smart move to get drunk, drive on a deserted pitch-black road, and then text someone.  I only wish she had been using voice-to-text, because I imagine her message looking something like this:
oh my god I'm so drunk right now and it's so dark but I ran out of beer so I have to get OH MY GOD OW OW OW OW
If you ever saw "Inglourious Basterds", you surely remember how Brad Pitt cut a swastika into the foreheads of the Nazis he caught so the world could see the scar for the rest of their lives (and if you haven't seen it, go rent it now).  Well this woman will have a horrible scar on her lip and cheek for the rest of her life to remind her how stupid she acted.

Doing one stupid thing (getting blindingly drunk) is bad.  Add a stupid thing on top of it (driving while blindingly drunk), and it's much worse.  Add a third MIND-BOGGLINGLY stupid thing on top of that (texting while driving while blindingly drunk), and it adds up to much more than 3.

See?  I told you I'd get there eventually.

6 comments:

  1. Yikes. Some people seriously should not be allowed to live on this planet.
    Another great, entertaining article, but I'm afraid your idea of what the woman's text message looked like wrong.... The spelling and grammar are too good. Personally I'm imagining something more like:

    "omg iz so0ooo drunk rite now itz soo0o d@rk but i haz no beer so i needz moar oooh look itz a tree OMG OW OW OW OW @%^25vb&!VG^B&"

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Except that he said voice to text, and the phone isn't drunk..

      Delete
    2. it also says that Doc' wishes voice text. The driver didn't use voice text.

      Delete
  2. That's astounding. I can't - I just - it's so... ugh. I don't even know what to say. I guess it's just at that level of stupid.
    Also, your comment about the US not using the metric system reminded me of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2xRPnmvF2b8 .
    Have you ever given a diagnosis in fruit?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. This comment has been removed by the author.

      Delete
  3. How'd the phone cut her?

    ReplyDelete

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