Assault on a mynah
Very brief fragment of a conversation I just had with a patient.
"Anyway, I'd better get on with this" I said to the enthusiastic, slim Greek woman - enthusiastic, slim and alarmingly off her face on methamphetamines. She had just been released from Britney-Glasson, Mordor's maximum security women's prison, and had spent the first fifteen minutes of her medical assessment chatting about her cellmates - the blueberry bush murderers (the two sisters who murdered a bisexual Malaysian jockey and hid his remains under a blueberry bush*), the methadone bathtub baptist**, the woman who killed her husband (a deeply unpleasant man even by Mordorian standards) and got sent to prison instead of getting her statue put up in the city square.
"It says here you've got some kind of blood disease" I butted in.
"Oh yeah" she said. "That white blood cell thing. Or red."
"Thalassaemia?" I guessed.
"That's the one."
"Did they say which type?" From memory there are several - different parts of the various hemoglobin proteins are deformed, you can get normal haemoglobin genes from one parent and bad ones from another and so on.
"Don't think so."
Ëver been sick with it? like, needed a blood transfusion or anything?"
"Not a day."
"Probably thalassaemia minor then."
She nodded. "That's the one. That bird one. Thalassemia mynah."
Well, I thought that was funny, squillions of little red blood cells, each with a small passerine passenger inside. A damn fine idea. Like Sarah's recent mention of the great feathered snack of the Aztecs, Pretzlcoatl.
Thanks anyhow,
John
* Seriously, only the names have been changed, not the level of weirdness.
** Full immersion. Actually, full and quite prolonged immersion.
"Anyway, I'd better get on with this" I said to the enthusiastic, slim Greek woman - enthusiastic, slim and alarmingly off her face on methamphetamines. She had just been released from Britney-Glasson, Mordor's maximum security women's prison, and had spent the first fifteen minutes of her medical assessment chatting about her cellmates - the blueberry bush murderers (the two sisters who murdered a bisexual Malaysian jockey and hid his remains under a blueberry bush*), the methadone bathtub baptist**, the woman who killed her husband (a deeply unpleasant man even by Mordorian standards) and got sent to prison instead of getting her statue put up in the city square.
"It says here you've got some kind of blood disease" I butted in.
"Oh yeah" she said. "That white blood cell thing. Or red."
"Thalassaemia?" I guessed.
"That's the one."
"Did they say which type?" From memory there are several - different parts of the various hemoglobin proteins are deformed, you can get normal haemoglobin genes from one parent and bad ones from another and so on.
"Don't think so."
Ëver been sick with it? like, needed a blood transfusion or anything?"
"Not a day."
"Probably thalassaemia minor then."
She nodded. "That's the one. That bird one. Thalassemia mynah."
Well, I thought that was funny, squillions of little red blood cells, each with a small passerine passenger inside. A damn fine idea. Like Sarah's recent mention of the great feathered snack of the Aztecs, Pretzlcoatl.
Thanks anyhow,
John
* Seriously, only the names have been changed, not the level of weirdness.
** Full immersion. Actually, full and quite prolonged immersion.
posted by Bronze John at 4:37 PM
2 Comments:
Pretzlcoatl: the only god to whom I would even consider praying. Even better when dipped in chocolate (which is, after all, an Aztec food substance).
Whatever. Can you imagine how bloodthirsty those Aztecs would have been if they hadn't had access to chocolate?
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