Fruit Basket

Sometimes, you get lucky, and find an excuse to get out of the library and into the Real World to do Real People things. My luck came in the shape of one of my favorite women in the world- Maurine. Not only did we go Out To Lunch and go Shopping On Madison Ave, we also got to talk about everything from marriage to silk chiffon. What a nice change from bacterial endocarditis and acute non-ST elevation MIs! (We were in our cardiology block, if you couldn't tell.)

Of course, as it always happens when two doctors (am I allowed to call myself that?) come together, we did end up talking about medicine. Maurine gave me lots of good advice, about how to survive med school, what to do for residency, etc. But my favorite part were the ridiculous stories that she regaled me and my friends with, as we sat around a table at a Fancy New York Restaurant, sipping wine and eating tuna tartare.

Here's the best story (in my opinion) of the night:

We were talking about being a doctor in the 1970s, and Maurine busts out a story about a dude who comes in with a pear stuck in his anus. (Yes, for real.) And apparently this isn't really something shocking; the worst is when the person has a lightbulb stuck up there, because you sure as hell don't want that thing to shatter. But anyway, so, Patient With Pear Up Butt comes in, and the doctors are talking about how to take the pear out, being careful of rectal distention and whatnot, and they decide to take an x-ray of the guys abdomen, just to make sure that there wasn't any air in the abdomen due to a bowel perforation. Great. But, what did they see on the x-ray?

There was an apple shoved up there first. Yes, friends, an anal fruit basket, if you will.

I don't know about you, but I kind of want to meet this guy. If only to ask him, "How?"