Puck 425
on January 15, 2018 at 10:00 pm
NEW VOTING INCENTIVE!!! WINTER SKETCHES!!!
January will be devoted to some winter activity sketches to get us in the seasonal mood! Vote to see this week’s offering! (And remember: fans who donate $5 or more a month get a say in what voting incentives run! If you want to join their controlling ranks, HEAD ON OVER TO PATREON and join the select club!)
VOTE FOR PUCK BUT ONLY IF YOU WANT TO!!!
As for this comic…
My actual conversation with my oncologist was different though no less hilarious. The exchange just didn’t totally work as a four-panel comic because it was a bit too wordy, but it went like this:
Oncologist: “So it’s tough to say what to do, but I think we should wait and see.”
Me: “Wait and see?”
Oncologist: “Yeah. See, I look at you, and I see a rule follower. I see a guy who will come back in six months for a scan and some blood work if I tell him to. Now, if you were some shabby homeless bum or something like that, someone whom I could never trust to do any follow-up, I’d take those lymph nodes out right now. But you? I trust that I can control you.”
Me: “Oh. Uhm, thanks?”
The mentioned lymph nodes, by the way, are in the torso, and they’re apparently the next place that this type of cancer will spread. If they’re taken out, the chances of it spreading further are seriously reduced. But taking them out comes with risks; apparently the surgery is right next to some key nerves, and if the nerves are damaged (which happens most of the time), it seriously messes up a dude’s … workings. Long story short, that which shoots outward a certain, um, climactic moment stops shooting outward and shoots inward. Which did not sound cool to me.
All said and told, ‘wait and see’ sounded like a very attractive approach.
I did a med mal case once where the guy went in for a mere vasectomy and the butcher of a doc cut a lot of those key nerves instead, even though they were anywhere close to where he was supposed to be cutting. This was not fun. So, not a risk to ignore.
Eek. Yeah, them dang nerves. They keep getting in the way of everything.
“Primum Non Nocere” a sign in my boss’ office. “First, do no harm” It’s from Hippocrates. Shows you how long this kind of thing has been going on. 😛
Well, it’s a good concept. The Hippocratic Oath is still cool after all these years. Except the part about swearing fealty to the Greek gods. We can skip that part.
Well, I swore fealty to Dionysus a long time ago, but that’s another story 🙂
Good man.
Better than dianetics.
Yeah, and the part about “not cutting for the stone.” Urolgists ignore that part.
For which I’m sure many people are grateful.
Re: the incentive pick. Tyler/Taylor is really risking losing his fingers holding on like that. Mind you the only other real option to keep a handhold has the same potential outcome.
I thought the exact same thing, though I took the pose directly from a Bill Watterson pic and Hobbes had his fingers like that. Though I totally agree with you. As a sledding pro, I can say that you NEVER do that on an old toboggan.
@EG
There are so many betta places Tyler’s HANDS could be.
He’s passing on a real opportunity here !
I tried to find a good picture of toboggans to see if there were other handholds available. No luck with that, but they said your solution was the preferred one.
They don’t have handles. They’re kind of a pain, really. They predated comfort or practicality.
You guys !
Every picture of a TOBOGGAN I could find all illustrate a “Handy” ROPE all along each edge for passengers to hold onto to !
Yeah, the rope’s all you’ve got. Though that picture DOES show guide ropes at the side, which I don’t really remember from the old-timey ones. It looks like a modern refinement, but it’s a good idea.
The heck with TOE-BOG-GHINS, anyhoo.
I wanna SNO PLANE !!
That looks dangerous. I am not a fan of metal sleds. Honestly, I’m not a fan of wooden sleds either. The ideal sled is plastic and weighs no more than a pound. That way, if you flip out, it won’t smack you in the head and give you a concussion.
SNO-PLANE
Let’s get practical.
What really works is, Satan, TRACEEE, and me cuddling a VROUMETTE.
And if TRACEEE deems to ride SANS CULOTTE, who are we to question ?
Sorry Salem, but to heck with a snow plane. When we were kids, my dad got my brother and I a couple of inner tubes from tractor-trailer tires. He managed an auto parts store, see, so for him they were cheap. They were faster than any sled, could take an enormous amount of abuse and had built in shock absorbers! Ok, there were some *ahem* control issues, but that was part of the fun! I highly recommend getting one, except they are pretty damn pricey. Don’t bother with the vinyl tubes that are sold in stores, they suck and tend to break easily.
Tubes are the best. Though the REAL terror comes from the crazy carpet. Just a $5 strip of plastic and it’s the most fear one can generate on a hill.
Hell, I want that thing that Clark Griswold had.
The ‘flying saucer’ style? Yeah, they’re great. Except unlike in that movie, in real life you always end up going down the hill on those things facing backwards.
Well, yeah. But when you slice a walmart in half you can honestly say that you didn’t see it. Ahh. Too bad it’s just a dream. A chance to run those town wreckers out of town on a rail sled.
@Susan
I’d like to say I have nevah heard the words GET YOUR PAWS OFF ME, but then I’d be lyin’.
@Salem: I suspect Taylor (my name choice) 😛 has already experienced trying to “Al Franken” Daffy and gotten bitten off short for it. (rest of post deleted so as not to alarm robots)
Still, sled-wreck injury was a formative winter experience for a lot of us kids. 🙂
It’s never the SLEDDING that hurts.
It’s the STOPPING.
It’s actually the inability to stop, and the process of skidding face-down on a hill for about fifty yards, that hurts.
Saucers and krazy carpets are both excellent; but no-one in this string has mentioned the GT Snowracer? I can personally attest that they are (were?) fast enough to break a wrist. If you take a wooden jump and superman off the sled.
I disliked the Noma GT Snowracer. For many reasons:
1) Depending on conditions, they really weren’t that fast. Speed on snow is determined by a reduction in friction, and in most snow conditions, the best way to do that is to get the widest surface area possible so as to reduce the pressure on any given area. The Snowracer tracks often dug into the snow, and that slowed you down.
2) The seat was raised, which raised your center of gravity. Which meant that you wiped out more. And when you wiped out, you had further to fall, leading to injury. (Hence the wrist.)
3) They actually attached freakin’ BLADES to the bottom as a brake system. Anyone who’s ever gotten a limb tangled up in one of those things can tell you that’s no fun.
4) The steering mechanism is a cool concept, but really it often led to kids fighting with gravity too hard and flipping out because of it.
They were the ‘coolest’ sled in the 80’s, but as a Canadian kid who did A LOT of sledding (or ‘tobogganing’ as we call it up here), I can say that I never liked them.
Friction is a complex matter.
Generally, you want tor REDUCE the contact area to an absolute minimum.
The problem is, as the contact area is reduced, the demands placed on the materials increase to a point that one or the other yields, deforms, fails.
An interesting example is the extremely hard “jewels” in a traditional watch. Combined with a hardened steel axle, the contact area is minimal, as is the friction and wear.
On Ice, the thin steel edges of the sharpened Skate blade contact hard ice. Like Watch’s Steel and Jewel, both surfaces are hard, and the friction is slight.
Snow is another matter. Mainly because it varies so much !
It’s said the Inuit have a thousands words for Snow (the actual number varies), and no wonder !
The varieties of snow are endless, and rarely appreciated by those who live in warmers climes.
The very cold snow that has fallen slowly and gently accumulates into piles of cotton that burst into a cloud of tiny flakes with even a sneeze.
But the warmer, wet snow can be heavy and massive; difficult to walk thru; excruciating to shovel.
The Sled that works well on one may have no chance on another.
A special sort of snow is one that began life as soft snow, but after a sunny day warmed at the top, then froze again. This kind can often be walked upon quite easily ! But beware – if you have a heavy foot you’ll break thru the top layer and your feet will descend to the bottom. If the soft foundation is deep you can find yourself quite trapped !
As an expert on snow, I can report that the Noma GT Snowracer was good for only 25% of your usual snowfalls in this area.
I have to give you all of that. Growing up in Fort Erie we kept a stable of sleds for different conditions: Discs and Krazy Karpets were best for new soft snow. A Flexible Flyer my Mom had kept from her childhood was usually the distance winner if the snow was hard packed, or icy. We never had a classic toboggan. But when I had saved up enough lawnmowing money to get my GT I thought it was the coolest thing ever. They were no good in powder, might as well leave it at home until the hill had been packed down for a day, but if it just barely melted, then refroze so there was a slick surface, especially with a bit more soft snow on top, you could zoom down the hill and do an awesome hockey stop skid at the bottom – definitely have to lean way into it or like you wrote you’ll fly off the side. So much fun. I also feel like the Snowracer is proof of Canada’s excellence in all forms of winter technology. “You put years of development into a new form of kids sled?” “Yes, yes we did”. I’ve moved to the States and gotten it out at hills here and people just look at it wondering that such a thing exists.
There are fans of it, to be sure. I was arguing with my friend Mary the other day (oddly enough) about the Snowracer. She grew up in Sault Ste. Marie (known merely as ‘the Sault’ -pronounced ‘Soo’) and there’s one thing they know a lot about in the Sault, it’s snow. And she insisted that the Snowracer was not only the best sled ever, but was REQUIRED for the kind of perilous sledding they used to do.
She’s probably more of an expert than I am.
@Justin
The sad thing is the Urban Environment has eliminated any Open Space – making so many wonderful Sports and Past-Times only memories.
Model Rocketry – Kite Flying – Sledding – Model Airplanes – Outdoor Shooting Ranges – ALL VICTIMS to the endless race to erect CONDOS on every pitiful patch of earth.
On the plus side (for some), there is a Starbucks on every corner.
There’s lots of enormous parks in this area. And relatively few Starbucks.
Hi SalemCat,
It’s interesting you mention rockets. I only ever did a little bit of kite flying, and no model airplanes or shooting. But I did do rockets. There were a few parks we could fly them in in the late 80s and early 90s that were big enough. I’m lucky my in-laws have fields big enough so I’ve flown them with nephews there with no problem. But a couple summers ago I tried flying them with friends and we went to a school nearby with soccer and baseball fields. We lost one and almost lost another, and we couldn’t think of any bigger fields that didn’t also have power lines. Also then a security guard came and said we had to go somewhere else to do that anymore. It’s hard in the city 🙁
I can really not argue with the wait and see approach.
I mean, I could, except that I won’t.
That said, I hope both for you and Colin’s sake that neither of you will have to deal with the lymph nodes removal.
A friend had to get them removed (though I never did find out why) and was lucky enough NOT to get screwed over by it.
Getting lymph nodes removed is never fun. I mean, it doesn’t sound so bad because no one’s really too emotionally attached to their lymph nodes, unlike, say, a lung. But you need your lymph nodes. And removal of said lymph nodes can sometimes cause all sorts of problems.
Removal of those lymph nodes can damage the nervi erigentes. Google it.
TIP: Never look up Susan’s big words. I did and the Night Terrors just won’t stop.
Hee hee. Those are the splanchnic parasympathetic nerves. They go to that Important Male Organ very close to “The Boys.” In fact, I would say that it was “The Boy Himself,” and if THAT became, um, nonfunctional, Colin would quickly quit worrying about his Missing Boy. 😛
Pshaw cat. You just gotta love a woman with big words.
@pat
BIG Words ?
heh heh heh heh……
Thanks EG, between you and Susan I may never sleep again :p
Well, shoot…
I think I see what you did there. Though I can’t be sure.
I can only imagine how filthy that black rectangle must be. Do you think they make special ones for hospitals that can just be drowned in alcohol to clean them?
Alcohol, of whatever kind, is a terrible disinfectant and is never used in hospitals (or doctors’ offices) except as a placebo for patients, since its only function is the cooling of the skin reduces the pain of puncture slightly. Not that is that bad, unless you are counting chest trocars. We use Betadine, PhisoHex, or other, stronger antiseptics. Ethyl alcohol, on the other hand, makes a pleasant soporific, such as the Irish Coffee I am drinking now. 😛
Alcohol – the high-percentage one of course – may not be that great but it’s traditional. In past, it was best disinfectant available.
Actually, they went to alcohol after everybody got tired of bichloride of mercury, which is a much better antiseptic, but messy, expensive, and causes reactions, like skin discoloration.
Wait, so all those alcohol swabs before injections/IVs were pointless?
Yep. Except for low-grade anesthesia for the puncture site. But it reassures the patients. “Hey, you didn’t use your alcohol swab!:
Oops, sorry. Abracadabra! 😛
I have a ridiculously high tolerance for pain, low-grade anesthesia is useless for me. Hours of my life wasted on a placebo I never even asked for.
In lab healthcare, we don’t ask, we just do. Patients are usually miles away from reality, worrying about something they thought the doc said. We need to get the blood that the doc ordered, so anything that would bring them back to reality, like a change in routine, is undesirable. Usually, I am out the door before the alcohol dries, though we were told in school that if you stab while the alcohol is still wet, it might vitiate the test. “Red top, check, lavender top, check, marble top, check… when’s lunch?”
@Susan
What be this AL-CA-HALL you speaketh of ?
See “Black Cat Fortified Wine.” There’s a lot of that in it. (Though it tastes like vodka and licorice, bleagh)
Well, I think all black rectangles are pretty filthy. Especially given people’s penchants for taking them into the bathroom. Though I’m hoping that surgeons would avoid doing that.
Yeah, I never got that. My phone has been in the bathroom all of twice in the 3+ years I’ve owned it (maybe 5 times across all phones for the past 13-14 years) and it never leaves my pocket when that happens. Maybe I’m a little germaphobic, but it shouldn’t be that hard to set your electronics down for a couple minutes.
When you consider how far from the bathroom the “bathroom matter” travels, I’m not concerned with taking my phone in there. I mean, remember the episode of Mythbusters when they tested that? They found “bathroom matter” in the break room, even though the test they ran had everyone washing their hands after.
Well, true. Very true.
Studies show that those multi-beverage dispensers have more E. coli in their water reservoirs than the floor did
I’m not privy to the male surgeons’ lounge, nor is my boss, but my bf tells me that the chief anesthetist used to take the morning paper in there with him. “A Morning Man,” they say.
Wait and see *is* cheaper…
Not only that. You can DIE from “barely-necessary” procedures. I’ve seen it happen, an I ain’t saying anything more. 😛
Well, it’s all the same to a Canadian like Colin, but hey, why not save the system some money?
Cheaper to *them*.
Are funerals free in Canada, too? 😛
On a totally unrelated subject, is the surgeon letting his hair grow? I recall him being totally bald in previous appearances. This would tend to decrease his “supervillian” quotient.
Nah, he’s always had that sort of ‘almost hair’ shadow. I know because I need to go to great pains to generate that effect and make it look right, so yeah. No change.
Love the voting incentive. Nice to see Daphne in some good fun involving risk only to herself. (And Tyler too of course)
Well, we all gotta have some victim-free fun every once in a while.
I think Daffy is plotting a “slide-by” shooting.
@Susan
Or BITING.
All in all, I really do like this doctor. ^_^
He has chill, and still does a good job.
He’s based on my real oncologist. And he actually is a chill guy.
Ugh, I did NOT need that image from the end of your blurb. It’s probably nowhere nears a gross or unsanitary as I imagine it, but still, gross.
Glad to be of service! 😉
Actually, that is known as “retrogade emission” and is a rare complication in my (admittedly limited) experience. OTOH, I have seen the OTHER complication occur three times. One was after a pelvic exenteration, but, still…
Everytime I read this doctor’s dialogue, I can’t help but hear Colm Feore’s voice through those words and demeanor. 😀
I guess that would work. The real doctor that this portrayal is based on is Israeli, and speaks with a marked accent, but I thought it would get annoying if I tried to depict that phonetically, so I just left it out. Colm Feore works. I saw him play Lear at Stratford a few years ago. Dude’s a real actor.
Also worth mentioning that removing your lymph nodes could lead to other problems; they’re not critical, but you DO kind of need them.
Most people know about the respiratory system, the digestive system, and the circulatory system. The Lymph system doesn’t get nearly as much attention on hospital drama shows.
(picture of the lymph system… since most people have never seen it: https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/sites/default/files/styles/cruk_wide_resp_breakpoint_one/public/diagram-of-the-lymphatic-system_3.jpg )
It’s basically your body’s sewer system for waste chemicals. Because it’s not as vital a system as your blood or airflow, there’s no “pump” organ. The waste material gets passively squeezed along when you move your muscles and body about (which is why people who are paralyzed or lose a lot of their mobility often develop lymph problems eventually). Here again, the sewer analogy holds (stuff only moves through the sewer when someone topside flushes).
Removing the specific lymph nodes in question also risks messing up nerves that are critical to … certain processes that men tend to value. So yeah, best to avoid such operations if possible.
I learned something new!
…to lie awake at night worrying about. Thanks for that.
RE: your actual conversation with your doctor. “I trust that I can control you” is kind of a really creepy power move, isn’t it? O_o
“…Doc, do you have an S&M hobby on the side?”
“What do you want me to tell you, my little gimp-man? A surgeon’s salary pays for a lot of leather zipper masks.”
He was a different kind of guy, that’s for sure.