daniel schorr died today and symmetry

i've always had a special place in my heart for daniel schorr b/c of the obvious similarities in our names...and the fact that we both have had to go through life correcting people who try to spell it intuitively.  him, shore, me schmoor.

i knew daniel schorr as a commentator for npr, not knowing that he was already in his 70's when first heard him on public radio in the 80's.  he was 93 when he died today, his advanced age never evident in his voice.  i had no clue he was that old and assumed he'd be around as long as me.  didn't i just hear him on npr this week?

what i've learned about him today:  he's been a journalist and correspondent for almost 65 years now.  he conducted the first ever tv interview with nikita khruschev in 1957.  he was number 17 of 20 on richard nixon's "enemies list"; a fact he discovered while reading the list live on-air.   in 1976, he made public a suppressed report on illegal cia and fbi 'findings' and to this day, he has not revealed his source.  he's been a staunch advocate for first amendment rights his whole career.

less auspiciously, he was born august 31, 1916, so he and i not only share similar names, we share our birthday (i'm aug 31, 1964.  if you have any interest in chinese astrology, you'd know that we were both born in 'dragon' years.  i think all this means that we both have a knack for occasionally pissing off the wrong people b/c of our beliefs and/or behavior).  the schorr's are ukranian-jew, he was born in the bronx.  the schmorr's are prussian-jew, my dad born in the bronx.

sigh.  i'm just really going to miss his voice.

my laser rocks

this is really only going to be interesting to people either in the dental field.  not for the faint of heart, but it's so cool!

this lady came in with a traumatic cyst the size of a marble!!  i've never seen one even half this size before!  she bit her lip, it swelled, causing her to accidentally bite it more, causing more swelling, etc etc.  you see these pretty often, same location, but they're usually the size of a bb.

 so i got her numb and lasered it.  it was sort of a surprise assault, but she did great!  here's immediately after--it's amazing!

here's one day later.  she has a little residual swelling, but the tissue looks great.  it's hard to believe i took a marble out of her lip yesterday.  AND it doesn't hurt.  little to no post-op pain.  lasers are crazy magic.

a new diagnosis: SUIT

this was forwarded to me by a friend several months ago and is one of the funniest things on the internet. jolene roxbury is a southern comedienne who does characters based on her bayou relatives.

fwiw, this is probably more of a chick thing than a guy thing, but i think it's relevant for this blog since SUIT (somthin' up in there) is now a commonly used diagnostic term in our office.

it's all audio...no video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MZ-XhuFSQFs

total dorks

a conversation we had in the office yesterday:

kassie's got a patient in the chair whose wife is a toxicologist.  he asks about a stuffed creature she keeps on a shelf (it's supposed to be a 'halitosis bug') and mentions that he got one for his wife once; it's a bacterium or a spore or something.

i say:  'spores are amazing things.  they're going to take over the world someday b/c they're so hard to kill.'
kassie, unconvinced, says:  'well, maybe, but i'm not going to hold my breath'
i say:  'you'd better if there's a spore around'.

yukyukyuk.  we just can't help ourselves.


another conversation....'rent a liberal':

last week, we have a patient, also in kassie's room.  she's a teacher at a local minority college; very cool, very hip, looooong dreadlocks, flowing shirts and skirts.  we were discussing our mutual love for indian food.  she said she'd like to go to india and be a serial wedding crasher just to try out all the buffets, which i thought was a GREAT idea.  then we figured a way to do it for profit.  if an indian couple wanted to diversify their guest list and show how progressive they are, they could hire us as a biracial, middle-aged, lesbian couple, thus covering a lot of bases in a relatively small, discounted package.  we'd call our business 'rent-a-liberal'. 

i love our patients....