Monday, October 24, 2005

humor...

Is it wrong to find the story below extremely funny? I can't help but feel a little guilty...

From an Immunology professor (partly parapharased, partly quoted--all in quotations):
(imagine hearing this in a heavy British accent)

"I used to have a neighbor, you see, whose wife was sick, and he took her to the doctor to find out what was wrong. Now, I tell you, this doctor--well he's just terrible, absolutely terrible, and well I certainly would not want to be his patient. Anyway, this neighbor of mine had been waiting for his wife's results for some time now, and he was getting rather worried. He'd asked me to go and ask the doctor what was wrong, but of course I can't, you know, because of HIPPA (? sp), and patient confidentiality and all. So I told him, while he was over at my house, just to call the doctor and hear what he says, and maybe I can help interpret some things for him. So my neighbor did call this doctor, and you know, the doctor was just terrible, and he said: "well now I'm so sorry but I've just seen about 60 patients today and I've got no idea which patient is your wife." My neighbor, you know, ever so polite, patiently reminded the doctor that his wife's name was Rose, Rose M. Keller. This doctor then replied, "well, I've got 2 patients here with the name Rose M. Keller, but I can't tell which is your wife...one's got Alzheimer and the other's got AIDs." As you can probably understand, my poor neighbor was then pretty distraught and asked" doctor, this is terrible news, what am I supposed to do, does my wife have AIDs or Alzheimer?" this doctor, (he's terrible, I tell you, absolutely terrible) replied," Well here's what you do: you send her to the market, you see, and if she comes back, don't have sex with her."

The above is a joke. My prof is hilarious.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is not an original joke... I’ve seen this before somewhere with a few minor variations.

bostonmed said...

Addendum: I don't claim this to be an original joke, as I'm sure various forms of it pre-date the retelling by my professor. The humor is still pretty funny nonetheless. It speaks to a doctorly sense of comedy in the context of tragedy, which I find amusing and fascinating.

Russell K. said...

I find you tremendously amusing.