“Doctor, Doctor, Give Me the News...”

Six anonymous doctors—all of whom have practiced or are still practicing in Colorado hospitals—disclose their secrets, explain the mysteries of medicine, and divulge exactly what they think about their patients and their colleagues.

In Medical Terms

Docs have a language all their own.

To Crump: to get a lot sicker or to die
Circling the Drain: when a patient is slowly declining and going to die
Seeker: someone who is seeking narcotics
Celestial Discharge: death
Self-Pay: an uninsured patient, which is never a good thing for hospitals and clinics, as the majority of “self-pays” will never “self pay”
Lapfatty: laparoscopic weight-reduction surgery done on an obese patient
Autoped: when an automobile hits a pedestrian
FLK: stands for funny-looking kid
Bumcicle: a homeless person who comes into the hospital because temperatures outside have dropped below freezing
Gomer: stands for Get Out of My Emergency Room; refers to a patient that “has lost—often through age—what goes into being a human being” (quote from Samuel Shem’s The House Of God); typically an old, demented, noncommunicative patient
Donorcycle: synonym for motorcycle; often motorcycle accidents create head trauma but don’t injure vital internal organs, which can be used for transplants
SOCMOB: acronym for Standing On Corner, Minding Own Business, which references assault victims who are lying about their injuries to avoid discussing their own illicit acts at the time of the attack