These are some funny things we hear in the ER all the time from patients, following the incorrect term, is the correct one with the definition. Feel free to add ones you have heard! Of course I would not surprised if our president used a few of these!
1. “Administrations” or “‘ministrations” – for “menstruation”, as in “I’m having my ‘ministrations right now Doctor.”
2. “Seahorses in my Liver” – for “cirrhosis of the liver” , as in “Doc, my liver ain’t so good – I got seahorses”.
3. “Sugar” – for “diabetes”, as in ” Sugar runs in my family, Doc.”
4. “High Blood” – for “High Blood Pressure”, as in “How high is my blood?”
5. “Sick-as-Hell-Anaemia” – for “Sickle Cell Anaemia”, as in “I’m carrying the trait for Sick-as-Hell-Anaemia”
6. “Groins”- for “groin”, as in “Doc, there’s pains in my groins.”
7. “Weasling” – for “wheezing”, as in “My son was awake all night weasling.”
8. “Vomicking” – for “vomiting”, as in “I feel like I am about to vomick!”
9. “Water Pill” – for “diuretic”, as in “My doctor gave me a water pill so my legs don’t swell up.”
10. “Fluid” – for “Congestive Heart Failure”, as in ” I keep catching fluid so I can’t breathe.”
11. “Arthur-itis” – for “arthritis”, as in ” My joints hurt from my Arthur-itis.”
12. “Diarhear” – for “diarrhea”, as in “I’m having vomicking and diarhear.”
Don’t forget Fireballs of the Eucharist–fibroids of the uterus.
Good! I completely forgot that one.
Well, you have to add my favorite “smilin mighty Jesus” for spinal meningitis. Also, “sirloin” for saline. But, some of yours are more like laymen’s terms than malapropisms. I think water pill and fluid are OK terms for patients to use.
Yes, you are right white cap – layman’s terms and malapropisms can sometimes blend together.
“Spladder” My 6 year old’s reference to where the urine is before he goes pee.
“Old-timers”, as in Alzheimer’s disease.
I’m not a medical professional, but I can offer a gem from my late Granny who told us a neighbour was very ill, suffering from muscular dysentery.
Sixty-five roses for cystic fibrosis
Dude, I never understood the vomick thing…I mean, vomit is a fairly common word, it’s not like they haven’t heard it pronounced correctly 900000 times. Garrh…
first comment ever.
My favorite is “gouch” for gout, as in “My foot is a hurtin’ cuz I got the gouch”. This term is pretty common in my neck o’ the woods.
Corporal tunnel………My corporal tunnel is acting up again.
Don’t forget “the ammonia” for pneumonia…very common mistake with the elderly where I work.
Totally different here, but I heard of a child named
“ABCDE” today! That was a new one for me! Besides the fact that is hard as heck to pronounce-
I had an old guy who had “temporal arthritis”. Poor bastard really thought he had arthritis in his temples {rather than arteritis}.
Okay…I am now crying…(and starting to weasle from all that laughing)!
I had an old man come in complaining of pain in his arm. It had been broken and he’d been “draggin’ it around in a casket for six weeks” and the doctor just took it (the casket) off and it was sore. The visual on that still cracks me up!
And then there’s blood clogs or blood clocks! Can’t forget those!
That “Abdce” (or I’ve seen a child with it spelled “Abcd”) was pronounced “a-bee-see-dee”…or just like “obesity”.
What a thing to name your kid.
Urinary Track Infection – presumably because the urine kind of blazes a trail as it leaves the body.
Huh. “Sugar”, “Fluid”, and “Water Pill” all seem like perfectly reasonable nontechnical terms for things. And I kind of like “Groins”, it makes me smile.
[...] keeps pumping out the posts. My favorites from the last week were Entitlement Disorder and Medical Malapropisms – including the comments. The only one I didn’t see there was “Arthur.” I once got concerned when a [...]
While taking the sexual history a woman was asked whether she had mutual orgasms. She got huffy and stated that “She told that woman outside that she had mutual of Omaha.”
vomiking for vomiting, da sugar for diabetes, one time while in triage I asked a patient if she had been having fevers and she said “no but my hand be full of fevers feel how hot it is”
oh and how can I forget the “I am about to fall out”
Fall out…took me like 15 minutes to figure out what that meant the first time I heard it.
Today one of my pre-op assessments revealed an allergy to “sea lion solution”, as spelled by the patient.
Really, it was supposed to be “saline solution” (and how anyone can be allergic to that, I’m not sure!)
[...] is a related post to my “Medical Malapropisms” post from a few days ago – in our Electronic Charting and Patient tracking system, the chief [...]
Our patients get quite concerned about whether there is/are “pops” (polyps) in their colon. One or two have felt that these were transmitted from their father – hence the name “pops”.
I’m not in the medical profession but work in education. Delurking to add my 2 cents.
I work with a woman who suffers from migraines but refers to them as “minegraines”. It drove me crazy so I corrected her to no avail. She must think because they are happening to her that they are “hergraines”. She also refers to certain people behind their backs as retards but pronounces it “retarts”. Since discovering that she pays people to write her college papers and do her homework, I’ve come to the conclusion that either hergrains are preventing her from doing her own work, or she’s just a plain ole retart and too stupid. I’m leaning towards stupid.
Two of my favorites are “whelps” for welts or hives, and “rotary cup” when discussing their previously diagnosed rotator cuff tear.
[...] heard a lot of malapropisms over the years. ERP posted several good ones last year on his blog at ER Stories. Patients with “fireballs on the eucharist” who [...]
I’ve seen lots of “track infeckshuns”, “chicken pops”, people who have “dun fell out”, who are “vomicking” or who have “old-timers”, kids with “whelps all over” and even a guy with “dire in my ear” that caused him to have a “sinkable eppisode”.
Hilarious!
How about my patient that insisted they were allergic to “asper-minophen”? I never did find out if it was aspirin, Tylenol or both (just assumed both, since there was no chest pain or fever, and wrote it in direct quotes…!)
And “spiral menengitis” for spinal meningitis (I was impressed they got the meningitis)!
Finally: the best and hardest to figure out was a “nanny -isn’t” for patients’ grandmother’s history of aneurysms and avm’s…and the pt. was in the Er for a headache and abdominal pains…guess what? Multiple aneurysms!
Terry Pratchett had one of his characters use the term “Dire Rear” for diarrhoea. Seems appropriate.
(UK spelling used advisedly, as PTerry’s English)
[...] times the list is humorous, littered with misspellings and malapropisms. Such [...]
Those people who find themselves “vomicking” often have a pet Rockweiler at home too.
And if you really want a laugh, ask one of them to tell you the plural of the word “desk.”
Personal favourite: “patient has a history of immaculate degeneration”
I also once saw a COPDer with known CO2 retention labelled as being “allergic to oxygen.”
My wall-to-wall favorite malapropism is about
the pregnant women chatting in the OB/GYN
waiting room, and one of them says “This is my
last baby…I’m havin’ a BLT.”
She means BTL…but beware those tomatoes
nonetheless!
I refer you all to a little book called “A Chance
To Cut is a Chance To Cure,” by Rip Pfeiffer, MD.
Quite a compendium of malaprops, medical inside
jokes, and bits of wisdom. Included is the entire
Gomer Criteria Point System.
We were in the doctor’s office and there was a poster of a male body on the door, anatomically correct with veins, organs, etc. My son was about 4 years old and poited between his legs and said, “Those are his tentacles, right?” lol