h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Flying doctor?


Geggs

Getting closer...

Are you being dim on purpose?

B

The whole notion of paramedics came about after a particularly nasty tube crash. May have been Clapham Junction.

Before that the ambulance crews where just fetch-and-carry affairs, crewed by people with no medical training at all. In the aftermath of this one disaster many of the people they scooped up died before they got to hospital. But, it was reasoned at the time, if the ambulances where crewed by people who hand some medical training, then they could at least try to keep the injured alive until at proper doctor could see them.


Geggs

No, not on purpose. I sort of have to feel my way through these things until inspiration strikes. Sometimes it doesn't strike at all, and grim attrition gets me to the answer.


Geggs

Thank you for that.

Interesting if entirely irrelevant.

B

Hey, interesting is (half) the name of the game.


Geggs

Right, what have we got so far!

Paratroopers are called 'paras' for short.

What might medics also be called for short?

What relationship does this have to a logic puzzle and some ancient Greeks?

Which doctor can fix your ankle?

B

You'd need a pair o' docs...

Trouble is, what I would a paramedic is James. He being the brother-in-law, and a paramedic.

Not sawbones, 'cause that's a surgeon.


Geggs

paradox

Oh, and we're nearly there.

Which surgeon, then?

B

An orthopaedic one.


Geggs

Is this some orthodox paradox?

Just by way of making conversion I broke my left leg two years and five days ago. Most painful thing I ever did. On the ride to the hospital the paramedic asked me, "On a scale of one to ten, with one being no pain, and ten being the most pain you have ever known, how much pain are you in now?"

I said 10, but what I saw actually thinking is that I'm actually recalibrating my personal scale on a moment to moment basis right now.


Geggs

When I'm asked that question I have to lie.

I can tolerate quite a bit of pain, and I have a pretty scary imagination.

(When I was in hospital recovering from having a tumor removed from the base of my skull, my mother (a retired nurse) had to take the nurse on duty outside to explain to her that when I say my pain is a 7 she should be VERY concerned. I'd had no pain medicine since my surgery 10 hours earlier and she was just offering me OTC acetaminophen.)

UIf you can afford it - or if you have medical cover you could have a private surgeon.

Is anyone still working on this?

I think we're waiting on an assessment of the most recent musings from Mu Beta.


Geggs

Would anyone mind if Mu were to reveal the solution now?