I don’t really want to perpetuate the topic, but I’ll note that my 2026 Ram 1500 does not have AM… And I’m in MT, known for it’s spotty cell service.
Same, in 1985. North Dakota and eastern Montana are huge and were devoid of meaningful entertainment on the AM dial.
I was actually in Nevada on that trip, and each valley had 1 or 2 AM radio stations and nothing else. Everytime I went over a pass you’d have to search for a new station.
Shows how vast a country the USA is compared to central Europe. Everywhere I drive in Germany (or the Netherlands, Belgium, France for that matter), my car radio picks up at least 20 FM stations. AM? Nobody has listened to that for fifty years, and I doubt that many European stations even still transmit on that band.
Was it Philomena Cunk? Because her mate Paul tried to experiment with combining human DNA with vegetables, and now the greengrocer won’t let him in the shop.
It just struck me how hilarious it would have been if they had easter-egged subtle references to the other meaning of that number within the show. Or maybe they did and I missed it. I was only a teen when it came out.
Anyway, another great role of his was Thomas Cromwell in A Man For All Seasons. And the father in Ryan’s Daughter. The man you love to hate (except for Rumpole).
And as Clang in Help!
This is why, or so I have heard it advised, you should always mark “OTHER LEG” or “NOT THIS LEG” (or arm, hand, whatever) in the corresponding incision region on the appendage that’s not supposed to be operated on.
If the surgeons get the appendage identification right in the first place, then marking “THIS LEG” etc. on the correct appendage isn’t necessary, and if they get it wrong, the label won’t help them because they won’t see it.
Isn’t there a rule that they shouldn’t start a surgery without finding the mark? A limb being blank should be as good a warning as a limb marked “not this one.”
The New York Post article mentions that two surgical time-outs occurred prior to the surgery. One of the reasons for these time-outs is to prevent exactly this sort of thing from happening. So I wonder what went wrong here?
This feels like something that should be triple checked. Like three separate people should be responsible for making sure it’s the right leg.
This poor person was probably upset enough about losing their limb in the first place. To go from “you’ll have to learn to walk again” to “our bad, you’re using a wheelchair forever” would seriously fucking suck.
When I had surgery to repair a broken right elbow two years ago, my orthopedic surgeon came into the pre-op room, and used a marker to draw a big arrow on my skin, pointing to the correct elbow.
He got to be Number 2 twice.
Who is Number 1?
All I know is that I am not a number, I am a free man!
Some years ago, there was a news story about a patient who was getting a cancerous lung removed . . .
(See where this is going?)
I’d bet that patient was REALLY upset when they took out the wrong lung.
With marking NOT THIS LEG, I’d be concerned that NOT would get accidentally wiped off.
When I had shoulder surgery, they asked me to initial the injured shoulder. I’d heard these types of stories in the past and was about to mark the other shoulder “NO” or something along those lines, but I stopped for mostly that reason. That they’d see my NO, with my handwriting, which is terrible when I write normally, much less on my own shoulder, and misread it.
Plus, I was writing on the surgery shoulder with my non-dominant hand, so that probably barely resembled my initials in the first place.
IMHO, something that might make sense would be for them to have you initial the surgery location, but then give you a red marker and have you make an X on the non-surgery side. Preferably with a marker that won’t easily wash off if the OR team accidentally starts prepping that side first.
The prep staff gets the patient positioned and draped. By the time the actual surgeon shows up, there’s a small area of skin visible where they’re going to work. Any / all markings are somewhere under the drapes they’re trying hard not to touch.
A set up to goof, but the blame is (probably in most cases) somewhat upstream of the first incision.
“I’m a surgeon, not a book-reading guy. I thought it said ‘note this leg’ like ‘note that this is the leg you gotta cut off’. So what if I forgot that ‘note’ had an ‘e’ at the end?”
You forgot the “Dammit, Jim!” that goes before this.