[QUOTE=gabriela]
picunurse, I don’t really know – if the head to the windshield is bad enough to send them to me, they’re usually fractured all to hellangone, and the coup/contrecoup distinction vanishes in a multitude of injuries all over the place.
I like the bleak humor of the neurosurgeon’s comment. When I was a fourth-year medical student I had a prized T-shirt that read “Found Down” on the front and “DNR” on the back. (For non-medical people: “Found Down” is for a person the EMS folks find unresponsive on the sidewalk with no history; “DNR” is of course “Do Not Resuscitate”).
I loved that shirt. Got some stunned and evil reactions to it. I’ve always loved dry bleak medical humor. Maybe more than normal people love it.
Reminds me of a few nights ago when a CSI guy’s mother wanted to ask me a question. Seemed she had forgotten the name of a syndrome applied by her doctors to her toe. All she could say was that it started with an F. I had to admit drawing a blank. I said, “The good news is, it probably isn’t fatal.” She said, “Oh no, I don’t want to die!” I said, “Well, since I don’t know anything about it, you probably won’t.”
Too dry?
[/QUOTE]
Never! 
Oh, he was dead serious. I saw shock on his face, when, after said placement, a family member went ballistic because, “You said he’d be FINE!” His response was “Well, he is fine!” He just didn’t “get” it.
I’m I awful that I’ve used it?
To prolong the hijack a bit longer, can I mention the nurse who moved from some other part of the country? At the time, the major ambulance company in the area was named Shepard’s Ambulance.
One day, reading a chart, she looked up a bit bemused and said “It’s so nice to live somewhere that regular people care so much.” 
She continued, “Like in this chart, the patient ‘was found down by shepards and brought to the ER.’ Where are the sheep ranches so close to downtown?”
The worst part was that no one clued her in, so she kept watching for herds of sheep in downtown Seattle.
We medical people are so very funny.
