Road Apples
Dec. 8, 2008


When a little information is just a little too much

By Tim Sanders

Like most Americans, I am a vast repository of information. Unfortunately, most of it is bad information. On the positive side, however, I do know enough about some things to fake it.

When I have a conversation with an auto mechanic, for example, I try my best to make him think I know exactly what he’s talking about.


MR. GOODWRENCH: What you’ve got here, Mr. Sanders, is a serious problem with the diaphragm in your vertical Soames constrictor.

ME (nodding judiciously): Aha!

MR. GOODWRENCH: I can’t be sure until I take it apart, but at the very least we’re looking at a completely new subset of pterodactyl fittings and probably a leftwitch bushing replacement. And if everything is oxidized in there, we’re talking about a corrupted Fenster valve. And you know how expensive that can be.

ME: Fenster valve ... oh yeah. I sure hope it’s not one of those.


Of course I have no earthly idea what the mechanic is talking about, but my plan is to act as though I do, so he doesn’t take advantage of me. The mechanic’s plan is probably to make up as many nonsense words as he can to determine just how stupid I really am. Later he probably tells his boss, "That guy was a moron. I told him I had to replace his Farnsworth retainer and recondition his Volstead oscillator with my jib grinder, and while he was gone I tightened a couple of nuts. I charged him $198 for parts and $65 for labor! Let’s go get some Kentucky Fried."

I’d bet that at least 75% of American males are like me. They don’t want to admit that they don’t know anything about auto repair and other testosterone-related things, so they fake it. And if I’m right, my guess would be that an even larger percentage of Americans, male and female, are clueless when it comes to medical terminology. There are a few of us mechanical neophytes, after all, who’ve changed our own tires and gapped our own spark plugs, but how many of us have ever set our own broken legs or removed our own gallbladders? A recent statistical study from the National Institutes of Health clearly shows that 98% of all recent statistical studies from the National Institutes of Health were the result of numbers arranged randomly by fourteen chimpanzees borrowed from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. And if I had my very own team of statistically trained space monkeys, I believe I could offer conclusive proof that 100% of all American doctors and pharmacists know full well that 99.9% of their patients, regardless of age, sex, race, creed, or political affiliation, know as much about medicine as your average piece of dried plankton knows about nuclear physics.

How do I know this, you ask? Well, here are a couple of indicators:


1. There are those instructions we’ve all encountered on our medicine bottles which say: "Take two capsules daily BY MOUTH." I’m sure you know what this means. This means that before that bit of instruction was added, there were thousands of Americans using those capsules who were sticking them somewhere other than in their mouths. You can just imagine:

"Hey Bob, what’s them things in your ear?"

"What?"

"THEM THINGS IN YOUR EAR!"

"My blood pressure pills, why?"

"Are you sure that’s where they’re supposed to go?"

"What?"

"ARE YOU SURE THAT’S WHERE THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO GO?"

"I dunno. It didn’t say nothing on the bottle."


2. And then there’s the infamous medical misinformation grapevine. Here’s how it works:

a) Leon Bohack visits the doctor for his annual checkup. His doctor says something fairly innocuous, like: "Well Leon, you do have a bit of phlebitis in your right leg, but nothing to worry about. That abdominal pain you’ve been having after meals is probably just gas, but to be on the safe side you need to come in Monday for an EKG to rule out any heart problems." Leon hears something or other about flea bites on his leg, but is more concerned with the words HEART and PROBLEMS.

b) Leon tells his wife he has a serious heart problem and fleas, and needs to have a heart test done. He doesn’t remember what kind.

c) Leon’s wife calls her mother and tells her Leon’s heart is very bad, and he needs to have one of those tube things stuck up his leg to check it out. She’s not sure, but she thinks he may have caught heart worms from the dog, because his leg is all eaten up with flea bites. She shampoos the carpet and gives the dog a bath.

d) Leon’s mother-in-law calls her friend Virginia and tells her that her son-in-law is going to have open heart surgery and probably won’t make it because after all he eats bacon every morning, and he’s smoked for over forty years, and dipped snuff, too. She adds that it’s a wonder he even has any lungs left. He also may lose a leg due to rabies.

e) Virginia tells the ladies in her Sunday School class that Leon Bohack is going to have quadruple bypass surgery and also a lung transplant and both legs may be amputated due to a coyote attack. They agree to send flowers and a get well card to the Bohacks the following week.

f) Old Miss Nevins, having got temporarily disoriented in the church parking lot, doesn’t get to the sanctuary until the service is almost over. She hears the preacher say something or other about poor Leon Bohack and flowers and a card, and then her hearing aid battery goes on the blink again. Immediately after church she purchases a sympathy card and goes home to prepare a nice green bean casserole for the bereaved Bohack widow.

So within two days after that original piddling little diagnosis of a swollen leg and gas problems, Leon’s condition has evolved into a fatal combination of disorders and, as far as half the community knows, he’s already shuffled off his mortal coil. That is what happens when people like you and me, who know little or nothing about medicine, relate medical information to each other.

We’re better off pretending to understand automotive terms. The results of that silliness are seldom fatal.