Friday, April 23, 2010

Being Polite Could Save Your Life

For our FHE activity Monday night, we played Doctor to help Aaron prepare for the practical portion of his Entrance to Third Year Exam the following morning, where he would have pretend patients and pretend to get their medical histories, do physicals, diagnose them, counsel them, and such. So we got out the kids' medical kit and were having fun faking catastrophes and quickly being restored to health by the amazing Doctors.

When it was Aaron's turn to be the patient and Xander was the Doctor, Aaron was doing quite a dramatic rendition of a heart attack. When he fell upon the floor, Dr. Xander auscultated (that's Aaron's fancy word for listened) with his stethoscope and announced that his heart wasn't even beating. After several vigorous shocks with the blood pressure cuff, Xander auscultated once again and declared excitedly that his heart was beating again--he was better! Like a thorough physician, Dr. Xander proceeded to counsel his patient. "You need to be more polite and take smaller bites. When you swallowed the whole hamburger, it got stuck in your heart and gave you a heart attack. So you just need to take smaller bites, OK?"

What perfect advice. The laughter that ensued certainly helped reduce Aaron's risk of heart attack due to exceeding levels of stress that night! It was just what the doctor (or midlevel provider, as the case may be) ordered.