Grey's Anatomy: The Intern Formerly Known as Steve/July 2008

This page lists all blog entries from Grey's Anatomy: The Intern Formerly Known as Steve from July 2008.

Introducing Intern Steve & the Intern-ettes
Yes, the rumors are true. The interns are forming a band. So far I can sum up our style as Alternative meets Funk meets Country meets the Grateful Dead. Ok, so we’re having some creative differences. But don’t worry, we will finish forming our band and go on to produce at least a one 1–hit-wonder before breaking up. I promise you that. So get in line folks because our performances are going to be SOLD OUT!

Now I know you are all dying to know just who is in the band, and what instrument (or instruments, as the case may be) I will be playing. But before I can reveal this information to the blogiverse, we need to find a drummer. Auditions will be held 7am Tuesday at Joe's Bar. (And yes Leo, in spite of your claim to be the Keith Moon of your generation, you too must audition.) Joe was kind enough to lend us the space, but keep in mind that we must be out of there by 10am so he can open. So please be punctual.

Everyone is welcome. We just require two things. You must be an intern and you must be good. Which means that the audition doors are NOT (I repeat, NOT) open to the following groups: residents, attendings, nurses, orderlies, cafeteria chefs, administrative assistants, maintenance staff, and lab technicians. We like you. We respect you. We stand in fear of you. But we will not let you into our band. We will hold strong in our resolve. This is an intern band. It is one of the few things we have. And gosh darn it, we will not let that be taken from us!

This blog post was originally posted on blogs.abc.com/internsteve on July 3, 2008.

How I Made $312 on Stevens vs. Torres
Abracadabra! A magician never reveals his secrets. But lucky for you inquisitive readers, I am no magician. I’m a mathematician. (Or at least a former state quarterfinals mathlete. Go Tanglebrush Tangents!) And mathematicians are all about sharing the knowledge. So today in the tradition of mathematicians past, I will share with you my cafeteria-tested, surgical-intern-approved, please-do-try-this-at-work gambling algorithm.

Every algorithm begins with a mathematical problem. As a former mathlete my job is to identify these problems before they filter into the public information superhighway. That’s why, when I was running to get Dr. Yang her extra-hot-no-foam-quadruple-cappuccino and spotted Dr. Torres speaking a little too close for comfort with Dr. Stevens, I quickly translated their body language to mean that a fight was in the works. And thankfully, I did, because it allowed me quite a head start. It wasn't until four-and-a-half minutes into my strategizing that Megan telephone-tagged me with the 411. (Ok, I’ll admit it. I kind of broke the cardinal rule of gambling and shared my technique with her.  But fear not fellow mathletes, she admitted that she “does not hate trigonometry all that much.”  So really, she’s a mathlete at heart.)

So now that I'd identified the potential fight, I had my problem that needed solving. Who will win? Now as much as I love time travel, (Oh, you didn’t know that about me? I haven’t mentioned that yet? Well, I do.  And I will.) I haven’t yet mastered that whole traveling to the future thing yet. Good thing I have math as my tool for making future predictions. The first step in this is translating the problem from layman’s terms (who will win) into the lovely language of mathematics. But in order to do that, I had to reduce the two residents to variables. For the sake of the equation, I assigned Dr. Torres and Dr. Stevens the variables X and Y respectively. Thus the mathematical problem became “Is the sum of X’s force greater than the sum of Y’s?”

Now comes the tough part. The brainy part. Solving the problem. Traditionally I would begin with an intensive investigation into the two variables. But time doesn’t always permit these things, and since the fight was only five hours away, I had to rely on my previous observations.

So here’s what I knew about X…

Fact: She lost a baby once. She LOST a baby! (Yeah, I’m still not over that.) Value: -1 Reason: Lack of follow through is not the best quality for a fighter.

Fact: She breaks bones for a living. Have I mentioned she’s an orthopedic surgeon? Value: 1 Reason: MAJOR advantage in any physical scenario.

Fact: She is married to George O’Malley. Value: 0 Reason: I can’t place a quantitative value on this since I’m learning that I really don’t have all the facts. Joe the Bartender filled me in on some stuff about George last night. It’s pretty personal, so I can’t write about it here. But needless to say, now I’m thinking that I may have been a little hard on the guy.

Rumor: She used to eat her own hair. Value: 0 Reason: First off—GROSS. Second—that is such a rumor.

Theory: She might be a hologram. Why not, right? I mean she’s not around very much, and when she is it’s only for a couple of minutes. Graciella claims she scrubbed in with her once and touched her arm. But I’m not going to buy into that silly attempt to disprove my totally awesome theory. Value: 0 Reason: It’s just a theory, albeit a darn good one.

-1 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 0

Evaluation: X’s strengths and weaknesses cancel themselves out.

And here’s what I knew about Y…

Fact: She saved the life of a deer. She likes animals. And values life. Value: 1 Reason: Valuing life (especially your own) is a prerequisite to winning a fight.

Fact: Leo is her intern. Handling him on a daily basis? Enough said. Value: 1 Reason: Ditto.

Fact: Penmanship is important to her. Just ask Graciella who got caught writing an indecipherable “p.” Value: 0 Reason: This really doesn’t have much to do with anything, I just found it interesting that someone other than a 1st grade teacher, would place such emphasis on crossing your “t”s and dotting your “i”s. That’s all.

Fact: She recently orchestrated a small funeral service for a patient. Again, she’s big on the importance of life. (Which is really cool.) Points awarded: 0 Reason: Redundant. I’ve already allotted her one point for this quality.

Rumor: She cut a patient’s L-VAD wire to bump him up on the transplant list. Yeah, I’m totally not buying this rumor. Talk about far-fetched. Really folks, if you are going to make things up, try to make them sound at least kind of, sort of, a wee bit true. Value: 0 Reason: Because it is just a rumor. I don’t care what Mitch says.

1 + 1 + 0 + 0 + 0 = 2

Evaluation: While Y’s strengths are not that substantial, her lack of apparent weakness places her at an advantage over X.

Once I tallied the sums, and evaluated the variables, I felt confident in making my prediction, which I wrote on a small piece of paper in case anyone questioned me later. It is always good to have proof. Physical proof.

Here it is… 'Y will take the fight. Even if it is by default because X doesn’t show up. (Which I think is a distinct possibility.) Ergo, Y > X.'

Ok, so maybe my formula-for-gambling-success never got the chance to be officially tested. You see, X walked away before Y got to throw the first punch, (which btw she was totally ready to do). You should have seen her removing her shoes and going all Karate Kid 3 with the pre-fight stretching.

I’ll admit I was kind of bummed at first. But then I realized two things. #1: X walking away further proves my theory that she is a hologram. Think about it. Of course she can’t fight Y, because her punches would go right through Y! #2: X forfeiting meant that I had won! Turns out only a couple of us bet on Dr. Stevens, so I totally CLEANED UP! (And by cleaned up, I don’t mean mopped up a spill in the Pit again. I mean, won a whole lot of money…aka $312!)

And $312 is no small potatoes. For $312 you can ride to the top of the Space Needle 19 ½ times. Or purchase 15 pounds of salmon from Pike Place Market. Or 62 budget lunches (a.k.a. salads, not the famous meatloaf) from the SGH cafeteria. Or 78 round trip passes on the Monorail. $312 can go a LONG way in the city of Seattle.

So when your co-workers are all placing bets on who will win the hot dog eating contest (before my time they had one here at SGH) just know that with a little luck, (ok…and maybe a dash of magic) and a lot of logic you, too can be a winner. And tomorrow, when you walk back through the doors of your place of employment, you won’t just be known as that #2—that single digit guy. No Siree! From this point on you’ll be known as the triple digit WINNER! Or at least I will be. Go math!

This blog post was originally posted on blogs.abc.com/internsteve on July 19, 2008.

A Case of the Seriouslys
The Black Plague. Smallpox. Syphilis. Just a few of the highly contagious infectious diseases that have ravaged and destroyed the peoples of the world throughout time. Diseases caused by one bad strain of bacteria catching on and spreading like wildfire. Well, as a new M.D., I’m taking it upon myself to diagnose a pretty nasty bug that’s infiltrated the walls of Seattle Grace Hospital. Yes, you guessed it…the Seriouslys.

As far as infectious vocabulary diseases go, the Seriouslys are right below a case of the Umms (which are of course, one step below the Likes) and directly above a case of the Actuallys. What makes the Seriouslys so dangerous is their ability to replace practically any word or expression in the English language. One person unknowingly utters a couple of "seriouslys" and it’s a slippery slope. Within hours everyone in a quarter-mile radius is gradually losing the vocabulary they’ve spent their whole lives compiling.

Below I’ve transcribed a real life, actual conversation that took place in the locker room before rounds yesterday. I believe it illustrates the dangers of the Seriouslys.

MITCH: Seriously guys, I need to get in on Sloan’s facial reconstruction today.
 * Translation→ I so need to get in on Sloan’s facial reconstruction today.

PIERCE: Seriously?
 * Translation→ Facial reconstruction? Real surgeons slice open brains.

ME (#2): Seriously.
 * Translation→ I second that.

LUCY: Seriously?
 * Translation→ Whatever. Cardio trumps Neuro any day.

NORMAN: Seriously!
 * Translation→ I haven’t the foggiest idea what any of you silly kids are talking about, but I can say “seriously” just like the rest of you. Ha ha!  See?  I said it!

LEO: Seriously?
 * Translation→ Who are you kidding, grandpa? You can’t keep up with our “seriouslys."

# 3: Seriously!
 * Translation→ LEO! Have a little respect.  He’s one of us.

Ok, so now do you see the danger? Let’s face it folks; this disease has reached critical mass. We are entering threat level purple here. If we don’t find a cure, I give us two months tops before the Seriouslys have irreversibly replaced every single word in our collective vocabulary. And I don’t think that it would be in the interest of patients to have surgeons communicating with sentences like “Can I have the seriously to seriously him?” or “Which seriously is it that we are seriously-ing?” or “Is he seriously-ed already?”

So is there a cure? Can we solve this lingual crisis? This war of the words?

Well, I’ve decided to consult an expert on the subject—me. You see I once developed a case of the Umms. I got it from my five-year-old cousin. (Stay on alert folks! These vocabulary disasters can come from anywhere!)  But fear not, the Umms didn’t progress to an irreversible state of wordlessness. Nope, thanks to a little thing called the Likes, the Umms went away pretty quickly. You see the only way to cure the Umms is to give everyone a vial of the Likes or the Actuallys or the You Knows (but I’d advise not to go there as they are a dangerous beast) or some other lingual disease. Then the new lingual disease replaces the old one just in the nick of time.

Ok, so there may be a minor side effect to my cure. You see, eventually the replacement lingual disease will begin eliminating words and need to be thwarted by the introduction of yet another lingual disease, thus creating a bit of an endless cycle. But that's okay because cycles are what the world is all about! (I mean, where would we be without the water cycle?) And it is this endless cycle of lingual diseases that will prevent our collective vocabulary from complete and utter obliteration.

So please sign the petition below to make “Actually” the new “Seriously.” Save the words. Save the world.


 * 1.   #2
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This blog post was originally posted on blogs.abc.com/internsteve on July 24, 2008.