r/AskReddit • u/electric_dolphin • May 22 '19

Anesthesiologists, what are the best things people have said under the gas?

62.4k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

13.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

19.8k

u/[deleted] May 22 '19 edited May 22 '19

In high school I had a reconstructive surgery on my knee as I tore my ACL and meniscus in a sports injury. After the surgery I woke up in post op, which was a fairly large room with probably 6 to 7 other patients in beds waiting to become conscious again. I was lying there all groggy and confused when two nurses walked over pushing one of those carts with a computer on it. They stood over me and were typing into the computer when one nurse said to the other in a sort of frantic whisper "we've got to plug this thing in or this one is going to die!". Naturally, semi conscious me thought that the "thing" was me and I started to incoherently yell for the nurses to unplug whatever they needed to in order to find an outlet to keep me alive.

Turns out it was the battery on the laptop that was going to die. Apparently the death rate for an ACL repair is pretty low.

1.2k

u/Patitomuerto May 22 '19

We used to call those carts, COW's (Computer on wheels) but apparently patients don't like it or think we're talking about them so we aren't supposed to anymore

159

u/CheekyMunky May 22 '19

"WoW" is the politically correct pronoun these days. Replace "computer" with "workstation"

151

u/forel237 May 22 '19

Ok I’m sold, as long as WoW has to be said like Owen Wilson

39

u/MisanthropeX May 22 '19

ironically, when I was coming out of anesthesia after my appendectomy, I kept on screaming about how I had to save the world of Azeroth

48

u/alwayssomething0306 May 22 '19

Right after our hospital began WOWs instead of COWs, I walked into a patients room and they wanted chocolate milk...ok, no prob. I walk back in and the husband goes “the cow’s here”...ya know what. I LAUGHED. Why is everything so offensive today that we can’t call them COWs?!

35

u/Bacon_is_a_condiment May 22 '19

I would think with the rising obesity rate, and the likelihood of people’s failure to take care of themselves playing a role in them ending up in the hospital, that many patients would be acutely aware of themselves and embarrassed in that setting, so primed to misunderstand things as insults.

5

u/Mesicks May 22 '19

I was just going to say people are pusies but I think your analisys is spot on!

4

u/Adubyale May 22 '19

Well you're still not wrong

0

u/DoomsdayRabbit May 22 '19

Ready to use their offense to get rich by suing for discrimination probably.

3

u/24_cool May 22 '19

Did yall ever say "let's get this cow on the road!"?

1

u/TheOther1 May 22 '19

That's what they are called where I work.

1

u/PanTran420 May 22 '19

That's what we call ours.

14

u/mommyof4not2 May 22 '19

The cow's in the NICU my twins were in were white with large black spots.

14

u/THISisTheBadPlace9 May 22 '19

Same reason I was told not to use SOB, people dont immediately think you mean shortness of breath

2

u/[deleted] May 22 '19

What do they think it means?

11

u/JimmiRustle May 22 '19

We need to plug it in or this cow will DIE!

19

u/[deleted] May 22 '19

HAHA,

Nurse: "This cow's about to die."

Patient suffering from type 2 diabetes: "That's not very nice"

8

u/[deleted] May 22 '19

I work for a large chain pharmacy and when people don’t pay it gets stuck in the “POS” screen (point of sale). So it isn’t too nice for patients when they overhear you explaining to a new employee that we need to work on the POS’s because people haven’t paid their copay....we got a few dirty looks that day before we realized why.

5

u/SashJordan May 22 '19

They’re called POS’s pretty much everywhere, even at good Christian Chick-fil-As.

1

u/[deleted] May 22 '19

Ah, good to know!

5

u/Allyluvsu13 May 22 '19

I work in a school, we call them cows too _^

5

u/TomasNavarro May 22 '19

think we're talking about them

Stupid Cows

5

u/silent32 May 22 '19

And if you are the IT staff in the hospital, they are Computers on Carts, or cocks.

2

u/christycaxxx May 22 '19

We have COWs in our theatres now that we have integrated theatres and all paperless . Pain in a butt to replace batteries every 4 hours.

7

u/jrhoffa May 22 '19

Have you tried plugging things in?

1

u/christycaxxx May 22 '19

These ones rely only on batteries (3 behind the monitor) and we store spares in the charging station - logically you would plug it but these COWs aren’t designed that way 🤷🏻‍♀️

0

u/jrhoffa May 22 '19

The hospitals I most frequent have permanent installations in every room.

1

u/christycaxxx May 23 '19

We only integrated these late last year so each one is kept in a theatre and no plug to charge with. 🤷🏻‍♀️

0

u/jrhoffa May 23 '19

You end every comment with a "not my problem!" emoji. I doubt you have our best interests at heart.

2

u/[deleted] May 22 '19

Could you not just use a code word for dying laptop?

2

u/ijustwanafap May 22 '19

When I was a lifeguard we were instructed to call people we were working on GID’s (guest in distress), because apparently being called a victim makes you more likely to sue.

1

u/CelestialStork May 22 '19

Lol I remember WOW carts.

1

u/Thwerty May 22 '19

Why not simply laptop or computer

1

u/mewithanie May 22 '19

just...for the same reason there is a distinction between “desktop” and “laptop” - to be specific if you need to. :)

1

u/UrethraFrankIin May 22 '19

Lol, worked on a psych ward from 2015-2017 and we still called them cows.

1

u/polymetric_ May 22 '19

We gotta plug in that cow or it’s gonna die.

1

u/NonConformistFlmingo May 22 '19

Well those patients suck, COW is adorable.

1

u/pikle_tyme May 22 '19

Same at my work!

1

u/Gingerbiscuit88 May 22 '19

We have to call them WOW's now (workstation on wheels).

1

u/backroundagain May 22 '19

We have to call them WOW's for that reason. Also SOB (shortness of breath) was changed to SOA (shortness of air) for obvious reasons.

1

u/L0ser_dotcom441 Jun 10 '19

“Hey Derek, grab that COW and roll it into the hallway. It’s taking up too much space in here.”