My oldest son
had an ingrown toenail problem. It happened to him twice on the same foot, so I took him to the doctor's office.

The practice we went to was a teaching practice- that is, they got interns from the local medical college, and had three senior doctors who were there to supervise.

So my son gets this young girl who takes all of the information down and inspects the toe, then decides that she's in over her head with this and gets a senior doc. He brings in another girl to watch as well, and kept a running commentary going about using Lydocaine for the local anesthetic, and how he was injecting in three locations do achieve digital blocking before cutting the sides of the nail off and destroying the strip of exposed nail bed so the problem wouldn't recur.

After all was said and done a middle-aged nurse was wrapping gauze on his toe when my son asked, "What does digital blocking mean?"

The nurse replied, "Nerve block. Making the entire toe numb."

I leaned closer. "Actually when you weren't looking he hooked up a USB port to your toe and downloaded a couple of Carpenters MP3s into there. If you hold your foot near your ear you should hear 'Laaaaaa, close to you...'"

The nurse stared at me a moment, then said to my son, "Is he always like this?"

He glumly nodded...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 13 Jan 2012, 0:17, Reply)