So here’s a story about a doctor who removed the wrong kidney from some poor dude.
This is pretty bad. But it’s also at least somewhat understandable. I mean, kidneys look pretty much the same. And everybody has two of them. A quick screw up of right and left, and bam–you took out the wrong one. Oops!
But that’s not all. The same doctor apparently accidentally biopsied another patient’s pancreas instead of his kidney.
Now, I’m no doctor. I don’t even play one on TV (or the intertubes, even). But I do own a copy of Gray’s Anatomy (the book, not the TV show) and I’d like to think that, should I ever find myself confronted with a person with an open abdominal cavity and was asked “quick, identify the kidneys!” I’d be able to avoid pointing at the goddamn pancreas.
Here, check for yourself:
There’s a lot of crap in there, I admit. And I’m sure when someone is cut open, there’s like blood and stuff obscuring your view. But see those kidney bean shaped things in the back? Those there are kidneys. And that big thing that sort of wraps all around and goes every which way in the middleish of the picture? That’s a pancreas.
See the difference? Yeah, I admit, there is some stuff that’s omitted in that diagram. For instance, I don’t see a liver in there, and I’m fairly sure there ought to be one. And those intestines probably aren’t just cut open and disconnected like that in real life. But still, a surgeon spends years and years learning this stuff. They’re not expected to just cut into people and fish around randomly after just a few weeks of boot camp training. So I feel justified in thinking that this guy is a complete incompetent asshole.
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