Diagnosing the Chicken (and other cool tricks)

My husband (aka Ward) is totally ignorant to the fact that I've been playing games with him for the last, oh, ten years or so that I've known him. He really has no idea--- the entire game is in my own little head. I'm a sore winner, so when I am victorious in the secret competition, he's completely baffled as to why I'm suddenly all full of smug sassiness.

The gist is this:

He's a physician. I'm not. But if I can beat him to diagnose someone, or better yet, I correctly diagnose someone--- and he doesn't, I win. And since there's never an end to people who want to air their laundry lists of symptoms to two medical professionals, this secret pastime of mine had no end in sight. Yay me!

First there was a patient that kept crashing in the ICU when Ward was doing his neurology rotation in med school. I was this guy's OT, and I had a gut feeling about what was going on. In the meantime, the MD's were just scratching their heads and ordering more tests.

My hunch was right--- sepsis! Bada BING!!

Then there's this friend of mine that was having troubles with falling and tingling extremities. She's not diabetic.

"Oh my God," I thought. She has MS.

When I relayed the symptoms to Hubby, he said "She has MS."

Uh huh, that's right. Who thought of that first, Mr. Smarty?

Fortunately, I came off my winner's high quickly, when presented with the seriousness of the situation. Turns out it wasn't MS after all--- just some random minor thing that's easy to fix. Thank goodness.

But I still won.

Yesterday, I put on the full June Cleaver Act, and roasted a chicken. It smelled wonderful, and I praised myself on my ability to appear somewhat domesticated, at times.

I cut into it at dinner, and it was the juiciest damn thing you ever saw. I served it to the kids. And I noticed, too late, that there was some yellowish spongy thing near the spine. By that time, the kids had inhaled their dinners, so I was left to retch in peace. I thought I recognized The Thing, since it looked too much like something I found in my cadaver during Gross Anatomy. Still, I hoped I was wrong.

Sure enough, Ward comes home and confirms my worst fears.

"I think this thing has a tumor."

I must have had a look of absolute horror on my face. So he tried his best to make me feel better by saying, "What? Look, just because you eat a tumor doesn't mean you're going to get a tumor."

I was quite aware of this, thank you. And still, it took a few tries to swallow my bile back down.

Suddenly, The Win doesn't taste so sweet.

And I'm now, officially, a vegetarian.