Aug 18, 2012
The classical medical parody The House of God by Samuel Shem (AKA psychiatrist Stephen Bergman) has been a must read for medical students and residents since its publication in 1978. The August 2012 Let Magic Happen newsletter has more details about The House of God and the somewhat darker and not quite as funny sequel, Mount Misery, another parody chronicling Basch’s psychiatric residency. The Laws of The House of God are listed below and explained in the accompanying 9 minute video.
The first 8 of the 13 Laws of The House of God are attributed to the legendary Fat Man, the resident who is the only voice of sanity during Roy Basch’s tumultuous internship. The Laws are introduced in ALL CAPS in sequential order in the book with the last 5 apparently being made up by Basch himself.
The Laws of The House of God
I: Gomers don’t die.
II: Gomers go to ground.
III: At a cardiac arrest, the first procedure is to take your own pulse.
IV: The patient is the one with the disease.
V: Placement comes first.
VI: There is no body cavity that cannot be reached with a #14 needle and a good strong arm.
VII: Age + BUN = Lasix dose.
VIII: They can always hurt you more.
X: If you don’t take a temperature, you can’t find a fever.
IX: The only good admission is a dead admission.
XI: Show me a BMS who only triples my work and I will kiss his feet.
XII: If the radiology resident and the BMS both see a lesion on the chest X ray, there can be no lesion there.
XIII: The delivery of medical care is to do as much nothing as possible.
Dec 20, 2022
POSTED BY Larry Burk
I was noticing daily bouts of palpitations associated with mild nausea where I could feel my pulse racing at twice the normal speed. A repeat Holter monitor showed one episode of life-threatening VTach which got me a prescription for a beta blocker. Never having taken any drugs other than antibiotics before, it was an unusual experience. My resting heart rate immediately dropped from 60 to 50, my chronically cold hands and feet got warmer, and my wife noted that my personality was flat.
I embarked on a journey of self-healing exploring every possible natural option beginning with learning to increase my heart rate variability using the Inner Balance Coherence Sensor and App from HeartMath which has been shown to decrease arrhythmias. Cardiac herbs Hawthorn and Arjuna were added to my daily supplements along with homeopathic Digitalis and Aurum Arsenicum as recommended in homeopath Joette Calabrese’s blog My Dad and the Dead Cardiologists.
If you would like to learn more about these holistic approaches, I offer free 20-minute phone coaching consults to assess the emotional state of your heart. Read about the experience of one of my coaching clients in the Holistic Healing for Heart Arrythmias blog.
Part 1 & Part 2 free videos
Part 3 - Using EFT & Imagery Experiential group exercise
22 min. edited High-Def video $4.99 in Let Magic Happen Store.
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