In the 90s, my parents – like the rest of the country – were really into watching ER. (My 9 year old self didn’t quite get the magic of the show – I mostly just remember the heartbreaking instances where my dad accidentally recorded it over my unwatched episodes of Xena: Warrior Princess.)
Still, I remember it being really popular.
Anyway, I was reading Everything Bad Is Good For You yesterday, and one chapter included part of the script.
Cue to KERRY bringing in a young girl. CARTER and LUCY run up. The girl’s parents are present.
KERRY: Sixteen-year-old, unconscious, history of villari treesure.
CARTER: Glucyna coma?
KERRY: Looks like it.
MR. MAKOMI: She was doing fine until 6 months ago.
CARTER: What medication is she on?
MRS. MAKOMI: Emphrasylim, tobramysim, vitamins A, D, and K.
LUCY: The skin’s jaundiced.
KERRY: Same with sclera, does her breath smell sweet?
CARTER: Peder permadicis?
KERRY: Yeah.
LUCY: What’s that?
KERRY: Liver’s shut down, let’s dip her urine. Set lactulose, 30 ccs per mg
What the… wait, what?
WHAT?
Action Potential 
I can’t decide if this is a science fiction world where insulin is made by the liver of extraordinarily tiny people (30 ccs per mg! Give her ALL the osmolarities!), or if this is just the universe explaining to me why my mother and her nurse friends always yelled and threw pillows at the screen for factual inaccuracy..
biliary atresia?
My mom never watched ER very much. She was more into Chicago Hope. I just remember thinking those people had a A LOT of sex in the hospital.
I’ve never heard of the show ER before. Can you post a link to a video clip of the show?
Oh lord. I have no idea what they’re saying!
You guys are all noobs. I prescribed Emphrasylim for my patient in a glucyna coma just the other day. That peder permadicis cleared right up. If you don’t even know that, you have some serious boards studying to do, let me tell you.
WHAAA?
This is exactly why medical shows are now ruined for me forever.
Sounds like their medical consultant must have been on vacation and they just said, “Screw it, we can write the show anyway!” Then they went back to a old episode, phonetically wrote down a couple of phrases from a few different patient encounters, and bundled it up into a new disease. I’m with Anon that one of them must have had biliary atresia.
I also think J.K. Rowling suggested the term “peder permadicis,” because I can’t imagine where else that came from.
I’m not so sure about the authenticity of the script. One of the reasons why ER was so good was that Michael Crichton was a doctor and were written not only from experience, but also with a little bit of good ol’ fashioned science behind them. Only a tiny bit mind. The storyline was the important bit.
Still now I want to watch another episode to see if I can spot anything like that.
That’s even better than Grey’s – they did full chest compressions in a cardiac patient with a cracked chest when he went into VF.
My personal favourite was a crime show – they did a thoracic X-ray of a completely empty chest cavity and it came back showing heart, diaphragm etc.
Transcription error: villari treesure = biliary atresia. peder permadicis = fetor hepaticus. Glucyna coma = is that how you end up with this script?
BUUURRRRN.
Haha, love it!