Saturday, October 27, 2007

Who the f@&k is Billy Ruebens?

As I mentioned in my previous post, Zeke is a bit jaundiced and is receiving phototherapy for it. He's doing fine and we're going home in a couple of hours. In the meantime, I learned something new.

When the night nurse came in a couple of nights ago to test him for jaundice, she said she was taking him to get his "Billy Ruebens" checked. I was a bit confused and asked who that was, and she explained that they were looking to see if Zeke had jaundice. So I figured that "Billy Ruebens" was a doctor back in the day who had come up with the test for jaundice or was some other prominent person in the medical field.

Then earlier today, we were meeting with the pediatrician who was explaining a bunch of stuff to us, and when she asked if we had any questions, I said, "actually, yes. I was just wondering who Billy Ruebens was and if he had something to do with jaundice research." She gave me the look that is usually reserved for people with dementia or some form of brain damage and explained that people hadn't been saying "Billy Ruebens," but rather, "bilirubins," which apparently is a chemical that has something to do with jaundice. Thankfully, her explanation was not followed by flashing sirens and large illuminated arrows with "moron" pointed in my direction, but it wouldn't have surprised me.

1 comment:

  1. OMG! We had almost the exact same thing happen to us, well, me, really, when Brendan was born.

    Had never read this post before. Very funny.

    Got to love all those things you learn in the first 24 hours of being a mom!

    ReplyDelete

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