Timesis

Tmesis (tmee’-sis): Interjecting a word or phrase between parts of a compound word or between syllables of a word.

He had more medical malpractice suits than Canada has geese. Once he sewed his surgical gown to his patient’s leg. It’s funny that none of the attending nurses warned him. But, he’s a tyrant, and would’ve yelled at them, breaking the solemn spell of surgery. Besides, he was a joker having too much fun. Why interrupt him?

Once, as a joke, he mailed a man’s heart to that he’d removed during a transplant to San Fran-friggin’-sisco. The address and return address were bogus. He was trying to get the heart “lost in San Fransisco” like song says. It is against the law to mail human organs without a special permit. He had risked his license to practice medicine. He didn’t get caught. He thought it was funny.

I think the height of his malpractice ingenuity came when he did a lung transplant. The patient had irked him in the run-up to the surgery. The doctor had a daughter who worked at the office’s reception desk. Whenever the patient came in, he would try to make a move on his daughter. He would lean over the counter and wheeze all over her asking if she wanted to go back to his place when she got off work. Of course, she told him no, but he persisted.

The doctor was incensed and told his daughter he would “take care of this guy.” On the day of the surgery, the patient was wheeled into operating room and anesthetized. The doctor pulled a rubber ducky out of his surgical gown, squeezed and squeaked it a couple of times, and set it on the table. When the surgery was almost complete, the doctor picked up the rubber ducky and removed the squeaker, sterilized it, mounted it inside the new lung, and sewed everything up. Now, whenever the man bent over he would squeak like a rubber ducky. Also, if he breathed quickly in a state of excitement he would squeak like a rubber ducky.

Of course, the doctor was sued three ways to hell, but he didn’t lose his license to practice medicine because the state medical board thought what he had done was hilarious. In fact, he won the “Scappy Medal” from the Australian Union of Surgeons, a collective of renegade surgeons who want to “bring a degree of humour to the fair dinkum rubbish that passes in surgery as fun as footy.” The medal is sculpted as a laughing scalpel and says “Let’s hit the coast” with an Aussie accent if you press the button on the bottom.

So, the doctor goes on. Slicing, but not dicing, bringing levity to the operating table. We understand he’s operating on a convicted “Peeping Tom” next week.

Definitions courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu.

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