Nurse Ratched’s Place

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas? I think not. It ends up on YouTube. Case in point. You must be careful when you are around Dr. Anonymous. He has a video camera, and he’s not afraid to use it. You’ve been warned.

The first med blogger track at BlogWorld/New Media Expo 09 was a wonderful experience. I want to thank Johnson and Johnson and Medpage Today for their sponsorship. I also want to thank Kim at Emergiblog and Dr. Val at Better Health for all their hard work. Kim knocked on doors and got things rolling, and Val help put the panels together. This shindig would not have gotten off the ground without YOU!

I don’t know where to begin. Going to Las Vegas is like dropping in on another planet. It’s filled with a lot of stuff that can get you into trouble like slot machines, Elvis wedding chapels, and machineguns. No, that’s not a typo. I said machineguns. This is the first sign that I saw when I stepped off the plane when I landed in Las Vegas. It’s an ad for a Las Vegas shooting range where you can fire off a few rounds when you get into town. Whatever happened to the days of innocence when the most exciting thing you could do while you were in Las Vegas was get drunk, marry someone you didn’t know, and go see a Wayne Newton show? I got worried when I saw this sign, but then I thought what could happen at a blogger convention. After all, I was going to be surrounded by computer geeks and responsible health care professionals like GruntDoc and Dr. Wes. Right?

Meet GruntDoc, seated on the left, and Dr. Wes. Don’t let their sweet boyish good looks fool you. They are a couple of wild and crazy guys. There are disturbing rumors circulating the blogosphere about these two. The rumors involve a bigwig keynote speaker from Ford Motor Company, bad acoustics, and something about getting thrown out of a banquet hall. Are these rumors true? What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but let’s just say that I can’t stop laughing every time I see a Ford dealership. Good going guys! (Photo credit, Kim at Emergiblog)

Then we have Dr. Anonymous and Kerri Morrone Sparling at Six Until Me. Kerri and I met a couple of month ago in Washington, D.C., but this was the first time that Dr. A. and I had met. He’s great, too, but he’s a little naughty, so we assigned Kerri to keep an eye on him. She did a great job. We didn’t have to bail Dr. A. out of jail or anything, although he did stay out late one night with the guys and didn’t come back to the hotel until almost sunrise. He was on his own that night. Kerri turned in early. She needed a break.

You don’t have to go into a casino to hit a jackpot. I love tee-shirts and exhibitors were giving them away inside the convention center. Dr. Wes and Dr. Rob Lamberts at Musings of a Distractible Mind helped me out by doing their Tyra Banks Top Model pose for the camera. Aren’t they handsome? You should see them do their runway strut. Thank you for modeling the tee-shirt for me guys. I deleted that video from my iPhone. You know the one I’m talking about. (Wink.) The world will never know what they missed.

I think Paul Levy at Running a Hospital had insider information about what was going to happen at the convention. This is Paul participating in panel discussion via a teleconference. He didn’t come to the convention because of “scheduling issues.” Yeah, right. We get it. You have an image to uphold. You just didn’t want to be seen in public with a bunch of wild and crazy med bloggers. No offense taken, Paul. Maybe we will see you next year.