Cats and dogs working together to build a snow fort!

Cutest mental image evah!

I didn't think twice about having one (it was such an offhand comment from the doctor) until the dentist got all balky.

t half-assed layperson lecturepants

The word "murmur" can make dentists twitchy, mostly because it can be both a diagnosis in and of itself and a symptom of something bigger and worse. Usually it's just a diagnosis - innocent murmur, functional murmur, pulmonary flow murmur are all diagnoses that just mean something in your heart is just a teeny tiny bit funky, not enough to cause any problems ever but just enough that your heartbeat sounds just a little different. Apparently in some people there's a little extra noise that sounds like a dove cooing or a musical note, or sometimes even a little click. It's a totally meaningless normal variant, like lefthandedness or widow's peaks or whatnot.

Sometimes it's a symptom of some Big Bad in the heart -- a hole where it doesn't belong or the lack of a hole where it does; these are louder and angrier and not pretty-sounding at all (I had a BF once with mitral valve prolapse, and when I rested my head on his chest I could hear a sort of slurping sound in between the BA and the dum of his heartbeat), and they usually mean surgery or a cath procedure or meds or whatnot (including antibiotics for dental work, since the human mouth is a giant germ pit and if the foul things in your mouth manage to crawl inside a bleeding gum and ride the bloodstream to your heart, bad shit can ensue).

And there are lots of people, usually freaked-out parents, who will hear their kids' complicated diagnoses and just shut down out of fear and walk away with the word "murmur," so dentists and other professional folks tend to get twitchy when they hear the word. If they don't know your full history, they have no way of knowing whether you're saying "murmur" because you know you have a slightly warbly but normal heart, or you're saying "murmur" because there's something really wrong and you've blocked out or just don't know the ugly details.

t /hall

Yay for shrift's grandmother.

Ugh. Had to temporarily shutdown posting ability on a mailing list I managed because someone's being an arrogant jackass about his political views and I want to kill the kerfuffle before it hits a full boil. Fun.

• blinks at JZ's explanation* Huh. My mom always refers to the fact that her heart occaisionally skips a beat as a murmur, which is apparently a different thing entirely.

I could murder a tea latte right now.

Did the tea latte offend you in some manner?

Also, I am completely earwormed with "Love is All Around" because of Allyson. To the point that I had to find an MP3 of the Joan Jett version.

That is like Very Special ER Christmas news.

Snork. Does it come bundled with George Clooney? Not that I really want George Clooney. No, he can keep romping with Brad Pitt and Matt Damon.

Now I'm listening to the Buzzcocks.

Tea Latte sounds delicious.

The database is down, the sysadmins are all drinking and I've got a frog in my throat and wish I could go home.

The database is down, the sysadmins are all drinking and I've got a frog in my throat

First line of a new Tom Waits song?

Cars are getting thoroughly stuck on my street. I think some of them were cutting down the one-way the wrong way in order to avoid a traffic jam, so they're even more screwed up than if they'd gone the right way.