The Freeze Clinic

[poliphilo]

We took my mother to The "Freeze Clinic" yesterday evening for the treatment of a wart (or something of the sort) on her scalp. I thought needles would be involved but what happened was the doctor puffed what I take to be liquid nitrogen at her head from an aerosol can, using his fingers- ungloved- to part her hair. It looked terribly dangerous. One wobble and his fingers would turn to ice and drop off and fall to the floor and shatter.

Tell me I've got it all wrong....

Comments

[splodgenoodles.livejournal.com]

No, one wobble and the patient's head falls to the floor...and it happens more often than you'd think.

(Yeah, I've had a few of 'em done too, and I like to see steady hands before they start work).

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

I presume your mum's skull didn't cave in? :o)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

This doctor breezed through a room full of patients in about half an hour.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Doesn't seem to have done.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I used to work with big Dewar flasks (thermos flasks in fact) of liquid nitrogen when I was a postgrad student. It's not too awful providing you don't get your pinkies into prolonged contact with it. If you do, it will of course, kill living tissue, which is what the freeze clinic was trying to do with the warts and all.

Nevertheless I rolled my lab coat sleeves down to the wrists and wore a pair of Marigold gloves whenever I had to deal with it.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

So brief contact with the stuff won't hurt the Doctor's fingers? That's good to know. :)