03 Mystery Detective

M.D. = Mystery Detective The next Monday was a better-than-best-ever third grade day. At lunch, Judy ate her PBJ sandwich in seven bites, then walked-not-ran to the playground. Class 3T had a ten-minute recess before their field trip to the hospital. Judy's mom was a driver and parent volunteer, so Rocky and Frank rode in their car. Mom made Judy ask Jessica Finch, too. "Did you know muscle comes from a word that means mouse?" asked Jessica. "If you move a muscle, it looks like a mouse." She flexed her arm. Judy used all forty-three muscles it took to

frown at Jessica Finch. At the hospital, Dr. Nosehair led Class 3T down a long hall. "Why does that doctor lady have a rabbit?" asked Frank. "Animals aren't allowed in the hospital!" said Jessica. "It's a new program called Paws for Healing," Dr. Nosier told them. "People bring animals to patients in the hospital to help them feel better. Holding an animal and petting it can actually lower a person's blood pressure, and help a patient forget about being sick." "RARE!" said Judy. Dr. N. took them into a room in back of the ER, where Class 3M was already waiting. There

were lots of machines. And important-looking stuff. "What's the first thing you would do in an emergency?" quizzed Dr. Nosier. "Call 911!" everybody said. "Would you call 911 to find out how long to cook a turkey?" "Only if you're a turkey," Frank said. Judy and Frank cracked up. "Is a crossword puzzle an emergency?" "Only for my dad, who tries to beat the clock," said Judy.

"Believe it or not, we do get people who call 911 for such things. But let's say we have a real emergency, like a car accident or a heart attack. Everything around here happens super fast. As soon as the ambulance arrives, the EMTs, people trained to handle medical emergencies, start 'giving the bullet,' — telling us what happened. Train wreck means the patient has lots of things wrong with them. Who knows

what code blue means?" "Lots of blood?" "All the people in blue shirts have to help?" "It means somebody's heart stopped," said Dr. Nosier. "You fix hearts that stop?" asked Alison S. "You must help a lot of people!" said Erica. "All doctors make a promise to help people. It's called the Hippocratic oath. Hippocrates was the Father of Medicine. In the old days, you had to swear by Apollo and Hygeia to help people the best you could. If you didn't know what was wrong with a patient, you had to say 'I know not.' The old oath sounds funny to us now, so a doctor named Louis Lasagna rewrote it." "Louis Lasagna? Did he invent pizza, too?" asked Frank. Dr. N. laughed.

"But how do you always know what to do?" asked Rocky. "Being a doctor is like being a detective. You look at all the clues and try to solve the mystery. In the ER we just do it in a hurry. Think of it like each one of us is a human jigsaw puzzle. My job is to figure out the missing pieces and put the puzzle back together." "RARE!" whispered Judy. "I'm the best at jigsaw puzzles," bragged Jessica Finch. "I did a five-hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle of Big Ben all by myself!" Sometimes Judy wished Jessica Finch would shut her mandible. "Now I'll show you what some of this stuff is for," said Dr. Nosier. Dr. Judy got to use a stethoscope to listen to her own heartbeat! Ba