Medical Mondegreens

Well, first, I know you're wondering what a mondegreen is. And even though my examples make it clear from context what a mondegreen is, you will be so absorbed by your curiosity and confusion ("What is a mondegreen? How come I don't already know this word? I must find out!") And then you will either leave my blog to find out (and perhaps forget to return), or you will go ahead and read on, but you'll be so distracted that you won't truly appreciate the hilarity of the situations I describe herein.

So:

A mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase as a result of near homophony, in a way that gives it a new meaning.

American writer Sylvia Wright coined the term in her essay "The Death of Lady Mondegreen," published in Harper's Magazine in November 1954.[3] Wright described how, as a young girl, she misheard the last line of the first stanza from the 17th-century ballad "The Bonny Earl O'Moray". She wrote: "When I was a child, my mother used to read aloud to me from Percy's Reliques, and one of my favorite poems began, as I remember":

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,
Oh, where hae ye been?
They hae slain the Earl O' Moray,
And Lady Mondegreen.

The actual fourth line is "And laid him on the green."
--the preceding four paragraphs are from Wikipedia.com

Wikipedia goes on to say that most mondegreens come from mishearing music lyrics or poetry.

For some reason, though, my most memorable and embarrassing mondegreen moments happen in doctors’ offices.

Doctor’s office mondegreen #1:

A few years ago, I was waiting in my family doctor’s waiting room. It’s a large practice, with its own lab, pharmacy, walk-in clinic, X-ray department, and more. Occasionally, various staff members’ voices would come on over the PA announcing who was needed where or other announcements important only to staff. For the most part, I was able to ignore them.

However, because my name is Kathy, this one caught my attention. A female voice came on and announced, “Kathy, please come clean a chicken.” Okay, I thought. I’ve clearly misunderstood. So it was with much greater attention that I listened when the announcement was repeated a couple of minutes later. She clearly said, “Kathy, please come clean a chicken.” Just to be sure, I listened very carefully for any further such announcements, and sure enough, she came on one more time with the very clearly enunciated request.

When I got in to see my doctor, I was going to ask him about this. Whatever could it have meant? Have they gone into the veterinary business as well? Or was it “clean a chicken” as in the way a meat-packing plant would use the term? Either way, it was a bit unsettling. But when the moment came, I found I couldn’t bring myself to ask him and risk being referred to a mental health facility. So I kept my mouth shut. He did, however, send me down the hall to the lab for some simple blood work.

I continued to mull over what it all meant as I waited in the hall to be called into the lab. My turn finally came, and this time, screwing up my courage, I told the lab tech about the announcement and asked her what it meant. Just as I feared, she laughed out loud at me. Then, to my horror, she says very loudly to all of her co-workers in the lab (plus the patients sitting out in the hallway, from whom we were separated only by cloth curtains), “Did you hear that? She says that she heard them come over the PA and say, ‘Kathy, please come clean a chicken!’”

They all then began to conjecture on what the announcer had actually said. I maintained that she had said exactly what I had heard, since she’d repeated it several times and I’d been listening carefully. They were all work on this problem when one of them said, “Hmmm. Kathy. Kathy. Kathy works in the clinic. Oh, they must have needed her to come to the clinic check-in!”

Clinic check-in, clean a chicken, whatever.

Doctor’s office mondegreen #2:

My next embarrassing mondegreen moment came at another doctor’s office, one I hadn’t been to in quite a while. The first thing they wanted to do was update all of my information in their file. So I filled out reams of repetitive forms, signed away my life, etc., and turned it all back in. Then, the receptionist called me back up to the front desk and asked me if I felt like I needed a new copy of the doctor’s prophecy statement.

Now, when I am confronted with something confusing or perplexing, my brain instantly loses its ability to control my mouth and form even the simplest sentences. I stand, eyes wide, completely mute, looking much like the famed deer in the headlights. My jaw worked up and down, but I couldn’t say anything. My mind, in the meantime, was going wild. It was saying, but only to itself, Prophecy statement? Prophecy statement? Whatever could she mean? I know that Dr. M is a religious man. Does he actually prophesy to patients? He has a *statement* that one has to agree to? How does this work? In the meantime, as I stood, apparently catatonic, she repeated the question several more times, each time saying “prophecy statement” very clearly. What was I to do? Mouth, move! I ordered. Say something. Just take the darned thing. What difference does it make? But I just stood, mute and unmoving.

Finally, looking very concerned about my mental condition, the receptionist said quietly, “I’ll just make a copy for you–that way you’ll have it if you want it.” I nodded my head. She went to the copier, ran one copy, and returned with the doctor’s privacy statement.

I should have been able to figure this one out. The woman’s accent made it clear that she was from deeper in the South than we are in Tennessee. I lived in Georgia, for Pete’s sake, for many years, and I should have recognized the long “i” that becomes “ah” off the tongue of someone from the Deep South.

Doctor’s office mondegreen #3:

This one happened just the other day.

I had a possible urinary tract infection and had gone to my doctor’s walk-in clinic to get a diagnosis and antibiotics.

A nurse beckoned me toward the bathroom, wanting to get a lab sample from me. She picked up one of the plastic cups and a Sharpie marker.

With marker poised over the cup, she said, “Got urine issues?” in a friendly way.

I smiled wanly and mumbled, “Yeah, I guess.”

She looked at me for a long moment, clearly trying to figure out what to do next, and then repeated, “What’re your initials?”