I'm Dr. Joshua Schwimmer, a nephrologist and internal medicine physician in New York City. • Kidney Notes was the first active nephrology blog. (Trivia: Kidney Notes is so old that the National Library of Medicine still uses it as an example of how to formally cite blogs.) • Professionally, you can find me at Kidney.nyc. • Kidney Notes is for educational purposes only, not medical advice. Consult qualified health care professionals. See disclaimer.

Saturday, April 29, 2006

The Sopranos and Zosyn

(I should create a section dedicated to email postings via Treo while on weekend call.)

In a recent Sopranos episode, Tony is shot by his uncle with Alzheimer's and is in septic shock in the intensive care unit. Meadow, his daughter, knows a bit about medicine from shadowing doctors in Columbia's ICU, so she asks the attending surgeon -- who's a bastard, and is perfectly written and acted -- which antibiotic Tony is on. "Zosyn," he replies, and walks away.

My first thought was, "Good choice."

My second thought was, "I wonder if Zosyn payed for that?"

My third thought was, "Someone, somewhere, is going to request Zosyn because they saw it on The Sopranos..."