Okay, so it’s that time of year again… time for the Christmas Bug Blog!

Last year I had a number of complaints from colleagues that most of the calls for advice over the festive period were about answers to the Xmas crossword and had nothing to do with patient care. So this year, since I’m the one oncall, I’m going to put up something easier.
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In the tradition of bad jokes in Christmas crackers I have put together a list of the 12 best medical related Christmas jokes. The Editor says "best is a relative term… don’t expect these to be the best jokes you have ever heard!". So here we go… the 12 best medical jokes of Christmas…

The Microbiology Consultant was waiting for the new Microbiology Registrar to finish the authorisation before going through any problems or questions they had. They started with their first question, a urine isolate which was identified as Pseudomonas aeruginosa but the antibiotic sensitivities didn’t make sense. The bacterium was sensitive to Co-amoxiclav and Ceftriaxone but resistant to Gentamicin and Amikacin. Pseudomonas aeruginosa is normally resistant to Co-amoxiclav and Ceftriaxone and sensitive to Gentamicin and Amikacin. A “nonsensical” or “incorrect” result like this should normally prompt further investigation as to what might be wrong before it is authorised or released.

​The patient was in her early twenties and had been complaining of a high fever, headache and muscle aches for five days. That day she had developed severe back pain and had started vomiting. She had also developed a widespread petechial rash. Her platelet count was low and she was going in to renal failure.
 
The ward doctors rang the Microbiologist for advice as the patient hadn’t responded to antibiotics including IV Ceftriaxone which had been started in case the patient had meningitis. The CSF and blood cultures were negative.
 
On further questioning it turned out that the patient had returned from North America three weeks earlier where she had been travelling. She had spent time in various places but more recently in Arizona where she had stayed with friends and helped them clean up their old barn on the family farm.
 
“This might be the nameless virus”, advised the Microbiologist. “Send serum for antibody testing but continue the antibiotics for now in case I’m wrong. Watch out for the patient becoming hypotensive and oliguric. You had probably best let the Critical Care Outreach team know about her, they might admit her to the unit pre-emptively… just in case”.
 
So the Doctor arranged the blood test and rang Critical Care, “the Microbiologist wants the patient to come to the Critical Care Unit because she might have some virus… I don’t know what virus; they wouldn’t tell me the name!”
 
So what was the Microbiologist talking about? Let’s discuss the Hantaviruses…