This has been a long, trying week for everyone in healthcare.

So allow me to divert you for a minute by relaying the most embarrassing moment of my career, risking professional ruin for your brief amusement.

A THREAD
1/

Last fall I was invited to give a talk in Dublin. The morning of my flight I scrubbed with Irish Spring, ate a heaping bowl of Lucky Charms, blasted U2 on the drive to the airport, downed a Guinness at the bar, and read Ulysses on the plane (note: Joyce & alcohol don't mix)

2/

But my egregious attempts to be 'on brand' aside, one stereotype proved true: the Irish people could not have been lovelier. They were warm, welcoming, funny and fun-loving.

The medical conference was edifying, and on the final evening there was a dinner in a stately home.

3/

Knowing I needed to dress for the occasion, I put on my finest H&M blazer. It was 100% polyester, a synthetic fabric whose thermoplastic polymers ignite at a temperature of 905 degrees Fahrenheit. (This may seem like an insignificant detail but it will be important later.)

4/

Upon arrival at the Georgian house, we were ushered into a lavishly appointed bar in the basement. It was a small room, cozy and lit with candles placed around the wainscotting (FORESHADOWING ALERT).

As the crowd grew, I moved closer and closer to the wall. It was ... warm

5/

Unusually warm, in fact, but there were a lot of bodies in a small space, so I kept chatting.

And then I smelled smoke. My first thought was that the kitchen must have overcooked the hors d'oeurves.

But no, this wasn't a savory smell. It was more like ... burnt plastic.

6/

While I was still struggling to place the increasingly offensive scent, one of my gracious Irish hosts uttered the following sentence in his delightful brogue:

"Dr. Lewis, I am so sorry to have to tell you this but I believe you've set yourself on fire"

7/

There's a reason that quote's not in ALL CAPS. He wasn't shouting. This was an oncologist who was used to breaking bad news, and he told me about this alarming development with the tenderness you might reserve for telling a child that a beloved goldfish had died.

8/

One might even argue that he was, if anything, a bit too gentle in informing me that I was now ablaze.

My priceless H&M jacket was quickly extinguished and I managed to escape relatively unscathed, having -- remarkably -- burned neither myself nor the house down.

9/

My hosts couldn't have been nicer about it. "Accidents happen," they said. And true, there is a hopefully forgivable carelessness about backing into a candle.

But there's also a remarkable lack of self-awareness associated with not recognizing you have set yourself alight.

10/

Especially when you have been flown across an ocean to share your renowned clinical acumen with an international audience, it does somewhat cast your deductive skills into question when you are unable to identify an inferno beginning right behind you.

11/

Having just lectured my peers not to overlook subtle diagnostic clues to hereditary tumor syndromes, I was unable to perform the following physical exam

Back: ON FIRE

(ICD10 X06.2XXA: exposure to ignition of apparel, initial encounter)

12/

And, on an unrelated note, I haven't -- yet -- been invited back, but I'm sure that has to do with all the travel restrictions right now.

Sláinte!

end/

@crashimminent
@elaine1walsh
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@DrHealeyBird
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@aduffy74

Thanks for hosting this colossal fool, and I send you all best wishes! Until we meet again ...

(Going to make this joke before anyone else. Instead of U2 I should have been listening to ... )