What's the Temperature?

SIC was reading some study about temporal vs. oral temperatures that she just had to share, I wasn't really listening since I was reading the latest issue of People magazine.  The study said something about oral temperatures being more accurate on kids aged 3 months to three years, although a rectal temp is the gold standard for babies.  That caught my attention since why anyone would bother even attempting to take an oral temp. on a 3 month old defies all logic so I wrote the data-reporting off as bogus and stopped listening altogether.

Until my next patient limped in with her veterinary tech boyfriend with a stubbed pinky toe, who said she had an extra foot bone that periodically dislocates and it felt like it was out of place.  Vet tech had actually wrapped the foot in several yards of purple vet wrap; we have the same thing for humans but we call it Coban, sort of an elastic self-sticking tape that comes in all different colors.  Paeds nurses used to yell at us when we used it to secure the IV's of admitted babies, but it works great on them.  Dogs too I imagine.   I suppose stubbed pinky toe was grateful that vet tech boyfriend didn't have any other stray veterinary equipment lying around such as this:

"Why??!!!"

Vet tech was fascinated with the temporal thermometer, and commented on how awesome it would be to be able to use something like that on dogs instead of rectal.  And then my mind started to wander envisioning dog-wrangling and trying to get a temporal thermometer to work.

Me: "Yeah, I guess rectal temps will remain the gold standard for dogs", which sort of put into perspective the whole oral temp on babies thing.  And then my mind wandered again and I thought about how awesome it would be for dogs if Vet wrap was bacon flavored....