BOSTON, MA – An intern’s initial excitement was quickly reeled in after his team pointed out that sticking a spinal needle through cork of a bottle of Moët & Chandon Imperial Brut did not quite qualify as a champagne tap.
One can hardly blame the intern, Jason Mann, as he admitted to Gomerblog that he never heard of the phrase “champagne tap” until it was mentioned during rounds today in reference to his immunocompromised patient with fever, headache, and neck pain.
“Our team talked about tapping him, and then they started tossing that phrase around,” an embarrassed Mann explained. “I’m not signed off on lumbar punctures, so I put two and two together and figured they wanted me to practice on the cork of a wine bottle, you know, to get comfortable and get proficient.” The intern said it made sense at time, saying orthopedic interns practicing drilling into PVC pipes. “Popping the cork is like the pop when you finally get the needle into the cerebrospinal space, right?”
To be a clear, a champagne tap is lumbar puncture (LP) which there are zero RBCs in the first and last tubes.
Needless to say, Mann’s team got a good laugh out of it, sarcastically asking the intern if the LP kit came with the bottle of champagne.
In a show of good spirit, the attending on the team decided to have some fun while Mann and his supervising resident spent the afternoon actually performing a spinal tap on their patient in question.
“I sent the champagne sample to the lab to run it, and it looks like it contains no RBCs,” said hospital medicine attending Cody Lovett, unable to suppress the largest of smiles. “I’ll tell Jason the results when they’re done. If it’s any consolation, he performed a champagne tap on the champagne.”
