My patient this week was a three week old baby boy who had come in with seizures, hypocalcemia, and presumed meningitis. I had to give him a bunch of oral medications, and based on his facial expressions, phenobarbital must be the nastiest tasting stuff on earth.

It might seem easy to squirt a syringeful of medicine into a baby's mouth and have him successfully swallow it, but not so. On the second day with him, a nurse told me to gradually mix a little medicine with a little formula in a rubber nipple, which worked brilliantly.

He was very cute, and I learned a lot about babies, including the fact that they often urinate on you and themselves when you open the diaper. I got peed on twice before learning this lesson.