, who goes by "Doctor Mike" on social media, is a board-certified family medicine physician at the Atlantic Health System's Overlook Medical Center in Summit, New Jersey.
In this video, Varshavski and Luis Espina, MD, watch stand-up comics make their sharp (and mostly accurate) observations about medicine, like Jerry Seinfeld in the waiting room, John Mulaney getting an unexpected prostate exam, Mrs. Hughes going through menopause, Brian Regan's cholesterol, George Carlin's immune system, Tig Notaro's breast cancer/double mastectomy operation, and Wanda Sykes and Jim Gaffigan's take on grapefruits being used to describe tumors.
Following is a rough transcript:
Mrs. Hughes: No matter what kind of doctor I go to, at my age I end up on my back with my feet in the air...and I thought that was excessive at the optometrist.
Mikhail "Mike" Varshavski, MD: I have next to me Dr. Luis Espina, who is a board-certified family medicine physician who I actually trained with as my senior in residency. In addition to being a great physician and engineer, he's also a part-time stand-up comic.
Luis Espina, MD: No.
Varshavski: So today we're going to actually watch professionals deliver medical jokes. Are you excited?
Espina: I am very excited.
Varshavski: You don't look excited.
Espina: I am...
Varshavski: Scream.
Espina: Woo.
Jerry Seinfeld: You must wait in the waiting room. There is no chance of not waiting, that's the name of the room. Then they call you. You get very excited when they call you because you think now you're going to see the doctor, but you're not. Now you're going into the next smaller waiting room, but I hate the extra wait, so I start... maybe I'll start screwing around with some of his stuff. Maybe I'll turn that thing up a little bit, whatever the hell that does. Take all the tongue depressors out, lick them all and put them all back.
Espina: No.
Varshavski: Oh, that joke does not age well with COVID days.
Espina: No, that was naughty, naughty there.
Varshavski: When was the last time you used a tongue depressor?
Espina: Today.
Varshavski: No way.
Espina: Yes.
Varshavski: Do you use them regularly?
Espina: Yes.
Seinfeld: Just once I'd like to say to the doctor, "You know what? I'm not ready for you yet." Why don't you go back in your little office and I'll be in in a minute, and get your pants off? Then we'll see what's what."
Espina: Yeah. That's just not going to go well.
Seinfeld: Why does a doctor need that little office for anyway? You know, his books and little stupid aquarium in there.
I guess he doesn't want people to see him looking stuff up, "What the hell was that?"
Varshavski: That happens all the time.
Espina: You got that, bro.
Varshavski: But that's good.
Espina: Yeah, and YouTube's a good thing.
Varshavski: How many times do I go to the clinical dermatology book in a day?
Espina: Oh, my God. Yeah, absolutely. The truth of the matter is what would you rather, I wing it or I confirm it?
Varshavski: Exactly.
Brian Regan: So they sent me to my regular doctor for a follow-up and I was nervous going because my cholesterol, I knew it was going to be high because last year it was high and I hadn't done anything different.
Varshavski: I love patients that are like "My cholesterol didn't go down?" I'm like, "Well, have you changed anything?" They're like, "No."
Espina: And the funniest is when the STD results come back and they act shocked, and then you talk to the Health Department and they've known since 2008 that something's been there, but they act shocked.
Regan: Doctors are good people. That's why they avoid the word "pain." It's a buzzword. They won't hit it a lot. They don't want to scare anybody. Doctors will tell you all about pressure.
Regan: They'll tell you all about the pressure you're going to experience.
Espina: Sticking a burn.
Regan: If a doctor tells you're about to feel some pressure, buckle up.
Varshavski: That's how I feel about the dentist. The dentist always says, "You're going to feel some pressure." I'm like, "No, I feel my gum is on fire."
Espina: Yeah. No, I tell them it's going to hurt. Like if I'm going to give them a tetanus injection, for example, I tell them straight out, "This one's going to hurt." I'll oversell it and under-deliver.
Wanda Sykes: Hey, I feel sorry for the doctors because they have to give us our diagnosis in fruit.
Varshavski: In fruit?
Sykes: You go to the doctor and they say, "Oh, you have a tumor." "Oh, okay. How big is it, Doc?"
Varshavski: Do you do that?
Espina: Oh, hell yes!
Varshavski: Grapefruit?
Espina: Oh, well that's huge. You're in deep trouble if we're in grapefruit land.
Sykes: Then the doctor gets sick of looking at your stupid face and he goes, "You have a grapefruit." "Oh shi...!"
Varshavski: See, I knew it. I knew it. I called it.
Mrs. Hughes: I went to the doctor and he said, "You're going through the change of life." Change of life. Girls, remember when you went through puberty they told you you were becoming a woman? You go through the change of life, they don't tell you what you're becoming.
Mrs. Hughes: I'm becoming my father.
Varshavski: Oh, my God.
Jim Gaffigan: Tumors are often compared to fruit, a pear, a lemon, a grapefruit. Interesting fact, worst tumor, grapefruit... worst fruit, grapefruit.It's kind of unfortunate that there is another fruit that's much smaller named "grape," because you know there's situations in doctor's offices, "We've found a tumor, it's the size of a grape..." "Thank God!"
Espina: "... fruit."
Gaffigan: "I didn't finish."
Varshavski: Why does every doctor use fruit or food?
Espina: Because we're trying to be relatable.
Varshavski: But pathologists use food all the time.
Espina: Oh, my God.
Varshavski: They use food references more than us.
Espina: It was hard to go to lunch when I was on my pathology residency.
Varshavski: Yeah. It was like, "The pizza stain." I'm like, "What is a pizza stain?"
Espina: The strawberry sign.
George Carlin: I want you to know I don't automatically wash my hands every time I go to the bathroom, OK? Can you deal with that?
Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. You know when I wash my hands? When I (expletive) on them.
That's the only time, and you know how often that happens, tops? Two, three times a week, tops.
If you kill all the germs around you and live a completely sterile life, then when germs do come along, you're not going to be prepared, and never mind ordinary germs. What are you going to do when some super-virus comes along that turns your vital organs into liquid shit?
I'll tell you what you're going to do. You're going to get sick, you're going to die, and you're going to deserve it because you're (expletive) weak and you've got a (expletive) weak immune system.
Varshavski: How did he know COVID was coming?
Espina: He is Nostradamus.
Varshavski: Yeah.
Espina: He knew everything. I am glad he's not here, for him.
Varshavski: It would give him a pain.
Espina: Oh, my... this wouldn't even be funny to him.
John Mulaney: The doctor looks at me and he says, "You're peeing 11 times a day, then you may have something wrong with your prostate..." "So, what we need to do..." Some of you are ahead of me. I did not know what this was going to feel like, and this was the actual sound I made. I went, "Ooh."
Varshavski: What's the weirdest reaction that you had from a patient in doing a prostate exam?
Espina: I've heard strange sounds. I had one guy almost break my finger off. It was...
Varshavski: With his sphincter?
Espina: No, it was the clenching and the twisting that was the problem, so...
Varshavski: The twisting. Okay, I was going to say because that's a strong sphincter if it...
Espina: Well, he was a strong man, so I...
Varshavski: Why didn't it just slide out?
Espina: Well, he clenched everything. I mean, he clamped.
Varshavski: Here's my cool story. I'm about to do a pap smear, we're doing the exam, I talk to the patient, walk them through it. I take my speculum, which is a see-through speculum, it's not one of the metal ones. I get a little lubricant on the lower part, not the top, so it doesn't interfere with my pap smear, and just as I'm about to insert it, I'm like feel the speculum and it's jagged edge on one side.
Espina: Yeah, I always check that.
Varshavski: On one side. If I would have inserted, it would have just slit the skin right open.
Espina: Yeah.
Tig Notaro: I was diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer and I ended up getting a double mastectomy...
Varshavski: Why are people laughing at that?
Notaro: ... and before I had a double mastectomy, I was already pretty flat-chested, and I made so many jokes over the years about how small my chest was that I started to think that maybe my boobs overheard me ... and were just like, "You know what? We're sick of this. Let's kill her."
Varshavski: This is called owning your own experience.
Espina: Yeah.
Varshavski: Something terrible happens to you and you found your unique way of coping with it, and it's a positive outlet, and I'm jealous because I want to be better at that. On that bright note, check out this "Grey's Anatomy" review...
Varshavski: ...that I did with Espina and what's your favorite video? You could point to the other side.
Espina: No dancing videos.
Varshavski: No... oh, the last TikTok video has him dancing in it. Click that. As always, stay happy and healthy.