Do you ever have this experience? You learn a new word, or concept, or person, or phenomenon, and then hear about that same newly-acquired token all over the place? You have to wonder: were you just dense before, or is this new concept actually cropping up more now than it used to?
When Ariel Sharon had his present medical difficulties, I heard that he’d been placed in a “medically-induced coma”. I’d never heard that term before. I didn’t know doctors could put you in a coma if they wanted to.
Since first hearing about Sharon’s medically-induced coma a couple weeks back, I’ve encountered that term twice more, once as part of a cbc feature on a Luthier who had suffered head trauma, and again in reference to the Canadian soldiers wounded in Afghanistan. Each time I thought “there’s that new word again”.
Apparently medically-induced comas are quite common. They crop up in the news several times a week. Was no one talking about them before two weeks ago? Or was I just not paying attention?
Weird.