Making Things Difficult
by Jeff
Image text: Favorite mastectomy breast prosthesis idea: a fake boob containing a spare rechargable battery, accessed via a nipple USB port. Complete with a ring of LED charge indicators in the areola!
This comic is a reference to the breast cancer surgery that someone in Randall's family recently underwent this year. This comic is the follow up appointment after the surgery. When the doctor asks Megan to take her shirt off, she refuses until the doctor gives her a necklace of beads that in the New Orleans Mardi Gras culture is used to exchange for the exposure of a female's breasts.
So, by Megan saying "You know the rules", that indicates that Megan has stipulated that every time she takes off her shirt for the doctor, a necklace of beads much be exchanged.
Don't forget, we still are looking for submissions for back catalog xkcd explanations. I'll have the list of the comics posted this week up on Friday.
Temperature
by Jeff
Image text: And the baby has a fever.
This comic is mixing two different types of medical items that look fairly similar but are used differently and serve different functions: the thermometer and the home pregnancy test. In this comic, Cueball is taking his temperature with an undisclosed device and when it beeps that it has finished. He looks at it, probably expecting his temperature, but instead sees "Pregnant". And the image text expands on that by saying that the baby has a fever. This is quite a device Cueball has.
Anyway, enough with that extrapolation. This is a straightforward one. It is funny because he was not expecting "Pregnant" on the device, instead he was expecting his temperature.
Do pregnancy tests make a beep? I have no idea.
Pain Rating
by Jeff
Image text: If it were a two or above I wouldn't be able to answer because it would mean a pause in the screaming.
In this comic, Cueball goes to the doctor for some arm pain and the doctor asks him the typical question to rate his pain from 1-10. Unfortunately, the doctor uses the phrase "...10 is the worst pain you can imagine" rather than something to the effect of "...10 is the worst pain you have ever felt".
Cueball then of course can imagine very terrible pain, so he responds with 1. In the image text, Cueball continues talking about his imagined pain.