CONTENT WARNING: Serious Accident/Injury (Car meets cherry picker)

I’m a construction worker — or rather, I was.

One day, I am working on the facade of a building in a cherry picker. For those of you who don’t know, a cherry picker is basically a platform you can stand on at the end of a very long hydraulic arm attached to a small self-propelled chassis.

I’m restoring a historic building downtown. It’s very finicky work, especially as we’re limited in the techniques we’re allowed to use. I used to be one of very few people willing to work on this style of historical building.

I start hearing something of a commotion, but I’m very focused on my work, and if I turn to look, it could ruin a whole day’s labor or more. I hear lots of sirens and loud honks. I can tell SOMETHING is wrong; I’m not an idiot. I start getting to a point where I can move away from my work as quickly as practically possible.

The noises get louder, and I turn to look. I have just enough time to see a blue Toyota Camry plow into the chassis of the cherry picker.

The whole thing jumps, and I’m thrown off of the platform. I don’t remember hitting the ground, but when I wake up, the cherry picker’s arm is lying across one of my legs, and a grizzled older paramedic is standing over me.

Paramedic: “You alive, man?”

Me: “I thought it would hurt more.”

Paramedic: “That’s not a good sign. Please don’t try to move. We’re going to put an IV in you, knock you out, get the picker arm off of you, and get you to the hospital.”

And they did. I lost the pinned leg despite the paramedic’s best efforts; it was too damaged.

The driver of the car survived. He was a drunk driver, and he was trying to evade pursuit by the police. He got seven years but got out on good behavior after four. He didn’t have insurance. 

Rehab took me years, and now I work as a trainer teaching other people how to do the restoration work I used to do.

My mother had me rather late in life, and I was born via a C-section, two months early. My early life was pretty much spent visiting different doctors, and some of my shots were delayed because I was too weak or sick when I was supposed to get them. One of the shots (Hepatitis B, I believe) was meant to be administered at birth and again at six months, but I got the first dose at three months.

When I’m six months old, my mom takes me to the pediatrician’s office for a regular check-up. Our assigned pediatricians change sometimes, and this one probably isn’t familiar with most of my medical history. Our nurse, though, is wonderful and has seen a lot of me.

Doctor: “Oh. You are six months old. You need to get the [shot], you know that?”

Mom: “Huh? We got the first one only three months ago and were told to wait six months for the second one.”

Nurse: “Yes, this checks out.”

Doctor: “But she’s six months old. You have to get this shot at six months.”

Mom: “Are you sure? It has been only three months, and I’m not sure she’s healthy enough for it right now.”

Doctor: “Yes. You’re going to get the shot at [Clinic] today.”

Nurse: “Wait. It’s only been three months. She shouldn’t be getting this.”

Doctor: “Yes, she should. She’s six months old. Write a referral for today.”

Nurse: “No.”

Doctor: “What? Go ahead!”

Nurse: “Excuse me for a moment!”

And the nurse stormed out the door. A few (pretty awkward) minutes later, she came back, along with an angry Head of Pediatrics, gave us our paperwork with a note about the delayed [shot], and said we could go home for today.

While going to a pediatrician at our state clinic is a lottery, we’ve always had the most awesome nurse watching our backs for over fifteen years. Obviously, I got that shot three months later.

I had to take my husband to the emergency room for a broken foot. As we were waiting to be admitted because they wanted to do more in-depth testing due to his many health issues, we were seated next to an older woman. To be honest, I don’t know if she was just old, lonely, and scared or an entitled jerk. We suspected the latter. 

She kept going up to the nurses saying how she was sick. They kept saying they knew, but she had to wait her turn which would be a while because she was not a priority patient. At one point:

Woman: *In a shaky voice* “I’m going to pass out!”

Nurse: “Then you definitely need to sit down.”

I got the impression it was not their first time dealing with her. She was carrying on like she was going to pass out and throwing up in a bag when in reality she was just trying to spit into it.  

After twenty minutes, the woman got up and left the ER. I watched her through the window as she went across the street and made a phone call. Less than five minutes later, an ambulance pulled up.

Yep, she had called an emergency number for an ambulance. They put her in the ambulance and brought her to the ER… where they promptly put her back into the chair next to me. 

Woman: *Crying* “But I’m sick!”

Nurse: “So is everyone else here. And now, since you left the ER, you have lost your place in line and will have to wait again until we have room.”

At this point, the woman harrumphed, crossed her arms, and pouted. She gave us a dirty look when they came out with a wheelchair to get my husband. She started loudly complaining to the nurses about it. I gave the nurses a sympathetic look and walked away with my husband. It’s people like her that make it difficult for real emergencies to be handled.

I get really anxious about seeing my dentist — doubly so when it’s a new dentist in a new city after a move.

I go to the appointment about forty-five minutes early and sit in the lobby. “Avatar” is playing on the TV. It’s already about half done, but it’s visually and audibly stunning on the TV and sound system installed in the office. There’s just me and another dude sitting on the waiting couch in the lobby. I sit on the waiting couch next to the dude, and we watch the last half of the movie together. No one interrupts.

By the time it’s over, I’m about forty-five minutes late for my appointment. I zoned out watching the movie.

The guy looks at the clock and then looks at me.

Guy: “Oh, s***, I was supposed to be working on your teeth! I lost track of time… Um, you are [My Name], right?”

I affirmed that it was me. We rescheduled my appointment successfully, and I got a post-insurance discount for my trouble.

DISCLAIMER: This story contains content of a medical nature. It is not intended as medical advice.

I was having some irritation on my leg. It felt like a spider bite, but there was no bite — in fact, no marks at all. It got progressively worse over the course of a couple of days until it felt like an itching, aching fire on the side of my leg. At that point, I decided I’d better see my doctor. I’d put it off because she hadn’t really impressed me; she didn’t listen to me, preferring instead to tell me what my symptoms were, and she never took my history. I’d been looking for a new primary care doctor, but it hadn’t been a priority.

I asked for an appointment and couldn’t get anything with her for a couple of weeks, but I was able to make a same-day appointment with her nurse practitioner. She asked a few questions, checked my leg, and made a diagnosis of shingles/herpes sine zoster (no rash). Since it had been a couple of weeks since the onset of symptoms, there was nothing to be done for the shingles except to wait it out, but she prescribed some gabapentin for the nerve pain, and I made an appointment with my own doctor for about ten days later.

She started the appointment by breezing into the exam room and saying:

Doctor: *Heartily* “We have to find out what’s wrong with your leg! I see you were diagnosed with shingles, but it can’t possibly be that!”  

Since it’s pretty easy to get basic information about shingles, I had done some homework, noting that the common symptoms checked all the boxes for my symptoms and that the no-rash version was uncommon but not rare. The only thing I could think of to ask that wasn’t outright rude was:

Me: “Why do you say that?”

Doctor: “Shingles always occurs on the torso, and it always expresses as a rash. The rash must be on a dermatome, and there are no dermatomes in your legs.”

For those of you keeping score at home, only one of those statements is true: shingles follows the path of a dermatome, which is an area of skin that sends information to the brain along a spinal nerve. That means you can get shingles on any part of your body; if you had no dermatomes in your legs, you wouldn’t be able to feel anything there. 

I decided that anybody who was willing to hand me that much misinformation about something so easily researched was not somebody I ever wanted to diagnose anything for me. So, since I was actually feeling pain, I walked out of the exam room and out of the clinic, and I found a new doctor the next week. 

I have a relatively mild case of post-herpetic neuralgia due to shingles at this point, and I am working with my new physician to find a means of treating it.