CONTENT WARNING: Potential Animal Abuse/Neglect

I work in a veterinary clinic, and I have almost this exact conversation at least once every. Single. Monday.

The phone rings.

Me: “[Clinic], this is [My Name]. How can I help you?”

Client: “Hi. [Cat] has an appointment for Thursday because she hasn’t been eating well, but she stopped eating after I scheduled with you on Friday, and I’m getting worried. Can I bring her in today?”

Me: “Well, as I said when we spoke on Friday, [Cat] is fifteen and has kidney disease, so not eating can get dangerous very quickly. Did you call [Emergency Clinic] like I recommended if she stopped eating over the weekend?”

Client: “No, I want only [Vet] to see her.”

Me: “[Client], we don’t have any openings between now and your appointment, and after going so long without food, [Cat] needs emergency care. Please call [Emergency Clinic #1], [Emergency Clinic #2], or [Emergency Clinic #3] to have [Cat] seen ASAP, and let them know to call me for [Cat]’s records.”

Thankfully, most of them do actually take their cats to the emergency clinic at this point, but I always wonder, are they this nonchalant about their children refusing to eat for multiple days? What about their geriatric parents?

Related:
Not Everyone’s Cut Out To Have Pets

I have to get health checks including blood tests twice a year because I’m underweight for an unknown reason. Unfortunately, I’ve always had a problem with fainting/feeling woozy after getting blood drawn, especially, but not limited to when I’m not allowed to drink anything but water before. The main problem is that it’s often very delayed; I may have already waited half an hour to stabilize my circulation and I feel fine, but after walking a few steps, I’ll start fainting.

I turned eighteen recently, so I’ve changed doctors from my pediatrician to one for adults, and it’s my first time there.

Nurse #1: *After the checkup* “Let’s get your blood drawn now. Which arm do you want?” 

Me: “Left. May I please lie down for a few minutes afterward? I don’t want to faint.”

Nurse #1: “Gosh, are you afraid of needles? Dear, you should look away, then!”

Me: “No, no. I just have a tendency to faint after getting my blood drawn.”

Nurse #1: “Why?”

Me: “I don’t know. It just happens.”

Nurse #1: “Okay, then I’ll draw your blood and bring you a little bit of water and snacks, okay? You can lay down then.”

I thank her. She draws some blood, brings me snacks, helps me lay down, and tells me to just take time until I feel fine. About ten minutes later, another nurse comes in.

Nurse #2: “Are you fine already? I need this room. You can’t laze around all day.”

Me: “Um, but the other nurse told me—”

Nurse #2: “I know what she told you. You’ve taken enough time; you’re young and healthy and you look fine! Stand up!”

I’m reluctant to leave because looking and feeling fine doesn’t mean I won’t faint. Still, I don’t want to argue the first time I’m at this office, and I convince myself that I should make it to the waiting room if I happen to feel dizzy.

I walk out of the room and start walking toward the waiting room where my stuff is.

Nurse #2: “See? You’re totally fine!”

Whenever I faint, it happens slowly and I can feel it happening. I’m only a few metres away from the waiting room when I start losing control and feeling in my legs and arms. I look around, but nobody seems to be there. Then, I start getting black spots in my vision. From observations by other people, I know that at this point I’ve gone from already pale to paper white, but I’m still standing.

Stranger: “Oh, hun, are you all right? Do you need to lay down?” 

I only hear this person’s voice because I can barely see.

Me: “Chair. Chair.”

She half-carries me to a chair and sits me down. I can see again after a few seconds.

Stranger: “Hang on. I’ll get the nurse!”

She leaves and returns with [Nurse #1].

Nurse #1: “Why didn’t you just stay in the room if you weren’t feeling well yet? It’s absolutely no problem if you take your time!”

Me: *Seeing black spots again* “Should lay down.”

[Nurse #1] helps me lie down across several chairs.

Nurse #1: “Of course, dear. Better?”

Me: “Yes, thanks. Sorry, it’s just that I can’t tell if I will faint or not. I guess I’ll bring some food next time.”

Nurse #1: “That’s a good idea! Also, call for me next time, so in case you don’t, I’ll be there. Okay? Why did you take such a short time in the first place?”

Me: “Erm, another nurse needed the room, so I left.”

Nurse #1: *Looking angry* “Well, just rest. I’ll be back soon to check in you.”

When she came back, she told me that [Nurse #2] would be reprimanded and wouldn’t be there when I was there. Meanwhile, “Stranger” brought me water and a bit more to eat and chatted with me, telling me about herself. It turned out that she had seen me going pale through the glass doors of the office and missed her own appointment with another doctor in the same building (with ridiculously long waiting times) to take care of a complete stranger.

The next time I went there, [Nurse #2] had been fired for another incident and the stranger had been hired as a nurse!

I’ve just had surgery. A nice volunteer takes my wheelchair and wheels me to the car where my mom is waiting. My mom and I have a brief conversation. Then, we turn back to the volunteer and I try to get his attention. The volunteer stops me before I can say anything.

Volunteer: “No, I’m sorry. I appreciate it, but we’re not allowed to take tips.”

Me: “Um… I was actually going to say that I left some paperwork back in the recovery room, and I needed your help to retrieve it.”

Volunteer: “Oh.”

I am a doctor in a hospital. At around 5:00 in the evening, we got a call that Code Black had been announced in the hospital. This meant that a mass casualty had occurred and the patients were being sent our way. Two buses had collided with each other; some patients were mildly injured, but some of them had serious injuries.

Around that time, a mother had brought her son to the hospital to consult into emergency because her son was having a minor stomachache and was refusing to eat food. I personally went to talk to her.

Me: “Ma’am, a large number of patients are coming here with trauma due to an accident. We’ll help them first to avoid fatalities. You and your son can either wait in the hall or go to the department of medicine and someone will attend you there.”

She started to make a fuss.

Woman: “You’re refusing to do your duty! You’re here just to trouble the patients!”

At the same time, the first two ambulances arrived, and both of the patients were injured badly. On seeing that, the security guards had to clear the entrance to the emergency room, and they asked the woman to move aside. When she refused to do so, they called a female guard, and she helped push the woman and her son aside. She started to scream like a banshee.

Woman: “You assaulted me! You assaulted my son and me! I’m going to call the police and file charges against you for harassment!”

We ignored her shouting and screaming.

We took the ambulance patients inside and gave their wounds support to stop the bleeding enough that they could be taken into the surgery room to locate the wounds, completely stop the bleeding, and check for any further damage.

The woman came back into the ER with her son, and of course, we were there and there was blood around the floor.

Woman: *Shouting* “You’re going to give us infections and make us sick with all this blood!”

We again had to ask the guards to escort her out as the ambulances with other, less injured patients had started to come in. We were tending to those patients when the woman tried to stop the entry of a patient who was not very injured but needed a full examination.

Woman: “This patient is fine! My baby needs treatment first!”

Remember, we had already told her to go to the other department, but she did not want to walk even a small distance to have her baby evaluated and treated.

This time, she actually called the police and tried to pester us again. One of my fellow doctors approached the police and told them about the whole scenario. They already knew that we were treating the patients. The woman had told them that we had refused to take in any patients and were making them wait outside.

At the end, the policemen took the woman outside, gave her a nice earful of some well-deserved strong words, and slapped her with a nice hefty fine. She was banned from the hospital for two weeks.

Later, we did treat her son, and it all turned out to be a sham. The whole problem was that the child did not get the food he had demanded, so he made a fuss about it.

On the brighter side, all of the patients from the accident were completely treated, and today, the last patient was discharged from the wards. They are all doing perfectly fine.

Some people really have the audacity to be such idiots in emergency scenarios for nothing but attention and drama.

I am a caretaker/handyman/groundskeeper at a local church in a town in Sweden. I am mending a snow-damaged light fixture when a very, very troubled young man, around twenty years old, approaches me. He speaks in a small, uneasy tone as if he is truly afraid of something.

Man: “Excuse me. Are you a priest? I urgently need to talk to one about the nature of the divine.”

Me: “No, but let me take you to the vicar. She knows most things about the divine.”

Man: “The vicar? Oh, no, I am far too unimportant. But… maybe you can answer my question? I am really scared.”

Me: “Um, probably not, but you can ask it and we’ll see if I can answer?”

Man: “Does the Almighty have black leather rubber Wellington boots, fashioned from the skin of Satan?”

Yes, he said, “…leather rubber Wellingtons.” (Lädergummistövlar.)

Me: “…”

Man: “Like it says in the Gospel of Exterminations?”

Me: “Where, you said?”

Man: “The Book of Annihilations, the sixth book that Moses wrote?”

Me: “You know, let’s go to the vicar.”

Man: “No, I can’t. She’s probably, like, busy!”

Me: “Let’s go! Come now!”

We go to the vicar and the man — who seems terrified of the wide-smiled woman in a knitted, rainbow-patterned sweater — begs me to stay, so I do. The man asks his question again, with a lot more details about the passage from the gospel that doesn’t exist.

Vicar: “Who told you this?”

Man: “Well, a… friend… heard in a dream that he had while being awake that if you didn’t do the right thing at any one time in your life, then the Almighty would stomp on you for all eternity in Hell. And the Wellingtons are from the skin of the… one down there… since it is really painful for humans to touch, and… and I am really worried! I don’t want the Almighty to stomp on me!”

Vicar: “I understand, and that sounds like a terrifying image in your mind. I have read the entire Good Book. The Lord does not need to make shoes out of anyone, and he doesn’t stomp on anyone. If you are worried, just try to live your best life.”

Man: *Relaxing visibly* “Thank you. How?”

Vicar: “Well, we have a volunteer group for helping the mobility impaired, and… well, we’ll go to the bulletin board in the hallway to have a look. And don’t be worried. God will not punish you for trying to be a good person; we are fallible and that is how He made us. And since your… your… friend… makes you troubled by these dreams, we should help him or her to get to a nice doctor who will make those dreams go away.”

And so, we got a very enthusiastic volunteer for most of our programs, like helping the elderly get groceries or reading stories for preschoolers. 

Oh, and “his friend” stopped having the awake-dreams not long after the man had a short stay at the psychiatric ward.