(I am running a test in clinic. Twenty seconds into the three-minute timer, I can already very obviously see what the result will be. I go to tell the doctor.)

Me: “That test is so positive it could be an inspirational poster!”

When I was about 17, I was treated for an ingrown toenail. After several tries, the doctor decided to remove part of the nail and the root of the nail so that it wouldn’t grow back.

The doctor prescribed the strongest pain medication he could. A stronger medication would have counted as narcotic. I went home, an hour passed and the local anesthetic wore off. I took the pain medication as the pain got stronger.

Due to brain damage I suffered as a child, my pain reception doesn’t work that well. So, I soon reckoned that something was off, since the pain continued to increase. I double-checked the medication, took some more, and waited. The pain still increased. I was going up the walls.

Now it was too late to revisit the doctor, so my dad drove me to the hospital. Luckily, the emergency room was quite empty. I told the doctor there what was up and he wanted to take a look. As soon as he cut the bandage from my toe, the pain was gone. He reapplied a bandage, put the old one in a bag, and told me to bring it to my doctor the next day.

So, the next day, I was back at my surgeon. He was a cheery guy normally. But as he took the bandage from the bag, he grew silent. His head whole head went red as he calmly excused himself. He went on the floor and bellowed through the whole office for the nurse, who had applied the bandage the day before. He was so loud, I expected windows to shatter. As soon as he saw her, he chewed her out. He was fuming.

Afterward, he explained the problem: the nurse had fixed the bandage with a knot, which was a normal procedure, but in the process, she had placed this knot right on the incision in the nailbed. The pressure applied this way was the source for the pain. No amount of pain medication could have helped against this.

(Some thirty-plus years ago, my mother is giving birth. The doctor has just come in from doing a hysterectomy and is not paying the best of attention. Fortunately, all is going well, and my brother is born safely. Then, this happens.)

Doctor: “It’s a girl!”  

Dad: *takes one look* “That’s no girl.”  

(Punchline: last summer, my brother came out as my transgender sister.)

This story is part of our Sisters’ Day roundup!

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(My stepdad has Meniere’s disease, and years ago, he had a doctor remove one of the ossicle bones in his ear, rendering him with a complete conductive loss in one ear. Because this is the only reason he can’t hear, his doctor recommends he try a bone-anchored hearing aid, which bypasses the outer and middle ear and lets him hear through the inner ear. The initial surgery involves placing a screw in his skull, and before he can use the hearing aid, this area must heal. It’s been taking a while to heal, and one night, while my mom is at work, my stepdad calls me to the bathroom.)

Me: “What’s wrong?”

Stepdad: “Come here. Look at my screw.”

(I take a look at the area, but I can’t see the screw. It’s so covered in blood that all I can see is an indention, so I fear the screw has fallen in.)

Me: “I can’t see it!”

Stepdad: “That’s because it’s right here.”

(He held out his hand, where he’d been holding the screw the whole time. After this, I made him call my mom’s work to let her know. They sent her home because “her husband’s screw fell out of his head.”)

I’m past due with my second child by a week when I wake up around 4:00 am and find fresh blood in the toilet after urinating. I wake my husband, get the toddler ready, and grab the bags, and we get to the hospital a little before 7:00 am. At this point, I am beginning to feel contractions coming on. The intake takes several minutes before I’m placed in a pre-check room — essentially a small department of eight beds, divided by curtains, where they do cervix checks, blood pressure, and first-step inductions. I’m placed in the last bed on the far side and hooked up to a fetus monitor while a new nurse checks all my vitals. I come to hate this woman immediately.

She tells us first that my toddler can’t be in the room with us, to which my husband and I both say we are trying to contact nearby family but no one’s answering yet, plus we have yet to be moved to a birthing suite and I cannot carry all those bags myself at this time. The nurse relents after two more tellings, but says snippily that the toddler can’t be there for the birth. We both know and inform her that we have no intention of having my toddler in the room at that time. She leaves and my husband goes back to calling family repeatedly.

A second nurse comes in, checks everything and suggests maybe I go home, stating that it’s probably too early for anything to happen. I tell her I don’t want to — that the contractions are starting to hurt badly — so she takes me into the birthing wing and sets me up in the jacuzzi. I’m there for twenty minutes. The first half, I’m starting to feel better, but then the contractions double. I count through the pain that I’m in a contraction for about a minute every two minutes.

Cue the b**** nurse. She comes in at 8:00 am and says I shouldn’t be in the tub — yet doesn’t help me climb out — and that my contractions can’t possibly be coming that fast, and has me walk back to the intake wing. Everything hurts! I’m trying not to cry and to do the breathing exercises, etc., all while the nurse hooks me back up to the fetus monitor, berates my husband for still having our toddler here, and then leaves. She only returns once, to snap at me, saying, “You need to keep it down! You can’t be screaming or crying; you’re upsetting other patients here!”

For context, I was induced in my first pregnancy due to the possibility of preeclampsia, stayed four days in the hospital, and was so completely loopy between lack of sleep and the epidural that come the birth, I did it half-dazed. I have never experienced the pain before this, but I’m trying to soldier on and muffle any screaming and tears due to my toddler being in the room. I finally convince the nurse to check my cervix next time she’s in, which she does, only to say I’m not even dilated. That’s a lie, because I was nearly two centimeters dilated when I saw my OB three days ago. I ask for the doctor and she says he’s not there and leaves. My husband leaves at this time to pass our toddler on to family. Out of desperation, I call out for a nurse until another one comes a few minutes later. I immediately ask to see the doctor and she goes to fetch him. He comes in at 9:00 am with the b**** nurse, who’s talking to him, “She’s not dilated… Didn’t do labour classes… Not breathing right…”

I want to punch her.

The doctor takes off the fetus monitor devices and checks my cervix. He goes, “She’s four centimeters dilated! Get her to the birthing suite now.” Then he vacates the room.

The nurse looks at me. “Okay, let’s go.”

A second nurse asks if she should grab the wheelchair, to which b**** nurse says we don’t need it and proceeds to have me walk out of the intake wing and into the labour side. That’s a distance of seven hospital beds and past three birthing rooms.

I’m leaning against the wall, trying to walk through crippling contractions, while she’s telling me I need to hurry up and I shouldn’t take so long. I hiss at my husband that if she doesn’t stop talking at me, once I get closer I’m going to rip her throat out. Unfortunately, she says nothing by the time I shuffle to the door and disappears.

No thanks to her, I can’t receive any pain medication because I am too far dilated by this point, and I deliver my healthy baby a few minutes after 10:00 am.