(I’m chatting with a customer and it comes up that her entire arm, from the elbow down, was badly broken in a car accident. She is only just starting to get enough control of her hand to limply hold a pen. The conversation, of course, drifts to her physical therapy, and she talks about her progress as I encourage her.)

Me: *single fist-pump* “You can do it!”

Woman: *laughing* “No, I can’t! That’s the problem!”

Me: *single fist-pump* “You’ll eventually be able to do it!”

(We chatted for another minute or so before she left. I hope she recovers quickly, or, at the very least, is able to keep smiling as she goes!)

Several months ago my cousin woke up with an absolutely massively swollen right eye, so naturally, she went to the hospital to have that checked out. They administered two CT scans, diagnosed her with a large, inoperable, cancerous tumor sitting right behind her right eye, and gave her six months to live.

Cancer is rampant in our family, so this makes sense in the context. However, she’s always been kind of easy-going and also, she refuses to believe it, so she just didn’t tell anybody and went about her life as usual.

A few weeks after the diagnosis, she was at a normal dentist appointment, and whenever anything touched her right cheek, it hurt a lot, more than it ever had at the dentist, even though she was just having a check done. Her dentist informed her that she had a severe sinus infection. She told him about her recent diagnosis, and he was absolutely not having it.

The next day they went back to the hospital together, in his free time, and he demanded they do another check and pointed out her sinus infection. It turned out he was right; she had a severe sinus infection, not a deadly tumor, that had spread up to right behind her right eye, and had caused an infection. She received normal treatment for that, and within a short time everything was back to normal. The first CT scan had been incorrectly calibrated, and the second one had been incorrectly interpreted.

Having spent many of my teenage years in hospitals myself, I’ve seen a lot, but I had never personally encountered a doctor as dedicated as that dentist before.

(I stop by my local pharmacy to pick up my prescription of birth control pills and to talk to my buddy who is a pharmacist. I notice on the package it says, “To be taken orally.” I point it out to my friend.)

Me: *with a laugh* “Well, what idiot doesn’t know that?”

(My buddy’s eyes grow big and she says:)

Buddy: “Oh, no. You would be surprised! The reason that is now on there is we actually had a woman sue us because she claimed we didn’t properly instruct her on how the pills had to be taken orally, and she got pregnant.”

Me: “Well, then, how the heck did she use them? Where did she put them?”

(Then, it dawns on me where she must have put the pills.)

Me: “Ohhhh, never mind. I didn’t ask.”

(I am working the night shift in a student team. One of our tasks is getting blood and stuff for the operating surgeons all around the hospital. This night a sixteen-year-old boy on a scooter has been hit by a car and is haemorrhaging profusely. I am called to get blood for the blood transfusion that needs to be done. However, due to the fact the boy is being reanimated while receiving a blood transfusion and an operation, there is no time to fill in a form. This is the conversation I have with the man at the blood lab:)

Me: “Hey, I don’t have a form, but I need blood for the sixteen-year-old patient that’s bleeding out downstairs.”

Blood Lab: “If you don’t have the form, you don’t get the blood.”

Me: “But they don’t have the time to fill in a form, as they are operating on him while giving a blood transfusion, and he was just reanimated.”

Blood Lab: “But you don’t have a form.”

Me: “Yes, I know, but the boy is dying.”

Blood Lab: “Well, it’s not my fault if he dies; come back when you have the form.”

(Sir, I know that you were technically right, but is a form more important than the life of a sixteen-year-old boy?!)

My mother was a pediatric cardiac nurse and was taking care of a boy who had just had open heart surgery. She left for the weekend, and this story was relayed to her the next morning she was in.

The mother of the young boy suddenly started to have severe abdominal pains during the night. The nurse realized after checking her over that she had forgotten to ask her a very important question: when was the last time she had had her period? The mother said, “Oh, it’s coming any day now.”

The nurse looked at the nurse supervisor who was helping her. This is a children’s hospital, so they had no labor and delivery ward. The supervisor started to panic. This hospital is up the road from another, adult hospital. So, the supervisor decided to put the mother in a wheelchair and push her down to the adult hospital. This hospital is located at the top of a hill, so as he was pushing her down to the other hospital, the wheelchair slipped out of his hand. Luckily, he caught her before she got too far away, and got her to the adult hospital before she delivered the baby.

When my mom got back that Monday, she went to the boy’s room and saw that the mother was back already. She found that the mother had been so focused on taking care of her son before his surgery and getting him the surgery that she hadn’t realized she hadn’t had her period in over seven months.

Luckily, both the son and baby were able to leave the hospital soon after, and last my mother heard they were all doing well.