One evening, while preparing dinner, I sliced my finger really badly. My husband drove me to the emergency room, where I got six stitches in my middle finger. Due to health crisis restrictions, my husband couldn’t be in the room with me and had to stay in the lobby.

After the doctor finished, I had an enormous bandage on my swollen, numbed finger to keep everything in place. I walked into the lobby, where my husband jumped to his feet.

Husband: *In a very soothing, hushed tone* “Hey, how is everything? How are you feeling?”

I showed him my bandaged middle finger.

Husband: *In the same soothing tone* “Oh, that’s really rude.”

I am a klutz. I bump into things, I cut myself on a daily basis (on anything, from paper to knives), and a lifetime supply of bandages is enough for a month. There is no medical reason for this. I am just inattentive and… a klutz. This has resulted in a very high pain tolerance, so whenever something happens again, I calmly walk to my husband so he can practise his first aid skills again.

This happens when I have a wart underneath my big toe. According to my husband, it must be bothering me, considering the size, so I make an appointment with my general doctor to remove it.

The day before I go to the doctor, I am wearing sandals and I am skipping up some stairs outside. Clumsy me gets stuck behind a stair; my slipper goes under and my feet go over. I feel something start to bleed and I put some tissues in between my toes. I calmly walk home.

I present my new wound to my husband and he gets the first aid kit with a groan. But when he cleans my wound… he finds out I managed to cut a piece of flesh from my toe!

We call the doctor, who gives us instructions to see if anything important got damaged, but it looks like I only cut some callus and the bleeding already stopped. It’s late in the day and the appointment is early in the morning, my husband cleaned my foot very well and I’m not feeling anything, so the doctor changes the appointment from wart inspection to wound inspection.

The next day comes and I indeed only cut callus… and the wart. It was a perfect slice and nothing (well, a tiny bit of skin) got damaged.

Doctor: “You know, if you were scared of the appointment, you could have just told me! You didn’t have to cut the wart off yourself!”

I used to work at the SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals). We had a guy come through and choose a puppy. We started going through the adoption paperwork.

Me: “The pup will need to have her stitches out on [date].”

Man: “Why does she have stitches?”

Me: “She’s been desexed so she can’t have puppies.”

Man: *Annoyed* “I wanted to get a dog that could have puppies! That way all my friends can have my dog’s puppies.”

Me: “That’s not ideal. People can often struggle to find homes for pups.”

He canceled the adoption and said he’d get a dog elsewhere.

A year later, he came in with five puppies that his dog had had, and he couldn’t find homes for them.

Back when years still begin with the number one, I am working in a warehouse. I’ve just clocked out and am about to head out the door when I hear a sound like something falling, followed by seeing one of the other workers staggering around, dazed, with her forehead bleeding.

Me: “What the [expletive] just happened?!”

A manager comes running over.

Manager: “The shelf fell down and she got hit by the pack of [ceramic product].”

Me: “Oh, no!”

Manager: “Can you take her to the hospital? I don’t want to wait for an ambulance to get out here.”

Me: “Okay.”

In retrospect, that wasn’t smart, but [Manager] and I are both panicking.

Manager: “I’ll help get her in your car.”

Two minutes later, I’m zipping toward the hospital. I arrive ASAP and stick around in the waiting room while my coworker is examined. Thankfully, it is only a concussion. After the hospital clears her, I take her to her home.

I come back the next morning to check on her and then again the next evening after my shift. Rinse and repeat for three days. And of course, since her car is still at the warehouse, I have to give her a lift in when she’s finally allowed to resume work.

On the drive in to work:

Coworker: “You didn’t have to do all that. Why bother? I’m just a nobody.”

Me: “Um, because it was the right thing to do?”

And that’s how I met my wife. We’re still happily married.

I have a chronic illness that causes me to have respiratory issues. To treat this, I take a certain medication and it generally works well. My doctor will typically just renew my prescription whenever it’s up but wants me to come in every other year for another exam even though I’ve been on the medication for over a decade at this point. It’s never been an issue until I went in for my latest exam and ended up seeing a new doctor since my usual one had a sudden emergency and wasn’t able to see me.

New Doctor: “Okay, [My Name], what brings you in today?”

Me: “I’m just in to get my prescription for [medication] renewed.”

New Doctor: “[Medication]? I’m not going to prescribe that to you. It will not treat [health crisis] no matter what the Internet tells you.”

Me: “It’s not for [health crisis]; it’s for [chronic issue].”

New Doctor: “I just get so sick of these people with Internet MD who think whatever random med of the week is going to solve the problem.”

Me: “Look, I don’t have [health crisis]. I tested before I came in.”

New Doctor: “I’m not stupid. I know your test is negative, but your grandma, or cousin, or nephew, or whoever you are getting it for is positive.”

Me: “Look, when was [health crisis] first observed?”

New Doctor: “2020 in the US.”

Me: “When did I start getting prescribed this?”

He flipped through my chart.

New Doctor: “2006.”

Me: “So, are you thinking that I somehow predicted a pandemic fourteen years early, theorized this medication would help, scammed a prescription for it by faking a chronic issue, stockpiled it for over a decade, and ran out of that stockpile?”

New Doctor: *Long pause* “I’m still not giving you your prescription today.”

And with that, he left the room. I ended up having to come back another day for my normal doctor to give me the new prescription. I brought up what had happened with the new doctor and was told that he had gotten in hot water for getting tricked into giving out prescriptions for one of the Internet’s fake [illness] treatments. But now, he was in hot water for overcorrecting the other way and never prescribing anything that anyone had theorized might treat [illness]. I don’t know if “hot water” ever translated to consequences, but I will see the next time I need to renew my prescription.