The best April Fool prank I ever saw was actually pulled by me.

I put my mom through three false labors on the same day I was born. The first was in the early morning hours, which got my older brother thrown in bed with my grandparents. The second time was in the mid-afternoon, making my mom take off time from work, and she had to go back.

The third time came later at night. They had her walk around the hospital this time, and I was finally born.

This happened back in the early 1970s when I was a corporal in the Marines.

A couple of other jarheads and I were playing with our pocketknives in the shop one day. We worked in avionics/electrics on planes, and those knives came in handy while doing electrical work. Believe it or not, my forty-year-old son still keeps that knife with his “special” tools.

We’d taken turns sharpening the blades and I got a little careless. I put a clean slice in a thumb, but I didn’t think it was bad enough to seek professional medical help. Gunny had other ideas.

Gunny: “With that much blood, go to sickbay.”

This was Wednesday afternoon, a while before we were off work.

I headed over to sickbay and the corpsman there was a third-class medic, the same rank as me but he was in the Navy. He looked at it pretty closely.

Corpsman: “Hang on.”

He came back in a minute.

Corpsman: “Look, you don’t really need stitches, but it could stand ‘em. We’ve got a guy who’s never stitched up a real person and this would be the perfect first time for it. You don’t have to do it if you don’t want to.”

I didn’t even think about it.

Me: “Nah, I don’t mind. Everybody starts somewhere. He’ll never forget me. What did he put practice stitches in?”

Corpsman: “Uh… shaved dead goats.” 

Me: *Laughing* “Okay, let’s move him up to humans.”

It took a few minutes to get all the stuff ready. As the new guy was anesthetizing my thumb, I suggested:

Me: “Do it like you did the dead goats, just like they taught you.”

He laughed a bit.

New Guy: “All the goats recovered completely and now live on a farm in Nebraska.”

As the new guy put four stitches in my thumb, a thought occurred to me.

Me: “Look, I don’t mind being a live guinea pig, but is there anything in this for me?” 

Corpsman: “Let me go talk to my lieutenant.”

A Navy lieutenant is an O-3, the same as a Marine captain.

He came back in time for everything to be about wrapped up and asked:

Corpsman: “You got duty or anything this weekend?”

Me: “No, a regular weekend off for me.”

The new medic finished the bandage on my thumb quite nicely while we talked.

The corpsman handed me a piece of paper.

Corpsman: “Okay, here’s a ‘no-duty’ chit for four days: tomorrow, Friday, and then the weekend. It has you returning to ‘light duty’ on Monday, and then nothing strenuous until we take the stitches out in ten days. You just got yourself a four-day weekend!”

Oh, yeah.

We yukked it up a bit more and I left.

When I got back to the shop, Gunny was still there, I guess waiting for an update. I showed him my no-duty/light-duty chit, and he kind of lost it.

Gunny: “What?! Four days off for that little cut? Don’t leave yet.”

He proceeded to call up Medical.

This was a long time ago, and all we had was an old clunker of a military shop phone. It was that heavy black plastic, and if there wasn’t much noise around, you could easily hear it from several feet away. I heard everything clearly.

Gunny: “Yeah, this is [Gunny]. I have a corporal here who just got a few stitches and I need to know why he’s getting four days off.”

Person On The Phone: “Hang on, Gunny.”

After a minute:

Lieutenant: “This is Lieutenant Doctor [Lieutenant]. I was told you have a question?”

Gunny barked:

Gunny: “I don’t know why anybody would need four days off for a few stitches. Maybe you can tell me.”

Lieutenant: “First off, I’m a lieutenant in the US Navy, so if you can, throw in a ‘sir’ once in a while. Second, I have the utmost confidence in my team. If that’s what they determined the patient needed, that’s what the patient will get. I’d also like to add that I don’t allow my team to run around the base telling gunnery sergeants how to do their job, and I sure don’t appreciate you thinking you know more about medical procedures than they do — unless, of course, you have a medical degree similar to my own. If that’s the case, we can sit down and discuss this like rational adults. If you don’t, why don’t you stick to doing what you get paid to do and give us that same consideration?”

Gunny: *Defeated* “Yes, sir, I understand. Thank you.“ 

He gently hung up the phone and looked at me. I almost felt bad for him, but there was no way I was telling him the entire story now.

Gunny: “See you Monday, Corporal.”

I was a medical scribe for about a year. One of the last patients I ever had was a frequent flyer. She had quite a long track record of going from hospital to hospital trying to get pain meds. You know the type — the one who says they are allergic to ibuprofen and asks for a narcotic pain reliever.

The physician I was working with that day happened to be the lead ER physician at that hospital and a board leader in the state, so he knew this patient very well. He brought in a nurse and me.

Physician: “I know what you’re up to, [Patient]. You’re drug-seeking.”

She became belligerent and started screaming.

Patient: “Someone else must have stolen my identity!”

When the doctor offered to call the police, she called him a racist slur (he was Indian) and walked out, screaming obscenities.

I worked in the bakery department of a supermarket. I had four broken ribs on one side and three bruised ribs on the other. My doctor told me I wasn’t allowed to work as it required heavy lifting and lifting above my head, so I phoned my boss.

Boss: “If you can’t work every time you break your ribs, maybe you don’t belong here!”

So, I went to work the next day, against the doctor’s advice. The boss’s daughter called in sick, so my six-hour shift turned into a nine-and-a-half-hour one. She had a hangover and was seen in the store later that afternoon.

At the end of my shift, I was called into my boss’s office. I lost my job that day, and I didn’t get paid for the overtime, either.

My ribs took almost a year to heal after that. They actually never fully healed, and I am now left with brittle ribs that can break from a bad cough.

I went to a doctor for a consult, and then I scheduled the next two appointments for Tuesdays at 4:30 pm. I didn’t ask specifically for evening appointments; that’s what they offered me. I got no confirmation calls for any of the appointments.

The first Tuesday, everything went fine. I checked in, got my treatment, and went home.

The next Tuesday, I attempted to check in… only to be told my appointment was at 3:00 pm, not 4:30 pm.

Receptionist: “We never start treatments this late, so we never would’ve scheduled me at 4:30.”

Me: “Uhh… well, you did. I was treated at 4:30 last week!”

Receptionist: “No, your appointment last week was at 3:00 pm, as well.”

Me: “Pull up my check-in and medication order from last week.”

She did, and sure enough, it had been at 4:30 pm. She just shrugged and called her manager. Basically, they told me to go home and reschedule. I live two hours away from this doctor, so I decided I wasn’t playing this game. I told them to cancel all my remaining appointments.

I hope I didn’t need to finish that treatment. I’ll never decline a written copy of my appointment time again.