(I work as a nurse in a cancer hospital. One day I see a teenage boy, maybe 15 or 16, standing at the front desk of our inpatient unit. As I have a few spare moments, and it doesn’t appear that anyone else has helped him yet, I walk over to him.)

Me: “Hello! How can I help you today?”

Teenager: “Um, yeah. I’m here to see my Grandma?”

(Yes, it came out as a question, but I just brushed it off as being nerves at having to talk to a stranger.)

Me: “Fantastic! If you’ll just tell me her name, I can point you in the direction of her room.”

Teenager: “Uh… I don’t know.”

Me: *blank stare* “You don’t know what?”

Teenager: “I don’t know her name.”

(We blink at each other for a few seconds, as I’m too stunned to say anything.)

Me: “I’m sorry; I really don’t think I can help you out.”

(We have over 150 patients in our hospital. And how you don’t know your own grandma’s name is beyond me!)

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 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.

(I am seven. A couple of months after the carnival, I become very ill. I’m so ill that I’m taken to the hospital and stay there overnight with medicine and IVs. This is, understandably, upsetting and frightening. My mother is the one who takes me there, but as soon as the staff are done asking questions, she leaves. I ask the nurse to call my dad, and he visits me. Shortly after he arrives, I suffer a grand mal seizure and get taken for an emergency surgery, since I’ve injured myself. I wake up hours later.)

Me: “Dad, what happened? Why does it hurt?”

Dad: *doing his best to keep me calm and explain how a child could understand* “It’s okay now. You got too hot from being sick, so your body panicked. And when your body panicked, you got hurt. The doctor fixed it. But hey, since you’ve been so good, I called your mom and she said she’s on her way with chicken nuggets.”

Me: *satisfied by the answer, but a little grumpy* “Okay, I guess. Can you stay while I read?”

Dad: *smiles* “Okay, let me know if you find a hard word.”

(Two hours pass. We are both hungry.)

Me: “Did Mom drive to another city?”

Dad: “She shouldn’t have. I’ll page her.”

(My father uses a payphone to page my mother. She arrives twenty minutes later, dressed like a jazz singer, in a flashy dress with a slit up to the hip, with makeup, jewelry, and perfume on. This is strange because she never wears perfume or dresses formally without reason. A man in a button-up shirt is with her but waits outside the room.)

Mom: *maximum sass and attitude* “What? I was on my way. Why couldn’t you just wait?”

Dad: “It’s eight pm; you know we usually have her fed by seven pm. She was worried. I called you hours ago. Where were you?”

Mom: *sighs indignantly* “I had a job interview!

Dad: “Since when do you go to job interviews with perfume and a dress that’s cut up to the hip?”

Mom: *shouts* “Since I said! Now shut up and eat.”

(She throws the bag of food across my legs. Being hungry, I grab what is obviously meant for me and take a bite.)

Me: *sad* “It’s cold.”

(I put my food back in the bag, grossed out.)

Mom: “Well, if you waste it, I’ll make you wish you’ll have to stay here longer! So eat!”

Dad: *takes the bags off of my legs* “No. If she doesn’t want to eat food that’s been sitting out long enough to get cold, she doesn’t have to. Kids have instincts about stuff like this. What if she is this sick because you forced her to eat bad food already?”

Mom: *smirks, then turns to face the hall and shouts* “HOW DARE YOU ACCUSE ME OF CHILD ABUSE! YOU’RE THE ONE WHO DIDN’T GET HER ANY FOOD!”

Man In Button-Up Shirt: *impatient, speaking to my mother* “Come on. Let’s just go. We are going to miss the movie!”

(Yes, my dad did get investigated. However, it was determined that it wasn’t unreasonable of him to trust that my own mother would bring edible food after agreeing to get dinner! And the man in the button-up shirt who waited for her? He became my stepfather within a year.)