(I work in a small town ER as an advanced EMT. I do a lot of IVs and venipuncture in the ER, on our ambulance on 911 calls, as well on our other hospital floors for nurses who are unable to start the IV themselves on people who are exceptionally hard to stick. I get a lot of practice in less than ideal conditions so my IV skills are well-honed.)

Me: “Hello! The doctor wants to run a few labs so I’m here to draw your blood.”

Patient: *laughs condescendingly* “You won’t be getting any of my blood today. I’m a horrible stick. Your nurse will have to draw it out of my central line.”

Me: “I understand, ma’am, but I’ll have to at least take a look.” *applies tourniquet to right arm and notices large blue vein comes to the surface on her hand* “Looks like you’ve got a nice one right here so I’ll give it a shot.”

Patient: “You’re welcome to try but you’re wasting your time! Everyone tries and they always fail.”

(The patient continues to chastise me for trying and assures me repeatedly that I’ll fail. Meanwhile, I poke her with a small butterfly and draw the blood, giving her “mmmhmms” and “ahh, okay…” during her rant. When I finish I apply a cotton ball and a bandaid.)

Patient: “See, I told you! You’ll need to go get your nurse now!”

Me: “Get my nurse? How come?”

Patient: “Because! You can’t just draw blood off of me like I’m just any other patient! I’m an impossible stick!”

(I hold up 10 mL blood.)

Me: *flash her a smile* “Oh, no worries. I got all I need. I appreciate your concern for me, but I’ve done this a couple times.”

(I accompany my mother and stepfather out to see my sister sing, and then we all go out to treat her and her boyfriend to dinner. At the restaurant, mom abruptly faints and falls from her chair. Stepdad catches her… and she starts snoring. We all laugh awkwardly as he gently sits her on the floor and shakes her awake, but the laughter stops when she remains unresponsive, even with her eyes open. She eventually snaps out of it, but is disoriented and irritable for a minute. By this point we have called an ambulance, and she is carried out of the restaurant on a stretcher. After a long wait at the hospital we are told that she’s recovered and that there’s no reason to expect a repeat incident or how to avoid a repeat incident. She is discharged and we head back to our cars.)

Step-Dad: *to boyfriend* “Now you’ve got the BEST meeting-the-parents story EVER!”

(My grandmother, whom I call Nana, has just had surgery on her back, My parents, boyfriend, and I are all visiting her while she’s recovering. My mother has taken two weeks off of work to help out my grandparents while my grandmother recovers, but her work keeps emailing her as the entire office tends to fall apart when she’s not there.)

Mom: “I don’t know how they’re going to survive without me. I just can’t get a moment’s peace even when I take the day off.”

Nana: “They won’t. They’re going to email you every hour on the hour. Remember when you were having [My Name]?”

Mom: *laughs* “Oh, yeah. That time, even the doctor was surprised.”

Me: “Wait, what happened?”

Mom: “Well, I was pushing; I was lying in bed, and I distinctly remember I was pushing, and then the phone in the hospital room started ringing, and your dad had to answer it.”

Dad: “It was [Mom’s Former Boss]; she was asking if you had been born yet.”

Mom: “And so I’m sitting there pushing and I’m like, ‘Yes, the birth is going fine; No, she hasn’t been born yet; Yes, I’ll have [Dad] call you back so you can rush over as soon as the baby’s here.’ And the doctor is just kind of staring at me as your dad hangs up the phone and I was just like ‘Oh, that’s my boss.’”

Dad: “He looked so confused; he thought they were going to fire her for taking the day off to give birth.”

(My mom’s old boss is one of her best friends. They share the same birthday and they’ve worked together at three different companies. I always knew she was excitable and she’s come to so many family events to see me but I had no idea she was that excited about my birth that she would call my mom in the middle of it.)

(I work the metal detector at the local ER. It’s about 1 a.m. and it’s been pretty slow with only one woman with a cough. Suddenly a woman, a little boy, and a girl with a fork IN HER ARM rush in. The fork is jammed at a weird angle with only about one prong visible.)

Girl: *in tears* “I don’t think I’m gonna do very well against that metal detector.”

(I’m a 17-year-old female. I haven’t started university yet but I study medicine, specifically infectious disease, on my own time because I find it interesting and I hope to go into the field when I go to university. I help my neighbor with her animals. One day one of her cats is attacked by a different neighbor’s dog and injured. Unfortunately the cat bit me very deeply several times on my finger when I was holding her to help examine her and my father takes me to the ER. This exchange happens when the nurse comes in to give me precautionary rabies vaccine and immunoglobins.)

Nurse #1: “All right, let’s get this over with. I’m going to be giving you a shot now. It’s to make sure—“

Me: “That I haven’t been exposed to rabies, and if I have been it will prevent it from infecting me.”

Nurse #1: “Right. I see they already explained it to you.”

(I see her start to draw up the vaccine. I’m a little concerned when she has trouble right off the bat, struggling to pull it up into the fairly small needle.)

Me: “Um, the vaccine shouldn’t be that thick, right?”

Nurse #1: “Sometimes it is a little harder.”

(She turns the vial a little to get a different grip and I am horrified to see that it is not, in fact, the correct vaccine. She is trying to pull up testosterone.)

Me: “Ma’am, I don’t think that’s the right vaccine.”

Nurse #1: *ignores* “Ah, there we go. Now please roll up your sleeve. We can do this on your shoulder.”

Me: *moves away from her slightly* “Ma’am, I saw the vial. You should be giving me ImoVax or RabAvert. That vial is marked testosterone.”

Nurse #1: *gets red faced mad* “Now listen here, missy, I know what I’m doing. Now come here!” *literally lunges at me with the needle*

Me: “DAD, I NEED SOME HELP!”

(It took my father and two other nurses to get Nurse #1 to put down the syringe and actually look at the vial. Thankfully I got a different nurse to give me the right vaccine and immunoglobins.)

Nurse #2: “I’m sorry about that. She’s being let go in about two weeks and she’s been acting… erratic. She won’t be in the ER after this.”

Me: “Thanks. Do you think I could… see the bottles this time?”