CONTENT WARNING: Suicide Mention. May also be triggering to those who’ve lost pregnancies.

This story contains content of a medical nature. It is not intended as medical advice.

I am living in another state to study while my husband is living in our home state to continue working. He comes to my college to visit me, and we are grateful and happy to find out a few weeks later that we are expecting a baby.

At first, we plan that I will finish my course as I only have two months to go before moving back to our home state, but when I’m around six weeks pregnant, I end up with such severe morning sickness that I am vomiting up everything in my stomach every thirty minutes to an hour, even water.

After around ten days of this, I call the national health service line, and they recommend that I go to the hospital for fluids. The closest hospital is in the rural town I’m studying in and only consists of an emergency department and basic care. My college principal’s wife accompanies me to the hospital as I am in no condition to drive and am very nervous about getting needles.

From the start, we have problems. The nurses think I’m just a young mum who didn’t realise women get sick when pregnant. They avoid me and roll their eyes when in the room. They don’t call in the doctor (who is on call in a small hospital on the weekend) until one of the nurses realises I haven’t kept down the 500ml of water I’ve tried to drink over the last three days.

When the doctor arrives, he ignores me and only addresses the principal’s wife, believing she is my mother, even though I’m twenty-four. He begins asking me about my medical history.

Doctor: “Do you have any preexisting medical conditions?”

Me: “Yes, I have depression, anxiety, OCD, and PTSD. I’m on [medication] for it, but I’ve been throwing it up after I take it.”

Doctor: “You know that everyone has depression at some point in their lives, right? You don’t have to declare it.”

Me: “My first suicide attempt was when I was twelve years old.”

Doctor: “Oh, I guess that is a more severe case.”

Eventually, he decides I should have IV fluids and they put me on a three-hour drip. During this time, a new nurse comes in who is very kind. She realises something could actually be more severe than “a bit of morning sickness” and urges me to come back if I continue to be as sick as I am.

A week later, I am still very sick and find myself in the same situation requiring fluids, so I return. This time, I am helped by yet another nurse, who is worse than all the others combined. She does not call the doctor at all and speaks down to me, barely listening to my answers and concerns.

Nurse #2: “Make sure you only eat very plain food; anything spicy or fatty can make you feel more nauseous.”

Me: “I’ve only been eating plain water crackers and milk arrowroot biscuits. Even when I don’t eat, I find my body trying to vomit even though I have nothing in my stomach.”

Nurse #2: “Well, if you eat anything heavy, you will feel worse. And only drink water. You can try ginger tea, too; that helps some women.”

Me: “I’ve tried ginger. It made me even worse. I can’t stomach anything, not even water.”

Nurse #2: “Well, if you stop eating fatty food, you won’t vomit, so we won’t be calling the doctor or giving you any IV fluids. We will give you an injection to reduce the vomiting from what you’ve already eaten, and you can go home.”

I’m so tired and exhausted from vomiting that I don’t argue. I’m just thankful for some medication to stop my vomiting. She says she will inject it into my buttocks, but she misses and injects it into my side in a very painful spot. I end up feeling terrible pain for a week and can’t even touch the area without gasping in pain.

A few days later, my husband and I decide it’s best I move back home as I cannot study in my condition. I book the next flight home.

The day after arriving in my home state, my husband takes me to the chemist to buy more vomit bags. While we’re in line, a staff member notices me pale and shaking in the line and pulls me to the side to ring me up away from the other customers.

Cashier: “You must have a terrible bug; you are so pale.”

Me: “No, just pregnant. Morning sickness sucks.”

The cashier stops and studies me for a moment before pulling me over to a desk with a blood pressure monitor and taking my pulse. She then walks away and makes a phone call and returns with a very serious tone in her voice.

Cashier: “I’m not usually a cashier here. I’m a midwife, and I’m here for a specific program for new mothers to come in and have checkups and ask questions, but it’s quiet so I thought I would help the staff. Now, you are severely dehydrated. You need to go to the hospital now for fluids. I have called [Nearest Large Hospital] and they are expecting you.”

At first, I objected, because of the way I had been treated at the last hospital. I had begun to assume that I was just unable to cope with the standard sickness that comes with pregnancy, but my husband urged me to take her advice, and we go to the hospital.

Nearly as soon as we arrived, we were taken through to a room where IV fluids were waiting and a nurse brought in [Medication #2]. They advised me that the medication [Nurse #2] had injected into my hip is actually considered dangerous for pregnant women and that studies have shown that it causes deformities in animal foetuses.

A doctor diagnosed me with a condition called Hyperemesis Gravidarum, which causes severe vomiting for the full duration of pregnancy. [Medication #2] worked excellently, and I ended up having to take it three times a day right up until my healthy — and hydrated — baby boy was born.

It’s 1990. I am a relatively new corpsman (medic) assigned to a surgery ward at the Naval Hospital. Our patients are all post-op and there are sixty beds. There are six or so corpsmen assigned to take care of these patients. As part of our duties, we are to chart our findings and observations as we make our rounds.

This surgery ward is usually the first assignment for corpsmen and nurses coming fresh from school. I joined the Navy at twenty-one, so I am a little more worldwise than my peers who are all eighteen or nineteen. I know, especially in the military, there is the book way of doing things and the effective way of doing things. We have volumes of manuals that cover every aspect of our jobs and duties that you could imagine.

Cue the new nurse who has been assigned and wants to show how good she is at managing the lowly corpsman troops. She is merciless, always looking for opportunities to embarrass or cause trouble for us.

One evening, I observe her shouting at one of the corpsmen for using an unapproved abbreviation in a patient’s chart. What is the offensive abbreviation? “ASAP.” He wrote that the patient needed an evaluation ASAP. You would have thought that he had personally offended [Nurse]’s honor.

I go and look in the approved abbreviations section of our operations manual to confirm that it is not there. It is not. I do find that there is a very extensive list of approved abbreviations available to use, though.

Cue malicious compliance.

I pull all of the corpsmen on the shift and tell them to bring their charts to the break room. We then chart all of the notes together using nothing but approved abbreviations. The notes look like another language! I make sure everyone can read their own notes and send them out to put the charts back.

The pain-in-the-butt nurse comes in to review the notes with the corpsmen. I take the first round. This is done while standing at patients’ bedsides. She opens the chart and looks at the notes.

Nurse: “WHAT IS THIS?!”

Me: “I don’t understand. What do you mean?”

Nurse: “I don’t understand anything you have written.”

Me: “It says that the patient is recovering well with little difficulty, but he will need further evaluation based on his comments and visible demonstration of discomfort and reduced mobility in his left upper limb.”

Nurse: “That is not what it says.”

Me: “Ma’am, I assure you that it does and that those are all approved abbreviations. I am sorry that you do not know them. I do realize that you are new.”

I smiled. She did not. This was the first of sixty charts she had to review.

I have never seen corpsmen so eager to review chart notes. We did go get the manual for her, just to be helpful.

I work in a pharmacy that ships out two deliveries (to nursing homes) per day. We call these the first run and the second run. While the first run is being packed up, a couple of people stay in the main pharmacy to answer the phones. Today, it’s [Coworker] and me.

Me: “Pharmacy, how can I help you?”

Caller: “I’m so happy I got you! Thank you so much for being the one who answered! My name is [Caller], and it’s been such a long day. I have no patience for [Coworker]. I love her, but she just talks so slowly and it takes too long. Anyway, I’m glad I got you!”

I’m not sure how to respond because I don’t feel the need to share [Coworker]’s reasons for working at the speed she does, but I’m not going to bad mouth her, either. I wait patiently for the caller to finish saying how the whole conversation takes longer when she gets [Coworker], oblivious to the irony.

Eventually, she gets to the point.

Caller: “So, my name is [Caller] and I’m a nurse at [Facility]. One of my patients has an inhaler that’s not working, and we need it stat.”

I take the patient’s information and check when we sent the inhaler.

Me: “Well, I’m not sure why the inhaler isn’t working, but the patient has refills and is due for a refill anyway. I can put that through for tonight.”

Caller: “I’m going to need it for the first run.”

At this point, it’s 5:30. The cutoff for the first run is 4:00. Anything we get afterward is for the second run. However, it’s a rescue inhaler and we’re not super slammed, so I tell her I can try to push it through for her.

Caller: “So, that will be on the first run?”

Me: “I will try to get it on the first run, but it might end up on the second run.”

Caller: “Wait, so can we get it on the first run?”

Me: “I’ll do my best.”

Caller: “Thank you so much, and what was your name?”

While I was born and raised in the United States, and my accent is very American, my name is not English. It tends to throw people off.

Me: “[My Name].”

Caller: “I’m sorry, what was that?”

Me: “It’s [My Name].”

The pharmacist has been following my side of the conversation, and at this point, she speaks up. The caller can’t hear her.

Pharmacist: “Just hang up so we can take care of it already!”

Caller: “Could you spell that for me?”

Me: “Sure.”

I spell my name out, the caller hangs up, and I run the refill. 

Pharmacist: *Shaking her head* “Bless you, [My Name]. All I can say is bless you.”

Now I’m left with one question. If [Caller] was so happy that I answered the phone, who did she think I was if she didn’t remember my name?

I’m a printer and copier tech, currently taking care of a couple of large hospitals. I go to a surgery department to fix a printer that the user describes as “printing colors weird and now jammed”.

I arrive, power it off, and unplug it. I fix a pretty standard problem that causes jamming — the paper backstop was out of place — and power it back up. Now, to the issue of the colors.

Once it’s powered up, the print jobs that were held up by the jam start churning out. I pick them up and start to study them for color issues. These are pictures that have printed, but I can’t figure out what they are pictures of, so I don’t know what the colors are SUPPOSED to look like.

Me: *To a nurse* “What is this?”

Nurse: “Aww, sugar, that’s a butthole.”

My brain is instantly horrified, and I don’t want to look again.

Me: “Oh, God. Okay, well, does it look okay to you?”

Nurse: “Naw, sweetie. That’s why he’s here.”

What.

WHAT.

Me: “I MEANT THE COLORS!” *Pauses* “Never mind. I’m going to print the fruit.”

I sometimes try to help nurses at my hospital with their computer troubles. I had a nurse come to me extremely upset and unwilling to even let me try to fix her “problem” because I “probably wouldn’t get it anyway.” Her problem was, in her own words:

Nurse: “I have a tendency when stressed out to rest my thumb on the spacebar and not notice.”

This caused obvious problems for her as she needed to type patient status updates, emails, etc. and they all had huge blank spaces in them where she’d just inserted twenty seconds of spacebar presses.

This, to her, was the computer’s fault because:

Nurse: “It should be advanced enough to know that I don’t want all of those spaces in there. Who would want those?”

Twenty minutes later, I finally convinced her that there was no way for the computer to know if she really wants all of the spaces or not because it relied on the user to enter spaces if they wanted spaces and not enter spaces if they didn’t want spaces.

She still thinks it’s the computer’s fault and is now resolved to “work around the computer’s problem, even if it causes delays for her.”

How brave.