(We’re in the waiting room during our adult son’s brain surgery. A family sits near us and I hear:)
Family: “He’s in Jesus’s hands now.”
(I lean over to my son’s girlfriend and say:)
Me: “They sent a carpenter in to do a surgeon’s job.”
(A mother and her eight-year-old come into the clinic. She says the kid was using the end of a pencil to scratch his ear the previous day and the eraser came off and he accidentally pushed it in while trying to get it out. She can’t get it with tweezers. I flush the ear to remove the eraser and notice a few things.)
Me: “There are clear signs of a swimmer’s ear infection. Fluid has been trapped behind that eraser for a lot longer than a few hours. The eraser would also not nearly be this… encrusted… after such a short time.”
Mother: “[Son] only told me about it yesterday. He said it had just happened. [Son], when did the eraser get stuck in your ear?”
(We both eye the child. He fidgets for a few moments before…)
Son: “Christmas break.”
(This is in MARCH!)
Mother: “What?! Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
Son: *defiantly* “Well, it only hurt if I touched it and I don’t sleep on that side!”
(Kid logic is my job security.)
(I am a junior volunteer at my local hospital with a decent amount of medical knowledge for my age stationed in the emergency room. As I am a freshly graduated high school student — and most volunteers are around my age — we aren’t really allowed to do much but answer call bells, put together blood draw tube sets, enter data, and, in my case, monitor the heart rate screen and alert nurses to abnormal changes. But this isn’t a story about an abnormal heart rate; this is a story of a complete doofus. I am coming back to Central from being over on North — two of the four sections of my ER — when I overhear this gem of a conversation.)
Doctor: *to a patient’s nurse* “We had [Patient] come in complaining of abdominal pain about an hour ago. [Hospital he was transferred from] suspects a small bowel obstruction, but he can’t think of anything to have caused it and said he was experiencing other symptoms.”
Nurse: “Was it?”
Doctor: “Well, considering his last meal was an entire jar of pickles and an extra-large bag of [Popcorn Brand], take a guess.”
(Spoiler alert, it was. Still my favorite story to date. I have no idea why that man thought it was a good idea to eat that in one sitting, and even less of an idea why he couldn’t figure out why he was feeling so bad.)
(I am in a hospital being treated for epilepsy. We have a button to push if we think we’ve had a seizure.)
Nurse: *to me* “You pushed the button, sir?”
Me: “Yeah, it felt like I had a tonic-clonic seizure, only I was awake and fully conscious when I was shaking so that shouldn’t be possible.”
Nurse: “You felt that shaking, too?”
Me: “Pardon?”
Nurse: “You didn’t have a seizure. I think there was an earthquake.”
(Note that earthquakes are very uncommon both where I live and where the hospital is, and this is the first time I have ever experienced one.)
Me: “Oh, okay. I wonder how many other people in this ward thought what I did?”
This story is part of our Epilepsy roundup.
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(I am in the co-op program at my high school, and I have a placement at a local university medical clinic. Since I am a high school student, there are a lot of things at the clinic that I am not qualified to do, so I am often tasked with calling patients to inform them of specialist appointments that they have been referred to.)
Me: “Hello, is this [Patient]?”
Patient: “Yes, it is.”
Me: *reading the referral sheet* “I’m calling from Dr. [Doctor]’s office to let you know about an upcoming mammogram appointment on [date] at [Location].”
(Pause.)
Patient: “Well, I just had a double mastectomy, so I don’t think I’ll be needing that appointment.”
Me: “Oh.”
(I was mortified and apologized profusely; thankfully, the patient laughed it off. I informed my supervisor and she, while shocked, commended me on how I handled the situation.)
