(My boyfriend and I are woken up by a phone call at six am from his 15-year-old sister saying, “Something is wrong with Dad; you need to get to the hospital.” We live 100 miles away, so I tell my boyfriend to go now and I will pack a few things and meet him up there. When I get up there I find out he has hydrocephalus, or water on the brain, which is a fairly rare disorder that typically happens to infants and people over 60. My boyfriend’s father is 47. It causes fluid to build up and put pressure on the brain. They release the pressure by removing parts of his skull. The next day, a nurse is in with him and my boyfriend’s mom comes out to talk to us.)

Mom: “They think he’s going to be okay, but right now we either have to sit with him or they have to restrain him. Otherwise, he might hurt himself; he can’t remember what is going on. Can you go sit with him for a while? I need a break.”

(We agree and go in.)

Boyfriend: “Hi, Dad!”

Dad: “Hi… Where am I?”

Boyfriend: “You’re in the hospital; you’re going to be fine. You just got sick and the doctors are going to help you.”

Dad: “Well, that was mighty inconvenient of me.”

Boyfriend: *laughing* “Just a touch.”

(My boyfriend’s father’s head starts to dip and his eyes slide to the side and become unfocused. Then, his head comes back up and he sees us and smiles.)

Dad: “Hi, guys! What are you doing here? Wait. Where am I?”

Boyfriend: *trying not to cry* “Hi, Dad. You’re in the hospital; you’re going to be fine.”

Dad: *laughing* “Well, that was mighty inconvenient of me.”

(Then, his head starts to dip. My boyfriend and I look at each other, both of us trying not to cry.)

Dad: “Hi, guys! What are you doing here?”

(I step over to his bed and take his hand.)

Me: “Hi, Dad. You had a small accident you’re going to be fine.”

(We stayed with him for a couple of hours having the same conversation. I had seen short-term memory loss on TV but thought it was an exaggeration. It’s not. Thankfully, he really was, overall, okay.)

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

For an assortment of reasons, my husband has been unemployed for a while, outside of extremely short temp work and off-the-book odd jobs. For a while he has been having random symptoms: foot and ankle pain, shortness of breath after exertion — more than normal — and lower back pain. All together, they don’t seem to add up to anything aside from random aches and pains, they never stick around long, and without insurance, he can’t afford to see a doctor properly, so he just treats with aspirin and the like.

Finally, it happens: the Affordable Care Act is passed. He signs up and gets real health insurance for the first time in a decade. He’s assigned a primary care physician and we call to set up an appointment. No answer. We try again, and again, and again, at both the number listed on the insurance site and on their individual site. We never get an answer; we never even get voicemail. After a bit more than a month of this, he’s feeling ill; the local EMO doesn’t take the medicare-based version of his insurance, so we head to the hospital ER right down the street. He apologizes for coming for such a minor thing but we don’t have any other options at the time. They say it’s fine and after a wait, they take his vitals… and they immediately wheel him into the observation room. We’re trying desperately to get some actual information from the first nurse bringing him in, or the second nurse coming to hook him up to all their monitors.

Finally, a full doctor comes in and starts asking questions, but we interrupt and ask, specifically, why they are doing all this. She shows us the blood pressure monitor: 220/120. His BP has always been high, especially at the doctor’s/hospital because of “white coat syndrome,” but never that high! Somehow he never actually had a heart attack or stroke over the past several months, but that unrestrained pressure did a lot of damage to his kidneys. My husband is in the hospital for about ten days — although he was originally going to get out in six, one batch of test results gets messed up and they can’t run it again until the following Monday. When he leaves, he is on a prescription for about eight different heart and blood pressure medications, two of which are quickly dropped and two others cut in half once he gets home and can relax!

The bad news is that, because of the level of damage his kidneys have suffered, my husband’s on the verge of needing to go on the transplant list. The good news is that his heart has made a near-complete recovery, his prescriptions have been cut down further, and his kidney functions have actually improved to a point where he’s no longer hovering on the verge of failure!

And that’s why we say to this day, with no irony: thanks, Obama!

(I have a fall during gym class when I am about ten years old. Because I have pretty brittle bones and very weak joints — but apparently not enough to warrant getting any kind of diagnosis — I instantly know that I have broken my arm. The fall was pretty minor; I was just running on the soft grass and fell down. I am crying and trying to explain to my teacher that I believe my arm to be broken.)

Me: “My arm hurts. I think it’s broken.”

Teacher: “It isn’t. You can’t break your arm from something so minor.”

(I explain that I have broken many bones before and that I know the feeling of a broken bone. I can tell she still doesn’t believe me, but she does send me down to the office. She doesn’t send anyone with me, though. I walk down there alone and crying, while my arm is swelling more and more. When I get to the office, I try to explain what happened to the secretary.)

Secretary: “Oh, no, what happened to you?”

Me: “I think I broke my arm. I fell out in the field while doing a running exercise.”

Secretary: “You didn’t fall from anything?”

Me: “No.”

Secretary: “It’s not broken, then. I’ll give you some ice for the arm, and then you’ll be better in no time!”

(I put the ice pack on my arm, but it still hurts. I sit and cry silently for about ten minutes in the corner. Even though I am normally very shy and not a fan of conflicts, I am also in a lot of pain. I approach the secretary again.)

Me: “Look. My arm really, really hurts, and the ice pack isn’t cold anymore. Would you please just call my mum?”

Secretary: “Fine! But your arm isn’t broken.”

(Neither of my parents answered their phones. I continued to sit and cry quietly while the secretary sent me sour looks. She finally got through to my dad, but he was delivering merchandise two hours away. My mum worked at another school pretty close to mine, so my dad suggested that the secretary should try to call my mum’s school. The secretary called my mum’s school and had their secretary fetch my mum. Over an hour had passed since I’d hurt my arm, but my mum obviously knew about my brittle bones and came to take me to the hospital within ten minutes of getting the call. My arm was, indeed, broken. When I told my mum of how my teacher and the secretary handled the situation, she was livid. Even though I was supposed to take a few days off after breaking my arm, my mum dragged me down to the principal next morning with my arm in a cast and sling. I told him my story, too, and both the teacher and the secretary got a stern talking-to about how to handle injured students and were asked to apologise to me. They did, and I hope they learnt something about listening to their students regarding their health. Never assume you know somebody’s body better than they do.)

(One of our patients is a very stubborn gentleman who has broken his hip. He thinks he can get out of bed without help, but he can’t. We instruct him to use his call light but he continues to get out of bed alone. We’re worried he’s going to fall, so we put him on a bed alarm which will automatically alert us if he tries to get up. However, when visiting hours start, it turns out we don’t need it after all…)

Patient’s Wife: “DON’T YOU EVEN THINK OF GETTING OUT OF BED BY YOURSELF! I’VE TOLD YOU A MILLION TIMES, YOU HAVE TO CALL THE GIRLS IF YOU WANT TO GET OUT OF BED!”

(Cue the nurse and I hustling over to his room to respond to the verbal bed alarm.)

(I’m in the ER with my husband after he broke his arm. A woman and her adult daughter are in the curtain area next to us. From what I can gather, the older woman had a fall and hit her head; she doesn’t remember what happened and has lost her hearing aids. The nurse is asking her some general questions. It is 2014 and we live in Australia.)

Nurse: “Okay, just a few questions. What is your full name?”

Older Woman: “[Older Woman].”

Nurse: “Great, and your birthdate?”

Older Woman: “Pardon?”

Daughter: *bit louder* “Your birthday, mum”

Older Woman: “Oh, it’s [birthdate].”

Nurse: “Who is the prime minister?”

Older Woman: “I’m sorry, what?”

Daughter: *louder again* “Who’s the idiot that runs the country?”

Older Woman: “Oh, that’s Tony Abbott.”

(My husband and I couldn’t help but laugh. The nurse had a good chuckle, too.)