In Rude Health (2 page)

This incident was related to me by a senior colleague who worked in the days when general practitioners still did lots of routine house calls and when doors were never locked.
He knocked on the door of a female patient who called for him to walk straight in. He did so, to find her lying naked in a tin bath in front of the fire. She looked up and said cheerfully,
‘Oh it’s you, doctor! I thought it was the insurance man.’

Doctor, Ayrshire

During our anatomy years, a group of us had to dissect the green body of an elderly female with a proud risus sardonicus (a death-mask grin).

As the dissection progressed to the lower extremities, our tutor decided to demonstrate how a PV (a treatment applied to the vagina) would have to be done later in clinical training. As he
withdrew his gloved middle finger, sitting happily on the tip of it was a raisin. He mused in wonderment, ‘How did that get there?’ A mutter response came from our worldly-wise
colleague, having partied well the night before:

‘Maybe she had a bun in the oven!’

Surgeon, Brighton

A young GP Registrar, who cut her teeth on squelchy carpet home visits in urban Ayrshire, later moved to a greater calling in deepest Drumchapel, Glasgow. Early one afternoon,
summoned to minister to a sick child, she found herself walking up a nominal garden path, through the standard avenue of discarded couches, mattresses and old cookers to the battle-scarred door of
a tenement, outside of which sat a big dog.

Receiving the customary no answer to her knock, she called out ‘Doctor here!’ and as she slowly opened the door, the big dog immediately bounded upstairs ahead of her. She followed
it cautiously into a dimly-lit living room, where half a dozen assorted, multi-pierced male and female slackers sat menacingly around the walls in a fug of wacky baccy, watching her intently.

Uncomfortable and self-conscious – and from past experience unwilling to kneel on the floor – she crouched beside the settee to examine the florid chickenpox of her young patient. As
she did so, she was conscious, out of the corner of her eye, of the big dog arching its back in the middle of the room and dumping a huge turd on the threadbare carpet.

Nobody moved. Not a word was said. Appalled by this lumpen display of total indifference to filth, she hurriedly scribbled a script for Calpol and Calamine Lotion, handed it to the mother, and
beat a hasty retreat towards fresh air and civilisation. Nobody moved.

As she exited the room and closed the door in relief, behind her she heard someone cry:

‘Haw, Doctor! Yev forgotten yer fuckin dug!’

Doctor, Glasgow

A 92-year-old woman had a full cardiac arrest at home and was rushed to the hospital. After about thirty minutes of unsuccessful resuscitation attempts, the old lady was
pronounced dead. The doctor went to tell the lady’s 78-year-old daughter that her mother didn’t make it. ‘Didn’t make it? Where could they be? She left in the ambulance
forty-five minutes ago!’

Doctor, Sunderland

We were on call in our ambulance, when an ESA (Embarrassing Sexual Accident) came on the screen. The notes said that a couple had got stuck while in the midst of coital
passion, with the man unable to remove his member. The notes went on to say that ‘The female is not in pain, but the male is feeling the pinch.’ This was enough to have us laughing
uncontrollably; but what was more, the caller’s name had been recorded as ‘Male – friend on scene’. Sadly he had scarpered by the time we arrived.

Ambulance driver, London

‘In retrospect, lighting the match was my big mistake, but I was only trying to retrieve the hamster,’ Philip told colleagues in the Severe Burns Unit he’d
been rushed to.

Philip and his partner William had been admitted for emergency treatment after a felching session had gone seriously wrong. ‘I pushed a cardboard tube up his rectum and slipped Gerald, our
Campbell’s hamster, in,’ he said. ‘As usual, Will shouted, “Apocalypse!” – our safe word that he’d had enough. I tried to retrieve Gerald, but he
wouldn’t come out again, so I peered into the tube and struck a match, thinking the light might attract him.’

The match must have ignited a pocket of intestinal gas and a flame shot out of the tube, igniting Philip’s hair and severely burning his face. It also set fire to Gerald’s fur and
whiskers, which in turn ignited a larger pocket of gas further up the intestinal tract, propelling the hamster out like a cannonball.

Philip suffered second-degree burns and a suspected broken nose from the impact of the hamster, while William suffered first and second-degree burns to his anus and lower intestinal tract.

I never heard what happened to Gerald the hamster.

GP, Wolverhampton

The oddest thing that has happened in my career so far has to be the woman who Superglued a plunger to her vagina. Apparently she’d been having fun with her girlfriend
when the harness for their strap-on broke. In the heat of the moment (she told us she ‘wasn’t thinking straight’), she thought that the plunger under the sink would give the right
amount of, well, movement. After a quick wash under the hot tap (so considerate), she then tried to work out how to attach it. To cut a long story short, the pair decided in the heat of their
ardour to use Superglue to affix the device. A foolish thing to do, and one that is very hard to hide whether you are sitting, lying or standing in the waiting room of A&E.

Nurse, Manchester

As a pharmacist, I am often a patient’s source of information about their medication. When one woman came to the pharmacy to get a refill on her suppositories, she asked
me if I had any suggestions she could take to her doctor. She said that the suppositories were not working. ‘And not only don’t they work, they
hurt!
Sometimes they even make
me
bleed
!’

I looked at her prescription, pulled some suppositories from the shelf, and opened the box for her. She then showed me that the corners of the hard foil wrapper were sharp. I cringed when I
realised that she was not removing the packaging before inserting them.

Pharmacist, Croydon

When I was still training to be a dental assistant, this happened during one of my last practical exams. A very important exam was being graded by an observer supplemented with
input from the dentist. The dentist was working on an amalgam for a filling, and I was handing him the instruments and materials as he needed them, without him having to ask. I was sweating
buckets, I was so nervous. Then out of nowhere a bluebottle spirals down, and where does it land but on the tip of the patient’s tongue, seemingly stone dead, on its back, no wing twitching,
nothing.

Now, I can’t afford to make a mistake, and I’m so nervous that all I can think is, ‘What’s the proper instrument for removing a dead stuck fly from a person’s
tongue?’ I had to think fast, so I look at my tray, grabbed an amalgam carrier, and pressed it into the hands of the dentist. The dentist, a terrifying professor known for his brutal marking,
grunts, takes the carrier, scoops the bug up with the large end and hands it back to me, saying, ‘That was correct.’

I couldn’t believe it.

Dental assistant, Warrington

A couple of years ago one of my fellow midwives was an extremely large woman called Lucy, who was so large it made you want to give up eating for her. Not only was she fat, she
also had a ‘big personality’, and with that came a very blunt way of speaking. Now, usually this wasn’t a problem, as not many people argue back to someone who looks like they
would happily snack on them if given the chance, but there was one incident that will always stick in my mind.

It was once considered good practice to weigh expectant mothers every time they came in for a check-up and Lucy was always one to make comment on this. So an expectant mother comes in, looking
quite normal, and Lucy takes her into a cubicle. They can only have been in there for a few minutes when we hear an almighty SLAP! and the mother-to-be shouting, ‘If I need to watch my
weight, then we’d better send out a bloody search party for whoever is watching yours!’

With this the mum-to-be storms out. Thirty seconds later, Lucy emerges and says quite calmly, ‘Who’s next, please?’ No one mentioned the perfect handprint in scarlet across her
right cheek.

Midwife, Padstow

Last month I attended the most memorable ‘accident’ of my career. It was on a rare quiet night in A&E, when in waddles a man in his mid-thirties. I ask him the
matter – though I can smell the booze a mile off – and he says it’s his birthday, and he’s been playing a drinking game. Now, whenever we hear the words ‘drinking
game’ uttered by someone in A&E we know it isn’t going to be pretty. It turned out that the final forfeit was the insertion of a carton of six eggs up the arse, and this poor sod
had lost, and was now overcome with worry that they might smash inside him before he could lay them to rest, as it were. We got them out all right, and presented them back to him in an egg box to
take home. Things like that that make A&E worth it.

A&E Consultant, Edinburgh

I never thought this was even possible until I saw it with my own eyes. A woman came into my GP surgery complaining that there were vines growing out of her vagina. I examined
her, and she certainly wasn’t wrong – there was a stalk of about six inches protruding from it. Further examination revealed a potato, which was the source of the problem (sprouting as
they do in warm, moist and dark environments). We never did find out just why it had been put in there, and for how long it had... germinated.

Doctor, Essex

A fool came clumping in with one foot in a bucket. It turned out he was a self-proclaimed ‘artist’, and for his art he’d decided that he would like to make a
cast of said foot. So he’d got a square plastic bucket, filled it with concrete, and plopped his foot straight in, sitting down in a chair, waiting for the concrete to harden enough for the
cast to be made. He watched telly for several hours, ate some snacks and then, bored, worked his way through a half bottle of whisky. Waking more than half a day later, the penny finally dropped
that he wouldn’t have any way to get his foot out of the cement, which was now almost completely hard.

We had to anaesthetise him and then get the bloody fire brigade to break the cement off; and let me tell you, the force needed to break cement is more than enough to break bones. The post-op
x-ray was quite something to behold.

Orthopaedic Surgeon, London

A woman brings in her two-year-old grandson, completely distraught, and tells us that she was getting ready to give him a bath when she noticed that ‘his belly button was
falling off!’ Now, this seemed like quite the emergency, but in fact the boy had a baked bean stuffed in his belly button.

Nurse, Birkenhead

A man was brought in with a bad case of concussion, which had resulted in extreme short-term memory loss. I’d walk into the room and tell him he had a concussion and
he’d explain he had one when he was a kid. This was repeated every time I walked into the room. After about 10 times of doing this, I walked in and told him he had a concussion and he’d
had one before when he was a kid.

Mind blown. Priceless.

Consultant neurologist, Glasgow

Me: Hello, my name is Frank and I’m the duty doctor tonight.

Patient: Hi Frank, I’m a junkie and I’m off my fucking head.

It doesn’t get much better than that.

A&E Registrar, Brighton

We had a young lady in recently with a trapped foreign body. A sex toy, it turns out. This little exchange occurred during examination:

Patient: Can you feel where it is?

Me: Yes.

Patient: Can you pull it out?

Me: I don’t think so; we’ll have to take you into theatre, I’m afraid.

Patient: Before we go there, any chance you can please SWITCH IT OFF!

Obstetrics & Gynaecology Registrar, London

A woman came into A&E worried because her legs had taken on a bluish tinge. Upon examination it was a case of newjeansitis.

Doctor, Swansea

At 8am one morning, a man rushes into our surgery, carrying a small Tupperware box. He comes up to me at the counter and says, ‘I’ve just passed a worm – it
was floating in the loo after I went this morning. Here, I captured it and brought it with me.’