I didn't find a thread for this so I thought I'd make one and see if y'all had any funny or absurd stories from the world of medicine. Back in the mid 1980's I was clinically depressed, I know that now, but back the everyone told me "Snap out of it!" Finally my mother takes me to see a psychiatrist. While my mother was filling out forms I am handed a scan-tron form, a number 2 pencil, and a booklet and told "Fill this out, then hand it in and then you can see the Dr." I had thought that the whole point of seeing someone was actually talking to someone about my problems, but okay. I really tried to answer honestly for the first third of the test, then the questions started to repeat, with slightly different phrasing. At this point I got creative, by the time I was done, if anyone actually read the results, I was a homicidal, cannibal, who liked to eat infants, with an Oedipus complex. They ran the test while I waited and shuffled me in to see the Dr. The first thing he does after introducing himself? Ask me why I'm there? No, word association. Resentful at this point I stay creative. Sun=Ball of fusing hydrogen. Boy=Pit of endless despair. Tree=Burning, etc. Then, ink blots! Yay! First blot=Giant dragon eating the sun and plunging us all into endless darkness. Second Blot=That's a demon ripping the soul from a young girl and dragging it screaming into hell. Third blot=Defiantly zebra vomit. All the while he is scribbling furiously. Fourth blot=Well doc I think you mixed things up, 'cuz I absolutely sure that's an Ink Blot! At this point he stops, actually looks at my scan-tron results, and reads the case file. "You are messing with me!" he says. I resisted the urge to say many unkind things. He then actually talks to me for about 30min, I had a diagnosis and treatment. "Kid, you're depressed, Snap out of it!" That is a exact quote. Yay! for state of the art treatment in the '80's
I hope it's okay to toss some on as well :O I can delete them if they don't fit in right. Before I was diagnosed with POTS but knew 1. something was very wrong and 2. had managed to hunt down something viable to ask to be tested for. Nobody was taking me seriously though, despite me saying "my numbers are going to be fine sitting down, they go crazy when I STAND, can you PLEASE just check this while I STAND next?" Three frustrating attempts at appointments later I finally just demanded they let me do both and check, if only to make sure I wasn't losing my mind. Stand up with the finger monitor on, suddenly jumps like mad from 86 to 140 and stays there. Blank staring, everyone's quiet, one lady went pale and poked her head out into the hall to ask for backup and second opinion from another nurse. ...Have me do it again. Then immediately send me back for an EKG both lying down and standing up. New nurse still thinks I'm being dramatic and is cheerful and making small talk despite my determined ass being fairly stoic because by then I'm exhausted, but does as she's told. Lay down peaceful and quiet, hit low 80's, things are chill. Stand up, 150 solid with signs of occasional pvc and it rising the longer I had to stand to get the readings. I kept shaking and getting weaker the longer I was up, and it made the scan hard to take because it was delicate against muscle spasms. I got orders to go to a base in Germany with spouse accompanying as helper for formal testing by specialists within a month and had a diagnosis formalized within two days. (Bonus: internal medicine doc who kept dismissing me prior to this because I kept saying I had a gut feeling he was very wrong and I needed him to listen... NO LONGER ACCEPTED APPOINTMENTS FROM ME. 8D Fuck him. ) And.. then there was still in Italy when I got my gallbladder out. First hospital was a public one that kept me for a week to get my liver back in order but didn't do the surgery because Reasons. So I wound up going to another hospital, a private one, to get the surgery itself done once I'd been released and home for a day or three. In there, very few people spoke English and there was general sadness that I didn't know dutch or german or french as there were more people who knew that and could talk to me. I knew very broken Italian. But with a few phrases and some creative gesturing we got the messages across. When time came for me to get undressed and put on the gown and the anti-embolism stockings, the nurses were helping because dizzy pre-diagnosis POTS patient and severe gallbladder pain weren't good for tugging stockings up. Naked and in thigh highs, I looked up from the ring of nurses to see the door opening and another person coming in, talking and laughing in quick Italian. And that's how a little old nun saw me naked in thigh highs in Vicenza, Italy.
Spoiler: Spoip jic for butt prank my bio teacher told us When i was in high school my boilogy teacher said one of her professors started off his first day of human anatomy class by wheeling out a cadaver and saying "the first thing you have to be in medicine is not easily grossed out by the body and it's functions" then proceeded to stick his gloved finger in the cadavers butt and stick it in his mouth. He then asked everyone to line up and do the same. After everyone had done it, he said " the second thing you have to be is observant. If you were watching closely you would have noticed i stuck my middle finger in his butt and my pointer finger in my mouth. Think on it"
Spouse reminded me of fun story from his Kung fu teacher. He was starting to get some pain in his arm, was fairly sure it was arthritis or a messed up muscle but nothing serious. Doctor sent him for x-rays and suddenly they were xraying other parts of his body he wasn't being seen for and the doctors were being cagey as fuck and really somber. They eventually sat him down to discuss the images, and said that they had means to believe he had a very -very- serious problem that could eventually lead to major disability and death. Dude's kind of freaking out and he's like. "What, is it some rare cancer or something, or a tumor or..?? The fuck's going on??" They were pointing to the extra calcification on his bones and how dense they were and very solemnly explaining that it was a rare condition that would eventually kill him at this rate. He had to just kinda stare, then busted out laughing and explained that, no, no, his muscle was not becoming calcified or anything, his bones have broken and healed thousands of times by then in microfractures that strengthened them over time from decades of work. They didn't understand till he explained that he's capable of punching trees and leaving indents, as well as explaining his daily routine of the last 30+ years. He'd sprained a ligament but everything was fine. Still apparently laughs about it to this day.
Fun?? Story about my childhood experience with uncommon procedures Spoiler: cw: catheters, lots of em I had a bladder problem that kids can often grow out of, so, to check if i did that, i'd take a year test consisting of getting a catheter inserted, getting a dye into my bladder, and taking an x-ray to see if the dye went up to my kidneys or not. if it did, problem persists, if it didn't, problem is possibly gone, come back in a month to double check so. as a young child (this started when I was... 3? maybe? longer than i remember) their way of helping a young child deal with the not-insignificant pain of getting a catheter inserted was.. amnesia-inducing pain meds. that's right, i was given a medicine that had a good chance of making me forget the whole thing. which works, until it doesnt. and then when it doesn't, fear helps make the amnesia part not work, and then you just have a painful procedure with what I assume were mild painkillers, cause lol did it hurt so at some point they're trying a new method for it: give the damn kid laughing gas. Which i much preffered, being high on laughing gas is enjoyable. but they. would just.. stop the gas right immediately after the catheter was in, and I had to deal with the whole rest of the procedure (and the removal is not painless, no matter what they say) with absolutely nothing. until, on like, the second to last time i ever had to get this done, I, now a 10 year old child, go 'can't i just have laughing gas the whole time???' and the doctors go 'huh, i guess you could' and do that. and continued to do that with everyone else for the procedure and that's how i changed medical procedure, at least in one hospital, as far as my memory serves
one time while inpatient i needed to get IV Benadryl pushed, because of an allegic reaction (hives are no fun), but i am also allergic to Benadryl in that it triggers major physical symptoms of anxiety. but i had to get it, because that's better than hives. but because the nurse had to push it in me so fast it felt like i got hit with both the usual result of benadryl (instant exhaustion) plus my reaction to benadryl (feels like i got shot out of a rocket and am running a marathon while there is a drum concert convention going on in my chest) at the same time. hands down the weirdest combination of sensations ive experienced thus far also insecurities: Spoiler so all the medical stories i find funny in retrospect are also kind of aaaaaaaa because i like being facetious about painful things. i think these are? funny? i have more but i worry they're more on the "why is this doctor doing exactly the wrong thing" kind of stories which not all find funny so idk i kinda wanna check in on what kind of content wanted here? i mainly deal with medical stuff by finding bad things hilarious in retrospect.
The most terrifying thing that has ever happened to me in a doctors office was the doctor looking at my mri and saying, "huh, that's weird." ADD THAT TO THE LIST OF THINGS YOU NEVER WANT A DOCTOR TO SAY ABOUT A MYSTERIOUS LUMP. It was a benign bone tumor and was weird because there were two big ones, rather than one big one or many small ones.
@raybot Go nuts. Houmorous in retrospect is still humorous, and I tend to be facetious about pain myself, by now it's and old fenemy.
Oh man, nitrous oxide makes me the most chattery, loving, laughy person (before it knocks me the fuck out). Naturally, all the times I've had it that I can remember have been when doctors needed to do stuff in my mouth, like shove an endoscope down my esophagus or do things to my teeth. Funny-ish blood donation story... My second time giving blood, I felt pretty good and on top of everything. Gave blood, lay there for 20 minutes afterwards, felt okay, stood up to walk to the food table... and promptly passed out. A very burly nurse managed to stop me from hurting anything, and I came to staring at the auditorium ceiling with my knees up and an ice pack under my nexk, having no idea what had happened.
oh man, fun story about blood donation: until recently I wasn't allowed to do it!! Lived (briefly) in the UK in the 90s, so I was considered at risk for mad cow cx still not planning on giving cause lol.. needle fear.. but yeah, it was nice to have a strange excuse nitrous oxide just makes me really happy and chilled out and daydream-y, and also makes me feel like my fav fictional characters could be real for a moment. just a good time in general. combo'd with dentists that let me just listen to my music through the time, it makes cavity filling a surprisingly pleasant time other than the numbing injections. those can go to hell, i still like, audibly whimper at them when on nitrous, a very adult thing to do in front of dentists l:
I remember when i got my wisdom teeth out the dentist said " we're not very good at this particular surgery here" and promptly numbed me before i could properly think about what he said. I also learned i process the numbing stuff faster than usual because they kept having to stick me again cause it would wear off. To make matters even MORE annoying, he kept making small talk at me when i COULDN'T EVEN FEEL MY MOUTH Plus they have Netflix set up to watch while you wait for the doctor to come in/ i assume some procedures allow and the nurse gave me an offput look when i said pokemon when she asked what i wanted to watch
So funny (?) story from when I was pretty young: EDS makes you really susceptible to bruising and I was an intensely active child, so lots of bruises. My mom takes me in to the hospital because of one reason or another, they take one look at this bruised child, and decide a CPS call is in order. And (justifiably!) they will not listen to a damn thing my mother says about it. So eventually she gets fed up, grabs a nurse and tells her to watch me-- right as I enthusiastically careen into a wall, face first into a counter, and then straight into a doorframe with no apparent issue. Bruises show up, and they quietly drop the complaint to CPS.
Once when I was a toddler I threw a screaming tantrum in the middle of the kitchen where my flailing hand managed to hit a hot pot on the hot stove. Turns out doctors get really suspicious about small children with burns on the backs of their hands.
Spoiler: Cut for gyn and tmi stuff I'm afab and I have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, where my hormones are jacked up. Body hair, acne, whatever. I saw this new gyn, who'd seen Wife. I had noted that I had PCOS, but apparently she didn't read the paperwork. When the gyn went to do the exam, she said, mystified, "oh, there's hair there." Occasionally, apropos of nothing, Wife and I still go "oh, there's hair there" and laugh like assholes.
I rolled against a crazy hot space heater with a diamond grill pattern when I was about.. I wanna say 15ish? i wound up with scarring in the shape of scales for ages (and I kind of miss it almost bc Aesthetic??) but boy oh boy, trying to explain that was interesting to doctors. It was an absolutely perfect pattern and so many things had to go just right for it to work, up to and including mom using that stupid thing past the safe point of heating.
Oh man; when I was about a year old I was running around and ran into my sibling, who was twice my size, and fell backwards and got a concussion on the back of my head, so mom rushed me to the hospital thing is, i have a bright red birth mark on my forehead (or, it was bright. it's faded since puberty). So the doctor saw that and started freaking out about skull fractures and internal bleeding and my mom had to be like. No. That's a birthmark. She hit the back of her head.
Speaking of cranial impacts, our gradeschool had been built where a very large hill used to be, so it has near 45° slopes on the north and south where the remnants of the hill are. These make great sledding hills in the winter, and I got pretty good at optimizing my speed and coasting distance. So much so that once in kindergarten I made it all the way to the brick wall of the school and split my head open. Then I did it again in 1st grade, this time cracking my skull (I must have been even better!) Then a few years later there was some late night pickup softball and Jacktrash was doing a warmup swing with an aluminum baseball bat as I stole home plate. That bat rang pretty good.
