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This happened at work last week, the day my nan died actually, which is why I never posted about it, but just thinking about it makes me laugh. I don't know that I will adequately be able to express the pure amusement of this story, but I'll give it a go.
I was with a patient in one of the ER rooms, messing about with her IV pump. There was what I originally thought was a baby screaming. As I listened I realized it was someone slightly older. "What's going on?" this patient (an older lady, in alot of pain, just a bit of moaning.)
"I'd assume it's someone who's broken a bone and they have to reset it" says I, the medical genius.
So I'm walking by the doctor's area and the intern/resident ( I can't tell the bloody difference, someone enlighten me) says to the doctor "Can you believe he's doing all that screaming just for stitches?" As I walk past a couple of the nurses I hear them saying that all they had done was the needle for freezing the area to be stitched.
I'm back in the ER about 10 minutes later, getting a patient ready to go to for an x-ray. More screaming. Last time, I was in the room next to the screamer. Now I am in a different area with doors in between us and him. But I can still hear him screaming. One of the nurses says something about him looking for attention and another says he said he a low pain tolerance. I have a low pain tolerance. This man had a negative pain tolerance. Liam had stitches in his chin at 4 and never uttered a word of complaint. It turns out he received one stitch. All that and alot of whinging.
See, men are wimps. It's true.
Just a note...if you ever have to go to the hospital don't expect anything to be kept quiet. I have heard patients called fat over their heads, I have heard nurses making fun of patients, and people's medical histories discussed in the open. I don't imagine it is just the staff where I work, in fact I know it's not. I dread needing to go to into hospital. Frightening.
3 comments:
Ahem,
I will say on behalf of all men that...
I am not a whimp.
And, are hospitals as bad in Canada and in the UK as folks over here say they are? I don't know if its just anti-universal health care talk from the right-wingers, or really scary, as you say.
No, I think the level of care is actually fantastic and the fact that it's free is a huge plus. I just think that women are catty and that includes nurses. Mind there are some fantastic ones!
I worked in a hospital for a couple of years in the Respiratory Therapy department, and one of the things I had to do was draw arterial blood samples. We had one patient, and elderly woman, who was in the hospital a lot for respiratory problems, and she gave us a really hard time about drawing her blood -- she claimed we were taking her blood to sell it.
My friend Steve, who also worked in RT never had any problem with her, and I went along one time to see how he did it. After he drew her blood, she said "you're going to sell it, aren't you?" And Steve looked at the syringe and said "Wow, this looks like good stuff! We're going to get a lot for this!" And the lady just grinned and looked very proud of herself.
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