Hospital Snippets

Actual conversations I had with hospital staff...


‘How’s the pain, Tom?’

‘First Class, best I’ve had’

‘Good.  Now you will ask me if there is anything you need?’

‘Well I could do with the gentle application of a soothing cream…’

‘You’d like cream for your leg?’

‘Well, you can use trifle if you like, I was just hoping you’d give me a massage.’

 

During a discussion on oral pain killer doses based on body weight.

‘You’re not very big, Thomas’

‘Cruel. Very cruel.  At least my girlfriend confesses to 'it' being at least 'sufficient'.

 

Very attractive female anaesthetist just before I go into theatre:

‘I am going to give you a powerful pain killer, Mr. Gowans.'

‘Will it take me to a nice place and make me feel all warm and fuzzy?’

(laughing) ‘Yes, Mr Gowans, I’m sure it will.  In a minute I will give you another injection to make you sleep.’

‘How long before I am asleep?’

‘Only five or ten seconds’

‘If, during that time, I made a remark to you laced with sexual innuendo, would the judge at my sexual harassment trial consider the drugs you administered a mitigating factor in my defence?’

 

‘I know it must seem a little silly but you do understand why we put a name band on each wrist, Mr. Gowans?’

‘In case I misplace one of my arms?’

‘No, silly!’

‘I was just joking, of course I know, it is for administrative reasons.’

‘That’s right.’

‘Yes, one tag stays with the body and the other goes back to the NHS War Graves commission marked as killed in action.’

 

While inserting a cannula

‘Now don’t go asking me to hook you up to a bottle of whisky or anything like that, Mr, Gowans, I have heard them all before.’

‘Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of certain well known hallucinogens fashionable among the sixties celebrity chic…’

 

While checking my wrist band before administering intravenous drugs

‘Can I just check your name, please?’

‘Thomas Gowans’

‘Why does it say Thomas Andrew?’ 

(My name is Thomas Andrew Gowans)

‘Andrew is my maiden name, if you look on the next line down on the wrist tag, it says Gowans, that’s my surname now that I am married.’

 

 

The surgeon in A&E, having performed an initial debridement of the wound and having marked the extent of the infection informed me that if, in two hours the infection had spread beyond the marked boundary, he would not bother to halt the procedure just to wake me up and tell me he was going to amputate my leg, he would just do it.

‘I’m sorry that’s a bit blunt, but that’s just the way I am.’

‘That’s alright Doctor, I am sure the hospital has a well funded department dedicated to the provision of emotional counselling to the patients that passed under your scalpel’

 

While having a vacuum dressing removed without anaesthetic

‘Oh my God, I can’t watch!’ (This is the nurse speaking), ‘Does it hurt?’

‘It is a little uncomfortable’

‘Is that all?  Gosh, I thought you’d be in agony!’

 

Questions before going down to theatre (bearing in mind I have been three days nil by mouth waiting for a slot in theatre)

‘Have you any loose teeth, dentures, caps or crowns?’

‘I have a loose tooth at the back here and a false one screwed in here.’

‘Oh,’

‘Why, is that a problem?’

‘It is.  You see we have to put in a breathing tube and we cannot afford the risk of any loose object causing an obstruction.’

‘Hang on a sec, I have completely misunderstood this question.  Can we go back?  Ask me the question again.’

‘Have you any loose teeth, dentures, caps or crowns?’

‘No.’