I’ve got one. Like Juliefoolie, I’ve had the opportunity to see more than my fair share of Stupid Doctor Tricks, and most of them are just too sad or tragic. But this one’s pretty funny—in retrospect.
I had to have abdominal surgery. They closed the incision with surgical steel staples. (These look just like regular staples except a lot bigger and thicker.) This was done at a large university teaching hospital. Days passed, the incision healed; the time came to remove the staples. A Junior Doctor was sent in to remove the staples, wielding an instrument that looked sort of like a pair of needle-nose pliers. This was the first time he’d ever done this, and no one had given him any instruction, besides a hurried “Here, use this, and take the staples out of Room 3112.”
I lay there in trusting innocence, my hospital gown drawn fetchingly up around my neck, while Junior Doctor surveyed the situation and pondered his options. Finally, he chose the direct approach to the problem. He locked onto one of the staples with the end of the plier-thing, and pulled straight up. The staple didn’t let go. He pulled harder and harder; the staple still refused to let go. Finally, he had pulled the staple up at least six or eight inches up from ground zero, in the process deforming and elongating the lower half of my abdomen until the area protruded like a narrow triangle of stretched-out Silly Putty, with the staple at the apex. Undeterred, Junior Doctor kept pulling with grim determination.
Suddenly, the staple popped off, and my abdomen snapped back like a rubber band, recoiling and rebounding like an oscillating spring—BOING OING OING oing oing [sup]oing[/sup] [sub]oing[/sub] [sup]oing[/sup][sub]oing[/sub]. It was like something out of a Wile E. Coyote cartoon. Remember, I’m only a few days out from surgery, I can’t walk yet, even slight changes in position like sitting up to swallow hurt like hell. So words can’t really begin to describe the sensation. I will say it was as novel as it was memorable.
Junior Doctor finally located a spatula thin and flexible enough to peel me off the ceiling. When I could breathe again, we gazed at each other with mutual horror and consternation. I have to admit, the poor guy was almost as taken aback as I was. The shocked, contemplative silence stretched into a lingering moment of near Zen timelessness (although the moment did not stretch out as far as my abdomen had.) What to do? The metal staples had to come out. But there were nearly a dozen remaining.
I cowered and braced myself as renewed determination entered Junior Doctor’s eyes, and he gripped the pliers with a grim resolve. Fortunately for both of us, a nurse chose that moment to enter the scene. Her experienced eye took but a moment to appraise the situation. Perhaps she had encountered similar tableaux before. In tones as patronizing as they were amused, she demonstrated to Junior Doctor how to simply snip the metal staples in half with the wire-cutter portion of the tool, then easily pick out the two halves with the pliers’ tip. The sense of relief in the room was absolutely palpable, emanating as it did from both practitioner and patient. With a final chuckle, Nurse Capable exited to dispense wisdom and comfort elsewhere. Junior Doctor easily and painlessly snipped and picked out the remaining staples; all the while both of us marveling at these wondrous advances in medical science.
