Ooooo!.. The excited “hey, guys you have got to see this!!!” is even worse than the “ick” face because then you really are a sideshow exhibit!
Hey Porcupine, I hope you’re feeling better today.
Yeah, you haven’t lived until you’ve had five doctors standing around the X-Ray viewer in the examining room commenting on the fact that it’s amazing that the foot is still attached and how it could be that this wasn’t a compound fracture and all…
What was really fun (when this all happened to me back in May) was when one of the Docs called in a couple of nurses and ORDELRLIES to have a look at the mess that can be made by a “stupid” motorcycle accident.
Man, at that moment, if I could have stood on two legs, I would have kicked that doctor right in the ass.
When I was 17, I took pilot lessons, only to be denied a medical certification because I got lightheaded when I stood up quickly. Two years later, I took the denial papers with me to my draft physical (during the Vietnam vs. USA conflict.) One of the two young doctors there looked at the paper, poked me, and looked in my eyes. He turned to other doc and cheerfully said, “Hey, Roger! This guy’s got Shy-Drager Syndrome!” Then he told me I was 4-F (unfit for the military.) Many years later, I found out I didn’t have S-DS, and the doc probably knew that. I’ll never know for sure, but I think he intentionally misdiagnosed me to save me from Vietnam. God Bless him.
I went to a dermatologist once for a nasty rash-kinda thing, and once the nurse left, TWO dermatologists came in, and they kept leaving to get other people to help make the diagnosis. It was like a parade!
There’s NOTHING like trying to give birth for the first time, and being in a teaching hospital. I had several classes of medico wannabes traipse in and take a good look up at what I had previously considered my private parts.
I have complete sympathy for cats. When they know they’re about to have kittens, most of them know enough to find a secluded space. Presumably, so they won’t get pinched, poked, prodded, shaved, and given an enema.
And my condolences, porcupine, an ER is not a fun place to be.
I have given the “ick” face to a patient before. Accompanied by “That’s disgusting.” Of course, I’m just a pharmacy tech, but I probably should have been more professional.
This woman walks up to me while I’m stocking shelves. (This should have been her first clue that I was not an authority on anything medical.) She had her right arm close to her chest. She straightens her arm, and stuck the most disgusting looking infection I had ever seen right in my face.
She: Can you tell me what this is?
Me: 
That’s disgusting. :eek:
She: I know that, but can you tell me what it is?
I directed her to the pharmacist, who in turn made the ick face and said, “that’s disgusting!”
He referred her to the emergency room across the street. Turns out she had a boil on the inside of her arm about the size of a racquet ball, and it got infected. Blargh! I guess sometimes you just can’t help the face you make when confronted with stuff like that.
I hope you’re feeling better, porcupine. I promise not to make any icky faces at you.
I had a student nurse cleaning gravel and tooth bits out of my face (years before I got a motorcycle, thanks) make the ick face.
What bugged me about that is that she’d been sitting next to me for six months in EMT class. Her eyes went wide when she finally checked the name on the chart.
That injury involved a curb, a redhead, and a great hockey season, but for similar reasons I always wear a full-face helmet and leathers when I ride now. Don’t really want to go see the nifty trauma stuff at Harborview.
Seventeen years old, hit by a car, kneecap shattered probably when I hit the pavement knee-first, taken to the ER by ambulance.
The Doc finally gets to see me and says something like…
“So let’s take a look at this kn <lifts drape over my leg>ee—eeeuuuW WEEE!”
“Oh… sorry. Ummmm… I’ll be right back.”
I’m fine now.
At least they looked.
Long story short: … so I’m in the emergency room with a finger that went thru a lawn mower. The family doctor (aka “The Quack”) came by and said that he called in a specialist, etc. He said he wasn’t going to look at it since it would probably make him sick.
It was bedside skills like this that no doubt contributed to him being elected President of the AMA a couple years ago. Really.
When my son was in the infant ICU with MRSA-caused bacterial pneumonia, I was sitting by his cribside one morning reading to him when a doctor popped his head in, saw me there, and sort of sheepishly said, “Oh, hi, uh, let me introduce you to Dr. [whoever] here; she’s presenting a paper on illnesses like this next week and I just wanted her to see your son because his case is just so, uh, interesting.”
Yeah, that’s what you want to here. Part of Whatsit Jr.'s treatment involved a chest tube to drain all the ick from his chest, and this stuff had the consistency of chicken fat. Apparently it was a lot thicker than usual, because EVERY damn time a nurse or doctor came in to check it, they’d remark on how unusual it was. We got everything from a subtle lifted eyebrow to, “Whoa! Look at that stuff! Is it ALWAYS like this? Wow!”
Hope your throat feels better soon, porcupine. Sore throats are just no damn fun.
My brother had a procedure called a “whipple” done about two years ago (panc related). I wanted to better understand the procedure, so I got as many pix and articles off the net as I could. Sitting in the hospital room a young intern came in and spotted the printouts.
“Tasty stuff!” he concluded. He then asked if he could photocopy the color pix. They were better than the ones in his textbooks from a few years back. He also got to witness the surgery and was thrilled. I thought it was kinda cool that he was so fired up for it.
Speedy recovery Porcupine!
Ooooh, I had the pus-tonsil thingy with strep and mono too! After that, I got grotesquely swollen tonsils along with any little bug that was going around…my Dr. finally gave up and I had them taken out last year. I looove having them gone, but getting them out was the single most horrible experience I have ever gone through. I was used to sore throats, but this was something I could not imagine.
It was worth it to not have to get them anymore, though. Have you thought about having them removed?
Hope you’re feeling better, I know what it’s like, so you have my sympathy.
I once had a piercing (in the little nubbin of ear cartilege where it’s more flesh) go awry, and since I was in Europe I waited until I got home to get it taken care of. It wasn’t so bad, actually, just very slow to heal and sometimes it would swell and ooze. We called it the pusbag on its bad days. I kept it clean, and when I got home I went to the dermatologist since I had a plantar wart on my finger, a nasty case of athlete’s foot I picked up in California, and the pusbag.
No problem with the plantar wart, says my nurse, and freezes it off. I get some cream for the athlete’s foot, keep it dry, blah blah blah. Then I pulled back my hair, and showed her the pusbag. She actually recoiled, perhaps not so much from horror but from the surprise of seeing a piercing there (they weren’t common at all then and where I was from). She tried to unscrew the ball, to no avail. We trekked down to the ER.
In the ER, my nurse sat me on a gurney, and went to get a special instrument. When she returned, she had the can-opener thing they use to cut rings off people. She also had about 5 interns and students with her. My nurse clamped the can-opener onto my piercing and said, “Let me know when you need me to stop.” I only needed her to stop twice, and watched the faces of the interns contort and grimace basically in concert with mine. Finally, the ring snapped, and the interns clapped. I was actually happy to provide a teaching example in the ER, and since I wasn’t really sick or in a great deal of pain I could laugh along with them. The ear is healed up beautifully, but I have no intentions of trying the piercing again.