Funny Hospital Experience

[Rowanomicon]

Not Funny Part: I've been in Central America and, though the trip was awesome, am coming down with someing. I think it may be Chagas Disease (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chagas_disease), but am not sure.

My symptoms are reduced appetite (and I usally eat a lot), lack or energy, and (the first symptom to develope) swollen lymph nodes on my throat and head.

I went to a private hospital here in Antugua, Guatemala to get a blood test today. The blood test was normal which means it's likely a virus or parasite. I still think there's a good chance it's Chagas, bu the doctor said it might my Mono, or Denge Fever, or something else (I hope it's not Denge!).

Anyway, I speak some broken Spanish and he spoke some broken English so we communicated alright.

At the end of my visit he was really emphasising that I should not be too worried about this, but I should get it checked out once I'm back in Canada (I fly Thursday). He said two things that made me laugh. The first was, after a couple times of telling me not to worry "Don't worry... be happy." I am quite certain that he has never heard the song and did not mean to make any reference, but it made me crack a genuine smile. The second thing that made me laugh was one of the reasons he gave me for why I should not worry. "Your balls," he said, clearly refering and pointing to my swollen lymph nodes, "are small."

Over all I thought it was hilarious. "Don't worry, be happy. You balls are small."

Well, I guess as long as my balls are small everything will be alright...

And now I have "here's a little song I wrote, you might want to sing it note for note, don't worry, be happy, don't worry be happy now, dooo do da do da do..." stuck in my head.

I guess if anyone else has any funny hospital or language related stories then this would be a good place to tell them. Also any discussion about tropical diseases would be on topic. Wherever this goes, I just wanted to share this hilarity with you all.

[mercurymaline]

Oi, funny.
My own story, then:
I shattered my arm when I was in Europe a few years back. When I went to the hospital, one of the nurses spoke English, but got the parts mixed up a bit. She translated for the doctor that my "foot, ankle and knee" were broken. Good trick, considering the bone was sticking out of my elbow.

morbid

[Cobra_Ikari]

I've never had a funny hospital experience. I've only had 3 that I can remember. One for slicing open the back of my head, one for excruciating pain that ended up being psychosomatic, and one for a panic attack that nearly resulted in being kicked out of school (as such panic attacks constitute behavior unbecoming of a cadet. :smallannoyed:).

[LightWraith]

Nice stories :smallsmile:

No funny hospital experiences here either... no unfunny ones either. I've never been to the hospital for myself (I've visited others though). This scares me, since I feel like I'm saving up for a really horrific one.

[rubakhin]

No funny stories per se, but one time I got stuck in the psych ward of this one hospital for the night, and - well, you know Abbie Hoffman? The guy who wrote Steal This Book? I was in the bed next to his sister-in-law. I read her some poetry in French that I had on me, I think Paul Verlaine, and we made friends. She told me some dirt on Abbie, and also all of these very cool stories about the 60s; the Youth International Party and free love and whatnot. She ended up telling me she had fallen in love with me over the course of the night and asked me to move in with her - even just as a platonic thing - but I was living with a guy at the time.

[Bor the Barbarian Monk]

Funny hospital story? I have a few of those. Here's one now! :smallsmile:

I was having ambulatory surgery. My girlfriend of the time and my Dad waited with me in the prep room. Now, I was quite nervous. Surgery will do that to a person. So someone came along and put something in my IV to calm me down.

Now, I don't know what they gave me, but I remember nothing. All of this comes from the witnesses. Apparently, while I was lying on the stretcher, my "audience" was treated to a dramatic rendition of "Rubber Ducky" from Seseme Street...Shapkespearian style.

Forsoothe, Rubber Ducky!
Thou art the one.
Thou dost make bathtime lots of fun.
Rubber Ducky, I'm awefully fond of thee!

:smallbiggrin:

[Cobra_Ikari]

Funny hospital story? I have a few of those. Here's one now! :smallsmile:

I was having ambulatory surgery. My girlfriend of the time and my Dad waited with me in the prep room. Now, I was quite nervous. Surgery will do that to a person. So someone came along and put something in my IV to calm me down.

Now, I don't know what they gave me, but I remember nothing. All of this comes from the witnesses. Apparently, while I was lying on the stretcher, my "audience" was treated to a dramatic rendition of "Rubber Ducky" from Seseme Street...Shapkespearian style.

Forsoothe, Rubber Ducky!
Thou art the one.
Thou dost make bathtime lots of fun.
Rubber Ducky, I'm awefully fond of thee!

:smallbiggrin:

...*giggles*...

Bor, you are 11 kinds of awesome. *hugs*

[Count D20]

the time i had to hold a barium milkshake in my throat to x-ray my esofogous (sic) wasn't fun .
but my reaction was.
I thought,"I hope next time it can go in my ass instead". It really tasted that bad!
[EDIT] To X-ray the digestive tract,they have to coat it with a dense substance to make it show up. for upper parts like i had, you have to hold it in your mouth. for lower it is an enema. the taste made me wish i had a lower tract problem instead.

[Mauve Shirt]

I was in the epilepsy monitoring unit for a week with wires attached to my brain, and I was playing cards with my grandmother. In the EMU there's an observation room next door watching my brainwaves and watching me through a security camera. My grandmother's back was to the camera and I was jokingly miming at the camera to tell me what cards she was holding, not expecting any response. A speaker box on the wall I hadn't noticed before beeped on and said "I can't read lips, but are you winning?"

Also, the day of my surgery I wasn't allowed to eat or drink. While I was under anesthesia in the operating room a nurse asked me where I'd rather be and I answered "A restaurant."
"What's your favorite restaurant?"
I answered "La Palapa", which is a Mexican restaurant near my house, and apparently it's hilarious to hear someone on the verge of consciousness say La Palapa. The nurse said (I had already fallen asleep, but to my mom) "Hey, I know where that is!"

[Jokes]

Well, I hope it isn't too serious, Rowan.

The only funny story I can think of is recently I went with my dad to the hospital to have his teeth pulled so he could have radiotherapy on his throat. Anyway, the funny part was a story the dentist told about how he used to work in the Northern Territory.

Now the dentist had a colleague who worked with him up there and one day our dentist was working and he heard this weird skipping noise coming from the other dentists theatre. He didn't take much notice of it but it kept going so he thought he'd duck his head in.

There was his colleague, his feet barely touching the floor, being held up by his... er... groin by an irate aboriginal man saying "You be right with me and I'll be right with you" (or something to that effect).

Well, we found it funny, but that could have been the nitrous oxide leaking into the room...

[Count D20]

Highly-Expendable-CrewMember, may i ask what operation you had?

[Hell Puppi]

I've had 6 operations. most due to a scar on my chest.
One notable experience was when I was younger, I had a stuffed dog I named Jake that I refused to go into the operating room without. The nurse pretended to give Jake the anesthesia to show it didn't hurt, then gave it to me, I thought that was really sweet of her.

The other one was recently when I had to go into an emergency room, there was a man yelling and cursing. They had him tied down because he had ripped he neck brace they put on him. When a nurse went over to him (it was a male nurse) the man said "I like you, but I don't ever want to see you again. I will kill you and your entire family. DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?"
It was strange. I don't know if the guy was seriously doped up on pain meds, or if he was just crazy. He was making death threats on everyone. There was also a drunken hobo who gotten hit in the head with a piece of rebar and was upset that they had a neck brace on him and wanted to go home. He showed this by a long string of cursing.

[Mauve Shirt]

Highly-Expendable-CrewMember, may i ask what operation you had?

Talking to me I presume?
I had grids. A grid of electrodes on the brain to see exactly where the seizures are coming from.

[valadil]

About a year ago I had my tonsils taken out because they kept swelling up to the point where I couldn't fit air down my throat.

A couple hours after the surgery I was pumped full of morphine and drooling on myself. A nurse came in the room, "Hi, I'm Kristen. I'm a med student at Harvard and I'll be your nurse." I responded in the same smarmy tone, "Hi, I'm Jon. I just had surgery at MGH and I'll be your patient." She never came back to check up on me.

The surgeon who took out my tonsils came by at some point to tell me it was good we got them out, because they were the biggest he'd ever seen. What I wanted to say, but didn't have enough morphine to actually go through with was, "You think my tonsils are big? You should see my t********!" (Apparently the tonsils were crazy huge though. They were catching bits of food that I tried to swallow and making little chunks of calcium.)

[mercurymaline]

I have another.
When I went in for surgery a while back, I was about to go in, under some odd medication I can't recall (I can't have morphine, or related meds.) The nurse was doing something with my IV, and I noticed his name tag said he was a CRNA, which I had never seen before (CNA is Certified Nurse's Aide, RN is Registered Nurse.) I remember I said to him "Dude, you know you're certified and registered? That's awesome. You must be so proud." I remember nothing else.

[Ranna]

i have had absolutely no funny hospital experiences at all, I went to Thailand and came down with something and had to go into hospital and i had every stupid damned test performed under sun on me including some fabulously painfully ones that when I laughed (i had to otherwise I'd have cried alot!) the Dr said, wow thats the first time anyone has laughed whilst Ive done that you must be very brave... great, that makes me feel better thanks!

Bah never going again, I'll take my chances next time!

[Rowanomicon]

Thanks for the stories everyone.
Funny language related stories are welcome as well.
Thanks for the well wishes, Jokes. I hope it's not too serious too.

Here's another story, not too funny, but worth telling.
I had a deviated septum (in my nose) for basically all by life starting when I was very young and broke my nose on the dashboard of a car.
This resulted in me not being able to breathe through my nose for the early part of my life and then only being able breathe through one nostril as a teenager.

Anyway they (ear nose and throat specialists) told me from a young age that they couldn't operate to straighten it until my nose had stopped growing fully. So they had to wait.

When I finally got the operation it was quite the experience.

Right before they took me into the operating room the doctor turns tot he nurse and says, quietly, something about getting cocaine. I must have made some sort of a face because the doctor notices that I heard and says to me "We're just goign to put some cocain in your nose to freeze and dialate the tissue." or something like that. Most people don't believe me when I tell them this, but ti's true.

So the nurse comes back with some cotton balls and a bowl half full of liquid. The liquid, I find out, is a cocaine solution and the doctor takes a cotton ball in a pair of forcepts (tweezers) and soaks it in the solution, then puts in up my nose. He then does the same for the other nostril. Almost immediately I'm high as a kite. I've done cocaine recreationally a couple times, but don't really like it. I don't like how people act when they're on it either. This time, however, I was way more high than any other time I did it.

So then they wheel me into the OR and and the anesthesiologist (spl?) starts asking me some question, the usual small talk. I start talking a mile a minute and before I even know it the IV is in my hand. I have an irrational phobia of needles (much like some peoples' arachniphobia) from childhood hospital experience, but this time I didn't even care. With a couple of second I was out from whatever they gave me.

I woke up after the oporation with my heart rate at a whopping 104. I found the words to ask the nurse if this was from whatever they gave me to wake me up. She said it was that, and the physical trauma of an oporation and to just relax. My nose hurt like hell, way worse than I thought it would. The nurse kept asking me if it hurt and I replied "yes." I didn't realize what was happening until she said "We've given you 4 shots of morphine now and that's as much as we should, here's a quick release oxytocin and a time delay one as well for the pain." I didn't really think and just took them.

By this time I was so incredible drugged out I was starting to have visual hallucinations. I was seeing hawiian hula dancers in front of me swaying back and forth. I also saw shooting stars and rainbows. It was quite the experience... until I threw up from having gotten blood in my stomache during the operation.

Thye next few days were a blur of pain (excrutiating when I sneezed) and oxytocin.

[sktarq]

Step one: Psychoactive drugs to very odd things to the male members of my family (which due to a lack of records is me my dad and my half brother).
Step two: This first story wasn't very funny at all to live though but looking back has a very odd humor about it.

My father had a heart attack about 5 hrs before gettting an Angioplasty to clear the blockage that let go. Rather traumatic for everyone but he he was taken under for his quadruple heart bypass and it went off without a hitch until it came time to wake him up again. Normally when they chop your chest open they have to leave a resperator in you for a day to a week so that your breathing stays steady. Well my dad started fighting and coughing up the resperator long before the rest of his brain was even starting to wake up. After significant trial and error they basically waited until my dad withered away to the point of being too weak to fight the tube before waking him up. Thus he was kept under (not very deeply but enough) for 5 weeks. Durring this time I was away at boarding school and trying to pick a Uni-my visits to them being canceled for obvious reasons. As soon as they woke him up I made arangments to visit and he wanted out of the hospital like little else you have ever seen. To calm him down they gave him a Benzodiziapine and when the following reaction kicked in switched him to a second one (Adavan) which he was on when I saw him-These drugs are a longer acting version of Valium-they theoretically calm you down and help you sleep. Lets say he didn't recognize me, even though I was wearing a shirt emblazoned with a huge black and red logo he thought I was a doctor, was hearing machine guns, and wanted to escape the yellow submarine. He had also dropped from 165 lbs (75kg) to 95 lb (43kg). The effect wore off about 3 days after they stopped giving him the Adavan, which only happened at my mother's insistance. Turns out I got to have a free acid trip about a year latter when I found the same kind of effect from an OTC sleeping aid a year latter-that one gave me synithesia (sp).

MY second story is more about the amusing post op of a repeated surgury I had while at the same high school. A rather large rock had fallen on my big toe and shattered a small part of the nail bed. Which re-set the nail bed into growing slivers of toenail in various parts of my big toe where they shouldn't go, including the bone. It took them only 5 operations to figure this out. It had only been noticable when it wouldn't heal and formed large callous like growths. Having a rather high pain tolerance I didn't care too much about it but it was sort of worrisome. After the 4th surgury the taxi to pick me up never came. I knew I was only about 4-5 miles from school so I walked it on the bad foot. I also started munching the codine i was given but the pain kept on growing. I figured that codine must be rather mild and/or this must have been a low dose. I got to the theatre where I was in charge of building the set after school. People found out I had codine and asked for it. Normally I would have said no but this stuff ws producing absolutly no effect so I handed them out. 20 minutes latter everyone including my teachers was blissing of the stuff. I was in pain, slightly miffed about it but didn't think on it much. When the surgury to melt the remains of the damaged nail bed came around I ended up with a morphine drip. Mostly because one sliver was growing right near a significant nerve in the toe and they were sure they would have to move the nerve out of the way. Came out of Nox to find out that morphine doesn't kill my pain. Also found out that someone had gotten lazy nd not set the regulator to limit the amount I could give myself. Since it didn't kill my pain I had just figured give myself more. Only quit when my breathing and heart rate (which fortunatly I had learned to control somewhat) slowed. I figured something was wrong when the pretty nurse that they had checking up on me got eyes that belonged on Betty Boop. I was fine a couple hours later. They gave some painkiller that works in the PNS and I was fine....except for going to the bathroom. I don't like morphine anymore.

[Mauve Shirt]

Most people don't believe me when I tell them this, but ti's true.

Heh, there was a similarish situation when my sister was born. She was born with her nose squished off to the right, so they put some cocaine on a cotton swab, stuck it up her nostrils and just sort of pulled it into the right place. My mom wrote "baby's first crack" in the baby book.

V Unintended and fixed

[Cobra_Ikari]

Heh, there was a similarish situation when my sister was born. She was born with her nose squished off to the right, so they put some cocaine on a cotton swab, stuck it up her nostrils and just sort of cracked it into the right place. My mom wrote "baby's first crack" in the baby book.

...

...how punny of you. :smalltongue:

[Metal Head]

One hell of a weird experience that I had was when I was getting a blood test. For the past week I had been faking sick because I was behind on a project, so my doctor got worried that I had some bad disease (mononucleosis) and had me get some blood taken for analysis. So after some painless needlepoking I got back the results and it turns out I actually had a nasty disease. Mononucleosis. Within a few days my spleen was several times its normal size, and I was home in bed. That's what I got for faking sick.

[Vuzzmop]

Funny hospital story? I have a few of those. Here's one now! :smallsmile:

I was having ambulatory surgery. My girlfriend of the time and my Dad waited with me in the prep room. Now, I was quite nervous. Surgery will do that to a person. So someone came along and put something in my IV to calm me down.

Now, I don't know what they gave me, but I remember nothing. All of this comes from the witnesses. Apparently, while I was lying on the stretcher, my "audience" was treated to a dramatic rendition of "Rubber Ducky" from Seseme Street...Shapkespearian style.

Forsoothe, Rubber Ducky!
Thou art the one.
Thou dost make bathtime lots of fun.
Rubber Ducky, I'm awefully fond of thee!

:smallbiggrin:

you win Hospital. The whole thing.

I've only been in hospital for myself three times. Once when I smacked my head open onto a jagged rock, the next time when my hairdresser found an anurism (spell check?) on the side of my head, and another time, (the only one in the last couple of years) when I smacked my head on yet another rock coming of a scooter, and got post concussion syndrome. From what the doctors told me, I repeated the words, "What day is it? Is it the end?" about two dozen times on the way to the hospital. nothing really that funny though. Hospitals don't tend to be.:smallfrown:

Ooh! also, getting my tonsils out when I was much younger. I saw spiders crawling out of peoples eyes, and the walls in tyhe theatre. Pretty freaky when you're only three.

[Rowanomicon]

I got sick once when I was faking sick as well. It made me wonder if, through the power of my mind, I made myself sick by pretending to be sick or if maybe I sunconsiously knew I was coming down with something and therefore wasn't really pretending, but just thought I was...

[Syka]

Not hospital, but the infirmary on campus. I started coming down sick last weekend (the weekend after Valentines Day), so I made an appointment on Tuesday and went on Thursday. Now, my symptoms varied from sneezing to runny nose to cough to headache to dizziness, but none stuck around for a very long time (literally, each symptom had a time period of 1-2 hours and then never manifested itself again). The only continuous symptom was an ear ache accompanied by a shooting pain my my throat. It didn't feel like a sore throat, since it was only on one side, so naturally I think my eustacian tube is messed up again or it's an ear infection like my sister just got.

Naw, just a viral headcold that has a sore throat masquerading as an ear ache. --'

On top of that, I had tonsillitis.

Lady taking my vitals as she shines a flashlight (literally a flashlight) down my throat: Are your tonsils normally this big? They're really big.

RN Student who checked me out before the actual nurse: Your tonsils are really swollen.

RN: You're tonsils are swollen, you have tonsillitis.
Me: Do I need surgery? (Because I know a lot of people do, and my sister did when she was younger)
RN: Oh, no. It's not that bad.
Me (in my mind): WTF? Then why all the comments about them being swollen? oO


Oh, and I looooved the nitrous oxide I got when my wisdom teeth came out. I fell asleep on it and woke up just as they started cutting. The doc and nurse knew this and were asking me yes and no questions during the surgery, and they would pause so I could move my head.

Then again, I could have imagined that. :smallbiggrin:

Cheers,
Syka

[Icewalker]

One hell of a weird experience that I had was when I was getting a blood test. For the past week I had been faking sick because I was behind on a project, so my doctor got worried that I had some bad disease (mononucleosis) and had me get some blood taken for analysis. So after some painless needlepoking I got back the results and it turns out I actually had a nasty disease. Mononucleosis. Within a few days my spleen was several times its normal size, and I was home in bed. That's what I got for faking sick.

You're probably really lucky that they caught that. :smalleek:

Of course, I don't actually know anything about that disease so it could have been not bad if not caught either.

[Serpentine]

Re: Syka's one, my tonsils shrank after I got tonsilitis - that is, they became smaller than before I got it :smallconfused: My mum suggested that I might've had a minor infection before. But... for years? :smallconfused:

[Rowanomicon]

Mono(nuceosis) is really not that terrible. The worst thing about it is that it last for like a month and you basically just have normal cold syptoms, especially lack of energy for a month, nothing too serious, just annoying. It's caused by a virus called... epstienbar?

Anyway, the doc said I might have that not, but I still think there's a good chance it's Chagas.

[Nathan W]

i one took something for adhd wich gave me high blood presher so i was also tacing this othe blood preser lowering medican at brecfast. i went on vacation a started sleepin in till noon so i dint have brecfast only lunch and stoped taking the blood presher meds. then i had Gyser nosebleeds

[CrazedGoblin]

i was having a ingrowing toenail cut down for the 5th time or something, so i went in got the injection and we waited for it to go numb, it didnt so he put more in, and abit more, and nothing, it turned out i had become quite immune to local anesthetic, which sucked, which also meant i had to have a general for a toenail!

[dish]

Most of the hospital stories I've gathered here in China tend towards the highly frustrating or slightly insanitary side of things. Only a few of them become funny, and that's usually in retrospect.

Here are a couple that have been passed on to my by colleagues:

Conversation between colleague and doctor:
Doctor: You have syphilis.
Colleague (offended): No I don't.
Doctor: Yes, you do.
Colleague (starting to get angry): NO, I DON'T.
Doctor: YES, you DO.
Colleague (muttering): Right, that is IT. I'm going back to the UK.
(He went back to the UK, where he was promptly informed that of course he didn't have syphilis and where did that idiotic idea come from?)

Then there was the another colleague who had some kind of tendon/knee surgery on a rugby injury a few months before moving to China. He wanted to check it was healing properly, so went to the local hospital to ask for an x-ray. Apparently the British surgeons had chosen to make an incision that was different from the type the Chinese surgeons were used to. The examining doctor was so stunned by this that he called in five other doctors to look at my colleague's knee. Apparently they crowded round the examination table - pointing at my friend's knee with their lit cigarettes and laughing...
The x-ray later came back with the following diagnostic note: Your knee appears to be perfectly normal except for the two small metal screws inside it? :smallconfused:

[sktarq]

which also meant i had to have a general for a toenail!

Well now I know I'm not the only one