funny story

[sfnix]

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as a soon to be BM post baccer, i post this with at least a little shame.

i'm currently a server at a fine dining restaurant in charlotte, nc. tonight, while polishing a wine glass, i cut my left hand open b/t the thumb and index finger. the cut needed 7 stitches (wooo hooo, no work for 3 days!) and i asked the physician if he minded if i watched him do the stictching. Mind you, i've been following 2 general physicians for about 4 months now and have definitely seen worse than stitches. at about the 3rd stitch i start to get a little warm and then sweaty and then... boom, i'm out like a light. i friggin passed out, ridiculous. worst of all, when i passed out the physician went to grab me to prevent me from falling off the bed and in doing so poked himself with the stitching needle. of course this meant drawing blood to test for every major infectious disease, including HIV and Hep. after waking up, the doctor asked, "so what kind of medicine do you want to do?"

thought you guys would find this funny, feel free to add any remarks that might add to how dumb i feel about now.

 

[SnarkLA]

haha, i think everyone has a story like that.

about a year ago my friend had to have an appedictomy (sp?) anyway, they had a tube into his stomach to drain some of the remaing blood from surgery, I asked the attending if i could watch while he pulled it out, and it almost knocked me completly out. Since then I've been working at a hospital, and I am less squimish... funny how we react to certain situations though

 

[DrMidlife]

Squeamish, no. Not sure why I'm not. In the ER where I volunteer, I've seen severed hands, gunshot wounds, legs twisted behind a guy's back, brains leaking out of ears, I've been puked on, and last week there was a feces-throwing incident that I was sure was going to turn my stomach. Nope.

Last week I shadowed a colorectal surgeon and witnessed the complete gutting of a woman whose J-pouch (what they give you after they take out your diseased colon) failed after 20 years. They took out the pouch, a couple feet of ileum, and her rectum and anus. I ran laps to keep up with what was going on. Before they closed her up, from the anesthesiologist's end, I was able to look through her abdominal incision through where her anus used to be. Very odd to see light through there in somebody who's expected to live. The only part that seemed gross was the ileostomy, where the tail end of her small intestine was sewn into a hole in her abdomen for a colostomy bag. It's VERY squishy and has bile oozing out. (Very hard to comprehend that this procedure was going to vastly improve this woman's life, and she's only a couple years older than me...)

This was after viewing an anal fissure, an anal fistula, an infected ingrown butt hair, and a half dozen butt exams. The poo jokes never stop.

OK so I have a strong stomach, but your GPA is almost certainly higher than mine so don't feel bad.

Love,
Dr. Midlife

 

[DrSumdae]

It's strange how people react to things differently. You prob passed out because it was being done to you! I worked for a pediatrician who could give shots, stich people up, draw blood, etc....but she was SUCH a whimp about getting a shot. It was funny.

I'm the same way with stitches. I can't stand the feeling of the thread running through my skin! ahhh!!! It doesn't hurt, it just feels funky. 😱

 

[ssquared]

I'm the same way with stitches. I can't stand the feeling of the thread running through my skin! ahhh!!! It doesn't hurt, it just feels funky. 😱

Getting them out is worse; when they yank on them and you're watching and you're saying to yourself "um, I'd rather not be experiencing this right now." I've been lucky (well, in a sense) that I've never had to get stitches while awake (any I've had have been from surgery). I think watching them being put in would bother me.

 

[Heinz57]

I recently had some weird bumps removed from my elbow and the Ortho initially told me that I could be awake if I wanted. I wanted to be awake, but they said they wouldn't let me watch because they thought I might freak out.

When I got to the surgery center, everybody there, including the Ortho, was really pushing an IV for sedation. The Anesthesiologist seemed angry and was definitely drunk or something (he was swaying), so I vehemently refused. He left the room saying, rather loudly, so I could hear, "I can't reason with her, I'm not going to push it, blah blah blah," which brought in person after person advising me to get the IV, which pissed me off even more. The surgery was fine - very dramatic for the removal of a few bumps. All this weird yellow wash on my whole arm, pulse monitors, other things attached to my body, a curtain between me and the surgery team, who kept saying, "okay, we'll see how brave she is..." So I focused on keeping my heart rate down ("that will show them!"😡 ) and talking to the surgical nurse about her life. The only really painful part was when the blood went back into my arm (they squeezed it out with a compression mitt of some sort and kept it out with a tourniquet). After they removed the mitt and the tourniquet, I kept thinking the mitt was still on, rhythmically compressing, but it was just my heart pumping the blood back in. Ouch - painful. But it went away and I'm mad I didn't get to watch and they all tried to scare me. They showed me the bumps, which were really small, compared to how I thought they'd look. Oh, and the bumps came back as Rheumatoid Arthritis. Okay - I so do not have RA and this has been confirmed by a blood test, chest x-ray and Rheumatologist.

Why do I want to go into medicine again?? 😕

 

[sfnix]

It's strange how people react to things differently. You prob passed out because it was being done to you! I worked for a pediatrician who could give shots, stich people up, draw blood, etc....but she was SUCH a whimp about getting a shot. It was funny.

I'm the same way with stitches. I can't stand the feeling of the thread running through my skin! ahhh!!! It doesn't hurt, it just feels funky. 😱

not sure if this was the case. i think it was probably because of a lack of food (stitches around 8:30 and hadn't had anything to eat since noon) and loss of blood (cut was around 6:15 and wasn't getting stitched up till 2 hours later).

in the continuing saga though, i called and told my boss that i would be able to come back tomorrow and he started giving me **** about not coming back today. i kinda let him have it, b/c the injury was definitely the restaurant's fault. 1- we don't buy the best wine glasses, they look nice, they're definitely glass, just cheap. 2- if we set the table with water glasses and wine glasses this would not happen b/c we wouldn't have to pour the sparkling water into wine glasses the table table is set with. we're a privately owned restaurant, so he then went on to say something about how he doubts this was the restaurant's fault, but (and i quote) "i guess i'll still pay for it." unbelievable, really really really glad i'm moving to philly in a month and a half.

 

[DrSumdae]

Another story....
I had surgery on my right wrist several years ago and towards the end of the surgery I woke up and moved the drape, looked at the doctor said something like "hi...whatcha doin'?" and watched him stitch me up....he said I was awake for a minute or so, but I only remember a few seconds. Obviously I had a block on my arm so I couldn't feel anything....'cept the vibration of the string running thru my skin....yuck.

Removing of stitches doesn't bother me much, especially when they are itchy!

 

[Heinz57]

Another story....
"hi...whatcha doin'?"

 

[dilzmega]

This is a good one. I got shot in my leg and watched as the bullets were taken out of my leg one by one (3 in all; random shooting at a club). By the time the doctor got to the third whole to stitch I passed out from nothing at all. My cousin said that the third whole shot up like a geyser and that is when I passed out. anyone else have anything good?