You Can't Make This Stuff Up (#13)

When you work in a hospital is major metropolitan area, you expect to see all sorts of strange situations or medical problems. Some of the situations are tragic but you expect to hear about such news as it relates to patients, not to one of your own staff members. One day, I came in early in the morning to a hospital I worked at in Miami. I worked on the 4th floor. There was police tape over the elevator door. Why? Well, as it turns out, the night before, a staff worker was moving things around the floor with a motorized forklift or pallet-jack type of device. The man lost control of the device and it went directly into the elevator doors, ripping them open, and causing him to plummet to an untimely death. The story I heard was that he landed on the ground and that the machine landed on top of him, but I was never able to verify that. Nevertheless, it is an incredibly odd and unfortunate story, reminding us of how our lives can all change or end at a moment's notice and that we should enjoy every moment we can.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up (#12)

This is another one of those amazing bedside manner stories. Someone I know wanted very much to get pregnant. However, she had a baseball-sized mass covering one of her ovaries that needed to be removed. It was quite possible that the surgery would result in removal of both ovaries which would make natural childbirth impossible. Fortunately, this did not occur and only one of the ovaries needed to be removed. The doctor who performed the surgery happened to be pregnant at the time. When the patient returned for a follow-up person, she asked about her chances of having children, which had been reduced but not entirely eliminated. The pregnant doctor's reply? "Your chances of having children are so low that if I were you, I wouldn't even bother trying."

What?!!! That has to go down as one of the most insensitive comments by a doctor to a patient. The patient left the office crying and distraught. Fortunately, this story has a happy ending. After 2 years, the patient gave birth to two beautiful children. She sent a picture of them along with a letter to the doctor who told her she would never have those children. What a good feeling that must have been.

You Can't Make This Stuuf Up (#11)

When most people think of head injuries and how to avoid having one, they may tell themselves to avoid contact sports and avoid traveling at high speeds so as not to be involved in a motor vehicle accident. This may seem like common sense but below are a few ways of suffering a head injury that you may not have thought of. These are all real life examples I have seen in patients and I hope you will avoid. Here goes:

1. Do NOT swing from a metal chain hanging from scaffolding, especially if intoxicated and high above a very hard concrete floor.

2. Do NOT stand next to a fireworks blasting tube, especially when there are wooden 2x4s attached to it which can turn them into missiles and crush your skull.

3. When changing a flat tire, do NOT do this with your back turned to busy traffic on a highway so that a car does not crash into you.

4. Do NOT stand next to a horse and make it upset. The force of a kick to the head from such a powerful animal can be enough to kill you.

5. Do NOT stand directly behind someone who is swinging a golf club or baseball bat because this can literally cause a hole in the skull.

6. Do NOT walk under buildings that contain giant icicles or ice boulders since they can fall at any time and land on your head. This happens more often than you might think.

7. Do NOT rush to get into your car so fast that you smash it full force against the roof of the car.

8. Do NOT let little children walk around with infants in their hands. They tend to drop them head first on the ground.

9. Do NOT leave your basement door open when your child is walking around, because he/she may plummet down an entire flight of stairs.

10. And last but definitely not least, do NOT place a bowling ball on the top shelf of your closet because it may roll off and hit you in the head when you go to put your coat away.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up (Number 10)

I live in Syracuse, NY, and as you may know, we get a lot of snow… and I mean lot. Snow blowers are basically a requirement and like any other piece of motorized lawn equipment, it sometimes jams up. I once knew someone who tried to clear out one of these snow jams with his bare hands. He succeeded in clearing out the snow but in doing so the blade sliced off the tip of his finger. Now, you might think the story ends there but there’s more. After this happened and the person was explaining it to me a few days earlier, I had to ask him, “What was running through your mind the moment you realized you just lost your finger.” He looked it at me and said, “I thought to myself, I CAN’T BELIEVE I DID THAT TO MYSELF AGAIN!” He then showed me his other hand which also had a missing finger tip!

You Can't Make This Stuff Up (#9)

Whenever I evaluate patients who suffered some type of traumatic injury, I am usually seeing people who were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Out of all of the different types of hospital settings (e.g., burn units, traumatic brain injury units, coma units, spinal cord injury units) I have worked in, one story sticks out above all others. It is a quick story, but it goes like this. A young woman decided to drive in her car one day go get some groceries. She was sitting at a stop light, minding her own business, when a giant tree suddenly collapsed from the side of the road and crushed the roof of the car. The force of impact was so strong that it broke her neck, caused a spinal cord injury, and left her paralyzed from the neck down for the rest of her life. To this day, I cannot even fathom what must go through her head every day because it is such an unbelievable, unlucky, and tragic event.

You Can't Make This Stuff Up (#8)

One part of my job involves assessing children with disabilities. One day, I was gathering information from the mother of one such child during an interview. The parents were divorced, which is unfortunately not uncommon when a child is disabled. Anyway, the father was living with a new girlfriend for awhile and told the child for weeks that daddy was going to have her over for a surprise party. She was told to dress nicely. So the child was very excited for all of this time and arrived at the party. But it was not exactly what the child was expecting. The "party" turned out to be a surprise all right – it was actually a wedding in which the father was marrying the girlfriend! So not only does the child have to deal with a disability but a surprise wedding. Any child who has been through a divorce and watched one of the parents remarry knows this should be a slow process and not a surprise, especially when the child is less than 10.

You Can' Make This Stuff Up (#7)

I once had a patient who told me how she was diagnosed with a serious medical condition and treated for it for many months with potent medications only to later find out that she actually did not have the condition. She stated she called a lawyer and found out that the doctor had been in serious trouble with the state licensing board. So I turned to a website (Federation of State Medical Boards) that lists all the state medical boards. The site lets you research the name of individual physicians in each state so you can make an informed decision when choosing a doctor. When I typed in the doctor’s name, I couldn’t believe what I was reading regarding one of the complaints:

1. The doctor stated to Patient A “get the hell out of my office” or
words to similar effect.

2. The doctor stated to Patient A that he would kick Patient A “out on
your ass” or words to similar effect.

3. The doctor grabbed the shoeless Patient A by his clothing and took him out of the office building

4. While outside of the office building, the doctor spanked Patient A multiple times on the buttocks (!!!!!!!).

5. While outside of the office building, the doctor pushed Patient A
up against a windowed area while his hand was around Patient A’s
neck and/or shoulder.

Can you believe having that happen at a doctor’s office?! As I keep saying, "You can’t make this stuff up!"