Daily Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Me: How much wine do yo Patient: Three bottles on Me: And on a bad day? Pat
Thursday, August 10, 2006 Tuesday, October 10, 2006 Monday, December 25, 2006
Reviewing a mother in clinic, something is clearly troubling her. She breaks down in tears – she thinks the baby has a brain tumour. It’s very much not my department but one look at the mother’s collapsed face tells me that now perhaps wouldn’t be the best time to play the unhelpful station assistant at a ticket window.
She shows me a hard swelling on the back of baby’s head.
My ship has somehow come in and I can confidently announce that this is baby’s occipital protuberance, which is a completely normal part of the skull.
Look, there it is on your other kid’s head!
There it is on your head! “Oh my God,” she cries, the tears still streaking her face, eyes darting from her baby to her three-year-old and back again, like she’s watching Wimbledon. “It’s hereditary.” I missed what the argument was about, but a woman storms out of gynae screaming at the clinic sister: “I pay your salary! I pay your salary!”
The sister yells back: “Can I have a raise then?”
I don’t particularly mind working Christmas Day – there are snacks everywhere, people on the whole are in a good mood and there are very few worried well. Tradition at St Agatha’s dictates that the on-call consultant will be dressed as Santa Claus as they do their round.
The nursing staff ’s disappointment is palpable when today’s consultant, Mr Hopkirk, turns up around 10am wearing chinos and a jumper. He explains that the last time he was on call on Christmas Day, he chucked on the outfit and beard for the ward round and was halfway through when an elderly patient suddenly went into cardiac arrest, so he dashed over and started CPR.
Unusually, the CPR was successful, and the patient gasped back to life to the sight of a six-foot Santa liplocked with her, his arms on her chest.
“I can still hear her scream,” he said.
In the doctors’ mess, my friend Zac – currently working in orthopaedics – tells me that he always muddles the words “shoulder” and “elbow” in his mind, and has to really concentrate before using either. An intensive care registrar joins in from the next sofa: since childhood, she’s always malapropped the words “coma” and “cocoon”. She shows us a piece of paper in her wallet that reads COCOON = Insect, COMA = Patient. This, we hear, helps prevent the admittedly hilarious scenario of sitting down an inconsolable relative to break the news that their husband is in a cocoon.
Sending a patient home from the day surgery unit following laparoscopic sterilisation. I tell her she can have sex again as soon as she feels ready, but to use alternative contraception until next period. I nod at her husband say: “That means he has to wear a c dom.” I can’t quite work out why t faces are a picture of horror, melting the Nazis at the end of Raiders of Lost Ark. I look at them both again, realise the man is actually her fathe
Special occasions tend to call patients to insert special types of ob into their bodies.
Christmas in particular has rewar me well, with a stuck fairy (“Do you w it back?” “Yeah, bit of a rinse and s be grand”) and mild vaginal burns f a patient stuffing a string of lights in and turning them on (bringing meaning to the phrase “I put Christmas lights up myself ”).
This is my first leap year working doctor and the Great British public h pulled it out of the bag for me wi very, very specific injury.
Patient JB decided to take advan of tradition and propose to her boyfr – going to the expense of buying engagement ring, the trouble of put it inside a Kinder Surprise egg and imagination of inserting it vaginally would discover it, retrieve it, and t she would go down on one knee. E