The Things I Hear at Work
Great stories are a gift
Once upon a time a patient came to me, frantic, and told me about his distress that a relative had died in the home where he lived. I was appropriately sympathetic. Until he said this:
‘And when he had the cardiac arrest, he rolled out of bed and crushed the Pomeranian.’
I always envisioned the paramedics doing CPR with the dog yipping quietly beneath, unbeknownst to them.
Requiescat in Pace, Fluffy.
Not long ago a heavily tattooed man in the ER with an injury looked over at me, twice, and said ‘you’re a good looking man you know!’ Similarly, many years ago a sketchy patient who was chronically in our ER smiled at me and said, with a smooth, baritone voice, ‘Dr. Leap, pretty boy!’
He me looked up and down at me and I felt a little objectified. And not in the good way, like when Mrs. Leap does it.
Compliments? Maybe. But do I want them? Not really.
Although at 59, it’s nice to know that I’ve still got what it takes…
A sweet little lady had to be cardioverted (shocked) because her heart was beating so fast that her blood pressure was dangerously low. She took it like a champ. Later she asked, ‘doc, did you shock me?’
‘Well no, actually the tech pushed the button, I just told him when to do it.’
‘I knew he looked nefarious!’ She said with a smile.
I’ve never loved that word more.
A very kind older gentleman came to me with knee pain. He had no recent injuries or fevers or anything else. I asked, ‘do you work doing flooring, or some job where you’re on your knees a lot?’
‘No, doctor, I just pray a lot.’
Wow. My pain free knees were instantly convicted.
According to tradition, St. James, the disciple of Jesus, was also known as ‘camel knees’ due to the hardness of his caloused knees developed in the time he spent in prayer asking for God to forgive the sins of the people.
A patient confessed to me that he used crack cocaine for his chronic pain after a surgery.
Curious, I asked, ‘have you ever used weed for the pain instead?’
He laughed. ‘Oh no, that’s way too strong for me!’
Weed >> Crack? I had no idea…
Maybe that’s an insight the medical profession should heed.
Early in my career one of our chronic alcoholics, formerly in prison for murder, routinely threatened to kill all of us in the ER. He pointed to us in turn. ‘I know where you live, and where you live, and where you live and I’ll kill you!’ (These were the days before the law took this sort of thing seriously…besides the only way he could get anywhere was by calling an ambulance and jumping out in the street when he arrived at his destination.)
He would yell and curse and make everyone nervous. But if you said ‘Tom, there’s a baby in the next room and you’re scaring him,’ he’d stop, apologize and cry.
Sometimes he would quote entire sonnets by Shakespeare. When his drinking buddy passed away one night, he sobbed like a child.
What wounds lay in his heart, only God knows.
She was adorable, an elegant 90ish lady from southern Mississippi, trying to tell me what was wrong. She was traveling through South Carolina and stopped in my ER.
Her husband, with accent as deep as hers, continually interrupted with well-intentioned tidbits of information. She had had enough.
‘Would you shut up?’ She looked at him, then at me.
‘You ask him the time of day, he’ll tell you how to build a clock.’
I have come to love the sound of everyone’s stories, the words they choose, and I have always had a sense that the things I hear are remarkable gifts to me. A payment more precious than money. Not only so, but when I listen, when I try to help them, I become a character in each of their epics.
Hemingway once said that war was the best education for a writer. Maybe. I’ve never been to war.
But if it is, then medicine must be a close second.
Have a great week! If you want to send me an interaction that touched you, or made you laugh, or a turn of phrase you heard (at home, or at work…medical or not) please do so in the comments!
I once went to ask a patient about his most recent fasting blood sugar level and he told me it was higher that usual. His wife, sitting not too far away, was monitoring the conversation. He told me he had had some fruit the night before as an explanation for this elevated reading. His wife interjected saying he ate too much fruit for his body to handle to which he replied, “Jesus ate fruit”. Without skipping a beat she retorted, “and Jesus walked everywhere “. 😂