I used to work as a Emergencey doctor in Adelaide, and I guess that being in an Adelaide ED, I saw a whole lot of fucked up shit. There's the story about the teenage girl who got leg wax stuck in her braces, or the story of the woman who came in completely naked and reeking of rotting tuna, or the story of the little boy who dug his poop out with a spoon and ate it, but I won't get into that right now.
I will, however, go into the story of ◊. ◊ is not her real name, obviously, although it would be pretty sweet for someone to have a unicode character for a name. But for the sake of anonymity, we will call her ◊, even though it is painstakingly hard to type.
It was a busy afternoon in the ED in which I worked. Hell, I was running from case to case to case without any coffee or lunch. And I'm the type of guy who turns into a fucking serial killer if you don't give me my coffee, so on that day, I was akin to some sort of demonic, almost posessed cunt who was pretty much foaming at the mouth.
Finally, there was a gap in between cases, and I sat down for a quick cappuccino with no sugar and soy milk. Alas, I had time only to take a small sip of my coffee before my supervisor (we'll call him K) barged in on me.
"Martin," he said, "we need you in Exam room 1 right now."
I raised an eyebrow. "Me?" I asked innocently, hoping to ward him off.
K smacked himself in the face so hard that I feared he would break his nose. "No shit, Sherlock. You're the only Martin who works in this hospital."
"I am?"
He shook his head. "We've got a 54-year-old female, morbidly obese, who was brought in by her son. He says she suffered a stroke, and we don't have anyone else free to look at them. I've got a paramedic looking after them right now, but he's only a probie, so you better hurry."
"Why can't you see the patient if it's such an emergency?" I asked.
K pursed his lips. "Exam room 1. Now."
Like a child who has just been taken away from his favourite toys, I reluctantly put my coffee down and followed K down the hall into the exam room. There, I saw an absolute whale of a person lying naked on the hospital bed. Next to her was a tiny kid who looked stupid in a too-big, too-bright paramedic's uniform. On her other side was a man who was wearing nothing but a pair of board shorts.
Let me remind you again that this was Adelaide, so I wasn't too alarmed. I asked the probie for a handover, and he just stuttered out, "Sh-she had a s-s-stroke. A-ask her for d-details."
I let him run off to his mentor, and stared at the patient. She didn't seem to have any facial drooping or any noticeable signs of having a stroke. When I asked her to hold both her hands up, she held them at the same level, and when I asked her to talk, her speech was not slurred. Confused, I asked her why she thought she was having a stroke.
"Me hurts," she replied, so loudly that I was sure the whole department could hear her. "
I squint at her. "...alright, but those aren't signs of a stroke," I said.
To this, her son narrowed her eyes. "What the fuck, mate? Just 'cause we aren't your hoity-toity private school stuff, doesn't mean you get to treat us like complete shit! My mom said she was havin' a stroke—you better treat her for one."
"Right...so what were you doing when you had the stroke?"
To this, both mother and son turn bright red. "We were fuuucking," the woman says.
"Wait...whom exactly were you fucking?"
"Johnny, of course!" (name changed obvsly)
I took a quick look at the report in my hand. The son's name (changed that and the nickname for privacy)—Johnathan.
"You were having sex with your son while you had a stroke. OK." Once again, this is Adelaide. Nothing too out of the ordinary.
We gave her a physical and a head scan. Nothing out of the ordinary. After overnight obs, we sent her home.