—SYLVIA DOUGHART-WOOD
What’s Up, Doc?
I was working as an interpreter at a hospital when I found myself in the middle of an odd conversation. The doctor warned his patient, “By drinking and smoking as much as you do, you’re killing yourself slowly.”
The patient just nodded. “That’s OK. I’m not in any hurry.”
—SALMA SAMMAKIA,
As I performed a simple medical procedure on my patient, I warned her, “After this, you can’t have sex for at least three days.”
“Did you hear that?” she asked her husband. “No sex for three days.”
“I heard,” he said. “But she was speaking to you.”
—KATHLEEN HOWELL
When my daughter was home during college break, she came in for an eye exam at the optometrist’s office that I manage. I gave her some paperwork to fill out, and had to laugh when I read what she had written under method of payment: “My mom.”
—SHIRLEY KUDRNA
A man walked into our medical practice complaining that he was in agony.
“Where exactly is the pain?” asked his doctor.
“Near my ovaries,” he moaned.
“You don’t have ovaries.”
The patient looked confused. “When were they removed?”
—KELLI EAST
My nursing colleague was preparing an intravenous line for a 15-year-old male patient. The bedside phone rang, and the boy’s mother reached over to pick it up.
After talking for a few minutes, the mother held the phone aside, turned to her son and said, “Your dad is asking if you’ve got any cute nurses.”
The boy gazed at the nurse, who had the needle poised above his arm, ready for insertion.
“Tell him,” he replied, “they’re absolutely gorgeous.”
—MATTHEW HUTCHINSON
My mother and I were at the hospital awaiting some test results when several firemen were wheeled into the emergency room on stretchers. One young man was placed in the cubicle next to us. A hospital employee began to ask him questions so she could fill out the necessary paper work. When he was asked his phone number, we had to laugh. His reply? “911.”
—VICTORIA VELASCO
My 60-year-old mother-in-law, completing two years of wearing orthodontic braces, was in the office having them adjusted. As she sat in one of the waiting-room chairs, the teenager next to her looked at my mother-in-law in astonishment.
“Wow,” he said. “How long have you been coming here?”
—DAVID REEVES
“Don’t you hate it when there are parts left over?”
As a doctor I receive calls at all hours of the day. One night a man phoned and said, “I’m sorry to bother you so late, Doc, but I think my wife has appendicitis.”
Still half asleep I reminded him that I had taken his wife’s inflamed appendix out a couple of years before. “Whoever heard of a second appendix?” I asked.
“You may not have heard of a second appendix, Doc, but surely you’ve heard of a second wife,” he replied.
—JAMES KARURI MUCHIRI
I’m an obstetrics nurse at a large city hospital, where our patients are from many different countries and cultures.
One day while waiting for a new mother to be transferred to our division, I checked the chart and assumed that, because of her last name, she was of European descent. So when she was finally wheeled in, I was surprised to see that she was Asian.
As I was performing the exam, we chatted and she told me she was Chinese and her husband’s ethnic heritage was Czech. After a short pause she quipped, “I guess that makes my children Chinese Czechers!”
—LISA M. EDGEHOUSE
While I sat in the reception area of my doctor’s office, a woman rolled an elderly man in a wheelchair into the room. As she went to the receptionist’s desk, the man sat there, alone and silent.
Just as I was thinking I should make small talk with him, a little boy slipped off his mother’s lap and walked over to the wheelchair. Placing his hand on the man’s, he said, “I know how you feel. My mom makes me ride in the stroller, too.”
—STEVE ANDERSON
I hate the idea of going under the knife. So I was very upset when the doctor told me I needed a tonsillectomy. Later, the nurse and I were filling out an admission form. I tried to respond to the questions, but I was so nervous I couldn’t speak.
The nurse put down the form, took my hands in hers, and said, “Don’t worry. This medical problem can easily be fixed, and it’s not a dangerous procedure.”
“You’re right. I’m being silly,” I said, feeling relieved. “Please continue.”
“Good. Now,” the nurse went on, “do you have a living will?”
—EDWARD LEE GRIFFIN
Overheard outside my medical office—one woman complaining to another: “My doctor says I have masculine degeneration and that I’ll just have to live with it.”
—NANCY K. KNIGHT
My dentist’s office was in the midst of renovation when I arrived for a checkup. As the hygienist led me to a room, I could hear the sound of hammering and sawing coming from next door. “It must really scare your patients to hear that when they’re in the dentist’s chair,” I remarked.
“That’s nothing,” she said. “You should see what happens when they hear the jackhammer.”
—CHUCK ROTHMAN
At the outpatient surgery center where I worked, the anesthesiologist often chatted with patients before their operations to help them relax. One day he thought he recognized a woman as a coworker at the VA hospital where he had trained. When the patient confirmed that his hunch was correct, he said, “So, tell me, is the food still as bad there as it used to be?”
“Well,” she replied, “I’m still cooking it.”
—SHEILA HOWARD
A man walks into a cardiologist’s office.
Man: “Excuse me. Can you help me? I think I’m a moth.”
Doctor: “You don’t need a cardiologist. You need a psychiatrist.”
Man: “Yes, I know.”
Doctor: “So why’d you come in here if you need a psychiatrist?”
Man: “Well, the light was on.”
—HEATHER BORSDOR
On the job as a dental receptionist, I answered the phone and noticed on the caller-ID screen that the incoming call was from an auto-repair shop.
The man on the line begged to see the dentist because of a painful tooth.
“Which side of your mouth hurts?” I asked the patient.
He sighed and answered, “The passenger side.”
—CHERYL PACE SATTERWHITE
I was working with a doctor as he explained to his patient and her concerned husband what would happen during and after her upcoming surgery. Then the doctor asked if there were any questions.
“I have one,” said the husband. “How long before she can resume housework?”
—JONATHAN JACOB
My father is a successful cardiologist, but his busy practice and long hours left my mother with a lot of spare time. So she decided to become a substitute teacher.
At the end of her first month on the job, she bought my father a new watch. “Honey, I just spent my whole month’s salary on a gift for you,” she said. “It’s now your turn to do the same.”
—RAHUL TONGIA
The husband of one of our obstetrics patients phoned the doctor to ask if it would be okay to make love to his wife while he was taking medication for an infected foot.
“Yes, that’s fine,” the doctor replied. “Just don’t use your foot.”
—SABRINA HENDERSON
My husband, a doctor, received an emergency call from a patient: She had a fly in her ear. He suggested an old folk remedy. “Pour warm olive oil in your ear and lie down for a couple of minutes,” he said. “When you lift your head, the fly should emerge with the liquid.”
The patient thought that sounded like a good idea. But she had one question: “Which ear should I
put the oil in?”
—BELINDA HIBBERT
A harried man runs into his physician’s office. “Doctor! Doctor! My wife’s in labor! But she keeps screaming, ‘Shouldn’t, couldn’t, wouldn’t, can’t!’”
“Oh, that’s okay,” says the doctor. “She’s just having contractions.”
—DONNA WINSTON
Just because one owns a business doesn’t mean it has to be all business. This sign in a dentist’s office proves that point: “Be True to Your Teeth, or They Will Be False to You.”
—JAMES WERTZ
The doctor is called late at night to a woman in labor. He goes into the room and closes the door. After a while he calls out. “Could I have some pliers, a screwdriver, and a hammer, please.”
Turning deadly pale, the husband cries out, “For God’s sake, what are you doing?”
“Take it easy, I’m only trying to open my bag.”
—BOGNÁR JÁRFÁS
The patient who came to my radiology office for abdominal X-rays was already heavily sedated. But I still had to ask her a lot of questions, the last one being, “Ma’am, where is your pain right now?”
Through her medicated fog, she answered, “He’s at work.”
—JEFF DOTY
In our pediatric office, I answered the phone to hear a frantic parent say she was at a Chinese restaurant, and her son had gotten a piece of paper lodged in his nostril.
They came over, and the doctor examined the boy. When the exam-room door opened, the doctor was holding the fortune from the child’s cookie. It read “You will prosper in medical research.”
—KERRI PACE JACKSON
Exasperated with obnoxious patients in the clinic where she’s the office manager, my aunt put up a sign that read: “If you are grouchy, irritable, or just plain mean, there will be a $10 surcharge for putting up with you.”
Clearly some people took the sign to heart. That same afternoon a patient came to her window and announced, “The doctor said he would like to see me every month for the next six months, so I’m going to pay all my $60 up front.”
—JUSTINE A. BACARISAS
While visiting my mother in the hospital, I stopped in the cafeteria for breakfast. I set a piece of bread on the moving toaster rack and waited for it to pass under the heated coils and return golden brown. Instead, it got stuck at the back of the toaster and I couldn’t reach it. The woman next in line quickly seized a pair of tongs, reached in and fished out the piece of toast. “You must be an emergency worker,” I joked.
“No,” she replied with a grin. “I’m an obstetrician.”
—BECKY LEIDNER
The doctor’s office was crowded as usual, but the doctor was moving at his usual snail’s pace. After waiting two hours, an old man slowly stood up and started walking toward the door.
“Where are you going?” the receptionist called out.
“Well,” he said, “I figured I’d go home and die a natural death.”
—SIMON BJERKE
Paying my bill at the doctor’s office, I noticed one of the clerks licking and sealing a large stack of envelopes. Two coworkers were trying to persuade her to use a damp sponge instead. One woman explained that she could get a paper cut. Another suggested that the glue might make her sick. Still, the clerk insisted on doing it her own way.
As I was leaving, I mentioned to the clerk that there was a tenth of a calorie in the glue of one envelope. Then I saw her frantically rummaging around for the sponge.
—DOROTHY MCDANIEL
One afternoon a very preoccupied looking young woman got on my bus. About 15 minutes into the ride, she blurted out, “Oh, my gosh, I think I’m on the wrong bus line.”
I dropped her at the next stop and gave her directions to the right bus. “I don’t know where my mind is today. I must have left it at work,” she apologized.
Just before she got off, I noticed she was wearing an ID card from an area hospital. “Are you a nurse?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I’m a brain surgeon.”
—RACHELLE ROCK
Even though it was warm outside, the heat was on full blast in my office at the hospital. So I asked our nursing unit secretary to get someone to fix it. This was a one-man job, so I could not figure out why two guys showed up—until I was handed the maintenance request form. It read: “Head nurse is hot.”
—CAROLYN HOUSE
While taking a patient’s medical history, I asked if anyone in her family had ever had cancer.
“Yes,” she said. “My grandmother.”
“Where did she have it?”
“In Kansas.”
—DIXIE LEGGETT
Our crew at an ambulance company works 24-hour shifts. The sleeping quarters consist of a large room with several single beds, so we get to know one another’s habits, like who snores or talks in their sleep.
While I was having my teeth examined by a dentist one day, he noticed that some of my teeth were chipped. “It looks like you clench your jaw at night,” he said.
“No way,” I blurted without thinking. “No one has ever said I grind my teeth, and I sleep with a lot of people!”
—KELLY WILSON
A man walks into a psychiatrist’s office.
“Doc, every time I see nickels, dimes, and quarters, I have a panic attack! What can my problem be?”
“Oh, that’s easy,” the doctor answers. “You’re just afraid of change.”
—WAYNE BENNETT
Time is a great healer. That’s why they make you wait so long in the doctor’s office.
—RON DENTINGER
Last Valentine’s Day, I arrived at the doctor’s office where I work as a receptionist to find a mystery man pacing up and down holding a package. As I got out of the car, he declared warmly, “I have something for you.” I excitedly ripped open the bundle. It was a urine sample.
—HEATHER BOYD
Every so often I’d challenge a father visiting his newborn in the nursery, where I was a nurse, to guess his baby’s weight. Few even came close, but one dad picked up his son, hefted him in his hands, and gave me the precise weight, right down to the ounces.
“That was amazing,” I told him.
“Not really,” he replied. “I do this all the time. I’m a butcher.”
—NOLA FARIA
It was a busy day in the doctor’s office where I worked, and I was on the phone trying to arrange a patient’s appointment. Needing her daytime phone number, I hurriedly asked, “May I have a number between eight and five, please?”
After a moment came the timid response, “Six?”
—DEBORAH SIMONS
We were helping customers when the store optometrist walked by and smiled at a coworker. Of course, we all had to stop what we were doing to tease her. But she quickly dismissed the notion of a budding romance. “Can you imagine making out with an optometrist?” she asked. “It would always be, ‘Better like this, or like this?’”
—JESS WEDLOCK
Nothing seemed out of the ordinary when a patient’s file arrived at our clerk’s office in the hospital—nothing, that is, until I read the doctor’s orders. He had written, “Chest pain every shift, with assistance if necessary.”
—PARR YOUNG
When a patient was wheeled into our emergency room, I was the nurse on duty. “On a scale of zero to ten,” I asked her, “with zero representing no pain and ten representing excruciating pain, what would you say your pain level is now?”
She shook her head. “Oh, I don’t know. I’m not good with math.”
—DON ANDREWS, RN
While I was on duty at a Los Angeles-area hospital as a registered nurse, a man arrived in an ambulance, accompanied by his wife and a neighbor. “I’m worried about my husband,” I overheard the wife say to her friend. “Since we just moved here, I know nothing about this hospital.”
“Don’t worry,” her neighbor replied. “The doctors and nurses here are excellent. I should know—this is where my hu
sband died.”
—MARGARET A. FRICE
Jack was depressed when he got back from the doctor’s office. “What’s the matter?” his wife asked.
“The doctor says I have to take one of these white pills every day for the rest of my life.”
“And what’s so bad about that?”
“He only gave me seven.”
—ROTARY DOWN UNDER
My ten-year-old son Andrew and I were waiting in a dentist’s office, talking about treatments for his painful tooth. Entering the room, the dentist asked, “Well, Andrew, which one’s the troublemaker?” Without hesitation Andrew replied, “My brother.”
—BELINDA SMITH
One day after a heavy snowfall, this announcement appeared on the bulletin board in the nurse’s lounge of my local hospital: “Student nurses will please refrain from ever again using this institution’s sterile bedpans for makeshift snow sleds.”
—JILL MARIE BONNIER
Employed as a dental receptionist, I was on duty when an extremely nervous patient came for root-canal surgery. He was brought into the examining room and made comfortable in the reclining dental chair. The dentist then injected a numbing agent around the patient’s tooth, and left the room for a few minutes while the medication took hold.
When the dentist returned, the patient was standing next to a tray of dental equipment.
“What are you doing by the surgical instruments?” asked the surprised dentist.
Focused on his task, the patient replied, “I’m taking out the ones I don’t like.”
—DR. PAULA FONTAINE
One day while at the doctor’s office, the receptionist called me to the desk to update my personal file. Before I had a chance to tell her that all the information she had was still correct, she asked,
“Has your birth date changed?”
—MARGARET FREESE
Seen on a car parked outside a gynecologist’s office: PUUUSH.
—CAROLE GROMADZKI
After practicing law for several months, I was talking with my brother, John, a doctor. “My work is so exciting,” I said. “People come into my office, tell me their problems and pay me for my advice.”
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