Shades of Kramer

Shades of Kramer

It was early evening on a Friday night and Beth was working the night shift with one other nurse. It was a small hospital with a small budget so Beth doubled as the endoscopy nurse, cardiac cath lab nurse, and ER charge nurse. There was a scattering of patients awaiting discharge, treatments, admission, the usual stuff you see in an emergency room on a summer weekend evening.

Albert arrived and rang the triage bell. In most hospitals there is a dedicated triage nurse who only does triage. Beth’s hospital was not large enough to expend the needed cash to employ a nurse to fill this duty. This meant that on busy nights both nurses took turns triaging new patients in between taking care of existing patients. This system did not work well for the nurses because if they were taking care of a critical patient and could not leave the bedside, and another critical patient arrived, they were shit out of luck.

I found myself in much the same circumstance when I was working in a small rural hospital in Alaska. I was often the only nurse on duty between 11 PM and 7 AM. If a trauma came in, and they always did, there were no nurses to care for any other patients in the ER. One night I was in CT bagging a patient (acting as a human ventilator) when an acute MI (Myocardial infarction, heart attack for all you non-med people) came strolling through the door. Doctor Pelvic appeared in the doorway of the CT room and announced in a high pitched tone that a heart patient had just walked into the ER. Calmly and quietly I asked him if after 17 years of school he had learned how to start an IV. I then told him I would be happy to cleave myself in two and have half of me care for the new patient, but I would have trouble bagging my current patient with one hand.

Dr. Pelvic disappeared from the doorway and went back to the ER. I called him Doctor Pelvic because every female patient who came to the ER would eventually get a pelvic exam by this pervert. I once watched him request the assistance of a female nurse to do a pelvic exam on an 11 year old girl with a broken arm. How sick and perverted is that? I asked the nurse later why she would agree to assist with such an obvious abuse and she had no answer. I suggested she call the Board of Medical Examiners and complain, she never did. I later learned that Dr. Pelvic was having an affair with my spouse's boss. What a small and wonderful world.

Albert refused to sit down and refused to tell Beth what the problem was. Being a seasoned nurse Beth immediately suspected something of a carnal/personal nature. Beth took his vitals, medical history, allergies etc… and lead him to one of the exam rooms. In great detail Albert explained how he had been very busy that day and was very hungry upon arriving home. He had grabbed a cucumber from the fridge and because he had a dinner date rushed to the shower to clean up all the while eating the cucumber. He explained how he started the shower, how he placed the cucumber on the floor of the shower briefly, how he soaped up his legs and feet and during this process slipped on his soapy feet and crashed to the shower floor. It was a terrible fall because when he hit the floor the cucumber was underneath him. He explained how he had soaped up his ass in addition to his legs and feet. When he hit the floor, the cucumber, point first, found its way to his rectum and slipped inside.

Beth dutifully recorded the story and ordered a KUB to confirm the presence of a rectal foreign body. Sure enough, the x-ray showed the faint outline of something in the colon. She called the gastroenterologist and went about the process of setting up the scope for the main event. She figured that a cucumber was soft enough to grasp with a large snare or even drill into and pull from the rectum.

The GI doctor arrived and Beth wheeled the patient to the endoscopy lab and prepared him for the procedure. He kept repeating how weird this was that a cucumber would accidentally find its way up his ass. Beth had had just about enough of this “accident” talk at this point and walked around to face the patient. In a slow and quiet voice she said, “if I find bite marks in the cucumber, then I will believe you.”

Post Script: She never did find any bite marks.