Friday, November 03, 2006

Grey’s Vibrator

I am tarred. That’s hillbilly-speak for exhausted.

Been gettin’ up at 3 AM to do the insanity run. That means I usually fall asleep about 7 PM - LOL

But I stayed up last night to watch Grey’s Anatomy, because I love that show. ‘Cause it’s all true.

I reckon most folks that watch it think, “Heh...funny, but that could never happen in real life.”

Trust me, real life is crazier.

I used to be an x-ray tech. The parade of human stupidity that you see when you work in a hospital is beyond anything a fiction writer could come up with.

We’d often get called to the emergency room to do portable x-rays. You never knew what to expect. It might be some fool who accidentally shot himself with a nail gun. Or a kid that swallowed something or stuffed something up their nose.

But the strangest case I ever saw (and let me tell you, I saw some damn strange stuff) was the vibrator case.

Got the call to do an ER portable. On the table was a young man in his 20’s sweating and groaning, and holding his abdomen. I glanced at the doctor. He looked at me and raised one eyebrow. The secret signal that this was gonna be odd.


He requested an abdominal x-ray. It is necessary to feel for the patient’s illiac bone to be able to position properly.

So I placed my hand on the man’s abdomen, and it was quivering.

I looked at the doctor again, who could not look directly at me as he was attempting not to laugh. (Anti-laughter is one of the classes they make you take in medical school.)

I excused myself and stepped into the hallway, motioning with my eyes for the doctor to follow.

“So, what’s up with this guy?”

Doctor stifled laughter.

“Up...uh, yeah. Up his anus. Up into the colon. "

"His friend,” he said, pointing to a man pacing in the waiting room, "His friend says they were ‘playing’ with a vibrator, and it, uh, ‘got away’ from him.”

The vibrator had taken off like the bell at the Kentucky Derby had rung, and it was now attempting to round turn one.

It got stuck there.

It was still running.

I took my x-ray, then they took the guy into surgery.

I was called on to take portable films in there, (like I'd have missed this for the world - LOL) as it kept shifting positions.

Once they sliced him open, and removed it, the doctor laid it on one of those silver medical trays.

It was still running.

It danced quite a jig on that metal tray, and the surgeon grabbed it and fiddled with it a bit, then yelled, “How do you turn this damn thing off?”

"Don’t say anything, Marti," said the wise little voice in my head.

One of the nurses piped up, “The bottom of it should twist counterclockwise to turn it off.”

She never lived down having the answer, or her new nickname, “Buzzy”.

Have a great weekend, everyone!




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