Scratched testicles, and other anecdotes...

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I was just having a conversation with a person I used to work with about a curious injury that he saw one day in the casualty department.
A young man presented himself to the trauma unit with injuries to the genitals, perineum and buttocks. My friend described the injuries as ragged scratches, being particularly nasty and bleeding significantly in the region of the scrotum. The patient's account of what happened is as follows:

He got home from work and got straight into the shower. While enjoying this relaxing shower, he heard a scream from the kitchen: it was his wife's voice and she sounded like she was in trouble. He dashed out of the shower, naked of course, and ran to the kitchen where he found his wife curled up on the floor screaming. A jet of water from a broken pipe under the kitchen sink had her pinned down. He immediately bent over to help her up. Unbeknownst to him, the family cat was sitting under the kitchen table and spied his gonads swinging in plain view as he was trying to help his wife up. And that is when the cat attacked the man's privates...

The problem is, the more I think about the guy's story, the less I am inclined to believe he made it up. But I am in the minority on that score since the attending doctor reckons it's all a load of bollox. He reckons the guy was doing something kinky. I'm not convinced though.

However...a very clear case of a cover-up was evident in another incident where a young man arrived at the hospital complaining of abdominal pain. X-rays revealed a spherical density in the rectum and a direct scope was ordered. There on camera was a fully intact gem squash. (For those of you who don't know, a gem squash is a type of vegetable from the squash family, popular in SA, having a smooth tough green skin and being about the size of a tennis ball). Upon discovery of the gem squash, the doctor advised the patient of the findings as a matter of interest. At that point the patient recounted this story:

He had been out early in the morning, jogging. He stopped by the grocer's on the way home and bought a big brown paper bag full of fruit and veggies. Upon returning to his flat he discovered that he had locked himself out. Fortunately he saw that he had left the kitchen window open (one of those mounted on a horizontal hinge, where there is a vertical pin and a bar with many holes so you can open the window and fasten it in various positions). Anyway, he opened the window, dropped the bag of groceries inside and then hoisted himself up and swung his legs around so he could go in feet first, his back to the kitchen. Unbeknownst to him, the bag of groceries had split when it landed on the kitchen counter, and several items had gone rolling off the counter and onto the floor (including a gem squash). Furthermore, and equally unbeknownst to him, the waistband of his tracksuit had caught on the vertical pin of the window fastening mechanism and as he was lowering himself down, it ripped his trackies and he kind of burst through his own clothing (not wearing any underpants). Taken off guard, he fell, lost his footing because of some veggies on the kitchen counter and then fell bottom-first onto the floor, directly on the gem squash...


As regards that story, ladies and gentlemen, the general medical populace is unanimous in its scepticism.

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@ Odin

"....morning routine..."

 :lol:  :lol:

That was good.

@ everyone:

It would be interesting to see how they do the reconstruction of the scratched scrotum incident, you know...kind of like Rescue 911 style. They would have to get a kind of 'cat-cam' and bounce it along the kitchen floor and then jump it up onto the guy's jewels  :lol:

[X-ray]

The hospital is a great place. Today one of my colleagues was moaning that a patient frustrated her by asking questions all the time, even while she was trying to do the exposure.
"That's just curiosity," I said. :-P
The most frustrating problems originate in the waiting room. These two happened to me on the same day:

In the morning...I got an X-ray request form for a young girl, 12 years of age, for a sore knee. (The form comes through via a receptionist and after it is verified as being legal and appropriate, the radiographer goes out to the waiting room and reads the patient's name out and then takes them to the X-ray room.) On the form was written this name: Deborah Smith (not the real surname: concentrate on the first name. At this point you could help me a lot by saying that name out loud, just for the record)
So, I went out to the waiting room and I saw two girls there who looked about 12: one was sitting with a woman who must have been her mother and the other was sitting with an older boy who could have been a brother. I said the name 'Deborah Smith'. Nobody got up but the woman who was sitting with the girl tossed her hair impatiently. I noted on the form what time I had called the patient and that there had been no response. Sometimes they've gone to the loo or gone for a bag of crisps or something. So anyway I X-rayed a few other people for half an hour and the girl and her brother were called by another radiographer. By now there was just the mother and the girl and an old man sitting there. So I got the form again and I went to the waiting room and said 'Deborah Smith, please'.
But nobody responded. This time I saw the woman give me a foul look and the little girl was scowling. I thought maybe they were annoyed that I asked twice, or that they were annoyed at waiting for their turn. But that form was the only one I had (besides the one for the old man). So I went to the receptionist (other side of the department) and asked them if they had any forms they had forgotten to bring around, because I had patients there who were getting tired of waiting. No, there were no missing forms. So I got the old man and X-rayed him and off he went. By now it was almost an hour since I had first gone out to call Deborah Smith. So I went out one last time and the girl and her mother were still there. I said 'Is there nobody here by the name of Deborah Smith?'
At that point the woman stood up, put her hands on her hips and said angrily: 'No, there is nobody here called Debra (pronouncing it how I had been pronouncing it)...there is only Deborah (pronouncing it Deborer).' And she sat down in a huff and the kid just turned her nose up at me.
I thought I'd seen it all, but these two were willing to wait an hour because they didn't like how I pronounced the name
    :-o

By the way, when you said it, did you say 'Debra' or 'Deborer' ?

Then, in the afternoon...I had finished doing a woman's X-ray and I was explaining something that she needed to tell her GP. She had a little five-year-old boy with her who was licking one of those huge red suckers: you know, the big round one that is flat and has a white smiley face on it. All the time while I was speaking to the mother, this kid was hiding behind her skirt and only poking his head out so he could pull faces at me and then lick that sucker on both sides, long and slow. He would peek first from one side then the other, and he had a decidedly naughty look on his face. He licked that sucker thoroughly, let me tell you.
Anyway I was getting into a long conversation with the mother becuase she wanted to know why she couldn't have the result straight away. After a while I noticed that the kid was nowhere to be seen. I immediately started looking around, but it was too late...

Thwaaaack!!!!!

The little tyke had licked both sides of the sucker again and wacked it against my arse so that it stuck there. He then ran and hid behind his mother, who didn't say anything even though she saw it happen. When I tried to pull the sucker off, I couldn't because it was ripping my back pocket. The kid must have licked it and then worked out exactly how long to leave the sucker in the air before applying it to my trousers for maximum adhesiveness!
And to make things worse, he then pulled faces at me again from behind his mother's skirt. There wasn't anything I could do. I had to retreat to the X-ray room, the big red sucker stuck to my arse in plain view of all the other patients in the waiting room. One of the girls had to prise it off with an X-ray film.

[X-ray]

"..Man you sure come out with some odd stories..."


That's because I'm odd  :-P

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@ Wilse

It's true, all radiographers are odd. Its because of the radiation and the goings-on in the darkroom. I am subject to further oddities because of my South African sense of humour and my fondness for all things ballistic. I'll provide a few examples once I have checked that they are ...err...recountable.

@ Leander

I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who would have earned the wrath of 'Deborer'  :lol:

@ PMC

That dude probably had a 30mm cannon round in situ: not a good way to make friends in the A&E department. At least with most artillery shells these days you have some protection against off-weapon detonation becasue the thing has to do a certain number of in-barrel rotations before it is armed. But a 30mm round: that's just a primer away from trouble.  :-o
Reminds me of one of the scenes from Holby City where the doctor got shot in a road rage incident and they found an 'explosive bullet' in his abdomen that could not be taken out and exposed to air. (Incidentally the BBC asked me to provide them with the appropriate X-rays after they failed to get anything convincing from any of their usual medical props sources here in the UK. They sent me the actual bullet by courier and gave me the script and the details of where they wanted the bullet to be placed and I composited it by serial analogue X-rays).
I can guarantee you that the atmosphere in that A&E with the 30mm round would be fairly similar to the contrived tension in the Holby City theatre scene.

[X-ray]

Right, I have dug up two examples of what we got up to down there...


A bored radiographer (wonder who.. :-P ) made several devices that can..uhh..explode on impact. These were originaly designed to be set off with an air-rifle but tests showed that they could be detonated with a standard 9mm pistol or thrown against a wall. Special targets for the range were made, each one having one of these impact-sensitive devices inside. Note the term 'impact sensitive' meaning that such items should not be thrown or compressed. Suffice it to say, several of us had these items as they were useful for dispersing the chav-types that were playing loud music out of their cars in the residence parking lot at all hours of the morning.
Anyway one night there we were, sitting in the casualty department with not much going on. There was one trauma surgeon, an orthopaedic surgeon, and a casualty officer. One of the guys said he was peckish and wanted a dagwood or a burger. We were all keen on that so we got into the casualty officer's car and drove around the back of the hospital to get to the highway. I was in the back with the trauma surgeon and the orthopaedic surgeon was in the front passenger seat. As we drew level with the helicopter pad the orthopaedic surgeon rolled down his window and chucked something high up into the air and then rolled it closed again. A few seconds later there was a hell of a bang right next to the car, at the back on the driver's side. The trauma surgeon almost had an instant bowel movement and the driver (who didn't know anything about these devices) was swearing and hunching his shoulders trying to correct what he thought was a blowout. Of course, I was the only one laughing, because that's how I am. The guy who threw it must have thrown it upwards and forwards, instead of vertically.
We had an agreement thereafter not to chuck them out of cars anymore...

Then there was this classic (I was not involved in any way):
There was a prefabricated building at the rear helipad where the pilots would sleep if the weather was bad or if they were on shift but it was quiet. One of the pilots had taken a casualty doctor up in the heli a few days previously and thrown the machine around the sky so that the doc was almost puking. (They were always trying to get each other, just a bunch of lads, you know.)
One night that very same pilot was peacefully sleeping in the prefab building at the back of the hospital. The victim of the flying stunt, a guy called Simon, got a heavy-duty biohazard bag (they throw amputated limbs in there before they are incinerated) and siphoned two cups of petrol out of one of the nurse's cars. He poured the petrol into the bag and then filled it up with gas from an oxyacetylene cylinder. He then shook the bag nicely, getting the petrol all over the inside of the bag, tied the neck off like a balloon and took it down to the prefab hut where the pilot was sleeping. He put it outside the door and wound a length of toilet paper all the way from the bag to around the corner, and lit it.
Now this was a bag which when inflated was about the size of a PC monitor box. I don't think the casualty doc understood how much gas is fun, and how much is daangerous, because it was too much. The bag detonated and blew out all the windows of the prefab and pushed the door off its hinges at the bottom. The explosion woke up everybody in the last block of the hospital and the police were dispatched (which is pretty impressive because in South Africa they don't come out for trivial matters). The pilot was deaf in one ear for three days and had only a ringing sensation in the other. He was not fit to fly any more of his shifts, although his constipation was cured.
The two chaps agreed to a truce soon after.

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@ Jefferson MacBetamax

"...Especially good fun in a bucket of baked beans left outside someone's door..."

Remind me to never tell you my address
 :-P

I found out early on that I should stay away from delayed chemical reactions. Let me tell you what happened one fine day:

I was going through the chlorine and brake-fluid fascination that is common amongst many SA teens but I was feeling the pinch financialy and had to switch to sugar water. So I got an empty Coke can and half-filled it with granulated chlorine (for the pool) and then returned the chlorine container to its storage place. I then stirred a few tablespoons of sugar into a  glass of water and then peered into the Coke can so I could see that I wasn't going to overfill the can. I was quite relaxed as I started pouring, because I had quite a bit of time before it blew, right?

Wrong.

Like a dunce I had chosen to use a newly-finished Coke can and there was a small residual amount of Coke left in the bottom. The chlorine was bubbling at the bottom and the mix was already hot. When I poured the water in, it reacted immediately. A purple pillar of fire shot out into my face and although I managed to jump back I was not fast enough to save my fringe or my eyebrows. They were burned almost completely away. I spent the next few weeks looking like an extra from Babylon 5.

[X-ray]

I was up in the operating theatre with my X-ray screening machine the other day. It was an orthopaedic operation where they repair the cruciate ligaments in the knee by means of a sterile cadaver's achilles tendon shipped from the US. I had been feeling unsettled the whole morning because of a dodgy take-away the night before, but I wasn't nauseous, just had a bad rumble in my gut. Now I got there at the initial stages of the operation and I X-rayed the knee so that they could get the anchor points for this 'remanufactured' ligament. This took about 40 minutes. Okay, so they had the anchor points and then they had to measure that achilles tendon and 'make' new cruciate ligaments. There was some bickering amongst the surgeons about the proper length of this new ligament and it turned out that I waited there for another 30 minutes, not doing anything. And my guts were getting that Mount Vesuvius feeling and I was starting to get fidgety. Now this is where it gets interesting. One of the surgeons said that they were halfway done 'making' the ligament. I reckoned I had another 30 minutes of just standing there with a lead apron on while they finished the 'make.' So I decided to slip out quietly and use the male restroom toilet while I had a chance. I whispered to the anaesthetist that I would be back, took off the apron, and ducked out of the theatre. I hurried down the corridor to the restroom.
Okay...so there I was in one of the two cubicles, door shut and cringing because I knew there was going to be a fierce eruption from down below. I won't describe that eruption but I'll tell you that it was momentous indeed, both in terms of audio effects and the terrible odour. There had been nobody else in the restroom when I entered, so I was grateful to be alone. I was really bi*ching out loud to myself, saying things like "Oh Jeez, f*ck this" and "Whew, I'm baaaad, a dirty baaaad arse" and generally muttering in utter amazement that I was the source of this event that would surely have been outlawed by the Geneva Conventions. It was simply the worst crap I've ever had and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
When I was done, I had to flush twice, saying "Thank f*ck for that" and really going on to myself about how much of a terrible event this had been.
Can you imagine my utter embarrassment when I opened the door to find one of the surgeons' assistants waiting patiently there so he could tell me they were ready for another X-ray, earlier than scheduled!!! He had followed me right from the beginning, and I had not noticed or heard him behind me because of our rubber theatre shoes and my tunnel-vision as I hastened to the commode.
When I stepped out of the cubicle, there was a terrible waft in this assistant's direction and I had to endure the further embarrassment of washing my hands with surgical scrub with him looking on all the while.

Ever since, my motto has been 'We are not alone'

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"..."Feck! Ma arse is despicable! Ah, lavatory... Who's y' daddy!"..."

--------------------------------------------------------


 :lol:

I was definitely that lav's daddy.


@ Graffias

The embarrassment was almost tangible...as was the terrible reek.

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 :lol:

Unfortunately, although I was offered a lot of money by the Canadian government for my 'weapons' I have been unsuccessful in providing them with a sample. It seems no container is up to spec: the stuff eats through anything. The works department wants to know why there is three-floors-worth of acid-type damage, originating from the restroom. It's like a scene from 'Alien'

[X-ray]

I think it was a Chinese takeaway.

My theory is that the radiation to which I am exposed daily had an amplifying effect on that toxic sludge. I might as well have eaten a bag of shrimps and fermented apricots that had been left in the bottom of a latrine on a hot summer's day in the Sahara.

Actually the more I think of this, I can't believe I'm still alive  :lol:

[X-ray]

"...Yeah, but it would have taken longer to arrive..."

 :lol:

Okay, maybe said bag could have been put in the engine compartment of the number 24 to Pimlico and collected after a day's rounds.