When it comes to serious business like having surgery, a serious procedure that can affect your health and well being, it’s good to hold off on making jokes so that doctors can do their job without distraction. Often times going under the knife can be nerve-racking, so what better way to deal with the stress than with a little bit of humor? When doctors gave this man a sharpie to mark up the infected areas, he was a little too specific.
The Reddit user Dreble took to the site to tell his story of knee surgery and the post went like this “I had knee surgery as a teenager. The doctor brought me a sharpie told me to circle the correct knee and put an ‘X’ on the other then he left the room. So I did exactly as I was instructed. Then I drew arrows to the circle and wrote ‘Operate here’ and drew more X’s on the other leg and wrote ‘Do not touch’. I sat there bored for another 30 minutes writing random stuff all over my body like ‘You can’t have my appendix’ and ‘Why are you looking up here? Focus on the knee.’ I even had my mom write on my back something like ‘If you can read this, the wrong side. Flip me over.’ Then I covered up with the sheet and the anesthesiologist showed up. I was told I said some weird stuff while I was going under, but that is a different story. The surgery went fine, I had to stay in the hospital overnight. When the doctor came into my room to check on me, he said that I had thrown of their schedule because when they uncovered me and saw all the notes that they laughed for 10 minutes. When they finally got their composure, they rolled me up on my side to get me onto the operating table and saw the note on my back and lost it again. He said that the surgery started about 30 minutes later than it was supposed to thanks to my drawing s and notes.”
Obviously, the Reddit went wild with comments and thoughts on Dreble’s story, a lot of them sharing a similar experience. A few commenters posted about how they did the same thing, hoping to make their doctors laugh before a stressful operation, but had the opposite effect. For example, one Reddit user said that when he marked up his other body parts before surgery, the nurse was offended.
One user said that the doctor and her son both initialed the right knee before surgery. Another said that that they had a doctor that drew an arrow on the correct toe, and x’s on all of the others so that he would be sure of which to operate on. Are these stories reassuring or worrisome that doctors have to go out of their way to ensure they have the right body part? Either way they make for some great viral stories to bond over.
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