Emergency Room, Utah Valley Hospital — 1975 to 1977
After I made the decision to go into medicine, I had the opportunity to work as a volunteer and then as an orderly at Utah Valley Hospital in Provo. This was a great opportunity and I gained a lot of practical experience. I worked primarily in the Emergency Room during 1975 to 1977. My duties included assessing patient’s status, taking a brief history and vital signs, cleansing wounds, applying dressings, catheterizing male patients, removing sutures, applying casts and splints, and housecleaning chores.
The cases were at times comical, and often tragic. I recall an American Indian who walked into the emergency room with a knife protruding from his abdomen. I also remember a lady who was preparing a salad and had an earwig crawl out of the head of lettuce and onto her left hand. She attempted to kill the earwig with the cleaver she was holding in her right hand. She missed the earwig, but successfully severed three tendons on the back of her left hand. The inebriated, combative males needing attention after a Friday night brawl were always a real treat. I particularly enjoyed working with Doctors Keith Hooker and Wendell Gadd. During this same time I also served as Vice President of the BYU Premedical Club, and enjoyed that opportunity as well.
While working in the Emergency Room, the employees would share limericks with each other and we would enjoy good laughs. I was able to muster some creative talent of my own and I composed a few limericks to share with the others. Following are three of my most memorable ones:
Doc Hooker once lost his cool,
“Don’t nurses learn anything in school?
You surely must know,
Although you’re all slow,
That urine is different than stool!”
Doc Fullmer once pinched an old nurse
Who then shouted this vehement curse:
“Try that once more,
You sex-hungry boar,
And your viscera I’ll promptly disperse!”
To Doc Hooker complained an old fossil,
“My sex life is now rather docile.”
“I’m afraid,” said he,
“Since you’re now eighty-three,
You’re what we call post-menopausal.”
While working there, we would also laugh at some of the initial complaints that brought people to the emergency room. We would laugh at their complaints, and also at the way our clerks recorded the complaints. Here are some great ones:
- sour throat
- lacerated finger – widow smashed it
- bumped head five years ago
- injured hand – hit hammer
- I think I’ve been raped
- possible miscarriage (patient was nine-months pregnant)
- growth under breast and part of it fell off
- kidney stoned
- need catherator changed
- attacked by maggot
- fish in ear
- hit with tubafore, got splendor in finger
- vomiting cold sweat
- belly button keeps growing
- chilly bean up nostril
- dog under eye
- bowel abstraction
- atrophibulation [atrial fibrillation]
- nausea, can’t keep foot down
- multiple injuries, patient rolled over a car
- can’t swallow horsey
- throwing up diarrhea
- lumps, head between legs.
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