A friend of mine was working as a nurse in a West Australian coastal town when a tourist came into the medical center with a fishhook lodged deep in his hand. Since it was the weekend, my friend had to summon the doctor from home.
The tourist was dismayed to see that the doctor was young, had long hair and wore sandals and a very casual shirt. "You don’t look much like a doctor to me," he said dubiously.
The doctor examined the hook in the tourist’s hand and responded, "And you don’t look much like a fish to me."
After I warned the nurse taking blood that it would be very hard to find a vein on me, she said, "Don’t worry. We’ve seen worse. Last year we had a girl come in to get a blood test for her marriage license and we had to stick her six times in four places before we got anything."
"Yes, I know," I said. "That was me!"
On the Friday before Christmas, a group of tuberculosis patients at the VA hospital in Springfield, Missouri, were filing past the fluoroscope for a checkup and the atmosphere was none too cheerful. But with the last patient it changed.
When the doctor looked at the man’s chest through the screen, he was at first dumbfounded and then amused to read the words "Merry Christmas." The patient had shaped the season’s greeting from a roll of wire solder and taped it to his chest.
