Black Humor- Warning:Clinical Adult injury/death/stupidity discussed

Like alot of clinicians and first responders, I have a black sense of humor to help cope with unique and often stressful situations.

When I first became a RN I worked in surgery and recovery room at a community hospital. One evening we had an elderly gentleman accompanied by his extended family come in to have a foreign body removed from his backside. He required surgery, as this foreign object, a can of air freshener, was firmly lodged up his lower intestine. The surgeon said the man told him he sat on the can "by mistake". Some mistake. After the can's removal, we tested the air freshener, (away from the sterile field of course!) It worked perfectly before we put it in a specimen bucket to send to pathology. (That must have made for an interesting pathology report.)

Twenty years ago when I worked in the Emergency Room at a large medical center in Florida, we had multiple trauma victims arrive from a high speed police chase and collision. This included an elderly woman driver in the wrong place at the wrong time and a drug dealer trying to evade arrest. I remember the ER doc and I working on the dealer and when she found a big zip.lock bag of crack coca.ine stuffed in his pants, she held it up to the waiting police and yelled out, "Party at my house tonight". The drug dealer survived. The elderly woman, a grandmother, did not.

Fifteen years ago when I was flying out to California from Florida, the airplane flight crew requested professional medical help. I dutifully pushed my call button and went up to First Class to "check out the situation" at the request of the flight attendant. (Btw, whenever anyone uses the word, "situation", it means seriously eff'ed up.) I walked into the first class bathroom to find a man pouring blood out of his cowboy boot into the sink. There was blood on the floors, the counter, alot of blood. I asked him, "What happened?" He turned to me with bloodshot eyes and reeking of alcohol and said, "I had a zit on the back of my leg and I popped it." I said, "Well, I guess you won't do that again." (Clinical note:It was not a zit. He suffered bleeding from a leg varicose vein and had clotting problems due to alcohol use.) He was stable and we did not have to make an emergency landing, saving Amer.ican Airlines thousands and thousands of dollars from fees and missed passenger connections. For my trouble, I got a lame letter from the airlines giving me a $100 off a FULL FARE Ticket with blackout dates! Talk about black humor, I guess the airlines have it too.