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Is there a doctor in the house?

Dear Sir;

I am writing in response to your request for additional information in Block #3 of the accident reporting form. I put "Poor Planning " as the cause of my accident. You asked for a fuller explanation and I trust the following details will be sufficient.

I am a bricklayer by trade. On the day of the accident, I was working alone on the roof of a new six-story building. When I completed my work, I found I had some bricks left over which when weighed later were found to weigh 240 lbs. Rather than carry the bricks down by hand, I decided to lower them in a barrel by using a pulley which was attached to the side of the building at the sixth floor.

Securing the rope at ground level, I went up to the roof, swung the barrel out and loaded the bricks into it. Then I went down and untied the rope, holding it tightly to ensure a slow descent of the 240 pounds of bricks. You will note on the accident reporting form that my weight is 135 lbs.

Due to my surprise at being jerked off the ground so suddenly, I lost my presence of mind and forgot to let go of the rope. Needless to say, I proceeded at a rapid rate up the side of the building.

In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel which was now proceeding downward at an equally impressive speed. This explains the fractured skull, minor abrasions and the broken collarbone, as listed in Section 3, accident reporting form.

Slowed only slightly, I continued my rapid ascent, not stopping until the fingers of my right hand were two knuckles deep into the pulley which I mentioned in Paragraph 2 of this correspondence. Fortunately by this time I had regained my presence of mind and was able to hold tightly to the rope, in spite of the excruciating pain I was now beginning to experience.

At approximately the same time, however, the barrel of bricks hit the ground-and the bottom fell out of the barrel. Now devoid of the weight of the bricks, the barrel weighed approximately 50 lbs.

I refer you again to my weight. As you might imagine, I began a rapid descent down the side of the building. In the vicinity of the third floor, I met the barrel coming up. This accounts for the two fractured ankles, broken tooth and severe lacerations of my legs and lower body.

Here my luck began to change slightly. The encounter with the barrel seemed to slow me enough to lessen my injuries when I fell into the pile of bricks and fortunately only three vertebrae were cracked.

I am sorry to report, however, as I lay there on the pile of bricks, in pain, unable to move and watching the empty barrel six stories above me, I again lost my composure and presence of mind and let go of the rope. And I lay there watching the empty barrel begin its journey back onto me.

Larry was a truck driver, but his lifelong dream was to fly. When he graduated from high school, he joined the Air Force in hopes of becoming a pilot. Unfortunately, poor eyesight disqualified him. So when he finally left the service, he had to satisfy himself with watching others fly fighter jets that crisscrossed the skies over his backyard. As he sat there in his lawn chair, he dreamed about the magic of flying.

Then one day, Larry had an idea. He went down to the local Army-Navy surplus store and bought forty-five weather balloons, and several tanks of helium. These were not your brightly colored party balloons, these were heavy-duty spheres measuring more than four feet across when fully inflated. Back in his yard, Larry used straps to attach the balloons to his lawn chair, the kind you might have in your back yard. He anchored the chair to the bumper of his jeep, and and inflated the balloons with helium. Then he packed a few sandwiches and drinks, and a loaded BB gun, figuring he could pop a few balloons when it was time to return to earth. His preparations complete, Larry sat in his chair and cut the anchoring cord.

His plan was to lazily float into the sky, and eventually back to terra firma. But things didn't quite work out that way. When Larry cut the cord, he didn't float lazily up; he shot up as if fired from a cannon! Nor did he go up a couple hundred feet. He climbed and climbed until he finally leveled off at eleven thousand feet! At that height, he could hardly risk deflating any of the balloons, lest he unbalance the load and really experience flying. So he stayed up there, sailing around for fourteen hours, totally at a loss about how to get down.

Eventually, Larry drifted into the approach corridor for Los Angeles International Airport. A Pan Am pilot radioed the tower about passing a guy in a lawn chair at eleven thousand feet, with a gun in his lap... now there's a conversation I would have given anything to have heard! LAX is right on the ocean, and you may know that at nightfall, the winds on the coast begin to change.

So, as dusk fell, Larry began drifting out to sea. At that point, the Navy dispatched a helicopter to rescue him, but the rescue team had a hard time getting to him because the draft from their propeller kept pushing his home made contraption farther and farther away.

Eventually, they were able to hover above him and drop a rescue line, with which they gradually hauled him back to safety. As soon as Larry hit the ground, he was arrested. But as he was led away in handcuffs, a television reporter called out, "Sir, why'd you do it?"

Larry stopped, eyed the man, then replied nonchalantly, "A man can't just sit around!"

"In retrospect, lighting the match was my mistake. But I was only trying to retrieve my son's rat." A man told doctors in the severe burns unit of San Francisco City Hospital.

Admitted for emergency treatment after an attempt to retrieve the rat had gone seriously wrong, "My son left the cage door open so his rat, Vermin, escaped into the garage," He explained. "As usual, it looked for a good place to hide and ran up the exhaust pipe of my motorcycle. I tried to retrieve Vermin by offering him food attached to a string, but he wouldn't come out again, so I peered into the pipe and struck a match, thinking the light might attract him."

At a hushed press conference, a hospital spokesman described what had happened next. "The flame ignited a pocket of residual gas and a flame shot out the pipe igniting Mr. Stone's mustache and severely burned his face. It also set fire to the pet rat's fur and whiskers which, in turn, ignited a larger pocket of gas further up the exhaust pipe which propelled the rodent out like a cannonball."

Stone suffered second-degree burns and a broken nose from the impact of the pet rat. His son was grounded for 6 weeks. Nobody knows the fate of Vermin.

For several months, nurses at a hospital have been baffled to find a dead patient in the same bed every Friday morning. There was no apparent cause for any of the deaths, and extensive checks on the air conditioning system, and a search for possible bacterial infection, failed to reveal any clues.

However, further inquiries have now revealed the cause of these deaths. It seems that every Friday morning a cleaner would enter the ward, remove the plug that powered the patient's life support system, plug her floor polisher into the vacant socket, then go about her business. When she had finished her chores, she would plug the life support machine back in and leave, unaware that the patient was now dead. She could not, after all, hear the screams and eventual death rattle over the whirring of her polisher. We are sorry, and have sent a strong letter to the cleaner in question. Furthermore, the Free State Health and Welfare Department is arranging for an electrician to fit an extra socket, so there should be no repetition of this incident. The inquiry is now closed.

A 28-year old male was brought into the ER after an attempted suicide. The man had swallowed several nitroglycerin pills and a fifth of vodka. When asked about the bruises about his head and chest he said that they were from him ramming himself into the wall in an attempt to make the nitroglycerin explode.



A 50-year old woman came into the ER with a complaint of mild abdominal pain. During a pelvic exam the doctor found that the lady had inserted a whole chicken piece by piece into her vagina and then safety-pinned her labia shut. Unable to have children she was hoping that the chicken would turn into a baby.



A man in his mid-fifties did a Loraina Bobbit on himself in a drunken rage and ended up in the ER. The urologist thought that he could reattach the mans genitalia if it could be recovered and if it was in good condition. The police were dispatched to the man's house and the search was on. During the search one of the officers heard a choking sound coming from the man's poodle that was sitting in the corner. After a brief fight the officer was able to retrieve the man's jewels from the dog's mouth. After inspection of the parts by the urologist it was decided that the man would need to be taught to pee while sitting (if you know what I mean). The officer was given a commendation from his precinct for medical assistance.



A woman with shortness of breath and who weighed approximately 500lbs was dragged into the ER on a tarp by six firemen. While trying to undress the lady an asthma inhaler fell out of one of the folds under her arm. After an X-ray showed a round mass on the left side of her chest her massive left breast was lifted to find a shiny new dime. And last but not least during a pelvic exam a TV remote control was discovered in one of the folds of her crotch. She became known as "The Human Couch".



A doctor who spoke limited Spanish was rushed to a car in the ER parking lot to find a Spanish woman in the process of giving birth. Wanting to tell the woman to push he started yelling "Puta! Puta! Puta!" At this the grandmother started to cry and the baby's father had to be restrained. What the doctor should have been saying was "Puja!" (Push!) Instead he was saying "Whore! Whore! Whore!"



An unconscious 36-year old male was brought to the ER with cocaine induced seizures. As a nurse pulled back his foreskin to insert a catheter (a tube passed through the urethra and into the bladder) a neatly folded twenty dollar bill fell out of the foreskin fold. When the man woke up and demanded to leave, the nurse gave him back his belongings and told him where she had found the money. His response: "It was a fifty, bitch!"



An elderly woman came into the ER complaining: "I got the green vines in my virginny" (Interesting). A pelvic exam verifies that she did, indeed, have a six inch vine growing out of her vagina. Further inspection revealed that she had a mass in her vaginal vault. It was easily removed and looked very much like a potato. It was, indeed, a potato. The patient said that her uterus was falling out and that she "put a potato in there to hold it up" and then forgot about it.



The most non-emergent ER visit: A male adolescent came in at 2 a.m. with a complaint of belly button lint.



A young female came to the ER with lower abdominal pain. During the exam and questioning the female denied being sexually active. The doctor gave her a pregnancy test anyway and it came back positive. The doctor went back to the young female's room.

Doctor: "The results of your pregnancy test came back positive. Are you sure you're not sexually active?"

Patient: "Sexually active? No, sir, I just lay there."

Doctor: "I see. Well, do you know who the father is?"

Patient: "No. Who?"



A 15-year old boy was laying on a stretcher with his mother sitting next to him. The boy was coming down from "crank" (methamphetamine) that he had injected into his veins with needles he had been sharing with his friends. Concerned about this the doctor asked the boy if there was anything he might have been doing that put him at risk for AIDS. The boy thought for a while then said questioningly, "I've been screwing the dog?"



A 19-year old female was asked why she was in the ER. She said that she and her boyfriend were having sex and the condom came off and she wasn't able to retrieve it with her fingers. I went to the bathroom and "gagged" myself to vomit but couldn't vomit it up either."

THOMPSON, MANITOBA, CANADA. Telephone relay company night watchman Edward Baker, 31, was killed early Christmas morning by excessive microwave radiation exposure. He was apparently attempting to keep warm next to a telecommunications feed-horn. Baker had been suspended on a safety violation once last year, according to Northern Manitoba Signal Relay spokesperson Tanya Cooke. She noted that Baker's earlier infraction was for defeating a safety shut-off switch and entering a restricted maintenance catwalk in order to stand in front of the microwave dish. He had told coworkers that it was the only way he could stay warm during his twelve-hour shift at the station, where winter temperatures often dip to forty below zero. Microwaves can heat water molecules within human tissue in the same way that they heat food in microwave ovens. For his Christmas shift, Baker reportedly brought a twelve pack of beer and a plastic lawn chair, which he positioned directly in line with the strongest microwave beam. Baker had not been told about a tenfold boost in microwave power planned that night to handle the anticipated increase in holiday long-distance calling traffic. Baker's body was discovered by the daytime watchman, John Burns, who was greeted by an odor he mistook for a Christmas roast he thought Baker must have
prepared as a surprise. Burns also reported to NMSR company officials that Baker's unfinished beers had exploded.