Urban Legends

Hang out around the public safety field long enough, and you're bound to hear endless stories that may, over time, seem to be all the same.  Whether you're telling 'em, your partner is telling 'em, the new guy is telling 'em or the charge nurse is telling 'em, storytelling is a great way to bond and build camaraderie and friendships.

But...

You'll also find out that a lot of us are full of it, and urban legends are prevalent.

Here are a few of the most common I've run across:

1. Sem-antics
      Somebody claims that, while in an A&P (anatomy and physiology) or Bio lecture, a fellow classmate embarrasses herself.  While discussing the composition of semen, the instructor talks about the sugar content of the fluid, leading a (usually reported to be both very attractive and pretty dumb) student to inquire why it "tastes so salty"  See also http://www.snopes.com/college/risque/salty.asp


2. Your name is what?
     While obtaining patient information for a run report or medical chart, the provider asks for the patient's name.  The patient says what sounds like "Limmonjuloh," so the medic asks for the spelling.  The patient says, "L-E-M.  O-N.  J-E. L-L-O."  The medic says, "Lemon Jello?!?" and the patient indignantly replies that, "It's pronounced Limmonjuloh!"

The same story goes around about Orangejello and "Sha-theed," which is always spelled Shithead.

3. Hyphen hijinks
     In the same vein, there's the medic that asks for the patient's ID, and sees the name "Le-a."  The medic calls the woman "Leah" and gets chewed out by the patient, who says that "No, no, no! It's LaDasha!  The dash ain't silent!"

4. Language barriers
     Then there's the guy that swears he transported a young Latina woman in labor.  On the way to the hospital, she gives birth to a bouncing (the rig is always doing warp speed, and the pun NEVER gets old. Sigh.) baby girl.  Not knowing any Spanish, he cleans the baby up, wraps her in a blanket and tells mom, "Fuhmolly" - his assumed Spanish pronunciation of Female.  The mom, being young, naive and unfamiliar with American law, assumes that in the US the practitioner that delivers the baby names the baby, and ends up naming the little girl "Female."  Other terrible and unfortunate names that your partner SWEARS he's seen can be found here: http://www.snopes.com/racial/language/names.asp

5. The big uh-O
     Many a medic also claims to have responded to a residence for a woman in her late teens or early twenties complaining of shortness of breath and flushed skin.  The patient is found in a bedroom with her boyfriend or husband holding her hand and trying to calm her down.  After describing her symptoms, the medic asks what she was doing when this started.  After a few moments of embarrassed evasion, she relays that she had been intimate with her boyfriend or husband when her body started to tingle and she got flush and short of breath.  The medic then laughingly congratulates the young lovers and informs the woman that she's just had her first orgasm.

6. The Star-Spangled Bummer
     Let's not forget the yahoo that responds to the call of a man bleeding and arrives to find a couple cops and/or firefighters caring for a Hispanic man named Jose that was brutally assaulted.  His face is a mess, with multiple lacerations and contusions, a misshapen nose and two swollen-shut eyes.  The medic pulls out a pen light to assess the patient's pupils and unthinkingly asks, "Jose, can you see?" and is promptly humiliated by the other responders humming and singing (usually off key, sometimes even into a radio) the rest of the first verse of the Star-Spangled Banner.

7. Why'd you call 911?
     This one is semi-unique in that I've heard it from both responders and dispatchers.  Either at call time with a dispatcher or upon scene arrival of the crew, a frantic family member hysterically relates, "Chicken breath!  Chicken breath!  Hurry, hurry, chicken breath!"  The perplexed crew makes patient contact and discovers a woman in extreme respiratory distress, and quickly figures out that "Chicken breath!" is what "She can't breathe!" sounds like in the family member's heavily accented English.

These are just a couple of the most common I've run across.  I've heard them time and time again, and while I can believe that SOMEBODY out there has had one of these happen to them during their career, I find it really hard to buy that the 21 year old probie has run across all of them.

I may have been born at night, ladies and gentlemen, but it wasn't LAST night.

Good grief.