This
story is only for people with broad minds.
At university
we, having proved out competence, were finally allowed to treat patients under
the supervision of a clinical tutor.
A friend of
mine, who I shall call Fred to spare his blushes in case he reads this, had
been seeing the same patient for a few weeks and on this particular day he had
come in for fillings. Trying to put the patient at ease before an injection,
Fred said, " Just lie back and open wide, this little prick won't
hurt" to which the patient replied, "You did last week".
Behind him the
tutor laughed and said, " Your patients know you well don’t they",
then walked off.
The tutors at
university as a rule had no sense of humour, one however proved to be the
exception. We shall call him Mr. T.
Firstly I must
explain that everything we did as students had to be checked stage by stage by
tutors. My friend N had started to do a filling on his patient, he had the
injection in, he had cut and cleaned the cavity ready for filling which had
been checked and approved. Next he had to line the cavity with cement prior to
filling. He chose liner that comes as two pastes, which you mix together, and
paint onto the floor of the cavity. The material is a little fiddly to use
particularly in a students hands. Having applied the material to the cavity he
went to Mr. T. to get the work checked.
Mr.T. looked
at the lining, took off his glasses and cleaned them, looked at the lining
again then stared at the ceiling of the clinic examining every square inch of
it. By this time N was worried and asked, "What are you looking for?"
to which Mr. T. replied " The pigeon that crapped in this cavity".