Sh*t patients say

I love triage. The pearls that come out of patients' mouths make up for having to deal with all those annoying/rude/stupid/taking too long to take their coat off for blood pressure/malodorous people with a (I wish I knew where it comes from) sense of entitlement. I mean, have you ever tried to arrange a CT through your family doctor to even dare to complain that the results of the scan are taking too long to come back (that's after you had your scan booked for you for the next day)? Were you raised in a cave by a herd of wild goats to think that it's OK to interrupt a nurse triaging a patient to ask for a glass of juice (Would you like fries with that?) or to ask them to open a door for you as you return from your q30min smoke outside? Which country did you just come from to think that waiting an hour in a waiting room at a hospital is a long time? Or is this your first visit to an ER ever? Because, judging by the dirty hospital tape glue that you didn't bother to wash off your arm,  I can clearly see that it's at least a second or third... in the last couple of days.

I can keep on going about the things that drive me absolutely bananas at triage. But, instead, I'll focus on the things that make triage my most favorite area in ER to work in. These are just a few examples of some of the profound conversations taking place at triage desk:

Nurse: "On a scale of 1 to 10 how bad is your pain?"
Patient: "10."
Nurse: "So this is the worst pain you've ever had?"
Patient: "No, I've definitely had worse."
Nurse: "So, out of 10, what would you rate your pain at?"
Patient: "10."

Patient: "The last time I was here I had pneumonia. They were gonna intubate me but I left."

Patient: "I had an ectopic pregnancy once but nobody could find it."
Nurse: "So how did you know you had it?"
Patient: "I could feel it was there. But then I hit myself in the stomach with a broom and used other objects and I dislodged it."
Nurse: "???"

Nurse: "From 1 to 10, 10 being the worst pain you can imagine, how bad is your pain?"
Patient: "12."
Nurse: "10 being the worst pain you can imagine."
Patient: "12."
Nurse: "OK."

And my all time favorite:

Nurse: "Do you have chest pain?"
Patient: "No, but I do have pain in my chest."