Free Ambulance Ride With Every Broken Nail

This blog post was submitted by a nurse who won a free gift card for her contribution.

Working in the ER one of the funniest things that I remember is the day we received a call that the ambulance was bringing in an accident victim with more to follow on arrival. That usually means they are so busy working on the patient they are unable to call report.

We set up our trauma bay and then got everything set up for any major trauma so those tools were close at hand. As the patient rolls in, Ginger, she's sitting up on the stretcher wailing holding a hand wrapped in what looks to be several towels applying pressure. Several of us enter the room while the ambulance crew asked to speak with the triage nurse outside.

Ginger is crying hysterically and we are trying to calm her down and remove the towels to see what damage has been done. She continues to cry “my hand, my hand” as we get down to the last layer still no blood as we are trying to figure out what is wrong, We hear a laugh outside the curtain as we get the last towel off to see no injury that I can see. I ask the patient what happened. Still crying she replied,
“Can’t you see? You must be blind. I ripped off my nail. I need the rest of it off.
” I look at the nail in question which is artificial and excuse myself from the room. She called an ambulance to bring her in because she ripped part of her nail off did not have the money for gas or to get it repaired and wanted us to fix it for her.

I forgot to mention, I work in a military facility where if you’re a dependent all your care, medicine and ambulance rides are paid by the government. I see so many things that just blow my mind working in the ER. My government dollars at work for things you just can’t make up.

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