Every summer growing up we would visit Big Bend National Park in Texas. There was a nearby town called Lajitas. In that town was a goat named Clay Henry Jr. I fed that goat a beer when I was 7 years old. His father, Clay Henry Sr., was mayor of Lajitas in 1986. www.roadsideamerica.com/story/2227
This isn’t an exaggeration. When I was working in Alaska, I met a PA who’s business card identified him as the mayor, postmaster, and chief medical officer of his town.
Adak. Whittier isn’t particularly rural by Alaska standards: you can drive an ambulance from Whittier to Anchorage, and if the weather cooperates, LifeMed can fly a helicopter air ambulance to bring the patient to Anchorage.
Reminds me of my time in medical school when I treated a rural Appalachian grandma who got a snake bite. She drove the 2 miles to her nearest neighbors (her nephews) and they got on an ATV to kill the snake then drove her to the ED. We asked her if she was sure it was a copperhead and she said "yep" and pulled the head out of her purse. Resourcefulness is on another level out there.
The rural doctor in my area was the only clinic within two hundred miles who would see patients without insurance. She had patients drive in to see her from 4-5 hours away. Walk in clinic so always a waiting room full of people waiting for hours. Whole families being seen at the same time. From babies go the elderly. She found a tumor in my dad from a physical exam. Treated my mom’s depression/anxiety. Treated my bronchitis. I don’t know what we would have done without her. God bless her.
Loved this vid! I'm a rural veterinarian and this rings true for us as well. Once I had a man come in with his dog- dog had a fish hook embedded deep into the face. I got it out and he said he'd be back to pay me later in the week. A few hours later he came back. I said "wow! that was fast! Fish not biting?" He said "Uh, well, I didnt come to pay you. I was hoping you could help me get the fish hook out of my son." I laughed, thinking he was kidding, but then his kid took his baseball cap off. Yep. Fish hook in the head. Also, had a pet rat come in. Needed surgery. I had no clue how to do it. But where else can the owner go? I watched a few you tube videos on rat surgery that night, and performed the surgery the next day. Rat went home happy and owner was happy. Country medicine is great! and scary. One must have inner confidence.
@@andrewsang4688 A lot of them are meant to help vet students study, or help vets brush up on an uncommon procedure before they do it. The veterinarian at the clinic I shadowed at watched one on her phone real quick before operating on a baby tortoise with a prolapsed cloaca. Poor little guy had a real bad day, but it had to be done
Awesome, I am a wildlife veterinarian at a National Park, Vietnam. Not only I treat exotic and endangered species, I am also live in rural area. Luckily, I still have internet connection :D
Texaco Mike's DWI caught my hemorrhagic stroke early and saved my life. I'll never forget the sound and sensation of his mighty propellor as he drifted away effortlessly, like the apotheosis of a newly minted deity. This is why, if elected, I plan to build him a new clinic and award him an honorary radiology license. I'm the goat, and I approve this message.
You don't need a radiology license to do mri scans. No radiation, means no risk to patient. It's a lot easier to get hired with one. Unless you're where Texaco Mike is.
To be honest I haven’t voted in over ten years. I’m pretty sure you live in another state at the very least. Whichever the next election is for, I’m writing your name in. Is it Mr Goat, or Go At? The whole first, last name thing is what I’m confused on.
I’m a rural medicine doctor- Family Practice. I’ve done just about everything short of open heart and orthopedic surgery. During COVID, that increased exponentially! Love your videos. Thanks for making one about us. We didn’t have a possum with venom, but we did have a pet raccoon for years that slept with my son.
My mom's OBGYN was also my pediatrician and my doctor until I left that town. There was a hospital in the town, did surgery on both parents, various procedures on myself and siblings that in a larger city we would now have to see a specialist. I'm sure many think have a specialist do these things is better and may it is in some cases, but I think having a doctor who knows their patient and all of their issues even better.
It's funny how this is relatable on an international level. In Iran we have to do 2 years mandatory service in rural areas when we're done with medical school. The first few months is nightmare! the patients are not shy to express dissatisfaction when they see a rookie who doesn't know shit about the endemic diseases or stitching a half detached finger! But gradually you earn a lot of precious experience lasting for the rest of your life. Like when two patients come to the emergency room, one is making a scene and requests attention and the other one is quiet and looks at you with wide open eyes, it's probably the quiet one who needs immediate attention, not the loud one
@@brounwynsmith848 it was fun times! We didn't have an ambulance at site. The only ambulance was 20 minutes away, which took about 2 hours to get to the nearest city and return. So this meant we wouldn't have any ambulances for about 2 and a half hours if we already had asked for one. Fun times!
@@Pedram_k reminds me of when I broke (not completely) both bones in my arm as a kid. Apparently I was dead silent but visibly crying. Was perfect when getting the X rays, concerned the radiologist once they saw the first few and the fact I willingly moved my arm myself for them. Also the story when my dad nearly got his thumb cut off in a tractor fan that suddenly turned on. He called into work for the next day BEFORE he went to the hospital.
@@addyshorhnr3544 there you go! And one of my own experiences: I had a patient come to me with a complaint of stomach pain since last night. 60 ish farmer. Completely calm. But you could feel something was off. I almost wrote him some prescription for stomach discomfort! But then I thought you know what, let's take an ECG first. Just to be sure. Turned out to be a V-tach (A potentially life threatening heart condition). Had an arrest right a few minutes later. Put him on conversion and sent him to a cardiac center. He made a full recovery.
Our tiny rural town has had the same family doctor for the last 40 years. I swear, that man could manage just about anything. He used his own funds last year to build the town it’s first medical centre. Brand new equipment and everything. Rural doctors are something else!
Oh my gosh so I grew up in a farming community and this is 100% accurate. You know how many farmers do their own stitches or family members. I once heard a Dr tell a story of a farmer who came cause he lost his thumb farming and he just wanted the Dr to stick the wound closed. The Dr was like let me call orthopedics at the nearest hospital for emergency surgery and the farmer responded no just stitch it closed cause I need to get back out there and keep working.. so so true.
@@teslaromans1023 You lose fingers in farming, yeah. You farm or you lose money. At least that’s my knowledge of it. The dad in Big City Greens even has a missing finger.
@@teslaromans1023 probably didnt think he would loose the thumb sup from rual texas my uncle got into a killer bee hive and got stung 80 times refused to go to the hospital just took some benadryl and laid down he was at least smart enough not to try to go back out in the texas sun after that.
Good lord do I relate to this. Hometown was a massive scattering of houses, pop 3,000 across a valley, and we were one of the bigger municipalities in the area. My sister had heart failure and ultimately succumbed to it at 4. Four years later my brother had heart failure, and transplants had just started to see success, so when we got the midnight call for a match in another state (nearest equipped hospital was 6 hours away by car), mom dropped me (4) a toddler at a neighbor's she had only ever talked to on the phone so they could catch a prop plane that would take them on a dedicated flight. Our rural hospital docs were champions. They identified a rare congenital heart defect, navigated us through the transplant process and recovery in 1990, successfully treated my aunt when the same defect hit her, and screened the rest of the family. They banked our samples in a research lab in Texas and about 20 years later, tracked us down to let us know when the genetic defect was identified (TNNT2 mutation). They successfully treated my mom when she later had heart failure, and shared records seamlessly when I had heart failure last year and was lucky enough to live right by an internationally known cardiac hospital. They also managed every broken leg, diabetic crisis, heart attack, fall, and stroke in a three county area. Rural docs are remarkable - and as I said, we aren't even THAT rural. The folks out in Montana, Alaska, the Colorado mountains, the deserts of the SW... they are brilliantly diverse, innovative, and compassionate!
Woah when you were explaining that at 4 your sibling had heart failure. I was l was like somethings not right here and then your other sibling also had a similar illness I was like did they find a genetic cause because for 2 siblings in the same family to suffer from heart failure at such a young age seem very unusual.
This is a wonderfully informative and inspiring comment. I'm so sad to hear about the deaths of your family members, and so grateful for your willingness to share your experience and the thoughtful, meaningful lenses you've applied to its impact on you and the world. And wow, I'm getting more and more excited by the moment about the possibilities in rural medicine as they relate to my own career goals in housing and public health. Thanks for sharing your story and helping educate us all in a great example of important things being done right!
@@AlilishSuki yeah, my sis also had Down Syndrome and a septal defect, so it was misunderstood as a negative reaction to corrective surgery. Back then we had so much less when it came to diagnosis, very little in terms of biomarkers, and we knew relatively little about how to differentiate between different causes. My grandfather died of the same condition in 1957, but it was assumed to be cardiomyopathy following a heart attack (though they did not know when this supposed heart attack occurred). We also had an aunt who died at age 6 weeks in the same time period and had severe edema as the only noticeable symptom prior to death. Once my brother, an otherwise healthy 12 year old, spontaneously developed cardiomyopathy, they suspected a genetic defect. They were in the process of reviewing family medical records when my aunt, who was in her 50s, suddenly had heart failure following an appendectomy. That was when the docs connected the dots and realized there never was a heart attack in my grandfather, that my sister's heart failure didn't line up logically with the time of surgery on her septal defect, that my aunt's heart failure matched my brother's course. Just goes to show how important curiosity and asking the right questions is. It was our family medicine doc in a small town who put a lot of it together, and I credit him with saving several lives by putting this puzzle together. That is why I adopted to avoid passing on the defective gene, why I got an echo that detected a 15% EF that other docs had missed for 6 months, and why we have been so successful in treatment by learning from how this specific mutation responds to medical therapy.
@@ItsAsparageese it is exactly why I got my doctorate in public health - technology has opened incredible options for rural health care. Given the unique challenges rural communities face, and the likely increase in rural populations as people leave cities and climate change forces migration, rural health will be essential. Never underestimate what curiosity, creativity, and determination can accomplish, and keep thinking of ways we can equip rural communities around the world with the tools they need to succeed!
Going in I thought it was going to be something very American, but I can say it's the same in my rural area in France. 15 years ago my gp stitched up a hand wound and sent me to the vet next door to get a wrist x-ray 😂 it saved me a 4 hour drive AND I got to pet doggos on my way out!
Yep, I did all of my clinical rotations in a rural hospital. My favorite was when an Amish kid sawed his thumb off (yes, with a handsaw, no I have no idea how) and the general surgeon was RU-vid-ing different repairs before operating on him. The kid was denied general anesthesia by the elder accompanying him, but we were allowed to give him heavy duty pain meds. So this Amish teenager is stoned out of his mind on Dilaudid and is flirting with the nurse about the cows on her family's farm all while the surgeon is repairing his mangled thumb and I'm trying so hard to be professional and not giggle like an idiot. It was amazing. Rural med is awesome.
The how: a handsaw, in proper condition and tooth alignment, operated by someone who knows how to *properly* use one can go as fast through wood as a power tool. Yes, really. Especially a ripsaw vs a crosscut saw. Most people these days have no clue how to use and maintain hand saws, which is why the idea seems so strange.
I don't know about other countries, but in Peru doctors are obligated to do one year of rural service after graduation. My dad told me about that one time during his rural service a man came in carrying his wife and his newborn, the woman bleeding like an open faucet. They had nothing to make the uterus contract, so what does my dad do to stop the bleeding while the ambulance takes them to a bigger hospital? He took his fist and put it inside the woman, putting pressure on the cervix, and stayed there for the whole 3 hours it took to get there. Woman survived and my dad earned the respect of the community. I love that man ❤.
A classmate did an essay on bleeding during and after labor in Africa. She did a presentation that showed midwives basically fisting the mother and squeezing the uterus from the belly to get it to contract on the way to the hospital.
Not required in the US but it would be helpful. So many rural areas have older doctors that will soon be retired with no younger doctors to take their place. The high cost of attaining a medical degree makes it hard for a person to choose rural medicine here.
Grew up rural. Dad was a former Army Medic. You better believe I was giving people stitches when I was seven years old in the middle of a cherry tree farm. (Don't worry, my dad supervised. Until I was 12, then I was on my own.)
I'm a nurse at a tiny, underfunded inner city hospital that still gets GSWs, stabbings, and any manner of whatever that comes through our door. We may have a Level 1 trauma center 15 miles away, but it might as well be another world. We take whatever, we do whatever, and most of our population is homeless so we're social services too. Sometimes we don't even have blankets, but we still give excellent holistic care. We totally relate to rural medicine!
I do find it interesting how much our poor intercities and rural areas have in common. In my area most serious injuries used to not survive. The magic hour passed before they could get to the hospital. That has started to change now that air ambulance services are contracted. But a lot of the stabbings and shootings from the Reservations still die in route.
The farmer part got me! My partner had a grandpa that grew up and lived on a farm his entire life. He had hemophilia and, being on a farm, was prone to cuts and bruises all the time. His go-to solution was to cauterize it. The man would find a piece of metal, burn it hot and then cauterize the bleed. And did so for decades. The hospital staff were constantly astounded by the fact that he made it well into his 80s doing this when ever he came for a visit.
I was once working ER in a rural community, and a guy came in for a nose bleed. He'd gotten kicked by a horse in the face. Took a while but finally got the bleeding under control. I said he should stay the night to make sure it's settled, and he was like "nah I gotta tend to my horses". Another guy had his barbecue blow up in his face, and he was all singed. I asked him if he smokes, said no. Asked him if he smokes marijuana. He said yes. I asked when the last time was, and he goes "right after my barbecue blew up."
My dad is a family doctor in a rural area while I am a med student in a bigger city. Man do I see some odd things that I quite sure wouldn't happened elsewhere. The deliver a baby thing is absolutely chefs kiss. My aunt is also a rural med and let me tell you: she takes car, boat and animal pulled transport before even reaching her post. Beeing a rural doc is almost too much adventure. Edit: Oh yeah, and about mental counseling... docs are more often than not invited to the burring ceremonies and it's usually expected from the doc to give counseling to the family and tell them they did all they could, that its fine to grieve and that they can look for him if things feel out of grasp. I seen one of such instances and is amazing how relieved people seem with some words even if its obvious they are suffering. Never underestimate the power a docs word hold.
Honestly the part about someone with knowledge, experience, and mana telling someone that their feelings are valid and real and not something to be ashamed of? That's vital for any group. I've told more than a few software developers that were feeling shit that their feelings are valid and real. And that tomorrow will come and things will feel achievable again. Often that's all they needed to start processing their emotions in a constructive fashion. It might take a day, it might take a few weeks. But they always got back on their feet and became better.
As a medic in a really large area, we worked with a mildly rural hospital in the mountains (nearest major hospital was a 45 minute priority ambulance drive) and I was always amazed at how the doctors handled everything. There was one trauma 3 center on the way, about 25 minutes, but they wouldn't TOUCH a lot of patients. They'd refuse and force you to drive the hour to the larger trauma center if the pt fell more than 3 stairs. But this little 5 bed ER in the mountains would take EVERYTHING. Absolutely no refusals. I was talking with one of the docs one day and he said the most obviously sensible thing: "We can do a lot more than can be done in the field, and while we do it, can have a helicopter on the way." Over the years, I learned so much more from the rural docs than the ones at the trauma 1 hospital. Some seriously impressive improvisation. That's honestly the exact kind of medicine I want to get into. Cut my teeth on major trauma in an ER and then go rural. Hoping that desire, a decent MCAT (plus my 10+ years as a medic) are what gets me into med school. I also intercepted a lot of air evacs to the major Seattle trauma hospital from places like Alaska and Montana, and those stories just blew my mind. Patient had a tractor roll over on him, he crawled two miles to the farmhouse, family drove him 2 hours to the clinic, local doc dropped two chest tubes and intubated, stabilized him for transport before the plane even had its flight plan ready.
Essentially he turned the ER into a deluxe ambulance lol. Just need to keep them alive long enough to get to a trauma center, and you can do a lot more with a doctor and even a basic ER than in the back of an ambulance.
As a small town rural doc who’s nearest tertiary care center is 3+ hours away, this is surprisingly accurate. From the politics to the central lines to the OB care to the uncertainty of knowing anything could walk through that door at any minute. When asked why we can’t recruit just any doc to be here, I commonly reply that working in this job you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable, which if not for everyone. I love watching your videos Dr G. Keep it up. Your humor has kept me going a few days this last year
Thank you for what you do. Sounds like you have to always be learning, and be a resourceful and creating person perhaps more than some who don't practice where you do. THough it's hard, as an urban patient who needs healthcare, I sense the type of relationship you create with your patients would be better for all of us but it's harder for us to get that. Ah, to be known well.
I could tell my local ER doctor was not only worn out from a Covid overrun ER but frazzled by the idea of treating my amputated finger so as he was reading my chart I told him I was actually looking forward to all the free time I will have in the future by not having to trim that fingernail. He literally cracked up. I feel for docs in small towns.
My grandfather was a small town doctor in upstate NY. He had a special pair of pliers for removing fish hooks from little boys’ ears. He hated field hockey season because they played for keeps in upstate. They would bring in teenage girls unconscious with their scalps laid open. By necessity he would sometimes barter. He knew the community so well that he could diagnose people as they walked in the door. It’s family medicine but the whole town is your family.
Hilton, NY? Dr Keller or Dr Zoghlin? Yes, as children we were forbidden to go anywhere near the ice rink/pond when "the big boys" were playing hockey. Also had my scalp sutured.
Also from upstate NY, yes the field hockey girls in high school went stupid hard. Also I shared a room at the ER with a guy with a fishing hook all the way through his thumb and the Doctor seemed very very bored of fishing hook impalement.
Coming from a guy who grew up in a rural area this is actually far more accurate than you might think. At one point the Hospital administrator was actually arrested for embezzling...he continued to be the hospital administrator from prison because no one else wanted/could do the job >.> If you work in a rural hospital you will pretty much be there for as long as you want, and pretty much do anything and everything because chances are there is simply no one else around to do it.
This is my rural Montana childhood in a nutshell. There was very little that our rural doctor couldn't handle. And if you were mortally ill or hurt, he stabilized you the best he could, and the HELP helicopter came and hauled you off to the nearest hospital, 150 miles away. Some didn't survive the trip... but most did. Shout out to old Doc Jay, and to all the rural medicine heroes - they don't do it for the money and they don't need your respect. But they've damn sure earned it.
OMG! I was laughing so hard! I live 2 hours from a hospital and this is so spot on. Our country doctor can deliver babies, do an emergency tracheotomy, do an emergency pelvic exam, all after running his chainsaw, building trail, out hosting a local talent show. Keep it up!
I'm a Marine Corps veteran and currently in school for philosophy and biology with the intent of medical school afterwards. I have a particular interest in rural medicine and also general/trauma surgery because it will force me to be the Swiss army knife of doctors. That's really what I want to be... able to tackle just about any problem with the fervor and zeal only the Corps can instill in a young man. I've got a long road ahead to get to that point so wish me luck.
You sound like a fine driven lad. Be vigilant, but patient with yourself. You are still human. You are going to need to pace yourself and relax at times. Best of times to you.🙂👍❤️☕
My grandpa was a farmer and that bit about farmers doing it themselves fits him perfectly. Safety was not exactly his #1 priority either. I'm honestly amazed he managed to live as long as he did.
Same with my grandpa! The last time that I visited him, I watched his mule try to kick him in the head, and my grandpa just continued casually feeding the horses just like nothing had happened. With all the stories that my dad and aunts tell, I marvel at the fact that my dad even survived his childhood.
My great grandmother had awesome guardian angels. That woman even cut a plugged in lamp cord and tied it back together to shorten it. My grandmother said didn’t you get shocked! She replied I felt a slight tickle. 😲 She was a farmer preachers wife
Old veteran friend (Korea) described a combat medic in his unit in similar terms. The combat medic was a farm boy and did everything (it is not all combat related injuries) with the barest of equipment and just basic medical training.
I know this is one of the most stressful versions of medicine, but it also sounds really amazing. This is the kind of doctor people want to be when they grow up, at least it was for me.
'Our possums do' 😂 YESSSSSS finally a sketch about what I want to do--rural medicine!! I want to specialize in both midwifery and family medicine so I can handle much of what is thrown at me out in the woods 😉 🌲 I shadowed a midwife in rural Maine and she was one of the few primary care providers for miles, and I was so captivated by the 'roughing it' resourcefulness and the breadth of her care. . . She prescribed antibiotics for conjunctivitis, antidepressants for a bereaved mom, delivered babies, stitched up tears, inserted IUDs, held the hands of a girl crying over a miscarriage, kept a controlling boyfriend out of an exam room, helped women with food insecurity, connected a girl with affordable housing who was living in her car, and would go into the hospital at midnight to deliver a baby and sleep on her office couch and sometimes not leave until midnight the next day. Mountain hero 💕 People trusted her (she was gentle, warm, and knowledgeable) and opened up to her. I hope I can be a fraction of what she is!
From Newfoundland, Canada here, we had an travelling midwife taking care of us up until my father's time (50 years ago), nearest hospital 8 hours by train. My family tells the story of grandma, how she delivered 5 babies via midwife - almost bleeding to death twice ( midwife pulled an miracle there). Had never been to an hospital before. She was 87 when she had an bad fall, and found it too painful to walk. Her granddaughter took her to the hospital - for the first time in her life, the doctors didn't take her seriously because she didn't seem to be in very much pain. The family insisted on an x-ray. It was a broken hip, the young doctor didn't understand why she wasn't in extreme pain. She's an old tough Newfie woman, that's an whole different breed of human. Atypically Newfoundland woman in my grandparents time had to tend to livestock, tend to the vegetables garden, tend to the house work and tend to the children all by herself while her husband spend several months of the year out on the ocean fishing for cod or hunting seals. They had to be tough cookies.
True old-timer, I swear I'm gonna d!e before my 87 and 85 yo parents, they lived through so many things in a VERY rural México and they're really tough cookies, blessed them
Makes me think of my great aunt. She and her husband lived on a ranch in Alberta. She was out cutting cattle one day (she was in her seventies), and when she dismounted her horse, her hip shattered. That was the first time she went to an actual hospital, which was four hours away. When she got there, the doctors did an x-ray and some tests and discovered that most of her hip bone had been eaten away by bone cancer, which is why the whole thing shattered when she dismounted. They had absolutely no idea how she was out riding her horse and cutting cattle in that state, but she was just crazy crazy tough. She passed away six months later as it was too late for them to stop the cancer from spreading to the rest of her body. After she died, my great uncle sold the ranch to his kids and moved into a yurt (basically a tent with a simple heating system) up in the Rockies, only going into town once a month for supplies. When my dad told me about him- seventy plus year old man living alone in the backwoods of the Canadian Rockies- he said, "Actually, I'm not entirely sure if he's still alive or not." We learned the answer to that question last year, when my dad was invited to his funeral. This guy had lived to the age of eighty-five, living alone in his yurt in the mountains. Dad liked to say that Joan and Jim were mountain pioneers that were born a hundred years too late. What legends.
I laughed. Thank you!! I'm the accountant, IT guy, foreign languages guy and airport guy in my rural community. I love how well your captured the amount of stuff rural doctors do for us.
Yep, definitely assisted with a partial hand amputation reconstruction surgery in the ER while working at a rural critical access hospital. Several nonagenarians lived the mountains above the town in cabins with no electricity or plumbing their families had built before we were a state. I also worked on a service where we made sure to carry heavy-duty wire-cutters and fence tools so we could repair any barbed wire we had to cut to response to an emergency (and also remove fishhooks on scene.)
Well, anything that's in your blood is making a detour through your mouth, and there's that vein under your tongue which is the second-quickest way to get anything into your blood system, just put the pill under your tongue. (the quickest way being injection). So if there's a high concentration of anything in your blood, it makes sense you might taste it.
It should say "What Veterinarian Medicine is like every day." I'm an x-ray tech, phlebotomy tech, pharmacy tech, ultrasound tech, wound care, surgical tech, anesthesiologist, floor, ICU, Cardiac, Surgical, Trauma, and delivery nurse, and probably half a dozen other human medical departments I can't think of. On, contagion too. On multiple body systems. I've trained on small animal, large animal, and exotics. And they are all very, very, very different.
@@minitntman1236 Actually, no it's not. "Large Animal" refers to horses, cows, pigs, sheep, goats and other livestock animals. "Small Animal" refers only to dogs and cats. All who have different digestive tracts. Did you know a horse can't throw up? That a cat can't have grains or veggies? I doubt it. I doubt you know anything or you wouldn't have made the condescending comment. But feel free to continue.
"You know how to do all those things?!" "You know this is a farming community right?" "You tell a farmer that and he will go home and do it himself". This is one of the best videos yet. Before MS forced me to quit medical school, rural medicine was top on my list.
This video is how I found Dr. Glaucomflecken-love these videos! I'm a rural nurse and can totally identify with the stories related here. Worked one night and a couple brought their dog to the ER with an eye popped out of the socket-couldn't get hold of the vet. Doc just popped it right back in and dog was so happy! We've also used the vet's chem analyzer when ours would break (until the state said no, now we have to courier it an hour away). I've called coworkers at 3am trying to find high proof liquor to give to a patient with methanol poisoning (drank a gallon of marine/stove fuel when his wife tossed his booze out) because IV alcohol expires too fast and is too expensive for us to stock, as we rarely use it. Pulling up liquor with a 60mL syringe and shoving it down an NG tube was a first for me-getting my patient drunk saved his eyesight and life! (Pharmacist now keeps vodka in the pharmacy). I love my rural docs-innovative, salty and caring. They pretty much have to leave the state for a day off. I love rural medicine!! Can i get a cert in that, like-"Certified Jack-of-all-Trades, Master-of-None?"
As a physician in México I did my social service (1 year) in a rural hospital near the Copper Canyon, 400 km away from the nearest 2nd tier hospital. Needless to say, we performed all kinds of jobs from delivering babies to giving rabies shots to street dogs
This is so true! My father once drove himself to the nearest hospital after cutting himself with a chainsaw in the leg. I was 10 and my job was to press down in the gigantic cut while he drowe, because in his words 'I dont want blood in my seat.'
If you were 10, I wonder if that was partly a way to explain a medical need without making it too dark. Eg. He’d bleed out before he made it without your help
@@DeathnoteBB nah farmers aren't going to sugar coat it. I'm betting he actually really didn't want blood on his seat 😂 farmer kids are built different
Rural healthcare was just like this where I grew up! We didn't have a local doctor but made do with a dentist, a veterinarian, and a couple of farmers who worked ski patrol during the winter. The dentist took care of x-rays to see if athletes could stay in the game. The veterinarian stitching up wounds and cut horse pills into appropriate-sized sections for human consumption. And the ski patrol guys were experts at transferring injured farmhands (and their dismembered limbs) to the closest hospital (this was back before GPS. Ambulance always got lost so it was just faster to drive.). We didn't have any fan boats but we did have a couple of retired school buses that were fun to drive around.
I may not live in a big city but this just reminds me of how... almost spoiled I am with medical care nearby. Every one in a while I remember the story of my great granddad breaking his neck in an accident sometime in the 40s or 50s, stuck somewhere on one of Germany's first high ways. Somehow he was able to not only survive but also walk to the nearest public house, some police station like 20km away. He made it out alive. An unimaginable scenario to me...
My friend did a rural year and loved it, but she also mentioned that it was not for everyone. In Colombia, the (med, nursing, odontology, bacteriology, etc...) students are sent for a year to do rural practice at the end of their studies. They have to live permanently in a small community, for a year, and the placements are randomized nationwide. My friend was sent to a small but friendly farming zone, some are sent to active guerilla zones, and others are sent to places near indigenous communities. It is pretty cool!
I am also reminded of an anecdote shared by a fellow nursing student. We had both had summer jobs as undergraduate nurse employees in rural communities, between our third and fourth years of nursing school. She said that one time STARS air ambulance had to come out to her hospital to transport a patient to an urban center. (This was about 17 years ago and our hospitals were remote enough that at the time, we didn't get very many helicopter ambulances out there as they couldn't travel that far - didn't have enough fuel capacity. If patients had to go out by air they usually went by plane. Many of these more remote communities have small airports as they were once fly-in only; these days the airports are more commonly used for medical flights and private aircraft. A ground ambulance would transport the patient to the airfield.) STARS radioed ahead and told them to turn on the lights on their helipad and ensure all the gates were closed. They replied, "Um, yeah, we cleared you a space in the parking lot, and our maintenance man is out there in his truck with the headlights on so you can see where you're supposed to land." Not sure what STARS thought of that!
Among the story in my small farming community my grandfather was kicked by a horse and it ruptured his spleen, he was bleeding internally, he crawled to his pickup and honked the horn until neighbors came to his aid. Local family Dr did emergency surgery in the clinic that day and saved his life. He was not transported to a hospital first, there was no time. They used Chloraform to put him under I believe.
Especially painful i've heard. Common hitting point too. Yep, might as well cut him open then and there, try to stop it. I'm a city kid and our family doctor did similar before in the clinic, it does happen. Usually only stabilization. In the UK we do often get many hour wait times for emergency response or treatment so it can be a similar situation even if near a hospital, when they're full.
So I don't normally stop to comment after consuming RU-vid videos, even when I wickedly enjoy them, but holy cow, this Sir is one of the largest nuggets of internet gold I've ever stumbled upon through countless hours spent here. Congratulations for winning the Internet.
I may be an engineer but I've got mad respect for rural medicine. It's like extreme first aid! Frontier medicine even! Y'gotta make due with what you've got and if you don't know how to do something, you need to pull from all of your past experience to jury rig a solution.
I'm a rural EMT and this is so true! 🤣 We've had folks having heart attacks who swear they can drive themselves just fine because "no need to bother y'all!". Every so often we'll get called to help take a grandparent to the hospital because they were injured seriously several days ago but insist they're fine and refuse yo go to the dr... these old farmers are tough as nails!!
My great-aunt was head nurse at a rural medical practice, after having been nurse at the second rural medical practice some 4 hours away. One day the doctor didn't come in (for reasons that were lost to time). A man came in after having his hand go through a threshing machine - aunt called the second practice, because this needed more care than a nurse can give it. The doctor answered, heard my aunt's name, and said "Oh don't worry, you got it." *and then hung up to go back to his game of golf*. Aunt did, in fact, have it. The man's hand had more stitches than anyone could count, and he lost of the tip of one finger, but gained full recovery of the rest of his hand. When they were done, aunt offered the man a ride home with her, since he had too many painkillers to drive himself. My aunt's daughter came to pick her mother up, because she'd borrowed the car that day. And that's the story of how my dad's cousin met her future husband. I'm sure there's been some slight exaggeration over time, but the scars on his hand are certainly real.
Dad's Cousin = Aunt.... Yup, that tracks. My family from somewhere (still don't fucking know how I'm related to them) still calls me "nephew" when I've never met them, and they aren't my parents siblings 😆
@@andrewknickerbocker314 It is exactly Like That. Fifth-cousins three times removed are still cousins, and their parents are still my uncles and aunties, and if I don't know how we're related they are STILL aunties and cousins.
My uncle, a farmer got MRSA while traveling. The drs could only keep it at bay. He was in danger of losing a chunk of arm. He concocted some veterinarian stuff together they used on the horses and fixed it right up. He said he could taste the meds for days, probably almost killed him, but he survived.
LOL!!!! could taste the meds for days!!!! I knew an old boy that took some horse antibiotics because the cut (read gash) on his arm was looking funny. it worked but he said the "tinny" taste in his mouth wouldn't go away for days!
I’m just so elated to read the wonderful stories of docs out there selflessly taking care of us. You are the best of us and don’t get nearly enough credit or fanfare.
Doctors in rural posting HAVE to have a basic all-round knowledge. In my rural posting, I had to do all that you mentioned (apart from Central lines) and more. 10/10 for the accuracy.
@@stephenrajgomes3304 You should be familiar with normal delivery and have a good grasp on common diseases in your area, which you will see in your general outdoor patients. In my posting, cases like typhoid, malaria, pneumonia, gerd, tenia, eczema etc were very common. And most importantly, never talk down to your parents. Rural patients are the most sensitive bunch I've ever seen.
Well, I got to wondering if opossums do have venom (I mean, platypus do, so you never know). Turns out, exactly the opposite: they produce an antivenom peptide that gives them protection from some kinds of snake venom, and it's being researched for possible medicinal application. Thanks for helping me learn something new today.
My grandpa (my mom’s dad) wasn’t a doctor - he was a cattle rancher - with hayfields to tend to all summer and cattle to care for year-round in a very small town. The winters were bitter cold, so if a momma cow had a calf in that weather, the calf was brought into their humble home to keep it alive. My grandparents were amazing enough just for that… But they also delivered the mail, were volunteer teachers and even the head clergy for their local congregation for many years, helped build a meetinghouse, worked on an FDR-era crew to create a highway pass over the nearby mountains, and managed the cemetery (including digging graves) in their later years. Grandpa passed away in 2002 after a sudden illness. He was 89. Grandma lived for many more years. My uncle (his son) who took over the ranch is also the county commissioner. I grew up in a suburb… I only hope I can somehow live up to my grandparents’ legacy ❤️
Fun fact: there's a book called "Notes of a young doctor" that describes an expirience of a doctor in a rural area. It was partially based on the author's own life and it's really good.
This is so true! My grandfather had me run errands with him one day, after all the hours of errands were done we stopped to get some lunch next. After lunch he goes please take me to the hospital now, I am like oh why do you have an appointment today? NO he was having a freaking heart issue and at the hospital they had to stop and restart his heart trying to correct the rhythm and it finally did. He later had to go to a city hospital for specialized laser heart surgery. I also grew up resetting his broken fingers, learned how to stitch him up, learned that duct tape is also a medical tool, and so much more! Once I cut my hand bad enough for stitches but we didn't have medical insurance so grandpa said we could go to the hospital and get stitches or I could let him to the stitches and we would get pizza which was a rare treat back then, we really enjoyed that pizza and he barely left a scar on my hand!
I can verify duct tape as a medical tool, split my finger instead of some kindling I was chopping and used a little duct tape and napkin to seal it back shut, almost no scar and just a little nerve damage.
As someone who's chronically ill & used to live in very rural Western Montana, this was SO accurate! Nothing like being the only patient to use the local ICU in over a year, because a snow storm blocked the ambulance & medi-vac options!
So I grew up in a farming town. It wasn't "three hours to the nearest hospital" remote, but it was remote enough that one woman had over half the town as her regular patients for something. She was a pediatrician and she was an OBGYN. Seriously, the only group of people who didn't see her for something was adult men, and even then she'd take them if the other doctor (who had all the other specializations lol) wasn't available. My mother enjoyed the fact that she could and would be my main doctor literally right until I had a baby, and still be available as my gyn, if I didn't want to leave my hometown. To be fair, I'm autistic and didn't react well to change, so that stability was also really good for me too
I grew up in a really rural area, and this is so accurate. When I was 11, my dad taught me how to do a field tracheotomy on someone with a ballpoint pen ... "just in case"
Guess everyone who has lived in a rural area can relate. My grandfather was... Nurse? Anyway he also was the doctor and medicine secretary. Among his exploits was a major hand laceration reconstruction using dental anesthesia. A heel tendon re-repair after it broke once, suture close to edge. Diagnostic and treatment of fractures including casting and cast removal. And, of course, delivery of babies. He had a very can do attitude with a clear "know how to, will do" take on medicine. So much so that when his license got under scrutiny he told the committee, who was asking him to stop practicing, something that roughly translate to "If I can help somebody, I will do so regardless of what you think". As he loved practicing medicine, cared for his patients and would actively seek to learn more. He passed away in 2016 of heart attack. However it was after he got really proud and happy for his granddaughter graduation in nursing.
After a fairly miserable day, this clip just made me giggle like a small child. I work as a nurse at a small vet clinic, not a human clinic, but yeah, you do sort of have to know it all, or else... Thank you for delivering a small ray of sunshine to my day!
A rural doctor here in WV clocked a mole on my BF that all his city doctors had missed. Saved his life. I grew up as a farmer and sewed up myself and my Dad several times.
My first gig after residency was in a rural community in the middle of Wisconsin. I only spent 3 months there, but learned more and did more than any of my other jobs over the past 23 years. Those docs really do it all. Not to the extreme hyperbole noted in this skit, but close.
The most unrealistic thing in this is that a rural doctor has more than one room in the clinic. (i mean seven? that is just outrageous). That one room also has to serve as a family kitchen.
My grandfather had a stroke while checking his cattle living in rural Kansas. He came home an hour late dragging the left side of his body. When ask by the doctor two days later why he didn't come in sooner his reply was; its calving time, he had to wait. He lived to be 89!
I have lived in many tiny towns up in northern Wisconsin and the UP and I can attest to this and the part about rural people just doing their own doctoring often enough. Last place i lived in up there had one doctor and his wife was the nurse and receptionist...nearest hospital was hours away.
I live in a fishing town and work at the local hospital. We're pretty normal right now but back in the day hoo boy. At one point the hospital was equipped with only an out dated x-ray machine and a microscope. Didn't have a full time doctor until the 1970's. The nearest hospital was about the same, and 70 miles away. There was a doctor who lived across the bay but she made more money working in the fish canning plant. The midwife/labor and delivery nurse had no formal training she was just a woman who. showed up. several of my friends were delivered by her. Many people I know including me were born on couches or in garages. At the fish processing plant hand infections were common from handling the fish. no doctor or nurse just someone who worked at the plant who handed out antibiotics. Now we have a lab, imaging department, 28 bed long term care, 16 bed acute, 4 bed ER, general operating room. We aren't up to a "normal" hospital but it's a far cry better than it was.
I’m a homebirth midwife serving a very rural area. The closest hospitals are an hour in any direction. A real conversation I once had: Me: I think we should go to the hospital because they can use Pitocin to get her labor started. Husband of pt: is that the same as the oxytocin we give our horses? I think I have some in the cabinet.
Go rural docs. Wow this hits home. We literally do everything and as the most educated in the rural community everyone relies on you to do more than your job
I cannot. 🤣 I moved to a very rural place in Arkansas from Buffalo, NY and it's like a different universe down there. The bus driver was the lunch lady and also the administrator. I was diagnosed with a genetic condition but instead of going to specialists because they were all 2+ hours away, my doctor was like, "nah, we'll treat you in the office here!" AND THEY DID. Now that I'm back in Buffalo I have to go to 3 different specialists on top of my primary doctor. 🤣
Love that Texaco Mike is back! Where I grew up we had one small building in the middle of nowhere that was the sheriff's office, general store, post office, and gas station. I miss rural living!
So my aunt is a OBGYN in Mexico. When she was a kid, she contracted polio and has a stunted leg. She went to UNAM which is an Ivy league school in Mexico City. She now has a clinic with multiple doc in the town where I’m originally from. Anyway, it was no uncommon for her to take this type of trek to see patients that couldn’t come see her. She told of one time she went to a remote village that required several relays, car ride donkey ride, hike and a couple day stay at the village. I’m sure there are docs around the world that do this type of thing on a normal basis.
My grandfather was a GP for rural farming communities, he saw there was a real need for doctors in those parts. Not many doctors would sacrifice a comfortable work life to go into the sticks.
I interviewed at Mad River Hospital. I waited in the ER, 2 patients got stepped by a cow and one cut all toes on his foot ..some kind of tractor cutting thing. The head of facility maintenance got me and march through a converted barn to have my interview. Wonderful friendly...dedicated people. A wonderful view from the parking lot.
Thanks for the video Dr. G. As a rural Dr, I love seeing some more publicity for our role in healthcare. It's the best job in the world. If only you changed MRI to CT you'd be right on the money.
Here in Mexico in our last year of the career (sixth or seventh year) is mandatory to give health care service to rural towns, is called the Social Service year, and this video is relatable for that :)
My sibling doesn't live in Mexico, but yeah, they also have that phase after they graduate as a physician. I think it's not that rare around the world.
This is amazing. Here in suburbia we live a pretty coddled life and take for granted how readily accessible great medical care is. Love all of you doctors and nurses who do it for the love of treating/caring for people.
Out of all my years as a medical professional, working at a rural health clinic was the best experience of my life. People are so nice, colleagues are so nice, enjoyable scenery, relaxing environment and the pay is insanely good. Unlike residency and fellowship, it’s by far my fondest memory.
EDIT: First of all thank you for "Elaborating on the character of" Texaco Mike. (I know he was introduced in one of the inssurance episodes 🙃) Second, as the wife of a doctor who used to work in a rural area many hours away from the city, I must say rural doctors are Heros without a cape. PS: the town actually wanted to involve him in politics, but we don't like that stuff 🤣
Rural docs have capes, they just have the good sense to have sleeves stitched on along with pockets to make them practical! Enda Mode's "NO CAPES!" was a message heard loud and clear long before that movie! 😉😄
Had an elementary school teacher who was the fire station chief (a volunteer position). The station was next door to the school and had this loud alarm. Whenever it went off he had to sprint out of the school and to the station. Another teacher would come cover and that was just an normal thing for his decades long teaching career.
Grew up on a farm, the comment about farmers is extremely accurate. My dad has broken ribs while cutting branches with a chain saw, came in, took some Ibuprofin, went back out and finished. He's also split open the space between the thumb and forefinger on his hand while using the manual post pounder (left hand if I remember right), mom and I stitched it up, put on a dressing, and he went back out to finish pounding fence posts. Only time he's willingly gone to the hospital was when he got an infected bite from trying to catch a feral kitten.
Hahaha accurate. My uncle broke his hand at our branding last year. And my dad sliced the tip of his finger off when a calf kicked him while he was castrating it...(they're getting old lol) took them to the ER a while after we finished and ate our traditional branding prime rib lunch. ER doc splinted my uncles hand, gave my dad some stitches, and wrote them a prescription to bring home to their wives for back rubs, red meat, and cold beer.
My wife graduated several years ago from her medical school's rural medicine program. This is so accurate. 😂 Any time I talk to someone who's thinking of going into medicine, I recommend that they check out rural medicine programs because they prepare students extremely well for residency, whether they end up staying in that specialty or not. My wife worked one-on-one with doctors the vast majority of the time and got much more direct experience with patient care than students on her school's more traditional campuses. She went into residency with more or less extensive experience with most of the procedures they required interns and PGY2s to do. She also saw a very wide variety of cases--everything from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, to impalements and crush injuries from farming accidents, to rare childhood illnesses. I lost count of how many babies she delivered in her third and fourth years. And there was a ton of opportunity for students to take the initiative (with faculty oversight, of course) in creating and leading projects like a free clinic, public health education efforts, and an on-site vaccination program to assist the local Amish community. TL;DR - Rural medicine is intense and hectic and often weird, and all of those things are what make it great. If you attend med school on a rural medicine campus, you will graduate prepared for just about anything.
This is true of rural life in general. Lots of opportunity to be a jack of all trades. As a kid, our college applications looked pretty good- it was easy to be a leader in a club of some sort if you wanted, participate in sports (our girls basketball team regularly finished games with 4 players on the floor because the other 2 fouled out), etc.
So true, I saw an interview with a doctor who did ED telemedicine. She sits in a room with a bank of monitors around her and wait for the calls. One of their hospitals on the system had a patient come in, no doctor available. She asked if anyone in the room had intubated a patient. No one had, so she talked them through intubation through the telemedicine link.
"Possums have venom??!" "Our possums do." As someone who does IT, having a doctor look up things online just makes sense. That's how I do 95% of my job. What is beyond me is how anyone did this kind of medicine 30+ years ago. Also how they did IT 30+ years ago. :D
if my grandfather is to be believed they showed up on location with about 300 pounds of source books in their trunk and _still_ had to go get stuff from time to time (backed up by him saying this in a room with about 800-1200 pounds of source books stacked up on a wall, and he wasn't even in programming, he was an electrician with a thing for neat gizmos) the flipside was that a lot of the problems they were dealing with were literally thousands of times less complicated but that doesn't mean it was much easier when their tools for obtaining and interpreting useable information were also worse. if the job was simple enough and the problems were frustrating enough just straight up writing something new to do the job was a real option: if you've sunk a week with no real progress into trying to fix something that you can just straight up replace in 8-12 hours and the client is okay with having a custom system then your boss might just sign off on it even knowing you're going to loose a day or two coming back and tweaking it later. I think one of the most horrifying things I've seen in regards to IT and troubleshooting was an actual factual punch-card program, it was stored in a large wooden crate compartmentalized into small sections and if even one card in the thing ever got misplaced or inserted wrong or anything the whole thing wouldn't work and I don't even want to think of the nightmares that produced, I've heard plenty of stories about punch card programmers committing suicide and I legitimately think at least some of them were true...tried looking them up but newspapers were already fond of printing things that never even happened instead of just wildly misrepresenting things at that point.
Heh. My first go-around with COBOL was on a punched-card Burroughs machine (used to be the computer they kept students grades on). Got through typing up my first program (about 150 cards IIRC), left the machine room to go home...slipped on the steps going to the parking lot, the source code went flying every which way, and fell all over the water covered sidewalk & parking lot. Picked 'em up, threw 'em in the trash and dropped the class the next day. Retook it when they got a computer a bit more contemporary. 😁
@@evernewb2073 yeah only 30 years ago is the early 90s now. I know it feels like it should be the 60s or 70s but it's the 90s. By that time, we're talking 386s with 300MB harddrives and Linus Torvalds uploading Linux 0.99 on the internet and battling Prof. Tanenbaum on Usenet over whether his kernel design is any good. Linus is in his early 50s now... That punch card stuff? Add at least another 15 years. Even the 80s already had tape drives and floppies and C64s for the kiddos. Yup, time flies.
@@TheFeldhamster yeah, that grandpa was late-stage punch cards through...actually, huh, I have no clue when he retired, like, not even a guess as to the decade...weird the things that never occur to you until they get brought up. I know he was involved with tectronics just after it was literally 8 guys in a garage and worked on the radar systems in the b52 (way less of a clear date than you'd think, that is probably a few people's job description right now) but I don't know enough of the history of the industry to place his disassociated stories to dates. and again, he was in electronics and to a lesser degree gadgets/etc, not a programmer, those 1200~ish pounds of source books were from like a year or two with a programming related job at most. at least according to him the literal hundreds of pounds of source books in the trunk was almost as old as non-card programming being something you would actually see in a business or somesuch instead of just a university or research lab, so essentially it's as old as sending a programmer out on-site since everything was running on a custom system and often built out of stuff that was intentionally obfuscated against diagnosis by whoever developed it as a way to promote job security and increase their reputation: way easier to convince people you're a genius out of a comic book when nobody else can make heads or tails of your work.
Worked as a PA in rural med for the last 4 years, 2 of which were in a lobstering community. If a lobsterman cut his day short and brought his boat in, we were similarly concerned. Also my supervising physician went on to run for state government shortly after I left.
i remember seeing a traumatic pneumothorax as a resident in my rural rotation, and ended up watching a youtube video on chest tube insertion with my staff, i nailed that chest tube though!
In South Africa, graduates from most medical professions have to complete a mandatory year of what's called community service. In the case of MD's, they have to do two years of residency prior to that. Without it, the respective medical councils won't recognize your degree. I graduated from dentistry, so only had to do one year. I was given a host of options and was then told where I had to go. I got sent to a rural town that wasn't too bad. (You get paid extra for working in a rural area, btw). The one constantly aggravating thing was that I was incredibly limited in the equipment and instruments I had available to myself. Basically just a few forceps, elevators and suturing material. The x-ray tube was already broken for more than 7 years when I got there and the dental chair (donated by the town's trust fund) had no functioning water line or compressor. I was just cleaning up blood and saliva with tons of gauze. Not being able to take or develop any dental x-rays was also less than optimal. The most interesting thing I saw was a guy who got a textbook Le Fort I fracture from being hit on the nose with a knopkierrie (a traditional war club).
I had an uncle that was a rancher (and did rodeos and horse breaking when younger). He had all his major joints replaced and heart bypass surgery. He said he will "keep a living as long as they don't run out of parts".
Reminds me of my time as a Rural emergency physician/public health coordinator/mayor (lol), in a rural mountainous area. I remember a patient with a broken leg hitchhiked a tractor to my office, and after putting a plaster cast on him, I told the guy to wait till the end of my shift, then drove the guy home myself, in my brand new car, to his village (the road to which had no asphalt), which was an hour away.
I work at a stroke comprehensive center, we get a lot of patients from the satellite hospitals up north. We can immediately tell if a patient is from the satellite hospital if the chart or patient mentions how they were chopping wood right before symptom onset. Most hospitals use the GCS or NIH. We have the Wood Chopping Scale.
Love this. Thank you. From FL and people dont realize how resourceful people from rural areas and the south are. This is so awesome. Also the best doctors i have are the ones who are actually curious and arent more afraid of malpractice than actually practicing. 💙💙💙💙💙
I was working on the farm in Northern, I mean NORTHERN Montana. I was just learning how to pace a semitruck while getting loaded with wheat from a combine. Hung out in the same relative position too long and front loaded the trailer with a ton or 3 too much leaving a huge mound in the back that I needed to level out. Pulled the truck into the fallow strip out of the way, climbed up onto top of the semitruck trailer side and started to shovel the wheat level. I was in a hurry and was moving very fast so that I wouldn't create too big of a hole in the truck rotation so that the combine wouldn't have to stop and wait for the next truck down the line a ways. I stood up after shoveling a ton or 2 of wheat and got dizzy and fell off the truck flat onto my back. Lost my breath and looked around for anyone nearby. I was quite alone and thought that I was going to die right there. I stretched and arched my back until I could breathe again, then got into the truck and hustled back into the truck rotation. There are usually half a dozen trucks running between the combine and the elevators where the farmers sell their wheat about 5 to 10 minutes apart. I was behind. I caught up and everything went smoothly. No stoppages. The next morning, I was changing out a tire mounted on a split rim that had gone flat. When I reached down to pull the rim out of the tire, I heard something big move in my back and it hurt pretty good. I couldn't stand up. It was like my back was locked in place. So, I'm walking around the farm shop bent over trying to find the farm boss to see if I could get a ride into town to get looked at by the chiropractor. When I found him, he swore at me and told me he wasn't going to let me "brick it." If I insisted, my folks could take me later that afternoon. We reached the chiropractor at 4:59 PM. He, the chiropractor, was NOT happy. He listened to my story and looked at me like I had three heads. When he touched my back, he instantly recoiled and jumped back. He started pacing and yelling like he was having a nervous breakdown. He was saying things like, "I chose a small town because I thought it was going to be easy. I've had 20 cases today, all of which should have been going to the emergency room. What the hell are you people doing out there? It's like a G...D... war zone. Half these traumas I've never seen before. They didn't prepare us for this in school. What the F... am I gonna do?" Turns out it was his first day on the job. I was hurting pretty good by this time and I just begged him, "Doc, just help make the pain go away." He said, "Get over here!" He moved me to face him with my back to the wall. He leaned over and put his right should under my right shoulder and told me, "You've got 4 sub located ribs sticking out of your back. We're going to try and shove them back in and see what happens." He then reached around me and put his fist into my back and ran me into the wall. We heard a number of crunches and I was standing up straight and, in a lot, less pain. I paid my $150 and went back to work. I thanked him profusely for his help but he didn't seem interested. He let us out and locked the door after us. I don't know if he stayed. I never went back.
