He Pooped in the Cup!

You may have heard of a police "ride-along," which is where you ride along with a police officer to experience the work of a law enforcement officer.  I've never done that, but I did recently get the chance to ride shotgun in an ambulance across town to an emergency room, with a student in the back being helped by the paramedics. 

As usual on these impromptu ride-alongs (never pleasant experiences), I had to jump in at the last possible moment and with no notice.  I'm glad I had my cell phone, otherwise I wouldn't have had any numbers to call to get a ride later.  The ride was actually quite interesting.  The sea of traffic doesn't exactly part, but instead scatters in all directions, often not actually helping the driver to get through.  He drove surprisingly fast, which is exactly how I hope they will drive should I ever need their services.

So we get there and the student that we brought, who doesn't speak English well (nor Spanish, but instead a fairly obscure African language), and he tells the nurses that he needs to use the bathroom.  They send him into the bathroom with a cup to collect a urine sample, which seems logical considering the medical problem he seems to be experiencing.  After about 10 minutes, there's no noticeable sound coming from the room and the boy still hasn't emerged, so the nurse begins knocking on the door and talking to him through the door.  About a minute later, the door opens and he passes out the plastic cup filled with what is clearly not urine.  That's right folks.  He pooped in the cup.

The nurse, obviously a man who has worked in the medical field for a long time, calmly hands him the cup back and says "this isn't urine, throw it on the trash and come out."  The boy threw the "sample" in the garbage can and emerged.

Admittedly, the language barrier probably made it so that exactly "what" to put into the cup wasn't really clear, particularly for someone who has probably never seen nor heard of giving a urine sample.  After all, he had told them he needed to go to the bathroom... then they told him to deposit whatever he needed to "do" into the cup.  So he did. 

The rest of the evening was equally bizarre.  When the father finally arrived 4 hours later (not a typo, FOUR hours later and only with tremendous coaxing and a ride from someone else), he seemed basically indifferent to what was happening with his son.  With a telephone translator, we got across some basics and ultimately the doctor was able to complete a rudimentary conversation with the man.  The evening concluded with an 11:30pm drive into a neighborhood that I wouldn't recommend anyone go even during the day.  I'll save the talk about the neighborhood for another day, though.

The takeaway for the night?  I don't think I'll ever see the urine sample cup quite the same way again!  Also, be very clear with instructions, not only in the classroom, but in the real world, too.