As you may have noticed I have been using my site as a forum for soldiers and veterans to share their funny stories. And so I get stuff emailed to me I read through it, and put the best ones I find up here.

Some of the stories I get sent are funny, but not written in a particularly comedic manner. Up to this point I have gone back and forth with the original writers to try to help them polish it up. Unfortunately this is beginning to eat up a bunch of my time, when it would probably be faster for me to just re-write the thing.

And so that is the new policy on submissions. If you send me a story, I will edit it, and possibly re-write a portion of it, to make it a funnier read. You will still get credit for writing the story, I will just mention that I helped you to tell it.

When I was going through the Army LPN program at Ft. Sam Houston, part of our course requirements was doing clinical rotations on the various floors and sections of the hospital. Most of the job was becoming familiar with doing complete patient assessments, charting, and basic procedures; ie: dressing changes, moving the patients, etc. One of my classmates whom I was paired with one day, learned a very valuable lesson.

My partner that day (who I will refer to as PFC Mybad) was taking care of a young man on a medical/surgical ward. That means all the serious problems he had were treated and he was now recovering. The morning routine was pretty simple: go in, greet the patient, do a physical assessment, change the linens if necessary, and ask if there’s anything they need prior to morning medication rounds. Unfortunately, Mybad forgot one key element at the beginning of this encounter. She failed to read the man’s chart to get a history of his current condition.

The physical assessment is essentially a rundown of check on the body’s major systems; musculoskeletal, cardiac, pulmonary, integumentary, etc. She did all of these very cheerfully and professionally, the whole time chatting up the man and his wife who was at the bedside. Then things went wrong. When checking muscle strength, a routine test is to hold your hands out, palms up, and ask the patient to press down on your hands with his as hard as he can. When she asked him to do this, he just kind of stared at her, bewildered.

That’s when the wife softly said, ”He’s a quadriplegic, dear.”

PFC Mybad turned beet red while the patient, his wife, and I went into near hysterics laughing.