As a first-year doctor working in a hospital, I have been chastised many times by grimacing patients in pyjamas about how I “don’t know how it feels” or that I’m “just doing this to torture them”. The second accusation is close to the truth for patients who abuse the public hospital system to get free drugs, hot showers, clean sheets and nurses to harass. The first accusation, however, has recently been laid to rest. I now patrol the wards and intervene with impunity. I have been dealt the great trump card of suffering and have been blessed, you might say, with the get-out-of-jail-free card of sympathy. I have done what very few men have ever done. I have given birth! — albeit to a 4.0 × 2.5 mm piece of calcium salt.

Early one morning, I awoke with a strange urge to urinate, but had difficulty doing so. It wasn’t that I couldn’t get anything out — it was more that it hurt to get it out. I kept starting and stopping and wondering what in Zeus’ name was going on. Although the problem plagued me all day, I decided that I didn’t need to consult a doctor. I would diagnose myself.

I made a mental checklist of symptoms. Urgency? Check. Burning? Check. Difficulty initiating a stream? Check.

I felt like a pharmaceutical ad.

I thought I had a urinary tract infection.

Unfortunately, as I didn’t talk to a doctor, no one reminded me that urinary tract infections are incredibly rare in men and usually indicate cancer or some other form of horrible co-disease. So my prescription was to drink a lot of water and “borrow” some antibiotics from the emergency department (ED). (This is why hospitals don’t trust doctors to handle and dispense medications and instead leave that up to the nurses.)

That night, during my shift in the ED, my symptoms continued and I became well aquainted with the toilets. I had just finished with a patient and sent him home when I sat down and felt a horrible ache in my left lower back. It was as if a body builder had ploughed his hand into my side, grabbed my kidney and squeezed it like a fresh tomato. Sweat broke out across my forehead. I got up and went to the bathroom, hoping somehow that it would relieve the pain. Alas! . . . nothing.

Staggering back to a chair, I flopped into it ungracefully and, putting on a brave face, told my supervisor I had a pain in the back.

Feeding a doctor a symptom is a wonderful thing. It’s like feeding a trained circus dog a biscuit. The symptom immediately unlocked an automatic pathway in her brain and, like a good doctor, she quickly rattled through a series of classic screening questions: Have you ever had back problems? Have you had this pain before? How would you describe the pain? How would you score the pain out of 10, with 10 being the worst pain you can imagine and zero being no pain? On and on she went.

I answered as best as I could, but that hand in my back was squeezing tighter and tighter and I could feel my stomach contemplating sending my dinner back to where it came from.

At some point, my supervisor’s visual system interrupted her brain. She stopped asking questions and, with a quizzical look, observed: “You’re sweating”.

I nodded.

“I feel like I’m going to vomit”, I gurgled.

Fortunately, a nurse walked past and instantly diagnosed me as sick. She took my arm, led me to a bed and handed me one of the large cups used in the ED for catching stomach contents. I had always despised these cups. They embody all that’s wrong with letting non-medical people have input into how a hospital is run. Some bean counter must have found them on sale after a milk bar went out of business. He must have thought himself very clever for scoring thousands of cups on the cheap. However, I’m sure they cost the hospital more than they save. The logo on the side taunts ill patients with “SLURP, SLURP!” in bubbly pink and blue lettering. Luckily, I knew to avoid making eye contact with the cup.

Lying down calmed my stomach enough for the nurse to roll me over for a shot of an antiemetic. For a while, I felt a bit better and thought things might work out, but unfortunately, the pain wouldn’t let me relax. I was sure that the body builder squeezing my kidney had noted my recent drug use and injected some steroids into his own rear.

A few minutes went by and the pain escalated from crushing to nuclear. I broke down and staggered to my feet to tell the nurse that I wanted to cross the line and become a patient. This was a poorly conceived plan. Standing up immediately pushed my stomach into reverse and I promptly filled the SLURP! cup. Luckily, the nurse saw this, and, holding a fresh cup, rushed over like a widow with a coaster trying to protect her antique furniture from a foaming beer bottle.

During a long period of mind-numbing pain, the nurse probed me for the usual patient demographics and produced what is known in the biz as a “large-bore needle”. The questions were quick and in themselves painless. However, the needle was less so. She missed my giant forearm veins twice. I thought I had always been nice to that nurse, but looking back through the haze of pain, I really can’t remember which nurse it was. There are a few who simply hate all doctors. Or maybe she resented having to put that first needle in my butt. So, I guess I could have deserved it. Fantastically, on the third attempt to get a vein . . . success! and with it . . . sweet, sweet morphine.

When frail, elderly ladies who subsist on toast and ginger ale come into the ED with broken hips, we give them 1 mg morphine at a time, and 5–8 mg turns them into giggling school girls. When an average-sized man comes in after a knife fight, we give him 2.5 mg morphine at a time, and after about 15 mg he has to be fished off the ceiling with a broom. During my stay in the ED, they gave me 5 mg morphine at a time and it took 10 doses to make me feel human again. Apparently, that body builder had built up a tolerance by injecting more than just steroids. After being pumped with 50 mg morphine plus various other analgesics and antiemetics, I was finally able to relax.

As I failed to diagnose, I had a kidney stone. It was not a fun night for me waiting for that rock to work its way through my narrow plumbing. But, as I was a “VIP” (ie, doctor), I received a couple of perks. First, I was put up in the sexual assault room, which comes equipped with its own ensuite bathroom and total privacy. When I pushed the nurse call button, she showed up immediately with morphine in hand.

Well, I passed the stone completely a couple of days later and, although the pain returned occasionally during that time, it was nothing like the first attack. Overall, it was quite an experience and I learned a few things. For instance, I learned that, contrary to common belief, kidney stones are much worse when they are higher up. I was still in a pleasant, early morning stupor when I heard the unmistakable “ping” in the toilet bowl. I shook my head and thought “that was too easy”. I had expected to be balled up on a cold, tiled floor, screaming for the afterlife, as I gave birth to my little rock monster. Furthermore, all that time staring up at a white ceiling in a morphine-induced stupor had got me thinking. It’s a rough gig being a hospital patient, and I wasn’t even offered the food. About 10% of all people who enter a hospital never come out. So, I was lucky . . . this time. But I have to enter that hospital multiple times a week.

So the next time you’re in the hospital and some fresh-faced doctor is inflicting a little pain on you in the name of improving your health, just think, that doctor may be me . . . and I do know how you feel! I also live in constant fear that, at any time, another illegitimate child may some day return to reduce me to tears.