While in my final year of Med.school I accepted a temp. job as a GP in a small village in the middle of the Finnish forests. Finland is the butt-end of many jokes in Scandinavia, mainly concerning excessive alcohol-use, mosquitos and trees, so I can't say I hadn't been warned. However, nothing could have prepared me for the wounds, damages and stories behind them! (In the defense of the Finnish people: the government HAD just halved the taxes on alcohol, but still...)

Case 1:

A young male, let's call him Pekka, came in on a Wednesday, as the damages from the weekend's heavy partying had started to bother him. He had lacerations and abrasions to his entire backside, starting from his ankles, and reaching to the top of his head. Pekka's main concern was a dislocated thumb; it was sticking out from his palm in a 90 degree angle and was a nice shade of purple.

I ordered X-ray imaging for his back and called in my supervisor to reset the thumb. Luckily for Pekka, he had no fractures anywhere.

Now to how the damages occured: Pekka was at the local waterhole with a friend, when they decided to drive home. Once they were driving, somewhat faster than the speed-limit (as one does being young, living in a village in the middle of nowhere), Pekka realised the driver was as drunk as he was! And he decided to take action, and get out of the car as fast as possible. While the driver was preoccupied with a sharp bend in the road, Pekka opened the passenger door and left the car... He became a regular customer over the summer, coming in every Monday or Tuesday, when the anaesthetic effects of the weekend began to wear off to have his cast replaced and the thumb reset, and reset, and reset... Not quite a Darwin-nominee yet, but I'm sure he's out there working on it!

Case 2: A middle-aged woman came in for a check-up after a car accident two days earlier. She had been on her way to work, when she suffered a sudden black-out while driving and woke up with her car on its roof. She felt fine, managed to get out of the car on her own and walked the rest of the way to work, from where she phoned triple A and had them remove the car. The reason for her visit with me was a horrible headache which had occured a few hours after the car-accident and had been worsening since. She was concerned it might be whip-lash, and claimed it was worse when she moved her head. Without giving me time to intervene, she suddenly started vigorously shaking her head up and down to demonstrate. The nurse and I both jumped at her and got hold of her head and held her tight till we could fit a collar and have the mad woman transported on a gourney to the radiology-dept. Imaging showed a fractered cervical vertebra, which luckily(?) hadn't been displaced, even though she'd done her very best in my office! She too lives to tell the tale, but I am sure she'll soon be a more permanent Darwin-winner :)

Submitted on 04/16/2006

Submitted by: Dorothy
Reference: July 2004

Copyright © 2006 DarwinAwards.com

James said:
Neutral: Personal Account
Thanks, Dorothy, I like your write-up! The second story is better than the first, but taken as an overall personal account, I think the readers might get a chuckle out of this!

Sheryl said:
Neutral: Personal Account
Thanks for taking the time to write up your experiences, Dorothy. I'll go with James on this one. I, too, like the second story better but the first has merit as well (especially since he seems to be a regular "customer").

Jorge said:
Definitely Keep: Personal Account

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