I was a new physical therapist sitting in Pulmonary Rounds twenty-plus years ago. One of the Pulmonologists told a story from his residency.
A child was brought to the emergency room after swallowing a jawbreaker and getting it stuck halfway down. He was moving air around it and in discomfort but his mom was the one in the greater distress.
They decided to take him back to a procedure room to try to remove the jawbreaker. The doctor was wheeling his bed while trying to calm the mother. The hallway was a long downhill ramp ending in a T-intersection. The doctor turned to calm to the mother, stumbled, and lost his grip on the bed. It took him a moment to recover and the bed was now accelerating downhill.
He looked at the bed. He looked at the mom. The bed. The mom. Finally he sprinted after the now speeding bed. He caught up to it grabbing it just as it slammed into the wall.
The kid jerked up and coughed the jawbreaker out.
The mother caught up screaming and yelling.
The doctor remained calm. “Ma’am. Ma’am. You are really very fortunate.”
“What? How?”
“Sometimes we need to do this three or four times.”
The moral of the story: Take credit when things go right because you are going to be blamed when they don’t.
With credit to Dr. Cohen,
Tom.