"I'll show you, bitch!"

The other day at the hospital, while I was shadowing in the emergency department, a physician called me over to the x-ray computer terminal.

"Vitum, come take a look at this."

He showed me an X-ray very similar to the one I've borrowed from Wikipedia thanks to the GNU Free Documentation License, photoshopped to match my story, and placed here.

"What's wrong with this picture?" he asked.

"Well," I replied, "I haven't done my musculoskeletal study unit yet, so I could be way off... but aren't hands supposed to be attached to arms?"

"Right!" the doctor replied. "Trust me, the story is just as good as the X-ray. It even made the newspaper."

Assuming that a story in the newspaper presents fewer issues of confidentiality, I'll share the exciting story with you here, with only a few altered details. Truth is indeed stranger.

Apparently, this gentleman was involved in a fight with his girlfriend, and all hopped up on drugs. The fight got more and more heated to the point where our patient reached his boiling point. "FINE!" he shouted. "I'LL SHOW YOU, BITCH!!!"

And show her he did. He proceeded to leave the house, go to the garage, and fire up the chop saw. He placed his arm under the saw, and sliced his hand off clean through at the wrist.

It gets better.

He realized that he was bleeding profusely, as typically happens when you slice your hand off (I assume), so he figured he should do something about that.

He went into the kitchen, fired up the stove, and in tribute to what happens in one of the Rocky movies - so I'm told - he mashed the freshly-severed stump of his arm into the red-hot stove element, cauterizing it to stop the bleeding. SSSSSSSssssssssttttttt.

I'm sure his girlfriend feels bad now. I hope she at least admitted he won the argument.