[1570] in Humor
HUMOR: (sick)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (abennett@MIT.EDU)
Tue Aug 27 14:30:54 1996
From: <abennett@MIT.EDU>
To: humor@MIT.EDU
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996 14:19:29 EDT
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996 12:30:47 -0400
From: pug@MIT.EDU (Sharalee M. Field)
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 1996 10:20:04 -0400
From: MGSHEA@aol.com
===============================================================
Okay, this message was so tragic and funny that I had to pass it along --
South African Health - Pelonomi Hospital
from Cape Times, 6/13/96
"For several months, our nurses have been baffled to find a dead patient in
the same bed every Friday morning" a spokeswoman for the Pelonomi Hospital
(Free State, South Africa) told reporters.
"There was no apparent cause for any of the deaths, and extensive checks on
the air conditioning system, and a search for possible bacterial infection,
failed to reveal any clues." "However, further inquiries have now revealed
the cause of these deaths.
It seems that every Friday morning a cleaner would enter the ward, remove the
plug that powered the patient's life support system, plug her floor polisher
into the vacant socket, then go about her business. When she had finished her
chores, she would plug the life support machine back in and leave, unaware
that the patient was now dead. She could not, after all, hear the screams and
eventual death rattle over the whirring of her polisher.
"We are sorry, and have sent a strong letter to the cleaner in question.
Further, the Free State Health and Welfare Department is arranging for an
electrician to fit an extra socket, so there should be no repetition of this
incident. The enquiry is now closed."
By the way, the headline of the newspaper story was, "Cleaner Polishes Off
Patients."
