The Blackened Member

The triage nurse placed the chart in the "IN" box and gave me a sympathetic look before walking away.

I picked the chart up. "Blackened penis," it said, under "chief complaint".

I guess the look on my face said it all, because the other nurses crowded around, wanting to know what wonderful medical mystery chart I held in my hands.

"What is it?" they asked, "anything interesting?"

"Manbits."

"Oh, really?"

"Yup."

The aforementioned "blackened penis" sat in a private room looking rather sheepish. Sticking on a straight face I introduced myself, making sure to use my title. One can't have too many titles in these sorts of situations. Slowly, the story emerged: he had been having sex the night before and had awoken in the morning to the alarming sight of his somewhat swollen penis which was now quite a few shades darker than it had been the night before. I suppose when you are a male Caucasian man and your penis turns the colour of ebony, this qualifies as a Problem.

"Any pain?" I asked.

"No," he said. "None at all."

"So.... any unusually vigorous activities that would have caused this?"

"No." He was sticking to his story. "I have sex maybe once or twice a week, but just the usual."

"No trauma?" I was fishing now.

"No."

O-k-a-y.... Time for the clinical exam.

The offending member made its grand appearance, then - a gloriously bruised, somewhat swollen species of penis. Quite evidently, something must have happened to give it this wondrous shade of purple, but damned if I was going to be able to discover what exactly that had been. However, he was quite right in that he didn't seem particularly tender, nor were his jewels deformed and so, after some mulling over the Purple Penis Problem, I decided to discharge him.

"Now," I said, "I want you to rest for a couple of weeks until this problem clears up."

"Oh," he replied, "that's not a problem - I'm not working anyway this month."

I couldn't help it - my eyebrows arched. "When I say rest, I'm not talking about work."

Understanding dawned on him. "Oh!" he exclaimed, and blushed. "Okay."

And so ended another day on the job.