Practicing Medicine Without a License

I suppose at one time or another every nurse has been called upon to dispense medical advice to family and friends. Even though I haven’t had hands-on patient experience in many years, I still get the occasional phone call requesting a medical opinion.

Recently a friend brought her son, age eight, to my home to have me look at a splinter in his thigh. It was more than a splinter. He’d fallen from a tree and in doing so a twig had somehow run under the skin of his leg for a couple of inches. When the boy saw it, he freaked and tried to pull it out but broke the twig in the process, leaving a portion of it in his leg.

It was easily visible beneath the skin but it seemed a stretch for me to attempt removing the twig with pointed surgical tweezers. Besides, the child was not thrilled to have me do so much as touch it so I was pretty sure that the idea of pulling it out with a sharp instrument was not going to be a winner in his book.

My decidedly non-medical husband got in on the act and we pushed (gently—but still the child protested) on the back end of the twig, trying to ooch (a certifiable medical term) it back through the channel by whence it had entered. No luck.

The mom was reluctant to go to the ED because it wasn’t an emergency and it would be expensive.

"Well," my husband and I opined, "you could just leave it alone for a couple of days, let it fester and then it should be easy to push out."

The mother was doubtful. Recognizing her hesitation, I called my standby medical consult—my brother-in-law, who’s an ED doc. There was no answer so I left a message explaining the situation, including our recommendation regarding festering.

The ED doc soon returned my call, emphasizing that the twig needed to come out but that it could wait until the next day when the procedure could be done in a doctor’s office (and would be covered by the family’s co-pay) and that an antibiotic might be required. Then he made a snide remark about our treatment of choice—festering—as though it was akin to voodoo.

I was quick to remind him that he was talking to someone whose brand of medicine is a blend of folk and traditional. I didn’t dare tell him that I know coal oil (kerosene) to have amazing healing properties, treating everything from simple cuts to copperhead bites. He’s a city slicker who grew up on Long Island so he doesn’t know or believe in the make-do treatments that my backwoods granny so expertly practiced.

A few days later, in the company of several women (one a practicing RN), I told the tale of the twig-under-the-skin incident. I wasn’t far into the story when two of the women (one the RN) said, almost in unison, "It would’ve come out in a couple days, after it festered." I had a good laugh and wished my bother-in-law had been there to hear their totally unprompted responses. The kerosene treatment was also familiar to them and the RN wondered aloud, "Why did it work? It has no scientific basis that I know of, but it worked!" None of us had an answer.

On the day following his fall, before my festering theory could be tested, my tree-climbing, gravity-challenged young friend was surgically divested of the souvenir of his fall and left the doctor’s office with three sutures, no antibiotics and an excellent prognosis.

Do any of you have experience with or amusing stories involving home remedies? Please share them here.