Dick’s House Diagnoses Male Student as Pregnant

I don't ask, for much these days
And I don't bitch, and whine, if I don't get my way
I only wanna fertilize another behind my lover's back
I sit and watch it grow standin' where I'm at
Fertilize another behind my lover's back
And I'm keepin' my secrets mine
I push my seed in her bush for life
It's gonna work because I'm pushin' it right
If Mary dropped my baby girl tonight
I would name her Rock'N'Roll

- Cody Chestnutt

Allen Walker ’11 was sick. He had been experiencing increasingly severe symptoms since the term began. What started as mild nausea turned into spontaneous and frequent vomiting. No medication was helping. So Walker decided to get in touch with Dick’s House to get an appointment to try to get healthy. They told him that the next available appointment was at 8 a.m. on the Friday of Green Key Weekend.

Walker, no stranger to Dick’s House, decided to “game the system” to get an appointment. He wrote another e-mail to Health Services, emphasizing that his sickness was contagious and could possibly be H1N1, and that his hand had recently fallen off. He was immediately given an appointment.

Rita Sherman, the really super-qualified doctor-definitely-not-moonlighting-med-student who was assigned to Walker’s case, met him with a big smile and a series of tests. She took his temperature, asked him if he was depressed, asked him if he really was sure that he wasn’t depressed, and then went onto WebMD to search for a diagnosis.

The first diagnosis was depression.

“Would you like some antidepressants?” she asked. “You seem a little down.”

After assuring Sherman that he was not depressed, only sick, Walker asked what the other possible diagnoses were. The next two diagnoses were H1N1 and meningitis. After testing Walker for these diseases and quarantining him for a week, Sherman was still unsure. So she decided to ask Walker what his symptoms were. He informed her that he was vomiting with unusual regularity, despite adjusting his diet and habits to attempt to rectify the problem.

After a really good think and an hour spent on Wikipedia, Sherman found the answer. Walker was pregnant.

“It just makes so much sense,” she said. “We’re trained at Dick’s House only to be able to diagnose H1N1, pregnancy, meningitis, and depression. After checking the other three off the list, it was only a matter of time before I did the math and figured out that it was pregnancy. I read about pregnancy online that it can involve vomiting. I added two plus two, and I got four.”

Despite Walker’s protestations that he could not possibly be pregnant, Sherman directed him to the pharmacy, where he was given medication and advised strongly to speak to a counselor and to his dean. Before they parted ways, Sherman put her head to Walker’s stomach and proclaimed confidently that it would be a girl.

•    At press time, Dick’s House was still officially named Dick’s House. However, the campus health center has recently been undergoing a series of name changes, from the “House of Dick” to the “Center for Diagnosing H1N1 and Depression.” This may lead to inaccuracies that arise with time.