‘Oops! I Killed My Mother by Mistake’

Arab News

HAFR AL-BATEN, 2 December 2007 — A Saudi man accidentally killed his mother, at least on paper, when he tried to help his foreign friend, Al-Watan reported. The saga started when the foreign friend asked the Saudi to admit his relative to the hospital as his own mother in order to receive treatment last Ramadan. The Saudi agreed to help and admitted his friend’s relative under his own mother’s name. The officials at the hospital did not suspect anything and the medical treatment proceeded smoothly. The Saudi never dreamed that the woman’s condition would worsen and after few days she died! The Saudi man was left with no option but to declare his “own” mother dead on paper so they could bury her. After many months, with his real mother very much alive and not knowing that she had been legally declared dead, the Saudi man felt guilty and confessed to hospital officials the whole story. Police have opened an investigation on this case.

Sorry, It Was the Wrong Foot

JIZAN, 2 December 2007 — A careless doctor put a cast on the wrong foot of a child suffering from a broken leg, Okaz reported. The doctor insisted on putting the cast on the right foot of the child claiming that he knew best because he was the doctor. He decided the child’s right foot was broken just by feeling it and not X-raying it. The father returned home with his child thinking that the doctor had done his job, but was shocked when he later discovered that the wrong foot had been treated. The father then angrily returned to the hospital where the errant doctor corrected his mistake.