Friday, July 10, 2009

Being in the Healthcare Profession (caution to those with weak stomachs)

makes for a very specific, under-appreciated sense of humor. I'm moved to post today in the honor of the fact that I will be going out to lunch with some colleagues of mine, and it occurred to me to invite my husband who is not yet in the profession. And then I took a moment to think. 3 nurses sitting around a lunch table will not give a second thought to having a very graphic conversation about the time that someone's patient had explosive diarrhea and it shot 6 feet across the room to land in someone's hair. Or the time the we watched some unfortunate soul yank his fully inflated Foley catheter out, and then describe the wine-colored urine that the patient had for a week following said incident. Each story is, of course, punctuated with laughter and interspersed with eating with great appetite. Nursing humor goes way beyond potty humor. So I'm thinking that I won't be inviting my husband after all... He won't appreciate the hilarity. Not yet anyway.
He will soon be joining the ranks of the twisted humor society aka the healthcare professional. In a few weeks he'll be starting EMT classes, and ready to roll by December. He'll soon have his own bodily fluid stories to share. I'm so proud of him. I'm also very glad that I will soon be able to bring home the stories of stool that smells like buttered popcorn and looks like sweetened condensed milk, urine with large black chunks floating in it, and various other disgusting exploits that one encounters when taking care of the very ill.
Hope I didn't actually cause anyone reading this to lose their lunch!

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