You’d think that nurses would be fairly cool about having our own body parts examined.  Nope.  Not this nurse.  I’m still trying.  Take a deep breath, try to act casual…and make a big fool of myself.  Always.

Back in the dark ages of the late 80s, I was a fairly new nurse.  I was also pregnant.  Being pregnant is a whole new lesson in humility.  Your so called “privates” are no longer that.  I’d been working as a nurse for about a few months, but I worked at a Children’s Hospital.  No pregnancy stuff, as a rule.  It was all about pediatrics for me then.  I worked all night, carrying two babies around, one on each hip.  Not counting the little guy inside.  Slept little or none during the days, eventually it just wore me out.  I wound up calling the doctor for advice on my “stomach bug”.   It turned out to be labor, at 25 weeks.  At the hospital, someone didn’t have their thinking cap on right.  He wrote the order wrong, and the nurses insisted on following the orders.  The short story- they gave me many, many more doses of a medication (terbutaline) than is safe, as well as way to much IV fluid.  I developed pulmonary edema, which is where your heart can’t deal with the faster rate and sudden increase in fluids and is just letting it pile up in your lungs.  Your lungs don’t do well filled up with fluids, and it can be lethal.  They did rally to fix their mistakes, giving me tons of IV lasix and morphine.  The morphine hit me like a ton of bricks (I’m a cheap date).  There were doctors in and out of the room.  Over the next 24 hours I had dozens of people  listening to my lungs and reaching up from my privates to check my tonsils (or so it seemed).  Finally, they let me sleep.

The next day I was woken by a knock on the door, then in came some foreign doctor guy with a posse of mini-me doctor-in-training types behind him.  “Excuse me, please, by my name is Dr Whassis and I am here to examine you.  Would it be permissible for my students to be present?”.  Well, I just died a little inside.  It’s bad enough for the docs to be crawling up my privates but with a cheering squad, no longer under the haze of morphine and first thing in the morning was a little awkward.  I hadn’t even brushed my teeth!  Well, then my “act cool” thing took over.  Not wanting to appear modest, oh no, not the newly minted RN.  So I smiled, through my covers off and pulled my nightgown up around my waste.  I had not a stitch on under there, my girlie parts were in full view.  I even showed off my ballet experience and did a little plie.  “Go right ahead”  I told him.  There was a little throat clearing, and a few smothered giggles.  I looked over at him, and he stuck his hand out to shake mine, saying “I am sorry.  Please allow my to introduce myself properly.  I am Dr Whassis, and I am a Cardiologist”.  What I did then, was real.  As in, this is the real me.  I pulled the nightgown all the way over my head, hiding my face, and said “just kill me now”.  But I do sooooo wish I could have been cool.  As in funny and cool.  Like my dear friend Sue.  When she heard about it, she said I should have told him that ” you might as well cop a feel since I’ve got the goodies out on the table”.  That is just so Sue.  Maybe next time…