What were they thinking?

In my day, I've seen many bizarre things in the hospital workplace. Several years ago, there was the 75 year old female visitor of a patient who was clad in a short miniskirt that left nothing to the imagination. Nothing. We often found her in the bed of her critically ill partner. When we rounded on the room, which is something done as a group, she hopped out of the bed and began to flirt madly with the physician who looked like a frightened deer in the headlights. She was a one woman show--I'm thinking The Vagina Monologues--and monumentally overwhelming.

Of course, I've seen my share of body art done in places one would not expect. There was the man who had xoxoxoxoxo tattooed all the way around his personal appendage. Perhaps in his heyday it was the talk of the pub, but at his end, it was the talk of the stepdown unit. Hanging there limp, the poor thing was rather unimpressive necessitating the use of bright lights and magnifying lenses to make out the writing. I can't help but think that was one heck of a spot to elect to stick needles and ink and I wondered how wasted he was to even consider it in the first place. Since that time, I've occasionally reflected on how I want people to think of me when they look at my decrepit body laying in a hospital bed. Though I've a couple of tattoos myself, I've placed them in spots that aren't likely to draw too much attention.

Not long ago, I saw a patient ambulating the halls of the cardiac unit with a woman I presumed to be his wife, and his ten year old son. The boy was towing the patient's oxygen tank, helping his dad to walk. At first glance the sight warmed my heart and then the man turned the corner. On his tee shirt, in rather large print, was the proclamation: Experience Menage et Trois. In the first place, this man could barely put one foot in front of the other and in the second, it didn't appear he'd ever experienced a threesome. What was he thinking?

Try as I may to be nonjudgmental, occasionally, patients make me scratch my head in wonder. If it's ever me ambulating those halls as a patient, I'll not wear a tee shirt that proclaims I play with needles. Wouldn't want the staff to get the wrong idea now, would I?