Post-surgerical sillies

Towards the very end of my shift (so, late at night), I introduced myself to a patient who had just finished his stay in the recovery room and explained that I would be taking him on his stretcher to his hospital room. I should say, he was only there for a laparoscopic appendectomy, which is a pretty routine in-and-out kinda surgery. He is otherwise young and healthy, and one of the nurses wanted to hook me up with him until we found out he's married.

So half way to his room, his wife asks him how he feels. "It hurts. I don't even think I had surgery yet, did I?" Ha. I couldn't tell for sure, but I'm nearly positive he wasn't kidding. Lots of people are surprised when they find out their procedure is all done.

This whole time to his room, he's laying on the stretcher and can't see me because I'm pushing the handles behind his head. He could see my coworker, who was at the foot of the stretcher.

We get to his room and have to move a bunch of furniture around in order to pull the stretcher in the room. We do this for every inpatient. You'd think they'd design hospital rooms more efficiently, but they don't. It is my least favorite part of the job. We finish moving furniture around, and I grab the foot of the patient's stretcher to guide it into the room. He looks at me surprised, "You're new [to me]!" He said it with such surprise, as if to say, "Where in the hell did YOU come from?!"

Then, we get him moved into his bed, and he lifts up his gown to see some blood on his abdomen. "Oh my God, I got my period!" He was obviously joking, but on top of his confusion and the look of awe on his face, this was completely hilarious to me.

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A different day, I was taking a woman back to her room who had just had a mastectomy thanks to her breast cancer. On our way back to her room, we picked up her family from the waiting room. After the usual greetings and all that, the patient's sister said, "Hey, at least mine are bigger now!"