Saturday, April 12, 2008

Ghetto Hospital

I had the funniest thing that's happened in a while happen.  My brother is going to school to become a nurse and he has a test tomorrow.  Part of the test involves doing some testing on a live patient.  So he needed to practice on someone and I was available so I was sort of coerced into being his guinea pig.

He started with checking my breathing and my spine for I don't know what.  I had to hunch over with my shirt off while he poked at my spine.  I couldn't sit still for the first ten minutes because I'm not used to being touched at the back.  I guess I'm very ticklish.  So I had to figure out a way to suck it up.  My mom came down and told me to just put my own hands on my back so that it would make it easier.  Now I'm sitting down with my shirt off and my hands trying to reach for my back, still slightly jittery every time my spine was poked. 

My bro couldn't get it right.  So him and mom started yelling at each other.  She came over with her own cold hands and started prodding me.  They're both prodding.  Surprisingly my mom is quite strong and I think I almost fainted because she was jabbing me at certain pressure points.  I guess all Asians do know some form of Karate.

Then my brother had to check my blood pressure with that contraption that everyone is familiar with.  So no big deal, right?  Well he checks my right arm.  Gets a reading.  But has to check my left arm to make sure (It's in the manual).  But he accidentally punches me in the face when taking off the thing-a-ma-bob.  Then when he does my reading for the left arm, he wonders why my blood pressure reading is different from my left arm.

Then there's more poking.  And then he has to use tape to mark parts of my back.  He uses some tape, but I'm so pasty white that he has to use extra tape so that it stands out.  He tried scotch tape and then some band aids and what not.  So he leaves this on me for an hour because he had to take a break to review the textbook.  But then he almost forgets that I have tape on my back.

Let me tell you, it's the anticipation of pulling off the tape that was more painful.

Are nurses suppose to curse out patients?  Visa Versa?

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