By Alex Berger
A nurse was showing some VIPs through the hospital. They passed a therapy room, where a patient was receiving a sensual front and back rub from a pretty nurse. The visitors gasped. “Oh, that’s the latest therapy for men,” explained the guide. “The excitement generated strengthens the heart and leads to recovery.”
Embarrassed, she giggled as she nervously approached. And, if you thought she never prepped a male patient before, you were right. Her hand shook as she stroked the razor to and fro across my fruited plain. Thank heaven I lived to tell the tale, but I am fearful that young lady has never recovered.
A student nurse was taking her driving test. Coming to an intersection, she went right through a red light. The instructor said, “Don’t you know what a red light is for?” “Certainly: a bedpan!”
During another time in a hospital, my grouchy nurse appeared to be 10 feet tall, weighed 250 pounds and could have bench−pressed the entire floor. And she never smiled.
A man complained to a friend about his recent hospital stay. “The nurses were so possessive. It was, ‘How are we today?’ and ‘How do we feel?’ ” “That doesn’t sound too terrible,” said the friend. “Well, one morning, I put my hand on her knee and she slapped my face.”
I tried to clown with Ms. Geniality, but she was not interested. On the fourth day, the doctor visited and I whispered that I did not need the nurse anymore. “Tell her not to come back,” I pleaded. The doctor replied, “You tell her. You’re already in the hospital!”
They nicknamed one nurse “Appendix” because every patient wanted to take her out.
My nurse was no Florence Nightingale. On my last day in the hospital, however, she actually smiled, kissed me on the cheek and said she is going to miss me. To this day, I still remember her smile.
One nurse is extremely accurate: When she takes a patient’s temperature, she deducts 20 degrees for cleavage.
My last confinement in a hospital occurred 10 years ago. It was Passover and Gloria asked me to vacuum. If there is anything I do not want to do, it is vacuuming. But Gloria was insistent.
Now, we have a vacuum with a long hose that plugs into a wall socket in each room. After completing a masterful job of vacuuming, I finished atop the staircase. As I began my descent, I wrapped the vacuum’s hose around my shoulders. The hose began curling around my right leg and I tripped and slid down the stairs. My body went to the right and my right leg, held rigid by the hose, went to the left.
A practical nurse is one who marries a wealthy doctor.
When the dust cleared, my foot was hanging from the leg. I suffered fractures of my ankle, two bones in my fibula (the outer bone below the knee) and the bone high up in the tibia.
A man bragged that when he was in the hospital, he had a day nurse and a night nurse. In the afternoon, he rested.
I was rushed to the hospital, where the nurse proceeded to snip off my shorts. As her flying scissors neared my forbidden zone, I began to get nervous. “Remember,” I said, “you are not clipping coupons down there.”
To make a long story short, this nurse, with a firm grip of the situation, made certain all my torso parts were safely intact and ready for surgery. The surgery was a success, finally permitting me to fulfill my dream of becoming a tango dancer.
I love all nurses, and that includes my sister, Florence, a registered nurse at Bellevue Hospital, who also spent a year as a nurse on a Native American reservation in Montana. On the day before she left, she was ceremoniously welcomed into the tribe as an honorary Blackfoot.
Contact Alex Berger at news@timesledger.com.
