Nurse talk needles those outside hospital

My wife is a registered nurse who has worked at Spokane hospitals for 25 years.

She has a circle of friends who are in the same business.

Nurses are a special breed. They work hard and perform functions that the rest of us would not do for any amount of money.

My wife’s group has parties, dinners and coffee together. Sometimes I am allowed to attend.

As with all co-workers, this group talks shop at these gatherings. They tell stories about what a bad day they had, about doctors and patients. They do not mention patient names.

Occasionally, I hear from someone who talked to my wife during their visit to the hospital for a medical procedure.

So I confront my wife, “Why didn’t you tell me Eric was in the hospital?”

“Eric who?”

“Eric, my brother.”

“It’s none of your business.”

That last remark is my wife’s subtle way of saying that the topic is “hospital business” and closed for discussion as if I were a spy asking Enrico Fermi for the plans to the atomic bomb.

When these medical people talk to each other, the language is technical, so the conversation doesn’t make much sense to me. When I do join in, I felt like a defendant testifying before a jury of experts who are waiting for me to use one silly word for a body part or bodily function.

There is no beating around the bush by this crowd. No private body part is called a “woo-woo.”

A butt is a butt. Boobs are breasts, left and right. Excrement is a four letter word, and that same word comes out of the mouths of young women who look like they were last year’s homecoming queens.

I liked that about my wife when I met her. Not the short word for excrement, but rather her frankness in discussing body parts and functions without being goofy or vulgar. My skills there were lacking.

However, during some social situations, like dinner at a restaurant, I sometimes have a problem.

The discussion of “tubal ligations” while I am eating spaghetti taxed my ability to mentally compartmentalize. I thought I got a glimpse of some forceps under my noodles.

But I am a big eater, and it takes a village to pull me away from the table.

Then the topic of colorectal cancer prevention reared its ugly head.

My wife took pride in mentioning my recent colonoscopy to those seated at our table and to any of those seated at adjacent tables who did not have their iPod plugged into their ears.

She laughed when she described how an older man like myself can break into an all-out sprint to the bathroom after drinking the vile fluid that cleans out a gentleman’s lower tract before he endures the colonoscopy. After my third run for the bathroom, she held up her watch and called out the seconds and applauded my improving sprint times.

Nurse humor can be cruel.

I saved some face by mentioning that no polyps were discovered during my colon examination and then tried to steer the conversation to the recent scope surgery of my knee cartilage: “I watched it on the television monitor. It was like a clumsy Pac-Man eating the edge of my knee cartilage.”

“You’re such a big boy,” my wife said in a sugary tone usually saved for grandchildren, or to direct sarcasm towards a male patient having a sissy moment.

Then someone at the table brought up her husband’s prostate. Not literally.

Suddenly, I felt an urge to go to the bathroom. I had finished the noodles and forceps, so I excused myself to the lavatory.

As I was doing my business, I visualized the nurses back at the table glancing at their watches and could almost hear them asking my wife if I always take this long to urinate.

“Does he go often?” “How long has he had this problem?”

After going pee-pee, I put my woo-woo away and zipped my pants, then headed out of the little boy’s room to face questions from the jury.