ADVENTURES IN NURSING

MRS. GIGGLES

This lady was the very definition of “a hoot.”  She was morbidly obese, had the sweetest little face I’d ever seen, and very much enjoyed skewering you with the truth about yourself, accompanied by an evil little grin.  She and B (my former best friend), were the first to diagnose me as passive-aggressive, all because of my love/hate relationship with nursing school.  Thanks for that insight, Mrs. G!

She was our instructor at our second nursing home clinical.  It was her personal mission to ensure that we had lots of fun, while still learning what we needed to know.  She was a slave driver, but so much fun to be around that we didn’t care.  I have never giggled so much while sober as I did during that time. 

My most outstanding memory of Mrs. G involved a relatively attractive 20-something young man who was being rehabbed for something or other.  The student assigned to him reported to Mrs. G that he had an interesting tattoo.  That’s all she needed to hear.  Immediately, she led all eight of us female students en masse to his room, insisting that we all needed to see his body art as part of our education.  Gawd, I loved that woman!

Said patient was only too happy to comply.  He was apparently inordinately proud of the word “WOW” inscribed on his butt for all eternity.  Mrs. G was a giggly mess by this time, but collected her wits long enough to note that, if he stood on his head, his tattoo would say “MOM.”  Now, there’s a thought to make any mom proud, right?  The fringe benefit of all this was that this man did, indeed, have an excellent derriere, and we all enjoyed being able to view it, for clinical reasons only, of course.

And we thought Mrs. B-1 was outrageous!    

NEXT UP:  MRS. J