Personally, I'm allergic to the salad tongs...

Don't quite feel up to an entire story tonight, dear children. So I thought I'd share a couple of the more glamorous aspects of my job.

1. Patients allergic to sanity. Asking if a patient is allergic to anything before taking them back to surgery is routine. Its one of the many things I do in order to ensure that the patient is still alive at the end of surgery. This helps my self-esteem, and is generally good for the patient as well. One or two medical allergies are common. However, a few weeks ago when I asked this question I was given a piece of paper, single-spaced typed on both sides with all the margins penciled in, of the hundreds of allergies that this patient had. Here are some of the things she was (allegedly) allergic to: 1. All antibiotics 2. The Sun 3. Copper 4. Silver 5. Hard candy 6. Mormoms 7. Vibrations and loud noises 8. October 9. Morphine 10. A mother's love. The sad part is that I'm only making a couple of these up.

2. Objects that should not be in places where they do not belong. One of the more fascinating aspects of my job is being called in late late at night to remove something from some body cavity where it has no business being. Since our hospital is in a not-so-great part of town, we are a hotbed for all kinds of disturbing late night extractions. Two recent examples include salad tongs and electric nose-hair clippers. The most amazing thing is that these incidents are always accidents.
How did that nose-hair clipper get lodged in a place eversofar from your nose, sir?
Pure accident, I swear. I must've fallen on it. Yes, that's it. I fell on it.
Life at 2 am does not get any better than this.