Never trust a nurse.

So it was the end of the day and I was looking forward to going home. It's hard not to watch the clock during those last few hours. So there I am, charting away, trying not to ask my preceptor too much advice (since I'll be on my own in less than two weeks), when a coworker approached me with a plastic bucket full of screws and pins.


"Hey, Kristine, you ever wonder what they put inside the spines of patients who get back surgery with instrumentation before?" Well, duh, of course I have. I'm just too shy to ask and sound like a dork. So I get all excited, like a little girl, and what's the first thing I do?



Reach my hand into that bucket and pick up one of the screws, to examine it closer. It was soooo big, and I was mesmerized by how that could fit into someone's spine and make it feel better. That just looks like it would hurt.



Word of advice: When someone brings you a bucket of something, and they have rubber gloves on, don't mistake it for show-and-tell. Because her next words were:


"You know, they just removed these from my patient's back."


OH MY F***ING GOD.


Yeah, I spent the next twenty minutes freaking out and washing my hands with every antiseptic thing I could find. And the other nurses have found something to incessantly tease me about.


God, I hope that guy didn't have any weird diseases.

shudder