One of the things I love most about my job is the fact that everyone there is a huge fan of the Practical Joke. Here's how I got Nancy yesterday:
I was working in the procedure room and Nancy was out in the Recovery area. For those of you who don't already know, I'm a GI nurse and assist with colonoscopies and upper endoscopies (scopes that go down your throat and look in your stomach) all day long. My day pretty much consists of an endless litany of "Okay, Mr. So-and-so, turn over on your left side...let me lift up your gown back here...now I'm going to spend the next 20 minutes getting up close and personal with your colon...and then I'll repeat the process 17 times...then I'll go home for the day".
So we rolled the latest patient out to the recovery area, I hooked him up to the monitor while Carol Ann, the other nurse in the procedure room, gave a hand-off report to Nancy, and we went back to get started on the next colon or stomach waiting in line. Pretty soon I heard Nancy coming down the hall hollering "Amy! Are you eating chocolate back there?".
No. Great idea, though.
Turns out that, as Nancy was organizing her paperwork, she came across some flecks of brown something smeared on her paperwork. So, in an attempt to decipher the origin of the smear, SHE SNIFFED IT. That's right. Working in an endo center. Surrounded by poop. Sniffing the mystery brown stuff found on the paperwork.
I thought I was going to die laughing as I asked her if the next thing on her detective list would have been to lick it. I mean, seriously, WHO SNIFFS BROWN STUFF WHERE WE WORK? It could be anything! We're talking about doctors and nurses who have pulled intact mushroom slices, peas, and tomato skins from people's colons and snuck them back to the dirty scope room on a tray for the poor scope tech to find, then yelled happily "HEY LISA! NAME THAT FOOD!".
So, not being one to let opportunities like this pass me by, and still slightly giddy from being back in a place where mocking someone for sniffing brown smears garners plenty of fellow snickerers and not a group of surly people who think you should be burned at the stake, I snuck upstairs to the clinic where one of the doctors had pointed out that the office manager keeps a jar of mini Hershey's bars on her desk. (He was totally in on my scheme.) Then I grabbed an extra recovery room form from the receptionist and proceeded to write SMELL ME in bold, chocolate letters, right across the page.
For the record, a Hershey's bar writes JUST like a brown crayon. It was beautiful.
I could hardly contain myself as I waited for the procedure to be over and roll the patient down the hallway toward recovery. My view was excellent--I could see Nancy's face as I hooked the patient up to the monitor and watched her flipping through the pages on the clipboard while Carol Ann gave her another report. She found her recovery room page. She stopped. And for a split second--right before she yelled OH MY GOD AMY, WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN UP TO?--she looked completely grossed out and confused.
And that? Is why I love my job.
(I can hardly wait to see how she'll get me back!)
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