Thanks for Sharing

"Thanks for sharing". There are quite a few times lately when I feel compelled to say this but I smother the impulse. This is sort of an offshoot of my feeling about "attention whores" but not quite as severe. Let me give you some examples about what I mean here.

I am currently treating a patient who lives in a public housing project and has a few questionable characters coming and going from his place that I occasionally run into. I am so immune to most inner city grit that it takes a lot to make me wince these days. I've pretty much seem and heard it all from walking in on someone having sex to seeing people smoking crack and spotting bloody hand prints all over a hallway surrounded by crime scene tape. Oh there was also the time I walked into a building and there was a man in the small lobby with a huge suitcase full of money wide open. He just looked at me (he knew I was there for my job and that I was not a threat) and said..."not today Mama, come back tomorrow". I said thank you and promptly left.

Considering all of this I don't know why someone telling me they wet their pants shook me a bit. It's kind of silly after all I've heard in the past but this one was just crossing the line for me. I was in the above mentioned patients home and a women who looked like she had been around the block quite a few times came in to give my patient some cleaning supplies for his home health aid to use. She asked if she could use his kitchen to change her pants. He looked at her with a quizzical look and said...uh, no. Now why she didn't ask to use the bathroom is beyond me, but I didn't want to give her any suggestions or get into it with her so I just stood by and watched in fascination of what was to come. She went into the kitchen to put the cleaning supplies away and he apologized to me for her presence and whispered that she was a nice person but a bit crazy. Within a few minutes she came back into the living area where we were and she leaned toward me and whispered to me in confidence, "I'm sorry, I wet myself". She said it in an intimate way that made me feel like this is something she thought that I do all the time too and that I would understand it. It was so strange I just said to her, "Oh wow, that's rough, glad you're OK". We had our moment and she left and I am still thinking about it two weeks later.


After barely getting back on my feel from this experience yet another moment of sharing occurred yesterday. I work with a Translator/Escort who I love dearly. I never felt that I needed someone with me on a daily basis, I feel that it slows me down and safety is not something I worry about. The language thing is a concern for me though because my knowledge of Spanish is limited and it is handy to have someone there for moments when I really want to communicate with people on a deeper level. My Translator drives and this is a godsend because I am currently being forced to take cases that are very far apart and there is no way I could be working on foot lately without him driving me from place to place. Yesterday, I had to stop at a friends apartment while working to pick up something and take him some baby wipes because he had no hot water in his building to bathe. He just had foot surgery and is unable to walk or go out so I offered to do the legwork for him. After stopping at the store and picking up the wipes, my translator casually said to me, "oh yeah, wipes are great I always keep a pack here for when I have sex in my car. " This statement was followed with DEAD SILENCE and me screaming WHAAAAAAAT? Don't get me wrong, I am not a prude and I do not care what this 20-something guy does in his car but be aware that I am SITTING in that very car 5 days a week and my mind instantly wondered if I was perched on the "sex spot" on a regular basis. The interior is leather so that calmed me a bit but I had to ask..."you do this in the BACK seat right?" He laughed and said yes and we were OK again. But now, I have an image of him getting it on in this car and I will never again rest easy in it.

As a warm up for tomorrow's Dirty Paper weekly review I will share with you some celebrity TMI (too much information) moments. Naomi Watts reveals that she likes to return clothes that she has already worn to stores for a refund. That's nice isn't it? Jason Biggs admits that he likes to wear his wife's ex-boyfriends boxer shorts. (Huh??? does this make him wacky or something, should I feel something here?). Kid Rock took a bathroom break on the couch of a music promoter because he felt that the guy didn't provide his band with enough perks. Niiiiiice. Klassy guy there. Thanks for telling us about it too. Oh, Jessica Simpson revealed in front of a concert hall full of spectators that she passes a lot of gas and that it smells like roses. Sweet, huh? Topping off the celeb thanks for sharing list is Britney Spears own Mama who has written a tell-all book which reveals that her daughter lost her virginity at 14, took drugs at 15 and started drinking at 13. Happy Mothers Day Lynne Spears, you're the best.

Oh have I told you that I pooped this morning and it was shaped like the face of Jesus?...oh wait a minute, I though I was talking to Dr Oz...my bad.

That's all for now :)