Funny if it wasn't True: My Scrotum the Size of a Grapefruit: The Dangers of Unisex Bathrooms. My Brush with Thrush and the Lessons I Learned

in #blog8 years ago (edited)

Ok so I've been thinking about how I will use Steemit (this being only my 2nd post). I think I will just write about whatever I feel is interesting/important/informative/enlightening at the time of writing... so basically anything!

I've often thought that my life is quite funny, in a tragic way. That is to say, it would be amusing if it wasn't so true. It is a series of tragic events that seem to repeat themselves periodically. But one situation I experienced recently has never happened to me before in all of my twenty-something years aboard this planet...

Picture the scene: a healthy happy healthcare worker (who happens to work in a maternity ward) needs the loo during a particularly busy 12-hour shift. He (yes he) trots off to the unisex staff toilets. He does not find the antibacterial wipes which are usually sitting atop the pads disposal bin. He pauses to think for a moment. Does he go and get some wipes? He decides to just forgo the effort, use tissue and water and be done with it. This, my friends, was his fatal mistake...

Fast forward to the evening. Arriving home at about 9pm, our not-so-happy but instead now rather tired healthcare worker has a little to eat and proceeds to wind down for the evening. Tomorrow is another 12-hour shift. Exhausted, with unmindful habitual automation, he slowly goes about setting his things out for the next day and eventually gets into bed and quickly falls asleep. Today was a busy day. Little does he know, the tingling sensation growing in his crotch is not just due to a sweaty scrotum (a sweaty scrotum that will continue to incubate within the same, unchanged pair of underpants for the rest of the night), it is something far more in need of attention...

The next morning arrives. iPhone alarm is snoozed. And snoozed again. And again... Ok he really must get up now. What's the time? He looks at his phone.. 7:15am! Yikes! He must leave in 15 minutes! It takes him 20. Without time to change his underwear he rushes out of the door, grabs his bicycle and is on his way, pedalling like a laboratory hamster in a cocaine-addiction study. He arrives at the hospital with 1 minute to spare. Despite the freezing cold weather outside he is perspiring like a politician hooked up to a lie detector, and panting like an asthmatic Harry Potter fan after finding out what happens to Dobby. He rushes up the stairs- the elevators always took too long- and suddenly realises that he needs a new set of scrubs to work in today. He hurriedly makes his way to the scrubs machine, swipes his ID card and waits. The display screen flashes with the message: "No Size 15. Please Enter New Size". Dammit! He enters the next size up. "No Size 20. Please Enter New Size". Frick! He'll have to use a medium, if there are any! He types "15" into the keypad. "Please Wait", reads the screen... "Please Take Your Items From Compartment 2". Finally! A clicking sound indicates that the compartment is indeed unlocked so he grabs the set of scrubs and rushes to get changed. He must get changed in the staff toilet because the staff changing room is used by the midwives and he still cannot get a certain image out of his head from the last time he got changed in there!

Fast forward 6 hours. It has been another busy day on the ward. Our healthcare worker has probably walked the equivalent of 3 to 4 miles, all in the confines of a hospital, and all in the confines of a 2-day old pair of underpants housed in a rather tight pair of scrubs. Much sweating and rubbing has been occurring. Then it begins...

[Tune in next time for a continued account of the comic theatre that is my life]