Too Much Flesh

Ugh!! Working in the E.R. is only partly a good thing. The extra money helps tremendously with bill-paying. But I never expected I would be seeing large quantities of saggy, old flesh while innocently trying to get patients' consents for treatment. I'm not clinical! Why do I have to see all this now??? I'm not ready for it. It only shows me what I will look like in due time. What a slap in the face!! If it were my parent, I would probably not be so appalled. After all, I love the people, so I can love their saggy flesh too (as long as they don't keep flashing it at me). When it's MY saggy old flesh, I guess I will love that too. Nothing like a huge dose of reality early Sunday morning before you've finished your coffee. Every time I went back to get a signed consent I was confronted with too much flesh showing, private parts just barely covered and everything else exposed to anyone popping in for paperwork. I think we should be more careful about covering folks up for their own sense of decency...oh who am I kidding? When I was in for my back surgery, I had two student nurses come in to help me shower. They tried so hard to keep me partially covered and I was so excited about having water washing over my body, I just dropped everything and told them to let me soak. I made fun of my flesh and the fact that I could barely move on my own but that water felt wonderful and I didn't care that those girls with beautiful thin bodies and youthful flesh were watching over me. I needed their help to maneuver since I was supposed to be wearing my "turtle shell", the hard plastic corset that supported my poor abused spine with new hardware in it. I figured it was part of their initation into the world of nursing and they would see much worse before they were done! Maybe it's only me that is offended by the quantity of flesh flashing in the E.R. But their skin has no elasticity; it doesn't snap back, it's just hanging there. Too many years of sun exposure on the normal body parts we are used to seeing bare in the summer time. Then you see that lily white (or gray) skin that should be covered up, all veiny and looking so fragile. Now that I think of it, I don't recall ever seeing a young person all exposed like that. Maybe it's because they rarely arrive in a condition calling for immediate removal of hampering garb and needing to be hooked up to heart monitors and all those other things with multiple wires. Here's to less exposed flesh and more dignity!