I'm a Personal Support Worker (PSW) which is the lowest, most hands-on catagory of nurse. By preference, I mostly do outreach in disabled people's homes. Sometimes I do shopping because it's just enormously less of an expedition for me to just pick up a few things for them on my way to work.
One of my clients, who lives in a retirement home, only needed a few extra things from me that week: He finds his feet cold at night in his bed, so he wanted a hot water bottle to keep them toasty. The supplied Toilet Paper the home gives them for free is about the same quality as that of a gas station or fast food restaurant, so he wanted a large, economy-sized pack of some nice, soft, triple-ply (and who can blame him?) Also, for we attendants who wash are hands 50+ times a day and have dry skin as a result, some moisturizing hand-lotion to keep by his sinks for our use. I bought all these things at a Wal-mart and took them to the checkout.
Something I hadn't really thought much about up until that point; hot water bottles are actually pretty obsolete as a bed-warming tech, and have long-since been replaced by electric heating pads as more consistent and convenient. However, there IS something that some people still use those old-fashioned red rubber hot water bottles for even today: self-administered home enemas. Thusly, the only H.W.B. I could find came with a number of "extra" attachments intended for that purpose that I was pretty sure we weren't ever going to need (well, one hopes not. :P)
As I was pondering with amusement the "new, modern" standard use for these old red H.W.B.s that I only remember as something my mother used to tuck under my blankets when I was a kid and sick on cold winter nights... I glanced back down to the conveyor belt and looked at my collection of purchases with new eyes.
1- "Enema kit"
2- "Lotion"
3- "48 jumbo rolls of toilet paper".
I'm a 38 year old adult man, but when I looked back up and locked eyes with the cashier, I turned as red as a 13-year-old with a public erection.
I'm a Personal Support Worker (PSW) which is the lowest, most hands-on catagory of nurse. By preference, I mostly do outreach in disabled people's homes. Sometimes I do shopping because it's just enormously less of an expedition for me to just pick up a few things for them on my way to work.
One of my clients, who lives in a retirement home, only needed a few extra things from me that week: He finds his feet cold at night in his bed, so he wanted a hot water bottle to keep them toasty. The supplied Toilet Paper the home gives them for free is about the same quality as that of a gas station or fast food restaurant, so he wanted a large, economy-sized pack of some nice, soft, triple-ply (and who can blame him?) Also, for we attendants who wash are hands 50+ times a day and have dry skin as a result, some moisturizing hand-lotion to keep by his sinks for our use. I bought all these things at a Wal-mart and took them to the checkout.
Something I hadn't really thought much about up until that point; hot water bottles are actually pretty obsolete as a bed-warming tech, and have long-since been replaced by electric heating pads as more consistent and convenient. However, there IS something that some people still use those old-fashioned red rubber hot water bottles for even today: self-administered home enemas. Thusly, the only H.W.B. I could find came with a number of "extra" attachments intended for that purpose that I was pretty sure we weren't ever going to need (well, one hopes not. :P)
As I was pondering with amusement the "new, modern" standard use for these old red H.W.B.s that I only remember as something my mother used to tuck under my blankets when I was a kid and sick on cold winter nights... I glanced back down to the conveyor belt and looked at my collection of purchases with new eyes.
1- "Enema kit"
2- "Lotion"
3- "48 jumbo rolls of toilet paper".
I'm a 38 year old adult man, but when I looked back up and locked eyes with the cashier, I turned as red as a 13-year-old with a public erection.