Let's start this post off with a horrendous cliché... I have nothing against gay people but... over the last few days I have been exposed to an unnecessary amount of man-on-man action.
Homosexual patients are nothing unusual and of no real trouble usually but even though there is no real problem with the idea of homosexuality and those individuals when it comes to in your face activity and sexual practices then it really pays to have a few seconds to prepare. The patient in question came in on one of my days off and I came into handover tired and hardly paying attention. The handover nurse (my Filipino bossman) is running through the normal and so far nothing unusual. Then he casually mentions that one male patient has a boyfriend just so we know the background and also that he has been tested for HIV and therefore for safety reasons we need to know. However with a workforce of 30-something middle-aged Indian women there was an obvious amount of ignorance about the whole thing so I was subjected to another five minutes of annoying analysis of this subject.
All is cool for most of the day, unlike one guy when I started who had a big thing for my Filipino boss and was generally quite creepy. It wasn't until this guy's boyfriend turned up that well... public displays of affection began. What made it uncool: I was the first of the nursing staff to come across it. Even worse: they didn't pull the curtain across where the guy's bed was. Basically as I walked past the bay I get a shout from a guy across the room asking me to do something.
As I walk in, he points over to the happenings on the other bed which I can't see from the door because the curtains between that bed and the bed closest to the door have been pulled at some point in the day. I look to see two dudes in bed making out, the healthy one astride the other... thankfully clothed.
‘Erm, excuse me guys, this is a hospital... if you're going to do that... could you... erm... pull the curtain all the way? There are other patients around.' Turns out I'm not as open-minded as I thought: the in-your-faceness left my ass shocked to stuttering. On one side I have no problem it going on; on the other side I wish I didn't have to see it. 'It' being hardcore sausage-groping. It's the same reasoning which has led to me not watching Brokeback Mountain (and the fact that the first half hour is about sheep-herding and I had to change channel to watch a good movie).
Generally the reaction from patients and my colleagues is as mixed as my feelings. Most of the patients feel the way I do; it's cool so long as they pull the curtains but you do get the ‘I'd have slapped the fag out of them if I'd seen them' and religious ‘dirty, hellbound fags'.
‘That's your opinion sir, but I can't agree and would appreciate if you kept that to yourself.'
‘You're worse than them then.'
‘That's kind of a loaded statement sir; I can't yes or no to that without passing judgment on them or myself for that matter.'
‘What's a loaded statement?' Idiot.
Anyway despite my ethical turmoil, when the guy was vomiting yesterday and the doctor was called to prescribe an anti-emetic I couldn't stop myself asking ‘Can we send that down to the labs and see how much semen is in there?'
Have to say though, the guy is easily one of my favourite patients: not bed-bound, polite, clean and generally a friendly guy. Downside: all the young nurses think he's hot and bitch to me about how all the hot ones seem to be gay. Bitches... are you saying I'm not hot?
