Worst Sponge Bath Ever

   Worst Sponge Bath Ever

With a goofy smile on his face, the young orderly began washing me with his cleaning supplies. What I wanted to know was this: How come a female nurse was washing my legs and feet? How come he didn’t get the lower half? Did he volunteer for the upper half, is he a pervert? Is he crazy? If he did volunteer, how come he’s not locked up in the loony bin?

To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t have volunteered to clean my upper part, surely wouldn’t. Did the cleaning crew draw straws and he got the short one? All I know is neither one of us was very happy when he slipped off my dirty hospital gown.

My stomach was his first casualty. As the orderly scrubbed my entire mid-section, he worked his way up to my chest, where things got way worse. The sponging suddenly came to a stop. He looked at me, then asked, “Do you want me to lift these?”

Did he really just ask if he could lift my, um, er, a, breasts? Flabbergasted, I closed my eyes and nodded my head in the affirmative. I couldn’t look.

I kept my eyes closed during the rest of the worst sponge bath ever. I didn’t even mind when I heard the orderly and nurses say, “One, two, three . . . hoist,” when they transferred me to nice, clean, and dry bed linens. I didn’t even enjoy wearing a new clean gown, and nice warm blanket that was placed over me.

The words, Do you want me to lift these? Played over and over in my mind. Someone should really tell that kid not to ask old ladies that question ever again. I’m willing to bet he’d never seen anything like those things. Maybe he was in shock—I know I was.

However it happened that he got the assignment to clean the top half of me, it was awful . . . purely awful—and that’s just from his standpoint.

As I watched him exit my room, I wished I could have hollered, “That’ll be fifty-bucks, kid,” but . . . I still couldn’t formulate a sentence. Good thing for him . . . and me.

Just before drifting off to sleep, my last thought was, “I wonder how many other humiliating things I’m going to have to endure.”

 It didn’t take too long until I found out.