
It’s Healthy to Talk About Bodily Functions
One summer during my college years, another premed student and I got a job at the Swedish Hospital in Minneapolis, as nurses’ aides. At that time, the guys were called orderlies, but we were part of the nursing department. We were taught how to clean patients’ private parts without making the patient feel self-conscious, and how to place urinary catheters mostly in old men with prostates that had overgrown and were blocking urinary flow.