Off by a Foot

This morning I woke up in a drunken stupor, hung over from a night of heavy drinking and dancing. Then I remembered, the only thing I did last night was work and drink tea. When I was young, I had to work hard to feel this bad. Now, just going to work does this to me.

Dragging myself out to the mulberry tree to eat breakfast, I was dismayed to discover that the sweet fruit felt like sulfuric acid going down my throat. A sore throat and fatigue...my immune system is fighting something.

At work tonight, a coworker gave me a cup of Philipino ginseng coffee which got me through a few hours. Then, some hand to hand combat with a patient while I inserted a tube through her nose into her stomach, revved me up a bit. The remainder of the shift, I just counted the hours until bedtime.

I had only one odd thing happen tonight. I had to find out how tall a patient was, so I asked him. His answer was 6-6. I smiled and teasingly asked him, "So, how tall are you really?" He looked at me with a blank face and said, 6-6. Now, I'm well under 6 feet and he was shorter than me, so I tried again and said "You're 5..." and he answered 6, so I wrote down 5'6''.

Later, I got a call from the pharmacy about my data and they said their records showed that he was 6'6". What I think is funny, besides the patient thinking that he was a foot taller, is that in the past, an employee had asked him his height and accepted his answer of 6-6 without question.