Holey sheet

As usual, there was a sheet on the exam table this morning. The idea is to drape it modestly over your lower half while you're being examined so that you don't see your doctor's face through the frame of your own upraised legs. ("I'd always wondered what he'd look like with a beard...")

I picked up the sheet and prepared to swaddle it around my hips like a stylish sarong. (Everyone's wearing turquoise this spring — we call this particular shade Listerine.) But when I unfolded the sheet I saw that it had a gigantic head-sized hole right in the middle.

It seems that on the weekends there's no laundry service, so the clinic quickly runs through its supply of sheets. By Monday morning, they have to resort to giving patients gowns to cover up with instead, the kind that function as a scratchy cotton poncho, entirely open at the sides, with no ties or snaps to close the garment.

I believe this is a most excellent innovation, if an accidental one. If you have your feet up in the stirrups and spread the gown across your upraised knees, you can avail yourself of the protection of the sheet while still watching your doctor's face as he performs the examination — without the unsightly goatee!

Posted by Julie at 10:53:12 AM in New York diary, Notes from astride the stirrups

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Holey sheet

As usual, there was a sheet on the exam table this morning. The idea is to drape it modestly over your lower half while you're being examined so that you don't see your doctor's face through the frame of your own upraised legs. ("I'd always wondered what he'd look like with a beard...")

I picked up the sheet and prepared to swaddle it around my hips like a stylish sarong. (Everyone's wearing turquoise this spring — we call this particular shade Listerine.) But when I unfolded the sheet I saw that it had a gigantic head-sized hole right in the middle.

It seems that on the weekends there's no laundry service, so the clinic quickly runs through its supply of sheets. By Monday morning, they have to resort to giving patients gowns to cover up with instead, the kind that function as a scratchy cotton poncho, entirely open at the sides, with no ties or snaps to close the garment.

I believe this is a most excellent innovation, if an accidental one. If you have your feet up in the stirrups and spread the gown across your upraised knees, you can avail yourself of the protection of the sheet while still watching your doctor's face as he performs the examination — without the unsightly goatee!