14 November 2010

Once again, working in the medical field gleans a cornucopia of unusable knowledge.  We nurses were sitting around in the nurses station during a brief lull; the flurry of brand new dependents had ceased, charting was caught up, and no corpsmen had to be severely beaten around the head and neck just for the hell of it.  In short, a peaceful moment.  I was contemplating my next course of action with my patients, including how to keep a wonderful woman with a repeat c-section without Duramorph because of a "soft" morphine allergy and only marcaine and fentanyl spinal, and without a post-op PCA, from climbing the walls all night as she had to deal with that major abdominal surgery without long acting narcotics in her spinal or a button of love to push as needed when I heard, "How the hell would anyone know it was JESUS' foreskin?"  As you could imagine, my head broke the sound barrier swiveling on my neck to see just from whence came such a query.  A colleague is finishing her degree and one class, apparently, required her to investigate religious artifacts and relics and their meaning to the flock.  Why this is important in a nursing degree, I have no idea.  It seems that the Latern Basilica in Rome has the Holy Foreskin as one of its relics. During the Middle Ages there were reports of up to 18 different foreskin relics around Europe. That seems a bit much for an eight day old infant, even if he is the Son of God.  Apparently, various miraculous powers have been attributed to the Holy Prepuce including it rising into the heavens and becoming the rings of Saturn.  Also, it expands when held near a virgin.  We all began to make comments sacrilegious, blasphemous and all manner of other ous-es, until it was decided that we were getting a little off the chain.  Although, we all agreed that "hey, I have a miraculous foreskin." is the pick up line of the century, hands down.  There are pages and pages of Google results on this particular subject, so even though I haven't given the Savior's foreskin any thought at all, many people throughout history have.

In keeping with the strangeness of the topic, another colleague informed us that there is a Museum of Menstruation in Washington, DC.  The website claims, "discover the rich history of menstruation and women's health!"  No thanks, my history is more than enough.

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