EMS is a very small community. The advantage to this is that you tend to work with the same group of people no matter who you're employed with. We play and drink together, especially the nighttime crew, as no other sane person wants to go do shots after getting off at 7 AM while laughing about that awesome single car rollover with multiple ejections. You also don't want to burn your bridges, ever, because word tends to get around quickly - just like all the boneheaded shit you do.

When you're in paramedic school, you have to do a lot of twelve hour "rotations" in the emergency department. These shifts give you a chance to develop practical skills you can't learn inside a classroom and see the continuum of care outside of the ambulance. You're given a list of procedures you're required to perform competently, even if you're only seen it once in some textbook, and the nurses you work with will monitor and assist you. Ideally. In practice, it never works that way, and knowing how to roll with the punches is among the most valuable tools a paramedic has.

One of these procedures I'd only read about was how to insert a foley catheter. For those not familiar with it, you insert a tube through the urethra and into the bladder so urine can drain out. Not that this matters, as you'll never actually use the knowledge again, but you've gotta check off one cath on a male and one on a female.

During one of my rotations in the ED, I was called to a room by a certain grizzled give-no-shits RN I've spoken about before. I tried to remember a couple of paragraphs on how to do this that I'd probably read in a drunken study group. After all, nothing goes better with memorizing complex medical procedures than alcohol!

In EMS, when you don't have any clue what the hell you're supposed to do, you have to do it with a look of confidence that says you've got the situation under control. Never let the parents of the kid choking on a balloon see the look of utter confusion on your face when you're trying to recall what you did with those damned Magill forceps after you used them to pull out that narcotics vial you accidentally drop in the sharps container.

I stride into the room like I own the place, and start getting ready to tube that dick. This nurse has seen one too many dumbass students in her career so she's perfectly happy to stand back and watch the train wreck about to take place. Hand hygiene is a fundamental component of good medicine and a very convenient way to buy time to remember how to do a procedure. Take as long as you want! The patient just thinks you're being thorough. Today, though, this nurse has no such illusions. She knows that I know that I don't know, and for some reason decides to take a sort of pity on me. The patient, who hasn't had a conscious thought in probably ten years, was perfectly happy to let me practice on him.

People in a coma are always so agreeable.

In the thickest southern accent I've ever heard, she opens up the box of supplies I'll need and starts coaching me through the procedure like I'm the retarded guy Wal-Mart always seems to hire as a greeter. There's a sterile drape on the outside, and inside is terrifyingly long tube and tray of supplies that looks like a Lunchables from hell. If you've seen it before, you know exactly what I mean.

Crap. I have no idea what to do with any of this. I'm definitely not going to prove her wrong.

"Okay, uh, your hands aren't going to get any cleaner" she sighs. Damn, she's on to me. "Get over here and get these on, I've got shit to do" she says as nods to the sterile gloves and yanks the poor guy's diaper off. Wait, why am I pitying him? I'm the one in trouble here!

"No, you idiot, don't touch the outside with your..." Oops. Out comes another sigh. I try to tell myself that I only touched the outside a little bit, around the wrists.

"Fuck it, I didn't see that and he ain't gonna say anything." I'm horrified that I made such a basic error, but she's in no mood to wait around while I fumblefuck with the gloves and tells me to continue. She points to a syringe filled with saline that we use to blow up a balloon on the end of the catheter to keep it in your pee-hole. "Hook it up to the catheter, push it all in and then pull it back out so you can see if it leaks." I manage to do this without killing anyone, but she's clearly not impressed.

I look down at what's left in the kit, trying to remember what comes next. Two packets stare back at me and I realize that one of them is lubricant (most people don't realize it, but the lube we use is sterile, surgical grade KY jelly). Tearing it open, I proudly squirt it in the square of the Lunchables that would normally house your cheese. My victory over the lube was short-lived, though, as I've got no idea what the other packet is.

"It's betadine." Man, she's good. Probably seen that dumb look a thousand times by now. Betadine is an iodine based disinfectant that kills just about anything. "Just pour it on the cock and balls and let's get this over with."

... wait, what? "Are you sure?" I ask.

"RIP it OPEN and put it on the cock and balls!" she says, pantomiming for the dumb kid.

Of course. I forgot! The penis is an exceptionally dirty part of your body, and you definitely don't want the bacteria on the tip to go inside or you'll end up with a rip-roaring infection and a great lawsuit for the hospital that caused it. It makes perfect sense - just pour it over Mr. Happy and we're clean and ready to proceed. I slather this guy's dick in betadine and completely miss the look she's giving me.

"What the fuck are you doing?" she asks. I stand there with a puzzled look on my face, not sure what to say. She told me to do this, right?

"B-but... You said to pour it on the cock and balls," I state in protest.

"No," she says, realization dawning on her. "I told you to pour it on the COTTON BALLS!" She runs from the room with a shout of "Ya'll gotta hear what this idiot did!"

In my haste, I had completely misunderstood her thick accent. A little set of cotton balls was conveniently included in the tray so you could soak them in the disinfectant and swab the tip of the penis. Years later, most of the people I work with still know me by the nickname I damn well earned.

Cock'n'Balls.

- Rashaverak