June 2, 2009, 6:00 am

Breathing is Underrated (I’m Back!)

Uh, Mildred?

Mr. Coffee called and they want their filter back!

*****

Could have used Nurse Latte-Head this week.

Breakfast in bed, a pretty new bed jacket.

(Remember “bed jackets”? Do they still make those?)

The good news is that I can now breath without Herculean effort.

The bad news?

I can’t smell anything and I can’t taste a thing. My taste buds are gone, kaput, buh-bye.

Makes it very easy to diet.

Actually, we utilized my lack of taste-sensory organs to conduct a scientific experiment at work.

I am well known for my inability to tolerate spicy food. Makes me nauseated and diaphoretic. My esteemed colleague, Stand-Up Comedy Dude, wondered how a lack of taste would affect one’s ability to eat hot, or spicy, food.

Never one to turn down an opportunity to utilize myself as a guinea pig, I promptly threw down a packet of Crushed Red Pepper Flakes on a saltine.

Whoa.

My mouth got warm and my sinuses cleared slightly.

Rather anti-climactic, actually.

On the one hand I could handle any combination of body fluids for the rest of the shift with no olfactory assault, but on the other hand I couldn’t lean over a patient too closely or I’d be guilty of causing an olfactory assault (and singe their eyebrows in the process!).

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Now that school is out (insert it’s-my-blog-bragging-rights-here: 4.0 for the semester, whoo hooo!) and I’m at a loss for what to do with all this…how do you call it…free time, I intend to plop my rear-end at a Starbucks at every opportunity and indulge my blog addiction with a newly rediscovered fervor.

And I’ll start with this week’s Grand Rounds, up at David’s Health Blawg.

Don’t forget to send your submissions to the next Change of Shift to Barbara over at Florence dot com (email: blynnolson at gmail dot com)!