Last Sunday, I promised to write about my experience of having to be bathed from head to toe by nursing staff during my recent stay at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH).
I thought it was common knowledge but based on many curious calls I received, it seemed that many people were not aware that if, as a patient, you are not physically able to bathe/wash yourself, a nurse does it for you.
Even stranger was the fact that where I assumed men would be the ones itching to hear all the details conjured up in their imagination, most of the curious people were female.
And the excited manner in which some pleaded for me to write about it now, not hold it back for sometime in the future, made me feel as if I had promised an erotic Bajan version of the classic Perfumed Garden, Fanny Hill, Lady Chatterley’s Lover or the graphic depictions of the Kama Sutra.
Rather, all I promised was that one of these Sundays, I would write about the experience of a big, hard-back man being given a sponge bath. So here goes.
It was before daybreak on the morning after they had put me under and done what they had to do that I was awakened by the lights being turned on and a soft female voice telling me she had come to clean me up. With that, she placed a container of warm water on a trolley beside the bed, with a smaller container in which she soaped up a washcloth with which to lather me down.
I was not able to assist but she soon removed one of those apron-like things with two armholes that covers the front and sides of your body and is tied around your neck and behind your bare back.
Now I was on my back, naked as the day I was born, with Rufus fully exposed in the cool breeze flowing through the open window. I do not know if she did not want to be distracted by Rufus or for him to be attracted to her but, for whatever reason, she covered him and my lower body with a towel.
After she finished my upper body it was time for the moment of truth as she removed the towel to uncover Rufus, and then to begin lathering, washing and drying him and then the rest of my body right down to my toes.
As most men would be in my condition in the presence of any woman, her dealing with Rufus was doubly embarrassing for me. First, I was in a weakened physical state, so Rufus was shrivelled, shrunk and dead as a do-do.
At the same time, unlike my body, my senses were on full alert and as the woman held Rufus in her gloved hands, lathered him all over and meticulously washed and cleaned him, I was overcome with panic. It had to do with the possibility that her actions might cause a Lazarus-like raising from the dead in Rufus.
I, therefore, had to do some serious concentration to take my mind completely off Rufus in her hands.
It worked; Rufus did not get out of hand. Soon, my entire body was clean and fresh.
Not long after the kind and caring woman turned off the lights and left, I drifted into a foreday morning sleep with sweet dreams.
Al Gilkes heads a public relations firm. Email [email protected]
