We'll call her Susan; she was an intern at a small residency somewhere in the American West. The medical residency program is typically comprised of many two to six week "blocks" that focus on a particular specialty. Susan was about four days into her surgery block.

Now, Susan had been exposed to quite a good deal of interesting patients. Her third and fourth years of medical school were of the clinical variety; she saw patients daily. She had seen her share of the drunk, the high, the stoned, and the lonely; But this was her first real exposure to surgery.

We'll call the patient John; he was an obese 40-something white male who was coming in for hernia surgery. Apparently, some friend of his had told him a fictitious story about doctors who had mistaken the testicles for the intestines when performing this type of surgery and men coming out as eunuchs after having been mistakenly castrated. (This, of course, has never happened. At least, no one's ever admitted to it happening to them.)

The patient arrives at the hospital and is prepared for surgery by the nursing staff without incident. The patient is placed under general anesthesia and the surgeon (a woman) puts her CD into the stereo. As ABBA's "Dancing Queen" gets started, the nurses are giggling at the side of the patient, waiting for the incisions to be made and the surgery to begin.

"What's so funny?" Susan asks.

The nurse manages to stop giggling long enough to relate that the patient, very seriously, asked her to be sure and leave the "twins" alone. She hadn't understood what he meant, but after he had been put under, she had asked the other nurse and she hand simply pointed to the man's crotch. The nurse immediately went back into gales of laughter.

Somehow, they all managed to calm down and performed a flawless repair of the hernia. Later, in the recovery room, the man started to come to. He immediately reached for his crotch and said, loudly, "Get yer damn hands off of Big Jim and The Twins!"

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