surgery question...

In reality, he’d laugh if she saw it.

We see this kind of thing pretty regularly at my hospital.  The best was the lady who came in for a colonoscopy and put two big smiley face stickers on her butt (one on each cheek) and wrote "think happy thoughts" across her lower back.

The crew cracked up pretty well on that one.

On a more serious note it comes up pretty regularly for people having stuff done on an extremity (or a breast) and they write in red marker "not this one" on the side that should be left alone.

Most hospitals are different in terms of what they make you write. 

On one of my shoulder surguries I had to write DNO (do not operate) on my right shoulder and put my initials under it.  Not easy to write lefty on your right shoulder. 

On that note...know your surgeon before hand, don't have your first experience with her/him be when you are lying on the table anxious and/or gorked out of your mind.

Unfortunately, this is more often than not the situation.   When I broke my wrist unexpectedly, my options were pretty limited.  Same thing with my son's appendectomy. 

When I had my heart surgery the perfusionist (who runs the heart/lung machine) was a good friend of mine.  He convinced the nurses to draw a bunch of stuff on my chest and feet while I was out during the surgery.

I didn't have a clue about it until I was waking up in ICU and the duty nurse came in to check my chest dressing.  She started laughing out loud when she lifted up the bandages and saw a little valentine-style broken heart drawn next to my incision.  Still foggy-headed, my first thought was that "Oh no, she's laughing at my incision - it must look horrible!"   Was funny later, but not so much at the time...

Mark

Had to put an "X" on one arm when I was having shoulder surgery, but now that I think about it, I can't remember which one it was: the one that was supposed to be cut or the one that wasn't!

I do know, however, that they did the surgery on the correct one.