The vulgarity!

When a woman is about to have a baby, I'm told it feels like she has to take the biggest poop of her life. That being said, that's what I tell my patients to look for, so we know when it's time to start pushing. Now, it could be in the way I was raised, or maybe it's that I have a little more couth than my average patient, but I cannot tell you the number of times a patient has said to me, "I have to shit." Umm, ok. I think I personally would have used a different word under the circumstances, but ok, I get your point. The other day my patient said, "My ass hurts." I'm thinking she's sore from being in bed too long, so I say that. She says, "No, it hurts where you shit from." Ok, again, I get what you're telling me, but is it too much to expect people to be a little less graphic? I mean, by no means am I a prude with language - I can drop f-bombs with the best of them - but in a medical setting, I would just think people would be a little less graphic. It makes me laugh...

Are my standards too high?

The scenario I'm about to relate happens quite frequently at work, and it shocks/stuns/amazes the hell out of me each time it happens.

When a woman comes in to be checked, we put her information into the computer so everything can be archived on the hard drive. Part of that information is her name, obviously. I'll take a patient into the room, have her go into the bathroom to change, and while she's doing that, I ask her support person, usually the father of the baby, all of the information I need. Quite frequently, when I ask him how to spell her last name, he'll say, "I don't know." You don't know? You're having a child with this woman and you don't know how to spell her last name?! I realize that it's not necessary to know a person THAT well to do what it takes to make a baby, but really, over the course of the 9 months it's growing inside her body, don't you think that might be an important thing to learn? And the first baby, sure, same thing. But the third?! You have 3 kids with this woman and you STILL don't know how to spell her last name?!

So again I ask, is that too much to expect? Are my standards too high?