Hospitalized women wearing sanitary napkins for modesty

As a young teen I was sitting in the hospital hallway for my turn in the X-ray departmet. Soon after I sat a woman in her mid to late 20s was brought on a gurney and parked opposite me. She was fairly attractive even without makeup and we made eye contact. In a few minutes she turned her body toward the wall putting her back to me. As she did this the sheet that was covering her moved away revealing her naked buttocks - the result of those notorious hospital gowns. She then moved her knees toward her chest (fetal position) revealing what I'd hoped would be the answer to a young man's dreams, all the "cash and prizes." But, alas, she was wearing a sanitary belt and napkin. Exciting to some extent but not what I'd hoped for when she rolled over.

Whenever my mother was hospitalized she would always pack sanitary napkins wether she really needed them or not. My question is ladies: do you use napkins in the hospital for modesty since underware is, to my knowledge, not allowed? The above incident took place in the late 1950s if that gives any clarification.

I could be way wrong here, but given the year this happened my guess is that she was wearing a belt and a pad because she needed it. Obviously, I can't speak for your mother's motivation but I think she was pretty clever. When the wearing of underwear is frowned upon, hospital personnel are hardly likely to tell a patient that they can't wear a belt and pad, whether she needs it or not.

Way to go, Mom!

LadyDoc

A nurse I worked with said that it seemed at least half the women of menstrual age seemed to end up getting their period while there as a patient; more than you would expect just based on the odds.

I think that it was just a case of bad luck making the world that more embarrassing.

That brings up an interesting point; in a work environment where there are a number of women working closely together, it often happens that they start to ovulate and menstruate within days of one another. Pity the poor men in that office!

Seriously, when I worked at the veterinary surgical center, there were three male surgeons, and a couple of male staff members. The rest of us were all females, and I think there were about 50 total employees. Moodiness, bloating, cramps, etc would come on like a tidal wave, along with general pinging off the walls. The guys would simply duck and run, and they hoped that whoever was assisting them in surgery that day would be in a relatively good mood.

It helped that they kept chocolate on hand 24/7!

Play On!

LadyDoc

!"That brings up an interesting point; in a work environment where there are a number of women working closely together, it often happens that they start to ovulate and menstruate within days of one another" It's an interestinf phenomena and this could give an entire new thread for itself: I can confirm - my last ex-girlfriend worked with 3 more girls and they all had ovulations PMS and mesntruation almost at the same time! 🌹

I can relate to LadyDoc's comments completely. I once supervised a work group of 30+ employees, about half female. I was hired to manage this group because they didn't seem to play well together. After a couple of months of observation and moving conflicting people to different locations and changing some work assignments I observed a very obvious cyclical nature to the friction. I started recording the dates and soon found an obvious cycle. It went Mary, Donna, Sue, etc. Now to figure out how to cope with it and, yes, chocolate helps!! What I did was to assign a specific guy that always worked well with one of the friction causing ladies when I thought it was time for difficulties. It seemed to help to get the ladies out and away from the other ladies and for some reason it worked better with a guy or two. A few of the guys figured out what I was doing and got on board making it work even better. Now I know this may appear sexist, but it worked and made the group a whole lot more pleasant. Thoughts, please? I left the manager role for that group after about 3 years and talked with the new guy on the block a few months later when I heard he was having troubles. He asked me how I got things going more smoothly and I told him my 'secret'. He didn't quite get it and I later found he was replaced in about 6 months since the work environment had deteriorated. Hmmmm!