Slippers on fire

The last two days I have been working with my oldest colleague. I really love working with her. She's always calm and skillful and she has the most lovely stories about her years of experience as a nurse. The next story just needs to be shared, it's too funny not to and it's not an urban legend, it's sadly true.

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About six years ago, a old nun with a hernia came to be operated at our department. Like most hernia operations, she recovered very quick and after a few days, she wanted to take a nice refreshing shower.

We allow patients to take a shower when we think they are capable to do it on their own. So that includes some physical and mental requirements. The nun was an old granny, but hey, she had spirit. So they taped up her wound with second skin bandage and off she went on her pink slippers and gown to our bath-room.

But granny-nun was becoming a bit forgetful, so she had a nice warm shower, without removing her lovely pink slippers. The slippers were made out of this sort of tissue, that just soaks up water, they were dripping all over the corridor.

My boss, always eager to help a patient in need, got an great idea. He took the pink dripping slippers, wringed a bit of the water out of them, and put them into the microwave oven on full heat ...

Kawoush, the slippers caught fire in no time ! Panic all the way, putting out the fire.

So there stood the poor pink slippers, scorched and still smouldering. And the smoke kept coming out of them ! Nothing kept them from smoking, so the boss had another great idea ...

He put the slippers into the deep freezer next to our ice-cream to stop them from smouldering ...

Of course the story wasn't a department secret for long. The neighbour departments started talking about it, the gossip got all around the hospital, up to the editor of the hospital magazine ...

That's how our department became famous in the three fusion hospitals in Antwerpen. The old nun never got her slippers back, they were far too much scorched and destroyed. But she got brand new ones, payed by the hospital direction.