Unfiltered Story #99505

I was staying overnight at the hospital for observation because of heart palpitations. I’m a woman in her mid-20’s who has had EKGs and echoes every two years since birth, and I’m fairly used to older male doctors working around my naked torso and have never really been embarrassed. My Cardiologists have also all been respectful in their use of coverings for my breasts, and averting their gaze when those covers need to be shifted or worked under.

This hospital visit, all of the doctors and nurses had been great- until the male nurse who woke me up to give me my next echo in the middle of the night. I am always a complete zombie for a while after any awakening, but even half-asleep I automatically started unbuttoning the shirt to my hospital pajamas, so the nurse could lift the edges and work underneath it, as usual.

This nurse, however, pushes my hands out of the way before I had finished two buttons, quickly unbuttoned the rest of them, and then threw open the shirt, leaving me completely exposed. As he started doing the echo, I lay there quietly, my zombie brain trying to parse the situation at the speed of a snail. Before I even started to realize that I was uncomfortable with this, he was finished and gone without a word the entire time, leaving me to groggily button my shirt back up and fall back asleep.

I never mentioned it the next day to the rest of the staff, between my deathly confrontation allergy and my rationalizations that maybe I was being slow, he was a nurse and had seen plenty of bodies, he just did his job and nothing else creepy, etc. Maybe if I hadn’t been in my vulnerable zombie state, I might have brought up that in 20+ years of medical practitioners, not a single one had required a completely topless show from me to perform an echo, and that the lack of both courtesy and asking for permission bothered me.