Name that part. Words patients use for their own anatomy.

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Ever searched in a patients' room for what you thought she said she needed to "watch her pocketbook" , she staring at you and you staring at her. Then finally saying, mam what color is your pocketbook because I don't see a pocket book here. Only to have her say, no get my washtub out of the drawer, my washcloth and soap. I always like to wash my pocketbook before I go anywhere. Especially down for tests. And close that curtain, too. Then you say, Oh. ;)

Specializes in Critical/Intensive and rehab nursing..
How about wheetzie, or goula for female parts......

Have not heard either of those. ??? What nationality of pt. if it is not to bold a question? Hope I am not being un-PC:icon_roll but it might help others in our field sometimes to add nationality or race(to this thread) as we all have something we were brought up with or it is the language norm for a given race, religion or culture.

I've learned not to laugh at anything I hear:o as I'll bet we all could be caught with our pants down ( no pun intended ) on this one. If most of us were not brought up with being afraid/ashame to state our body parts, then perhaps would not come up so often. Also being one of the worse countries to use so much slang, we set ourselves up to have to explain what we are really talking about.

?Had patients with speaking disorders or stroke induced problems that of course, use one word meaning a totally different thing??? One patient who had recovered from a stroke several years prior had regained all her speaking skills as well as understanding except for one thing. She was pointing in the general direction of her kleenex box on her bedside table one day after we had a rather wonderful talk when she asked for " kleenex", I reached and gave her the small box in case she needed more than one. She looked puzzled and asked again. Seeing that she had another better box on the end of the table, I retrieved it and gave to her. She was looking rather upset and pointed toward her eyes and asked again. "My Kleenex". Figuring she must have a particular box that she used to dab eyes or clean her glasses with that had her name on it or a box in the drawer under the table,:uhoh3: I looked reassuring her all the while that I would get it for her. She finally grabbled the table herself and took her glasses off the table and promptly put them on looking quite by now infuriated with me. "I just want my kleenex on".

If two items or more lay side by side and if your patient does not seem happy with your helpfulness at retrieving the presumed item they speak about, always guess you did not hear them right, did not understand their language or they have a speech problem that needs to be passed to others who care for them. 3 other nurses who had cared for her, knew that this was a residual stroke effect that had never resolved over the years but left no note on the chart/careplan which they found out from past experience of care for her and also her family told them. Could save a lot of time and embarrassment for both the staff and patient. :icon_roll

Another great one is many older men call a urinal a "duck". It did not make sense the first few times I heard it as it was usually an ex marine, army or navy man telling me they needed the "duck" and as a student at the time, I just figured it was a "service" thing. Finally as one gentlemen showed me. Think about it, set it down on the side to prevent the spilling. It is shaped like a duck with it's wings tucked and floating along. If you don't get to use it soon enough, you will be floating in something too!:chuckle

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Specializes in M/S, OB, Ortho, ICU, Diabetes, QA/PI.
My brother used to call his "wang" a schnitzel! LOL! It was my mom's fault. She told us that's what it was. She got it from the old hot dog restaurants call "der Wiener Schnitzel." We didn't know the difference for years!

Now, you see I call it a "wang." I also call it a ween, or a peen. I call my own parts "my hoohoo." I would never say any of these in a medical situation, though! I think it's funny people do. Oh, I almost forgot, my breasts are "my booballas."

:lol2:

I like "booballas" - I may steal that one for myself.........

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Cared for an elderly dementia pt. yrs. ago that refered to her genitals as, "My Tootsi-Doodlies", her husbands genitals were called, "His Tallywacker."

Yrs. ago at a hospital Halloween costume party one of the Docs and his wife showed-up dressed as M&M pkgs. She was "plain", he was "with nuts."

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Specializes in Education, Acute, Med/Surg, Tele, etc.

I hadn't heard the phrase before when I was fresh out of nursing school...but people were calling the bottom a 'tookus'...I thought that was funny! (and I call it that now! LOL!).

Had a few gents refer to their member as "John Thomas", "Plumbing", "Stalion" and "Dink"...or the older phrases like "have to see a man about a horse", "shake the dew off the lilly", and "write my name in the snow"...LOL!

It also amazes me how many pts do think the term 'A***ole' is a real for real medical term! LOL!!!!!

I like the funny ones about defication...taking a dump, pinching a loaf, mornings morning, my daily constitutional, tending the call of nature, dookie, number two, making a donation, or the occasional bold ones that use the four letter words we all know!

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Specializes in Mental Health and MR/DD.

When my daughter was about three years old, she would call her vaginia her bum

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Specializes in M/S, OB, Ortho, ICU, Diabetes, QA/PI.
When my daughter was about three years old, she would call her vaginia her bum

I'm from Canada and we say "bum" (well, everyone in my part of Canada anyway) and my youngest corrected me one day and said "Um, Mama, here in the USA, we call it a "butt"!" - to which I replied "Oh give your mother a break - she's a foreigner!" - the older they get, the more they call me on using Canadian words/expressions........

well, excuuuuuusssse me!

in my neck of the Michigan woods, there are lots of people of Polish descent and if they know any Polish words, it's the word for "butt" - which sounds like they are saying "dupa" (and it's used frequently here) - has anyone ever heard that word? did I say it right?

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Specializes in med/surg.
I hadn't heard the phrase before when I was fresh out of nursing school...but people were calling the bottom a 'tookus'...I thought that was funny! (and I call it that now! LOL!).

Had a few gents refer to their member as "John Thomas", "Plumbing", "Stalion" and "Dink"...or the older phrases like "have to see a man about a horse", "shake the dew off the lilly", and "write my name in the snow"...LOL!

It also amazes me how many pts do think the term 'A***ole' is a real for real medical term! LOL!!!!!

I like the funny ones about defication...taking a dump, pinching a loaf, mornings morning, my daily constitutional, tending the call of nature, dookie, number two, making a donation, or the occasional bold ones that use the four letter words we all know!

Ha! John Thomas -usually shortened to "JT" - is an English substitution for the male apendage! Now substitued by the younger generation with "Willy" . The cockney rhyming slang for the female anatomy is Jack - Jack & Danny - fanny - because here in the UK "fanny" means the female parts!! Hence the reason why so many people will fall around laughing when they hear you guys call "bum bags" (yes you're probably laughing at that right now) "fanny packs"! Because, as you can imagine, that has a WHOLE (hey what a great pun - ha ha) different meaning to us!

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Specializes in M/S, OB, Ortho, ICU, Diabetes, QA/PI.
Ha! John Thomas -usually shortened to "JT" - is an English substitution for the male apendage! Now substitued by the younger generation with "Willy" . The cockney rhyming slang for the female anatomy is Jack - Jack & Danny - fanny - because here in the UK "fanny" means the female parts!! Hence the reason why so many people will fall around laughing when they hear you guys call "bum bags" (yes you're probably laughing at that right now) "fanny packs"! Because, as you can imagine, that has a WHOLE (hey what a great pun - ha ha) different meaning to us!

I grew up saying "John Thomas" in Canada but my friends and I got that from the Monty Python movie "The Meaning of Life"....

whether they are right or wrong, I know the "Austin Powers" movies have given people some new words (supposedly British) to use - I caught my kids watching one of the movies on Comedy Central and they fell about the place when he called his parts "meat and 2 veg".........

in terms of other words, I said "shag" even before those movies (again, cuz we said it at home) - my friend's daughter (23 years old) went to spend a month in Wales with her sort-of boyfriend and my friend brought some of her pictures to work to show us - well, the daughter inadvertently left a picture in the pile of her boyfriend in bed (with the covers up to his waist but he was shirtless) smoking a cigarette - my friend was totally clueless when I asked "Oh, was Tony having an after-shag fag?" - I wouldn't tell her what it meant and she wrote it on the back of the picture so she would remember to ask her daughter what it meant - apparently, her daughter's face was very red when she read the back of the picture - then, it got even redder when her mother insisted that she explain what it meant!!!! my friend has a great sense of humour (I wouldn't have done it otherwise) and she had a good laugh - years later when Austin Powers made saying "shag" fashionable, my friend would tell people "Oh, I've been saying that for years!"

in Canada, in the '70's, whenever we saw one of those fancy tricked-out conversion vans with the beds in the back, we used to call them "Shaggin' Wagons"..........yee ha!!

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some of my female residents have some funny names for their private areas... "snatch", "cooter", bull dog", "lickety split".

one of my male residents calls his member his "hmmmm- hmmmm" and nods his head down several times as he speaks about it. LOL

:lol2: :lol2: How funny...LOL

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I havent' had this experience yet during nursing clinicals....however, my nieces call their lady parts's "moo-moo".

Growing up, my sisters and I called our lady parts's "toche"...My mom's from Cajun world so maybe that's where it came from...

I remember during my teenage years hearing lady parts referred to a "cat"

P.S. When they pass gas, they call it "percy'd"...There fathers mother (their grandmother) taught them that and "moo-moo"...LOL

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Specializes in ICU, CVICU, E.R..

I recall a doctor once explaining to a patient that he needed to have a colonoscopy done and went into the details of the exam. The patient then uttered "Doc, I think you just gave me anal glaucoma!"

The doc and I kinda looked at each other and then the MD asked, "what do you mean by that?".

The patient replied "Anal glaucoma? well, I just can't imagine seeing that long tube you just described going up my a..!"

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My brother used to call his "wang" a schnitzel! LOL! It was my mom's fault. She told us that's what it was. She got it from the old hot dog restaurants call "der Wiener Schnitzel." We didn't know the difference for years!

Now, you see I call it a "wang." I also call it a ween, or a peen. I call my own parts "my hoohoo." I would never say any of these in a medical situation, though! I think it's funny people do. Oh, I almost forgot, my breasts are "my booballas."

:lol2:

We have a Wiener Schnitzel restaurant close where we live and pass it quite often when we are out and about....Being originally from Germany I scratch my head each time trying to figure out what a Wiener Schnitzel and a Hot dogs have in common......I think it's so funny to name a restaurant a Wiener Schnitzel and then not sell any....but hot dogs instead! One of these days I'll go in and see what's up :chuckle "Wang" sounds like something from a Chinese restaurant! "Boballas sounds Italian????" ROFLMAO

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