Memories

Patients do say the oddest things to me.

A while ago, anaesthetising a completely sane, nice old man, he confessed to me, out of the blue:
"...my teeth were taken out by an SS Officer."

I decided not to ask him if this was
- involuntary,
- in one swift movement, or
- over an prolonged period of time and without anaesthetic.

In any case, I assumed he didn't really want to talk about it as it probably wasn't pleasant. (I s'pose theoretically it might've been. Maybe they had really good dental care during the War. Maybe, right, he was developing really bad dental caries from wolfing down all his chocolate ration in one go, yeah, and then maybe a passing Nazi dentist took pity on him and offered to help by... hmmm, who am I kidding...?)

Anyway, just before getting him off to sleep, I told him to think of something nice to dream about.
"I'm going to dream about previous sex" he whispered to me, with a smile.

(shudder) That's a bit creepy.
I just hope that it wasn't from the same period in his life...