Open mouth, insert foot.

I've been volunteering at a hospital on a weekly basis for the past seven or eight months. It's been a good experience--I enjoy spending time at the hospital and helping out in small ways (it also gets me some of my requisite volunteer hours for medical school). One of my responsibilities is to help move patients from their beds or stretchers to the CT beds so that they can get scanned. Tonight was one of the funniest moments that I've ever had there.

One sweet older woman was wheeled in to the scanner room, and the first thing I noticed was her hair. Most people who are in the hospital aren't too concerned about their personal appearance because they have other more pressing matters to attend to (like cysts, rupturing appendices and the like). Her hair looked amazing. Something like these two photos, but blonde and less of a tousled look. And no nose piercing (like Alyssa Milano).



So, needless to say, I was impressed. She looked really good for an old lady laying on a hospital bed. So I figure I should let her know--who doesn't love a nice compliment, especially when they're not feeling well? And that's when my foot entered my mouth. I say, "your hair looks really nice," and at that very moment, her blonde coif slid back on her head, exposing her real hair, which was brown with a lot of thick gray streaks. I could feel my eyes widen in shock as I realized that her nice-looking hair was actually a wig. Her eyes were closed, so she didn't notice, and she said, "thank you. It takes a few hours a day to comb it and make it look nice." I could feel myself turning red, and caught a few funny looks from Susie and Michelle, the techs who were on duty.

As soon as I got into the room where they operate the scanners (not the same room that the scanners are in, to prevent the workers from getting a lot of exposure to radiation), I lost it. I busted a gut, and so did everybody else. Some of them had totally noticed that it was a wig from the moment they saw the lady, and they gave me a hard time about it while we waited for the scan to take place. This was probably one of the funniest things that has happened to me in CT.

P.S. I would like to add that it didn't seem like the woman thought I was making fun of her. It sounded like she took my compliment the way it was offered--in a totally and completely sincere manner. She was a sweetheart, and I wish her the best.