It's been nearly 9 years since I wrote "You Might Be an Nurse If...," a list of 34 universal truths about this thing of ours called surgical nursing (tinyurl.com/k4bla73). A few funny-then, funny-now samples from one of my favorite columns:

• You think the best photo of yourself is the one on your ID badge.
• Your cabinet at home has more of those blue containers left over from sterile packs than it has dishes. (One has even replaced your butter container.)
• When you're bathing or showering, you start from the center and wash out, like you do on a prep.
• You do a better shave prep on the patient than you do on your own areas that need a shave.
• Multiple pairs of scrubs at home are slowly replacing your other clothes and you're actually taking them on trips with you as loungewear.
• You can look at a tissue specimen and start to plan what you're going to cook for supper that night.

'So true!'
"So true!" many of my readers remarked back then. Since that time, I've had more traveling OR nurse assignments then I can remember. Here are a few more quirky habits that seem natural to us but might seem strange to those on the outside.

• Scrubbing in at the rest stop. During a recent highway pit stop, I washed my hands at one of those sinks where the faucet was operated by a motion detector that turns the water on. It's a great idea for public restrooms. I wondered if it had ever been put to use in surgical scrub sinks: that might make things easier. As I finished rinsing, the water was still running and I noticed that my right leg jumped up, as if by reflex, searching for the place where I'd normally turn the water off. Lord knows what OR I thought I was going into.

• Got to keep all that hair covered. It's winter in Connecticut, which is like winter everywhere else, only more so, since it's in New England. One morning, after pulling a knit hat onto my head and over my ears, I felt this mandatory urge to put on a second hat, since the first one was not a blue bouffant.
• A new non-latex alternative? Wearing any kind of gloves evokes even more automatic behavior. At Christmas I received some nice, extra-long leather gloves that cover my wrists. As soon as I tried on the first one, the right-hand glove, I realized I was donning it like sterile latex.
• Elbow grease. When I'm cleaning up in the kitchen, I find myself wiping down surfaces with Clorox wipes pretty much as thoroughly as I do with those sanitizing wipes at work. You never know when surveyors might be watching.
• Orderly attire. Any nurse worth her salt knows the importance of organization. About 99% of the OR nurses I've worked with routinely set out their prepping and back table supplies in order of usage to make sure they won't skip a step when getting a patient ready for cut time. I do the same thing with clothing, laying them out in the order in which I plan to put them on. (And don't even get me started on how hoarding habits cross over from work to home.)