Something I said

I was assessing a teenager who had, a number of years ago, had all thier fingers/thumbs amputated at the knuckle. I knew this from looking at the patient notes, and also from looking at his hands and the scarring - he had no fingers.

Part way through the assessment, after taking the history, I went to take his physical observations, including his pulse. I went into autopilot, started unfolding my pulse-oximeter cable and said...
"Can I borrow a finger please"
I was mortified. The patient didn't have a sense of humour and didn't make a joke out of it to save me (Darn him! I thought later I should have said "Ah, it looks like we've already had them" but I don't think he was the laughing kind).
Instead I fumbled my way through with...
"Or, we could use a toe..." (I later read more of his notes and discovered he'd had a partial foot amputations too)
"Or I could just stop being so lazy and do a manual pulse. That's the problem with these machines, you get so used to using them that you become lazy and use them even when you don't have to"
Ramble. Ramble. Just keep on digging Angela.