Doctors and nurses are, as a rule, not easily embarrassed.

We throw around words that make even the strongest men and women quiver: Stroke. Cancer. Heart attack. We have heard and seen every manner of bodily function - even some unknown to most people. We stare with nonchalance at a picture of the pink mucosa of someone's rectum, relieved there is no tumor. We raise our voice in the ICU to ask our postoperative deaf, elderly patient: "Did you pass gas this morning?" - and though everyone in the unit can hear the doc screaming behind the curtain, no one thinks it unusual.

We have no problem being in the same room alone with a dead person. And we see sweet old ladies walking around the unit wearing ridiculous johnnies (whoever invented it was cruel) that don't quite close in the back so that they are mooning everyone on the unit. I've had to conduct the entire the pre-op consultation with many patients while they are sitting on the commode because the colonoscopy prep made it impossible for them to sit anywhere else. So it's a pretty good rule of thumb that doctors and nurses don't get embarrassed.

Rules were meant to be broken.

After a favorite patient of mine died some time ago, her husband, also a patient, became predictably very sad. They were a loving couple, enjoyed taking cruises together, and were inseparable. He spent a long time mourning. He was a tough guy, former Marine; it always seems that the strong, quiet ones take it the hardest.

Then, he started to look a bit better. He said his wife would have wanted him to be happier and so he was going to try. He was even thinking about going on a cruise alone and meet people. I asked if he was going to start dating, and he said he wasn't against the idea, but wasn't quite sure.

Now, one of the bad things I do in my job as a cardiologist is to give men a lot of medications, some of which can cause erectile dysfunction - a problem readily treated with Viagra. I was a little unsure how to broach a subject this sensitive, especially since he was still getting over his wife's death. I really didn't even know if he was looking to start an intimate relationship with another woman, possibly someone he would meet on the cruise. And so asking whether he had problems with erectile dysfunction and Viagra might have been a completely moot point.

So, after talking about the cruise he was going to take, and the kind of people he'd meet there, I cautiously and quietly I asked him, "Are you interested in having sex?"

At this point, he looked at me quite strangely, and his face twisted a bit. He became a little pale and said, "Well, no offense, but not with you, Doc."

I laughed so hard in my embarrassment that it took me a few minutes to tell him (to his great relief), "Not with ME! I meant with someone you meet on the cruise!"

Like I said, rules were meant to be broken.