"Is A Nuclear Reactor Considered Heavy Machinery?"

A post at Rob's Blog Online Magazine reminded me of the hilarity that can ensue when one combines reactor operations and pain-killers. A couple of examples from my time as Shift Engineer at MTS-626 in Charleston:

1) We have a Naval Reactors monitor watch going on, and I'm in Maneuvering with the monitor, when the SRO pulls out some medicine he's taking and says, "It says here you're not supposed to operate heavy machinery when you're taking this. Is a nuclear reactor considered heavy machinery?"

2) I had to get two wisdom teeth pulled, so I scheduled it for the Friday before the four-off. Got lots of good drugs. Started back to work on Wednesday swing shift, and was noticing that I still had some pus coming from one of the sites where they removed the tooth. I went into the Dentist's office, and they took an X-ray and said I still had a piece of bone in there that they'd have to pull. Went in the next afternoon for that (just before the last day of swings) figuring that it'd be a fairly simple process to remove the bone; it turned out that they basically had to do the same process they used for removing the tooth. The doc gave me the same pills, and I say, "I can't take these; I'm standing Shift Engineer tonight!" He said he hoped I had a high tolerance to pain. (I couldn't take the night off because I was in the 11 month stretch where I was the only qualified Shift Eng on my crew; I couldn't miss a shift.) I made it until about halfway through shift; called the EOOW and told him that I was taking a pain killer, and he should ignore any really strange orders he might get from me for the rest of the night. Luckily, everything went pretty well...

Going deep...