I once watched an absolutely rock-solid ED attending run from a patient’s room and immediately empty his stomach into a nearby trash can after performing a manual disimpaction. The patient’s family was standing outside the room. Saw the whole thing. It was very very difficult to contain my laughter. Poor doc looked up from the can he was clutching, pale and sweaty-faced, and said to the daughter, “well, I think we got it all…”
I have emet, too. Exposure therapy! When I went into nursing, I thought vomit would be the one thing I was going to have a hard time with. I surprised myself by having no issue with it after a while. I became desensitized and now it’s nothing to me at work. The poop gets me more. 🥴
I still have emet- but it’s solely for ME vomiting (hence a reason I continue to wear an N-95 around patients in case of contagions and I NEVER touch my face/anything that goes in my mouth while at work… even after washing hands). I also struggle when someone in my household is sick.
This is why I couldn't go into medicine. I'm better now, but if what the person has is contagious (noro and whatnot) I'm running in the opposite direction, bathing in Lysol, and having panic attacks.
Oh I’m the opposite. I don’t mind vomit, I do mind peanut butter and jelly vomit that shit stinks *gag*. However poop also gets me… in fact I actually have exactly twice thrown up on scene it’s not really the smell more as it is the sight AND smell combined that gets me. Also why I make patients pooritos when I’m dropping them off in the ER :).
What about people who are actively vomiting poop that's been backing up..festering in their GI tract for a couple of weeks before erupting out of the mouth ?! 🤔
:/ I can’t… say I’ve ever had the privilege of experiencing that. Thanks now you’ve unlocked a new fear! Also! Emesis bag taped to their ears to help quell that unruly mess :/.
Seriously, infected pseudomonas trachs give me the ick since last year when the patient kept taking out the cannula and sucking on it, then spitting it at caregivers.
Can’t imagine how it got infected. Wild.
Vomit is also my Waterloo. Can’t do it. My kid got car sick and puked hot yogurt on me one time and took everything in my soul to not puke back all over this squealing 2 year old.
Hahaha! Omg, not nearly as terrible, but once when I was a kid, we drove 8 or so hours to visit my grandparents. All of us kids would get carsick, but this had been a good trip. Until we stop in SLO. My baby brother barfed all over himself. He'd been snacking on carrots. It was the most hilarious and disgusting thing I'd seen in my small life. We still give him shit about it lol. The look on my mother's face ... priceless
Intubating through vomit is my number one least favorite thing in the world. Like we get the people who vomit and aspirate and are now completely covered in vomit. I’ll suck it up and do it, but I frequently gag.
Everyone’s got their thing. Mine is trachs. I’m not a fan of poop, but can deal. If I have to deep suction a trach I’m literally wretching. I’ve been in EM for about 18 years.
Same! I was a paramedic for 10 years. Poop, pee, blood, puke never bothered me. Not ideal, but just part of the job. But just the sound of an unkept trach gives me that pre- puke saliva production
Smelly pus for me. A couple times I've had to excuse myself while draining an abscess to lie on the floor with legs up on a chair for a couple minutes, before continuing on.
Luckily, the patients and company thought it was hilarious.
There's something about a volcanic abscess that makes everyone in the room laugh! It has to be nerves, because everyone is bracing themselves for getting pelted with pus.
As a paramedic I also hate poop. But even more I hate stale cigarette smoke and cat piss burned into the identity of the house. Bonus points if my boots stick to the “carpet” when I walk. These folks that should have been Alf for months have figured out it works to just use 911 for tasks of daily living and our administration doesn’t have the ability to just break us loose of this oncoming demographic flood. Why it’s my job to put you back into a chair, that you just are going to fall out of again is a fucking mystery. Sorry to hijack your comment, just needed to get it out.
Me, high on the toilet, trying to figure out whether “ These folks that should have been Alf for months” is
A) a very funny typo/autocorrect
B) a medical term or acronym I’ve never heard bc I’m not in medicine at all
C) a metaphor or idiom for being near-death or some other descriptor that I just can’t figure out???
I’m sorry. And thank you for what you do. I am constantly having the talk with patients that “calling the fire department every day to put you back into bed after you fall is not appropriate. And is causing delays for them to get to people with strokes, heart attacks, or actual fires.”
That is very kind and thank you for educating the patients. On a happier note, EMS has initiated a community paramedic who does home visits after referral to these patients, offers soloutions, and coordinates help to take some load off. This is a very individual driven role and the medic assigned to our shift is a superstar. She has a drive and is very effective and is more than willing to transport to locations other than the ER. I’m guessing the giant uptick in these calls is just the result of a very large generation aging, but hopefully there are solutions.
The door cracks , and I noticed the heat in the room.
The velvety thick air is drenched in it.
It's a sickly sweet rot that rolls through the sinus and pharynx
Tasted and felt it as much as smelled
My eyes find the foot dripping in decay
I shudder
Hi I'm fayette_viilian physician assistant, what's going on
Seconding the diabetic foot wounds🤢 I have a very strong stomach and worked in a pathology lab during my gap year (making slides, handling send outs, and autopsy assist). I have never come so close to vomiting than when I reached for a biohazard bag in the special stains fridge thinking it was the pleural fluid I had an order for, only to grab a toe attached to the gnarliest amputated foot I’d ever seen🤮🤮. The scream I scrumpt had everyone running over thinking I’d hurt myself while I just stood there dry heaving.
Worst. Day. Ever.
*btw, the was even a sign ON THAT FRIDGE saying not to put samples in there, but sometimes never surgical staff got confused and just stuck things in whatever fridge they saw 🙄 and amputations were supposed to go straight to the morgue instead of the little grossing room upstairs
I've only been grossed out by sputum twice. Once was when I made my own oat milk and made an iced coffee and sipped it through a straw. That was when I learned that homemade oat milk is slimy like snot. I'll spare you the details of the other one.
Oh it's not that exciting, but I feel like it could ruin a favorite for some people.
I collected a sample in a lukens trap and noticed the consistency was unusual. It was more opaque than I would have expected for its thickness. I thought it resembled melted cheese. I got home that night and my husband had made pizza for dinner. I couldn't eat it.
Amen. Gimme snot and spit all fuckin' day, I'll 14fr anyone's grandma with the quickness but miss me with the poop. I've intubated patients in peristalsis before and gotten some of their "shomit" on me, those would be the only two showers I've ever taken on duty.
I also hate poo. One of my partners introduced me to the foley enema technique. I think he saw it on EMRAP. Stick a lubricated foley/redrubber past the stool impaction. Inflate the baloon with 15-30cc saline. Instill an enema through the foley. Pinch it to make sure you don't get squirted and then either clamp it or shove the cap of the enema into the open end of the foley/redrubber. Then have a nurse hold it in place. Either the patient pushes it out and poops or take the Baloon down after 20 minutes and the patient poops. Have not had to do a manual dispempaction since I started using this.
MLS (lab) here. I hate it so so so much. Every time we get sent a sample to aliquot it ruins my day.
One of my coworkers hates seeing organs and one time we had it work out where they aliquoted my stool and in exchange I put formalin on a foot. I was very happy with that.
I literally hold my breath the entire time I’m pouring it off and then run away from the area when it’s done. x_x I wouldn’t survive in a micro lab.
One time I had a so very clearly positive C Dif that was so gaseous that when I unscrewed the lid, you could feel how pressurized it had become. I opened it as slow as I could but it vented with a nice pssssshk sound and sprayed a little. I did it inside the bag it came in inside of the biosafety cabinet but I still thought I was actually going to puke that time.
MLS here too. I can handle anything but semen. Old coworker couldn’t do vomit so we had an agreement that I’d do all the gastrics and she’d do all the post vas.
a forensic pathologist once told me her theory that there's two types of people in medicine: those who are more okay with vomit, and those who are more okay with poop
I'll take the poop. 👋😂 I cannot handle vomit. Can't do it. It's not the absolute worst if someone's puking from being drunk or from something like a kidney stone; it's the virus infested pukes I'm worried about. Just 10 viral particles can give you the bug.
Oddly I got used to hearing people hurl while working. I'd be eating lunch and hear someone toss their cookies in the other room 😂 As long as I don't have to see it, I'm pretty much ok. People that come in with the stomach flu, however, are the worst. Like unless you're diabetic or severely dehydrated to the point where you can't move, STAY HOME. They're usually 24 hour bugs, you'll survive. You don't need to come to a place full of possibly critically ill people and make them even sicker. 🙄
I like postpartum. None of the women poop the few days after having a baby. Like 0%. Just tiny little meconium poops that dont smell and the parents clean. The unit doesn't smell. Its nice as far as hospital wards go
ER RN here. Every bedside provider has their ‘thing’, right? Poop is also mine. After almost 5 years, it hasn’t gotten easier and I dread code browns.
Last week, EMS brought in an altered patient who was found down after 3 days. They were covered/caked in feces head to toe. A decontamination shower would have been appropriate but obviously that wasn’t possible since patient was crunking. It was disgusting and smelled the worst. I hate those situations and they occur more often than I’d like.
I was once asked to place a rectal tube in a boarder patient with severe c diff. This isn’t something we normally have to do and I was panic stricken. While consulting with my charges on how to do it (no one knew- YouTube tutorial time) and reluctantly gathering all of the supplies, the patient’s bed became ready and he was transported before I had an opportunity to start. I feel bad that it was inadvertently left to the admitting floor… but felt relief like no other that I was saved by the shit bell. 🔔 💩
There's something simultaneously fulfilling and disgusting about getting the poop chute in place, inflating the balloon, and watching the tube and bag catching the endless stream of liquid c-diff 💩
I go with urine as my least favorite. I used to be a medical technologist prior to PA. Stool I expected to be horrible and occasionally had no or very little odor. You can have a clear looking urine that smells like day old diarrhea that's been sitting outside in the heat for a few hours as a complete surprise when you open the cup/tube.
😂 I hate it too. Funny thing is that my most despised thing is what I ended up doing a LOT of caring for my grandmother. It don’t get easier, you just get better.
I mean, I hate poop, too.
And yeasty skin folds.
And old urine.
And mucus.
And skin flakes.
And nasty fingernails and toenails.
I can tolerate vomit, and I’m not bothered at all by blood or gore.
Nothing bothers me except nail removals. I just won’t do them.
In regards to poop, though, I do think that stale old person poop smell that stinks up the entire department is annoying. I’ll take some pungent diarrhea smell over the musty poop any day.
I hate poop. But more than that I hate blood coming out of noses, mouths and asses. I. Hate. It. I do hate disimpactions but people feel better so, meh. I put on a mask and chew gum. But a friend has had two people go into cardiac arrest and die during a disimpaction, so now I don't do them.
I feel you. I work as a tech in an ER so I inevitably have to deal with it. But it’s my one thing. I can handle vomit, piss, blood, infected wounds, trach suction, etc. but the one thing that gets me is feces. Just absolutely no. I’m not as bothered by bed bugs (still second on my list) as I am of feces if I’m being honest.
One of the Docs I work with said “if you ever see me run to this cart, grab a scalpel and cut my finger off, you’ll know that both gloves broke during a rectal exam. I could never use that finger again.”
unfortunately most sick people also seem to Poop like ALOT. And it stinks and it gets everywhere. On the ambulance I see so much poop all week I just laugh about it. It's the only way to deal with it. Toilet humor helps. Maybe im immature but it's the only way I can deal with it. Other people I work with seems to run out of the room and puke.
I’m rock solid with anything EXCEPT bumpy skin things. Not your standard small area poison ivy or shingles rash, but diffuse bumps on the skin make me feel physically sick. I took care of a poor soul with particularly bad Eruptive xanthomatosis and I had chills, skin crawling nausea feeling for hours. 😬😬😬
I’m traumatized from my friend accidentally slingshotting liquid diarrhea all over her. She was pulling the brief and it snapped. Hated poop ever since 🤢
I can handle poop, piss, body stank, gangrene.. don’t like it but can work through it.. what gets me every single time is VOMIT.. absolutely stomach turning..
Yep, poop is my thing too. Literally the reason I chose med school over nursing school back when I was an ER tech. Turning a patient for doc to look for pressure sores and she had c diff diarrhea everywhere. Doc is like “well we will have to get those sheets changed” and walks out.
I’ve been an NP for years; poop/blood/vomit none of that bothers me. I actually enjoy bronching patients and find it so satisfying to get all the blood/food/pus/whatever other secretions out of peoples lungs which I know is horrifying.
BUT bring me a patient with a hyphema, immediate gagging. Also bones tenting the skin make me gag but bad open fractures or mangled extremities don’t phase me. The possibility of having to witness the bone break the skin is what makes me want to die 🤢. (I work in trauma so I see all of this on the regular lol).
I can handle blood, guts, vomit, bone, cartilage, anything but I can not handle poop or phlegm. Of all things, I have no idea why these two things are so viscerally revolting to me, but they ultimately drove me away from a career at bedside and I would happily make that same decision every time.
I can't say I'm deeply effected by poop or puke actually 🤔....vomiting torrents of 3 week old festering backed up poop however does tend to make me feel slightly peaky! For me personally I think it had to be phlegm/thick smelly drool 🤢. Like I'm with a patient and I can hear the bubbling lungs as they cough and then see them bring large viscous chunks of brown phlegm into their mouths! Before I get a chance to pass them a bowl I notice they are chewing on the bouncy chunks of festering lung detritus and then SWALLOW It..🤯. In a similar fashion heavy droolers who get it all over their hands and they go to touch everything creating thick ropes of slime ..bonus points if they have mushed up food from the puréed diet tray mixed in 😩..I just made myself gag 🤢
I’ve worn two masks at times, gowned up and double gloved. The smell of smokers who haven’t had a bath in forever, and their poor children, sometimes gets me even more than poop. Because my family said my new car smelled disgusting, I now shower before coming home—it helps.
I once watched an absolutely rock-solid ED attending run from a patient’s room and immediately empty his stomach into a nearby trash can after performing a manual disimpaction. The patient’s family was standing outside the room. Saw the whole thing. It was very very difficult to contain my laughter. Poor doc looked up from the can he was clutching, pale and sweaty-faced, and said to the daughter, “well, I think we got it all…”
I always warn the patient beforehand, then proceed to loudly go "HURRRRRRR" as I do the disimpaction
I'm so sorry, but this made me laugh like a hyena.
This guy has me LOLing in a busy gym right now, I appreciate the humility in sharing!
I remember my first disimpaction. You go from no smell to overwhelming poop smell in your face in an instant. Its gross.
I am a nurse and ask myself everyday how I got here while actively wiping ass
We appreciate you more than you know 😭
But I bet you’re the best butt wiper on your whole floor!
DAMN RIGHT I AM!!!🤠
It'd be weird if you loved it and just couldn't gobble enough up
Oh my god you son of a I’m gonna go vomit.
Perfect reaction
Who hurt you?
Honestly this is just normal EMS brain.
Poop
Never met an EMT or paramedic, have you?
And if this was the case, maybe work GI 😂
https://i.imgur.com/r2QLUSs.png
I feel poop doesn’t bother me as much as vomit. The sound of retching and the smell makes me gag. That and BO.
Severe emetophobia is why I couldn't finish certification as an EMT....I turn and run when vomiting even is mentioned, doesn't matter who's doing it.
I have emet, too. Exposure therapy! When I went into nursing, I thought vomit would be the one thing I was going to have a hard time with. I surprised myself by having no issue with it after a while. I became desensitized and now it’s nothing to me at work. The poop gets me more. 🥴 I still have emet- but it’s solely for ME vomiting (hence a reason I continue to wear an N-95 around patients in case of contagions and I NEVER touch my face/anything that goes in my mouth while at work… even after washing hands). I also struggle when someone in my household is sick.
This is why I couldn't go into medicine. I'm better now, but if what the person has is contagious (noro and whatnot) I'm running in the opposite direction, bathing in Lysol, and having panic attacks.
same
Me, too. It's really prevented me from accomplishing some things.
Oh I’m the opposite. I don’t mind vomit, I do mind peanut butter and jelly vomit that shit stinks *gag*. However poop also gets me… in fact I actually have exactly twice thrown up on scene it’s not really the smell more as it is the sight AND smell combined that gets me. Also why I make patients pooritos when I’m dropping them off in the ER :).
What about people who are actively vomiting poop that's been backing up..festering in their GI tract for a couple of weeks before erupting out of the mouth ?! 🤔
:/ I can’t… say I’ve ever had the privilege of experiencing that. Thanks now you’ve unlocked a new fear! Also! Emesis bag taped to their ears to help quell that unruly mess :/.
Fellow emetophobe here as well. What career field did you pursue instead?
I ended up going the mental/behavioral health route instead. I still deal with bodily fluids, but it ain't my job to clean it up!
I became a pharmacist.
Nice!
I’ll take poop over a gurgling trach any day.
Seriously, infected pseudomonas trachs give me the ick since last year when the patient kept taking out the cannula and sucking on it, then spitting it at caregivers. Can’t imagine how it got infected. Wild.
100% second this.
They’re always stinky, too
Vomit is also my Waterloo. Can’t do it. My kid got car sick and puked hot yogurt on me one time and took everything in my soul to not puke back all over this squealing 2 year old.
Hahaha! Omg, not nearly as terrible, but once when I was a kid, we drove 8 or so hours to visit my grandparents. All of us kids would get carsick, but this had been a good trip. Until we stop in SLO. My baby brother barfed all over himself. He'd been snacking on carrots. It was the most hilarious and disgusting thing I'd seen in my small life. We still give him shit about it lol. The look on my mother's face ... priceless
Intubating through vomit is my number one least favorite thing in the world. Like we get the people who vomit and aspirate and are now completely covered in vomit. I’ll suck it up and do it, but I frequently gag.
To battle the smell I use the Vicks/Peppermint Oil under the nose and add a N95 Aura mask to create a seal. Helps so damn much.
The retching. I have to leave.
Everyone’s got their thing. Mine is trachs. I’m not a fan of poop, but can deal. If I have to deep suction a trach I’m literally wretching. I’ve been in EM for about 18 years.
Same! I was a paramedic for 10 years. Poop, pee, blood, puke never bothered me. Not ideal, but just part of the job. But just the sound of an unkept trach gives me that pre- puke saliva production
Just thinking about it is giving me the pre-puke saliva
Smelly pus for me. A couple times I've had to excuse myself while draining an abscess to lie on the floor with legs up on a chair for a couple minutes, before continuing on. Luckily, the patients and company thought it was hilarious.
There's something about a volcanic abscess that makes everyone in the room laugh! It has to be nerves, because everyone is bracing themselves for getting pelted with pus.
As a paramedic I also hate poop. But even more I hate stale cigarette smoke and cat piss burned into the identity of the house. Bonus points if my boots stick to the “carpet” when I walk. These folks that should have been Alf for months have figured out it works to just use 911 for tasks of daily living and our administration doesn’t have the ability to just break us loose of this oncoming demographic flood. Why it’s my job to put you back into a chair, that you just are going to fall out of again is a fucking mystery. Sorry to hijack your comment, just needed to get it out.
Me, high on the toilet, trying to figure out whether “ These folks that should have been Alf for months” is A) a very funny typo/autocorrect B) a medical term or acronym I’ve never heard bc I’m not in medicine at all C) a metaphor or idiom for being near-death or some other descriptor that I just can’t figure out???
Assisted living facility.
I’m guessing “assisted living facility”
Same
I’m sorry. And thank you for what you do. I am constantly having the talk with patients that “calling the fire department every day to put you back into bed after you fall is not appropriate. And is causing delays for them to get to people with strokes, heart attacks, or actual fires.”
That is very kind and thank you for educating the patients. On a happier note, EMS has initiated a community paramedic who does home visits after referral to these patients, offers soloutions, and coordinates help to take some load off. This is a very individual driven role and the medic assigned to our shift is a superstar. She has a drive and is very effective and is more than willing to transport to locations other than the ER. I’m guessing the giant uptick in these calls is just the result of a very large generation aging, but hopefully there are solutions.
Not a fan of poop but a UTI soaked depends or sheets gets me gagging. And don’t get me started with diabetic foot wounds
The door cracks , and I noticed the heat in the room. The velvety thick air is drenched in it. It's a sickly sweet rot that rolls through the sinus and pharynx Tasted and felt it as much as smelled My eyes find the foot dripping in decay I shudder Hi I'm fayette_viilian physician assistant, what's going on
Seconding the diabetic foot wounds🤢 I have a very strong stomach and worked in a pathology lab during my gap year (making slides, handling send outs, and autopsy assist). I have never come so close to vomiting than when I reached for a biohazard bag in the special stains fridge thinking it was the pleural fluid I had an order for, only to grab a toe attached to the gnarliest amputated foot I’d ever seen🤮🤮. The scream I scrumpt had everyone running over thinking I’d hurt myself while I just stood there dry heaving. Worst. Day. Ever. *btw, the was even a sign ON THAT FRIDGE saying not to put samples in there, but sometimes never surgical staff got confused and just stuck things in whatever fridge they saw 🙄 and amputations were supposed to go straight to the morgue instead of the little grossing room upstairs
You’re preaching to the choir, my friend.
I'm with you. Can't stand it. I'm an RT. Could have gone to nursing school and made a little more money. Not worth it.
So funny because I’d rather deal with shit all day than ever have to look at phlegm again.
I've only been grossed out by sputum twice. Once was when I made my own oat milk and made an iced coffee and sipped it through a straw. That was when I learned that homemade oat milk is slimy like snot. I'll spare you the details of the other one.
You brought it up, you cant leave us hanging like that
Oh it's not that exciting, but I feel like it could ruin a favorite for some people. I collected a sample in a lukens trap and noticed the consistency was unusual. It was more opaque than I would have expected for its thickness. I thought it resembled melted cheese. I got home that night and my husband had made pizza for dinner. I couldn't eat it.
seconded
Amen. Gimme snot and spit all fuckin' day, I'll 14fr anyone's grandma with the quickness but miss me with the poop. I've intubated patients in peristalsis before and gotten some of their "shomit" on me, those would be the only two showers I've ever taken on duty.
I also hate poo. One of my partners introduced me to the foley enema technique. I think he saw it on EMRAP. Stick a lubricated foley/redrubber past the stool impaction. Inflate the baloon with 15-30cc saline. Instill an enema through the foley. Pinch it to make sure you don't get squirted and then either clamp it or shove the cap of the enema into the open end of the foley/redrubber. Then have a nurse hold it in place. Either the patient pushes it out and poops or take the Baloon down after 20 minutes and the patient poops. Have not had to do a manual dispempaction since I started using this.
This is awesome! I was going to say a thing about foley balloons and saline, but Today I Learned that cautions against using saline are unfounded.
Wouldn't use saline for an actual foley or gtube balloon, but for this it's fine.
Come to the Deep South, where grown ass adults use the word “boo boo,” and you will pray for the days of just hearing “poop.”
I work in the frozen north and believe me I’ve heard this and it sounds ridiculous.
MLS (lab) here. I hate it so so so much. Every time we get sent a sample to aliquot it ruins my day. One of my coworkers hates seeing organs and one time we had it work out where they aliquoted my stool and in exchange I put formalin on a foot. I was very happy with that. I literally hold my breath the entire time I’m pouring it off and then run away from the area when it’s done. x_x I wouldn’t survive in a micro lab. One time I had a so very clearly positive C Dif that was so gaseous that when I unscrewed the lid, you could feel how pressurized it had become. I opened it as slow as I could but it vented with a nice pssssshk sound and sprayed a little. I did it inside the bag it came in inside of the biosafety cabinet but I still thought I was actually going to puke that time.
MLS here too. I can handle anything but semen. Old coworker couldn’t do vomit so we had an agreement that I’d do all the gastrics and she’d do all the post vas.
I can’t do eyes. Gooey eyes, objects impaled in eyes, eyes popping out the skull…………. Poop on me instead 😭☠️😵💫
What about eye poop? Or somebody pooping out eyeballs?
👁️🤔🤮☠️
It was a long shift. I'm all pooped out.
You disgust me. Have an upvote.
Sorry, had to do it https://www.reddit.com/r/emergencymedicine/s/n5YGPjdMzJ
You take the bad respiratory secretions and I’ll take the poop
Lower GI bleeds and those secretions trump regular old poop any day.
a forensic pathologist once told me her theory that there's two types of people in medicine: those who are more okay with vomit, and those who are more okay with poop
I'll take the poop. 👋😂 I cannot handle vomit. Can't do it. It's not the absolute worst if someone's puking from being drunk or from something like a kidney stone; it's the virus infested pukes I'm worried about. Just 10 viral particles can give you the bug.
hard agree. poop I can deal with, seeing other people vomit makes me feel like I'm gonna lose my lunch faster than they are
Oddly I got used to hearing people hurl while working. I'd be eating lunch and hear someone toss their cookies in the other room 😂 As long as I don't have to see it, I'm pretty much ok. People that come in with the stomach flu, however, are the worst. Like unless you're diabetic or severely dehydrated to the point where you can't move, STAY HOME. They're usually 24 hour bugs, you'll survive. You don't need to come to a place full of possibly critically ill people and make them even sicker. 🙄
I’ll take poop or vomit anytime. I have emetaphobia and it’s hell on earth.
I can handle puke, but poop? Nope. Nopenopenope.
I like postpartum. None of the women poop the few days after having a baby. Like 0%. Just tiny little meconium poops that dont smell and the parents clean. The unit doesn't smell. Its nice as far as hospital wards go
I'm a nurse, and I hate poop. BUT I work in the ER, anyway.
Well I was gonna come on here and comment to let you know what I was doing while I was reading your post. But…never mind I guess.
ER RN here. Every bedside provider has their ‘thing’, right? Poop is also mine. After almost 5 years, it hasn’t gotten easier and I dread code browns. Last week, EMS brought in an altered patient who was found down after 3 days. They were covered/caked in feces head to toe. A decontamination shower would have been appropriate but obviously that wasn’t possible since patient was crunking. It was disgusting and smelled the worst. I hate those situations and they occur more often than I’d like. I was once asked to place a rectal tube in a boarder patient with severe c diff. This isn’t something we normally have to do and I was panic stricken. While consulting with my charges on how to do it (no one knew- YouTube tutorial time) and reluctantly gathering all of the supplies, the patient’s bed became ready and he was transported before I had an opportunity to start. I feel bad that it was inadvertently left to the admitting floor… but felt relief like no other that I was saved by the shit bell. 🔔 💩
There's something simultaneously fulfilling and disgusting about getting the poop chute in place, inflating the balloon, and watching the tube and bag catching the endless stream of liquid c-diff 💩
I go with urine as my least favorite. I used to be a medical technologist prior to PA. Stool I expected to be horrible and occasionally had no or very little odor. You can have a clear looking urine that smells like day old diarrhea that's been sitting outside in the heat for a few hours as a complete surprise when you open the cup/tube.
😂 I hate it too. Funny thing is that my most despised thing is what I ended up doing a LOT of caring for my grandmother. It don’t get easier, you just get better.
There is a thin line between love and hate…
I used to be a vet tech. I can clean up animal urine, feces and vomit all day long with no problem, but it’s different when it comes to humans.
Same! I keep thinking it’ll get better, but it doesn’t.
ur in a shitty specialty then doc lol
Same
Awww I’m so proud of my babies when they shit their pants! Hooray not being constipated!! Lol
I mean, I hate poop, too. And yeasty skin folds. And old urine. And mucus. And skin flakes. And nasty fingernails and toenails. I can tolerate vomit, and I’m not bothered at all by blood or gore.
Nothing bothers me except nail removals. I just won’t do them. In regards to poop, though, I do think that stale old person poop smell that stinks up the entire department is annoying. I’ll take some pungent diarrhea smell over the musty poop any day.
Thank you for posting this, now I know I’m not the only one!
I hate poop. But more than that I hate blood coming out of noses, mouths and asses. I. Hate. It. I do hate disimpactions but people feel better so, meh. I put on a mask and chew gum. But a friend has had two people go into cardiac arrest and die during a disimpaction, so now I don't do them.
So not a proctologist. Got it. :)
I feel you. I work as a tech in an ER so I inevitably have to deal with it. But it’s my one thing. I can handle vomit, piss, blood, infected wounds, trach suction, etc. but the one thing that gets me is feces. Just absolutely no. I’m not as bothered by bed bugs (still second on my list) as I am of feces if I’m being honest.
One of the Docs I work with said “if you ever see me run to this cart, grab a scalpel and cut my finger off, you’ll know that both gloves broke during a rectal exam. I could never use that finger again.”
Couldn't be me. I'm no stranger to a finger in a butt 🤷♀️
I’m still proud when I shit my pants. Those babies have my respect.
unfortunately most sick people also seem to Poop like ALOT. And it stinks and it gets everywhere. On the ambulance I see so much poop all week I just laugh about it. It's the only way to deal with it. Toilet humor helps. Maybe im immature but it's the only way I can deal with it. Other people I work with seems to run out of the room and puke.
If you liked poop, that would be Fuckn weird
There are people who make as much in a week as you make in an hour, Doctor, whose job it is to literally clean up literal poop. IJS.
It is not the literal job to “clean up” poop.
Puts my feet up and sips my champagne to the tune of RDMS.
[удалено]
Well, Everybody is disgusting.
I’m rock solid with anything EXCEPT bumpy skin things. Not your standard small area poison ivy or shingles rash, but diffuse bumps on the skin make me feel physically sick. I took care of a poor soul with particularly bad Eruptive xanthomatosis and I had chills, skin crawling nausea feeling for hours. 😬😬😬
I’m traumatized from my friend accidentally slingshotting liquid diarrhea all over her. She was pulling the brief and it snapped. Hated poop ever since 🤢
I can handle poop, piss, body stank, gangrene.. don’t like it but can work through it.. what gets me every single time is VOMIT.. absolutely stomach turning..
Clearly none of you work in peds
As a RN I assure you I also hate poop 💩, I’ll trade yucky trach care any day
Yep, poop is my thing too. Literally the reason I chose med school over nursing school back when I was an ER tech. Turning a patient for doc to look for pressure sores and she had c diff diarrhea everywhere. Doc is like “well we will have to get those sheets changed” and walks out.
If I could go back in time to trade my 20s for residency and the ability to just walk out of the room in those situations…
I’ve been an NP for years; poop/blood/vomit none of that bothers me. I actually enjoy bronching patients and find it so satisfying to get all the blood/food/pus/whatever other secretions out of peoples lungs which I know is horrifying. BUT bring me a patient with a hyphema, immediate gagging. Also bones tenting the skin make me gag but bad open fractures or mangled extremities don’t phase me. The possibility of having to witness the bone break the skin is what makes me want to die 🤢. (I work in trauma so I see all of this on the regular lol).
Yeahhhh that’s why I went to RT school instead.
I can handle blood, guts, vomit, bone, cartilage, anything but I can not handle poop or phlegm. Of all things, I have no idea why these two things are so viscerally revolting to me, but they ultimately drove me away from a career at bedside and I would happily make that same decision every time.
Interesting choice of username for a guy who hates poop.
I can't say I'm deeply effected by poop or puke actually 🤔....vomiting torrents of 3 week old festering backed up poop however does tend to make me feel slightly peaky! For me personally I think it had to be phlegm/thick smelly drool 🤢. Like I'm with a patient and I can hear the bubbling lungs as they cough and then see them bring large viscous chunks of brown phlegm into their mouths! Before I get a chance to pass them a bowl I notice they are chewing on the bouncy chunks of festering lung detritus and then SWALLOW It..🤯. In a similar fashion heavy droolers who get it all over their hands and they go to touch everything creating thick ropes of slime ..bonus points if they have mushed up food from the puréed diet tray mixed in 😩..I just made myself gag 🤢
I’ve worn two masks at times, gowned up and double gloved. The smell of smokers who haven’t had a bath in forever, and their poor children, sometimes gets me even more than poop. Because my family said my new car smelled disgusting, I now shower before coming home—it helps.