Smells: Our Week 3 Review

If the theme of Week 2 was “Bugs”, the theme of week 3 was definitely “smells”.  Funky odors and sickening stenches are something that you learn to expect as you go through your theory courses about diseases and patient care. From gangrenous toes, to dirty diapers and freshly removed casts.  But, you really can’t prepare yourself for their assault on your crista galli. And mine just happen to be abnormally large or something, because I am always affected by the scents wafting around not only the hospital, but the house and the sidewalks and, well, everywhere.

I love picking up new terminology at work and deciphering the Doctor’s impossible scribbles- things like Sjogren’s Syndrome, and Perthes Disease, Charcot Fractures and FOOSH (fell on out-stretched hand).  Things I’m not particularly thrilled to learn about are flautus-tubes.  Yes – they are exactly what you think they are: tubes inserted up the rectum to relieve pressure built up from things like blockages, impactions, or volvulus – like the patient I started my week with. It really makes that connection with that partially inflated bag poking from beneath the sheets that looks less than pleasant.

At least flautus tubes (I can’t say that without picturing it in Hank Hill’s voice from “King of the Hill”) keep the aroma’s contained, however.  Unlike the other patient I met who we were seeing due to extreme distension and abdominal discomfort. I’m not sure that they spoke English, and they groaned from the time they were wheeled in the room. To make things worse, we had to use a sliding board to transfer them on to the x-ray table.  You may be able to see where this is going…I’ll just say it was questionable whether what was squeezed out of her during the roll was physical or atmospheric, but it engulfed the room.

For the first part of the week, this seemed to be the theme: bowel distension, recurrent volvulus, incompetent diarrhea, but oh!  There was more to come!

I really shouldn’t have asked what it was, but I couldn’t help it when I saw the words “feculent vomiting” on the request form. It couldn’t possibly be what it sounded like?  Oh, but it is!  I made a face before coming out from behind the window to help move the patient. Lo- and behold, first came a phlemy-sounding cough, and then he let loose almost before we could hand him and emesis bag.  I quickly turned away, and had to slyly slip outside.

I wasn’t let off that easy, though, and by quitting time on Thursday, two more patients had chucked up their insides, one I thought for sure was inside-out by the end of it all by the sounds of it. 

Between all that, I came face to face with an assortment of feet who take the cake when it comes to “smelly” – whether they be ‘dry and scaley’ scented, or ‘diabetic-toe-amputated sweet’. I was also assaulted by a couple of extremities who were getting their first breaths of fresh air cast-free after 6-8 weeks.

Sweat-soaked sheets, caked-on bandages, seeping bed sores, soggy adult diapers, seeping cavity drains and catheters, weeks-old unbrushed breath, and feculent-vomit filled trash cans:  we truly took a trip down the ol’ olfactory lane this week… and we haven’t even made it to the ED yet.  Oh boy, I can’t wait!