Very little gosses me out. My husband, on the other hand, can't even listen to the music associated with medical shows if he is eating. It gosses him out that much. Nurses don't have that luxury.
Most nurses I know have a thing. The one thing that they can't do. Mine is snot.
There is a lot of snot in the ICU. We wipe it, suction it, collect it, document the color, consistency and frequency of it. Seriously. We call it sputum (spew-tum), that's the correct terminology. "Frequent cough with copious amounts of green-grey, blood tinged, tenacious sputum." I've charted it. Patients save it for us in little tissues. "Look at what I coughed up." I bet most people will never hear that statement in their entire career, I hear it on a weekly basis. Just be happy I'm not posting a photo of sputum. Maybe I'll do that the next time a patient saves a tissue full for me.
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