wipeout
By impactEDnurse • Apr 23rd, 2006 • Category: the funnybone.As it happened, it was my first day on the wards as a nervous but enthusiastic student nurse, and the senior nurse on duty was showing me around when we came to Mrs Jackson Kowsky’s. Mrs. Jackson-Kowsky was a rather large (120kg) 85yo lady who suffered form severe dementia and spent her days lying in bed or sitting in her chair, rocking back and forth calling out …nurseee!….nurseee!
Anyways, poor old Mrs. J had not had her bowels open for many moons and this day had been dutifully primed with a powerful incantation of stool softeners, enemas and aperients.
She had just spent the last 10 minutes sitting in a commode chair (a kind of chair come potty come toilet ) flanked by two burly wardsmen ensuring that she did not topple out.
Her bowels had (and the term does not do olfactory justice to the circumstance), well and truly been ‘evacuated’.
Faeces is the excrement from the digestive tract expelled from the anus by defecation. It consists of undigested food residues, digestive secretions, and bacteria. The reddish-brown color of human feces is derived from stercobilin, created by bacterial action on bilirubin and subsequent oxidation.
Scatology, or coprology, in medicine, biology and paleontology, refers to the study of feces.
It should not to be confused with eschatology, the study of the end of the world.
“Would you like to clean her up?” asked the charge nurse.
This was surely a rhetorical question, but eager to impress with my new found nursing skills I stepped up to the plate. As I re-wrapped the entire roll of toilet paper around my hand and forearm (this was back in the days before universal precautions, so using gloves whilst wiping a derriere was considered poor form), the two wardsmen lifted Mrs. J into a standing position beside the commode.
This was without a doubt the most voluminous and most intimidating bum I had ever seen, and as I leaned forward it seemed to fill my vision like some sort of Siberian landscape.
Without getting too graphic, the task at hand required pushing aside a veritable suburbia of real estate so as to get to the …ahem…central ‘business’ district….
…and with the intense concentration of trying to impress the sister with my superior sanitary technique and the technical difficulties of only having two hands, and trying to suppress the urgings of my uvula to slide down my throat and coax up my lunch…. I had leaned forward and stuck my head into the bowl of warm liquid poo.
This was, apparently, the funniest thing the wardsmen had seen so far and they laughed and jiggled so hard they almost dropped Mrs J, who I’d swear was also laughing at me.
I just stood there with my newfound faecal toupee and decided that nursing was definitely not my cup of tea.
That was 19 years ago. I am still an nurse, a nurse who has long since learned to accept the fact that in our profession like no other, shit happens
impactEDnurse is also known as Ian Miller, a nurse with over 26 years experience working in a busy emergency department in, Australia. This site in no way reflects the opinions of that hospital.
All stories (although based on actual experiences) have been changed to protect patient confidentiality.
Email this author | All posts by impactEDnurse
[...] People are always asking me why I shave my head. Is it because I am going Grey? Do I have lice? Is it because I’m a member of some bizarre trans-dimensional alien-channeling cult? Is it some sort of traumatic reaction to this incident? The truth is far less exotic but far more complicated. [...]
Oh..my…gawd.
I surely would have puked at that point.
Euuu.
Rest assured, there is a particularly special place in heaven for nurses!
[...] It seems like the snap of fingers between the day I stuck my head in Mrs Jackson-Kowsky’s commode and today, when I am considered as an older …*ahem* …senior member of the ED. One of the most important responsibilities we have as elders in the emergency department is both to empower the newer staff venturing into this speciality and to make sure that they do not loose sight of the incredible value inherent in the work they do. [...]
[...] bizarre trans-dimensional alien-channelling neo-nazi cult? Is it some sort of traumatic reaction to this incident? The truth is far less exotic but far more [...]