Smelling Sh*t

I made some of my students smell the organic waste material excreted from the anal end of a patient yesterday during the night rounds.

Don’t get me wrong. I am no sado-masochist trying to make my student’s life more miserable.

I wanted them to smell the unique unpleasant smell of stool mixed with blood, otherwise known as melena (actually when I googled ‘melena’ on Google Image, I got pictures of naked ladies!!!). It’s got a unique pungent smell and looks typically black and tarry; a lot like the inside of chinese dumplings with black beans paste (tau-sar-pau).

Any similarities?

A patient in my ward had an upper gastrointestinal bleed (UGIB) and so passed out a lot of melenic stool. The ward nurses were changing his diapers just as I was passing that way with students in tow. I saw it as an opportunity to get them to take a deep breath, close enough to the patient to experience the smell.

My intentions were noble of course…I wanted them to recognise the smell, so that in the future if they come across a similar scent again while attending to a patient, they would be alerted to the possibility of an UGIB, without even having to tear open a patient’s diapers to see.

My students probably thought I have finally lost it (and the last marble in my brain) when I first asked them to do the unpleasant and unexpected task, but then they saw I was serious. And so, one by one, they gamely went near the patient and took a deep breath.

I swear I could see their faces turned a darker shade of green.

But I am certain they will NEVER forget the smell, ever. Like I told them, not everything in medicine is pleasant.

Wed, 281107 @ 1315; post-call and suffering the beginning of a major migraine! Sigh…

Fire in the Hospital!

Yeah I wish… heh heh! At least it would bring some excitement to the work place!

We had a mock fire drill last week at the hospital. The Bomba people came, in their bright shiny fire engines and there were firemen every where, wearing their uniform (that looked like they haven’t been washed since 1957) storming into the wards, following some imaginary distress or drill. Oh ya, they didn’t look one bit like those firemen in Hollywood movies, in fact many of them need diet control and exercise, in my opinion. But I am sure they are people who are dedicated to their job.

Actually it’s kinda weird because we have firemen rushing here and there in the ward while we were doing our morning rounds, quite oblivious to what was going on around us! I mean, we were that jaded!

My, my, some one has severe urinary incontinence!

Which begs the question: in the event of a real fire, are we, doctors, supposed to save the lives of the patients first or just jump quickly into the first escape chute down the building? I mean, plane and ship captains are supposed to be the last to leave their burning plane/ship. Does that apply to doctors as well? What about the nurses? What about the hospital director? Is he supposed to run up and save everyone first? (btw, his room is on the ground floor ~ how convenient!)

How? How?

Wed, 281107 @ 0700