Let's be blunt...

Okay, sometimes as a rehab nurse, you have to do it.Using grandiose medical terms like micturition and defecation just don't cut it.

We have to ask "Did you pee lately? " (due to a variety of reasons) and "Did you have a bowel movement?"  Yes, nursing students, if you can't observe it, you have to get reports from your patients, and like those videos, you have to ask questions: color, consistency, etc.

We sometimes even resort to the old standby, especially for the really deaf hard-of-hearing folks, "SO-AND-SO (insert name here) DID YOU POOP LATELY?" This is always especially fun when the soundproofing is not so good in the exam room.

So, needless to say, since I have some of those old characters (many of whom don't hear well) as patients, I really enjoyed reading the headline below (which wouldn't surprise me if I heard it out of our folks..)

Michael Douglas: Oral sex caused my throat cancer (from the UK Guardian)

While Michael still needs some patient education, he may have already inferred something from the literature from the comments he made.

I just wonder how Catherine Zeta-Jones took it all when she picked up the paper.

More later...

My least favorite thing

As a nurse, revolves around a body product. Yes, I deal with pee, poop, blood and sputum all the time, but my Achilles heel (in the right context) is emesis.

That regular ol' vomit will send yours truly to sick bay in the right circumstances. Alas, sometimes those rascally patients will do it once in a while.

So at work the other day, at the nurses' station, I was talking to the charge nurse and a few others about these Achilles heel issues we have.

Charge nurse:  "Oh, I just can't do sputum. Coughing, spitting...yuck!" To Mr. J., one of our characters with a trach who hangs out at the nurses' station to catch up on gossip between therapies, "J., I know I've known you for years, but you'd better not cough anything over here or else." J. just rolled his eyes and went somewhere else, since we started grossing him out. Obviously, no gossip was going to be discussed.

Newbie nurse: "I worry about someone having an arterial bleed. That much blood is scary. What if I pass out and can't hold pressure anymore?"


Our most experienced rehab NP: "RehabRN, did I ever tell you about when I worked at the kids camp one summer before cell phones? (this automatically piques the interest of the junior nurses, who can't imagine life without one.)"

"I had a kid with a high temp that wouldn't go down whatever I did. I was really worried about him, so I called the parents at camp and told them what ER I was taking Johnny to. On my way out of camp, my husband Bob was driving in, per usual. I rolled down the window, told him what was going on and that he could stay or follow me."


"I thought Bob elected to stay back at camp, so I kept going to the ER. All of a sudden, Johnny says, 'My stomach really hurts, I think I'm going to be sick.' So I pull over to the side of the road, and he opens door."


"What I didn't know, was that Bob decided to follow me, stop once he saw me pull over, then approach the passenger's side of the car. Kid then proceeded to vomit all over Bob once he opened the door."

"Needless to say, Bob doesn't approach the car from the passenger's side of the car anymore."

Lessons learned: Listen to your experienced NP wife, get a cell phone, and never assume anything with kids.


(BTW this post was inspired by NurseXY's comment about his sick kid. Hope you have a great vacation, dude, with little to no more vomit in store!)