I was almost a nurse but I couldn’t pass anatomy — too much memorization. One of my friends is an ER nurse in the Chicago area in a not-so-nice neighborhood, and whenever I see her I ask about all the gory stories about swabbing out bedsores and rubbing ointment on swollen testicles.
Apparently she had a particularly bad case this past week in which a man with an advanced case of diabetes came into the ER with black legs and a foot that was literally rotting off of his body. I didn’t get a chance to ask whether he was able to keep his legs or not, because she explained that he hadn’t come in specifically for that reason. He’d come in because he woke up that morning while his dog ate his pinky toe off of his body.
So.
I am glad that I am a cat owner. I don’t think they even like me enough to eat me. Also, I may have some problems with what I’m doing, but I do not have the countenance for nursing.
This also reminds me why nurses should be making six figures a year.
I have a friend who is an ICU nurse at Georgetown. He had a patient who had some gangrenous flesh on his scrotum, and the subsequent removal of the flesh, left his testicles exposed. He said everytime he had to do a dressing change the man screamed in pain at the top of his lungs. Then the guy eventually lost a leg and both arms to gas gangrene.
The anatomy was a bitch to pass. I have since forgotten almost everything I memorized for that class.
I have typed some hugely gross shit but that tops everything, even the guy who stuck a can of butane up his ass. Eww.
Gangrene is one of the most horrifying things I can imagine happening to my body. It almost beats ingesting fish, but not quite.
Mmmm fish.
My nurse friend likes to tell pregnant women about watching the hemmroids pop out during labor. He makes a little “ping” noise to bring it to life a bit.