theatrical_muse: #247 Messes
Write about a mess you've cleaned up
I know this wasn’t meant as a humorous nudge of the brain cells by any means, but it may have caused me to giggle-snort just slightly. I could’ve gone for a deep-n-meaningful answer about cleaning up a tragic emotional mess in my life (and trust me, that would’ve been easy to draw on), but really, being a doctor means you see a lot of messes on an hourly basis. Being a surgeon… well, you find some pretty interesting things when digging around in one’s open bodily cavity.
The question was, which mess should I pick to write about? Could I have wasted two hundred words talking about the time the patient happily stood on his bed and peed all over my legs? Or how about the time the dementia patient clawed open his own colostomy bag and smeared ‘I HATE DOCTORS’ all over the hospital room walls with his own excrement? Then there was the sixteen year old brought in to clinic after partaking in a Gummi Bear eating contest. Oh, he won alright, but does anyone realise what a mess that shit makes when projectile vomited all over a treating doctor with enough force to take out a small convoy?
Then there was the Golden Staph patient four years ago who had let the disease progress and infect so far before seeking treatment that the pus was literally dripping down his leg from his eaten away kneecap and forming a neat little puddle around his feet. The bloody vomit is always an interesting one to clean up. It seems to splatter much further and wider than normal vomit and blood is a bitch to get out of anything. Have you ever been present at an autopsy? Don’t even get me started on the bodily fluids and internal organs you need to deal with in one of those. And not just that, but you have to proceed in weighing them and tying them in neat little baggies to help determine the cause of death.
Speaking of death, there was the time House made us use maggots on the burnt flesh of a teenager to clean the wounds and aid us getting a better diagnosis. All well and good, but who were the stupid sods who had to clean them up off the kid’s body after the process? Sit for a moment and imagine yourself lying there with your skin literally crawling with hundreds of maggots and eating your flesh. No, seriously, do it. That’s just one of many messes I’ve had to deal with in my career.
Why did I find this question amusing? Well, if you can’t laugh about it, it’ll just end up making you either throw up or wondering why you didn’t becoming a florist. And they wonder why doctors get paid a good wage. Heard the saying ‘I wouldn’t do it if you paid me’? Bingo.
Word Count | 480
I know this wasn’t meant as a humorous nudge of the brain cells by any means, but it may have caused me to giggle-snort just slightly. I could’ve gone for a deep-n-meaningful answer about cleaning up a tragic emotional mess in my life (and trust me, that would’ve been easy to draw on), but really, being a doctor means you see a lot of messes on an hourly basis. Being a surgeon… well, you find some pretty interesting things when digging around in one’s open bodily cavity.
The question was, which mess should I pick to write about? Could I have wasted two hundred words talking about the time the patient happily stood on his bed and peed all over my legs? Or how about the time the dementia patient clawed open his own colostomy bag and smeared ‘I HATE DOCTORS’ all over the hospital room walls with his own excrement? Then there was the sixteen year old brought in to clinic after partaking in a Gummi Bear eating contest. Oh, he won alright, but does anyone realise what a mess that shit makes when projectile vomited all over a treating doctor with enough force to take out a small convoy?
Then there was the Golden Staph patient four years ago who had let the disease progress and infect so far before seeking treatment that the pus was literally dripping down his leg from his eaten away kneecap and forming a neat little puddle around his feet. The bloody vomit is always an interesting one to clean up. It seems to splatter much further and wider than normal vomit and blood is a bitch to get out of anything. Have you ever been present at an autopsy? Don’t even get me started on the bodily fluids and internal organs you need to deal with in one of those. And not just that, but you have to proceed in weighing them and tying them in neat little baggies to help determine the cause of death.
Speaking of death, there was the time House made us use maggots on the burnt flesh of a teenager to clean the wounds and aid us getting a better diagnosis. All well and good, but who were the stupid sods who had to clean them up off the kid’s body after the process? Sit for a moment and imagine yourself lying there with your skin literally crawling with hundreds of maggots and eating your flesh. No, seriously, do it. That’s just one of many messes I’ve had to deal with in my career.
Why did I find this question amusing? Well, if you can’t laugh about it, it’ll just end up making you either throw up or wondering why you didn’t becoming a florist. And they wonder why doctors get paid a good wage. Heard the saying ‘I wouldn’t do it if you paid me’? Bingo.
Word Count | 480