Four and a half hours.
That's how long it takes to get the smell of c-diff out of your nostrils after you have taken the patient upstairs.
The first two will be spent repeatedly checking your shoes, scrubs, stethoscope, etc, to make sure that you don't have any on you, because are sure that the smell is coming from something that you missed. After all, you spent five hours cleaning up massive quantities of slimy (yes, Mom, it really is slimy) poo every 30 minutes, it had to have gotten on you somewhere, right? Those gowns are only paper, after all.
But alas, it is coming from your own abused little olfactory cells. The cells that hate you now. The cells that will make everything you eat in that 4 1/2 hours taste like c-diff, too.
C-diff is a powerful little bug. Kinda like Slimer, from Ghostbusters.
3 comments:
ugh. Even the MEMORY of it is enough for me to smell it. Sometimes the aides like to torture us (cause we're students, and they can) by having us do nothing our whole clinical day but clean C. diff patients for them. My karma should be all shiny by now.
That is why one of my favourite inventions I have been introduced to since starting in the ICU is the rectal tube.... when they work they are fantastic!
that is so gross. GROSS.
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