Get a Job!

I spent last night working at the local community hospital. By the luck of the draw, I was dropped into Gomer-ville! As therapists, we refer to the old people who do nothing but lie there and leak stuff onto the bed as Gomers. I had a six-pack of Gomers, and all of them were riding a ventilator. While this may seem like an easy night, because they are all so completely snowed with seditives that they can't even blink, I can tell you that it was not. Due to a recent outbreak of enterobacter bacteria, everybody who works in the Intensive Care Unit, must gown up every time they enter a patient room. Before you leave the patient room, you must then pull off all of the protective stuff you are wearing and toss it into the trash. This procedure does not make for a smooth shift. Now, normally enterobacter bacteria is found everywhere... unfortunately we have developed strains that resist any type of medication. This does not present a problem for me, because as a healthy individual, my body can still manage to resist the bacteria... but if you get yourself a 95 year-old woman on life support... well, she can't quite fight the bacteria. So to make sure that I am not taking the bacteria from one patient to another in the ICU, we are forced to gown-up 5,000 times a night! With that in mind, I started my night of checking ventilators, pulling lung-cheese out of old people's throats, and the general upkeep of the terminally ill. As luck would have it, one of my Gomers needed to have all of the taping around the enodtracheal tube replaced.
I found this lovely picture online to show you what we have to work with. Basically you have to tape the tube down to the patients face. Doesn't seem all that difficult, does it. WRONG! Now the people who put this picture online are liars. This is not what you find upon entering the patients room. This is never what it looks like. Usually there is a big green blob of half-dried snot dripping down the side of their face, and yellowish, bloody gunk is stuck all over the tape around their mouth. The best part, is that the human body really resists foreign objects... especially tube tape. Once the tube tape is placed on the face, the skin beneath it will begin to break down and you get super gross sores on the face as well. It's all very delightful, really. Now, my gomer was old, close to death, and conveniently missing teeth, which serve as a very important piece of structure, because without the teeth the tape on the lip just slides down and off of the upper lip and into the mouth. I spent 20 minutes attempting to re-anchor the breathing tube to the face, all very unsuccessfully. After my second attempt of crawling onto the patient, lifting the floppy head up so I could place the tape around, and then maneuvering my tape between the five other tubes coming out of gomer's body I was getting frustrated and very sweaty because the gowns are made of PLASTIC! Imagine doing your daily activities wrapped in seran wrap! By the time I had finished my task, and ripped off all of my protective equipment, my scrubs were completely soaked with sweat. It was disgusting. Ironically, the only thing running through my mind at the time was, "wonder if I lost any weight just now"!