Playing with Acetylcysteine.

I set off the fire alarm at work. Not just the little "beep beep beep" kind. Noooo... I set off the fire alarm for the entire hospital. There I am, in the patient's room, and suddenly over the intercom to the entire hospital (all five floors), "CODE RED, THIRD FLOOR, ROOM 3212. CODE RED, THIRD FLOOR, ROOM 3212." The pathetic part is that it took me a few seconds to realize that yes, I was on the third floor, and holy crap, I was in room 3212! OH NO! Within sixty seconds, people were everywhere in my room. Some were standing in the entry way with fire extinguishers (three in total) and some standing in the doorway trying to get a peek at the fire. Mostly they were watching a big dumb therapist (me) climb over my bedridden(Mr. I Can't-Run-Away-From-The-Fire) patient while wearing a pair of big plastic goggles to protect my eyes, a mask over my face, a giant yellow gown tied over my scrubs, all while making a feeble attempt at waving a washcloth around in front of the smoke detector. That's what I usually do when I burn dinner, I figured it would work at the hospital!!! I can only imagine what my patient was thinking. Would it be worse to die in a fire or to have me, currently on tip-toe, tumble off that chair that was propped up against his bed and come crashing down on top of him? I am not so sure that the odds were in my favor.
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Fortunately, there was no fire. Not even a spark. And really no smoke either. It was more of a mist, really. Mucomyst to be exact (also known as Acetylcysteine). It's a drug that when aerosolized creates a smoke-like-mist that can really irritate the lungs and eyes, thus my protective covering. It is used for patients with pneumonia.
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As I stood over my patient waving that white washcloth (mostly in surrender!), suddenly a few memories came back to me. The first was from last year when the director of the respiratory program warned us about Mucomyst. "It can create a smoke-like cloud that can be mistaken for real smoke by the sensitive smoke detectors in a hospital, so be careful with it." Oh yeah, now I remember! The second memory was when our pharmacology professor told us, "Every so often, some idiot will use Mucomyst without any ventilation in the room and set off the smoke alarms!" Ummm... I guess that makes me the, "IDIOT, party of one"!