Surgery
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NSFW WARNING
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A few years ago, I was an intern at this hospital, the name doesn't really matter, and I was called at 2 AM for "general surgery". They didn't give me much info on what I'd be helping on, just some vague remarks that didn't really explain anything. So, I got to the hospital, and got a few extra details, most of them were just unimportant technicalities. The one detail that did matter was this: I was going to help perform surgery on a patient with "perirectal abscess". For those of you that don't know, that means the surgery was going to be done in the immediate vicinity of the asshole. There was a pocket of pus that needed to be drained. Just my luck. Our entire crew was bemused.
So, I went down to the ER to transport the patient. Ominously, the only thing the ER nurse said as she handed me the chart was "Have fun with this one". Now, among healthcare professionals, vague statements like that are usually a bad sign. The patient was a morbidly obese Native American woman who we could barely fit on the stretcher. She was howling in pain, screaming "Kill me now, Jesus", all that fun stuff. It took me a few minutes to even manage to get her name, to confirm her identity, and what we were working on.
I decided we should get her to the anesthesiologist. She continued her bellowing during the entire ride to the OR, and to top it off nearly fell off the surgical table as we were trying to put her under the anesthetic.
Finally, we managed to put her to sleep, and put her into the stirrups. I started washing off the rectal area, it was red and inflamed, and had a bit of pus seeping out. Her chart had noted she had been injecting IV drugs through her perineum, so it was infected from dirty needles. While it was certainly painful, it was not that bad, and didn't warrant screaming to Jesus for death.
So, the operation started. The surgeon comes up with a scalpel, and barely sinks the tip in. At the exact same moment he did that, the patient had a muscle twitch in her diaphragm. That's when all Hell broke loose. The infection had tunneled nearly a foot into her abdomen, creating a vast cavern full of pus, rotten tissue and fecal matter that had seeped outside her colon. That demonic mixture came rocketing out of that little incision. Our protective clothing was pretty much useless at that point. The surgeon continued advancing the blade, as the torrent of shit kept flowing out of the patient, who herself was seizing against the ventilator. With every muscle contraction, she shot more of the God forsaken fluid out onto the floor. Within a couple of minutes, it was seeping into a nurse's shoes.
Realizing this, she promptly threw up in her mask, and excused herself nearly crying, as she went to clean herself. It hit me, that we hadn't even began to imagine the sheer volume of fluid this woman's body contained. It was like getting a big bite of the despair and apathy that permeated her life. The smell was so intense, I almost couldn't fucking breathe. My lungs simply refused to pull that stuff in any further. The anesthesiologist went down next, his frame shaking as he threw open the OR door in an attempt to get some air in. Another geiser of pus splashed across the front of the surgeon.
The floor was, at that point, coated in what appeared to be a mix between bovine after-birth liquid and maple syrup, we didn't know which. We rubbed a vial of Mastisol, an adhesive rub we sometimes use for bandaging. I was just glad to be smelling anything except what was on the floor at that moment.
By this time, the smell had wafted outside of the OR room, and had reached the front desk. The other nurse was still sitting there, her eyes bloodshot and watery, clenching her stomach with despair. Our suite looked like the fucking underground river of ooze from Ghostbusters II. I stepped back into the OR suite, not wanting to leave the surgeon by himself in case he genuinely needed my assistance.
Here was this one guy, in blue surgical garb, standing nearly ankle deep in lumps of dead tissue, fecal matter and litres upon litres of infected liquid. It's as if he was performing surgery on a swamp, except this swamp had come out of this woman's ass. We didn't say a word as he scraped the inside of the abscess until all the dead tissue was out. The front of his gown was stained with a copious amount of gruesome red and brown matter. His eyes were squinting against the stinging vapours originating directly in front of him. I finished my paperwork as quickly as I could, and helped him stuff the recently vacated opening with gauze.
We taped the woman's buttocks together so the dressing would be held for as long as possible. Until then, I had only heard of alcohol showers. Turns out 70% isopropyl alcohol is pretty much one of the only things that can even touch a scent like that. As we left the locker room, the surgeon and I looked at each other.
This guy was ex-Army, he said about 8 words a week and made even less facial expressions. He said the only negative sentence I had ever heard him say in 2 and a half years of working together.
"That was bad."
The next morning, the entire department was still permeated by that foul smell from the abyss. The housekeepers told me it had taken over an hour to suction that mess up. The OR suite itself was closed and quarantined for 2 more days.
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