You Know It's Bad When.....

You know it's bad when everyone in the room during the code stops, looks at you, and pretty much in unison say, "You need a shower!" because of what has just happened.

As it turns out, during my next to last week in my job I had an adventure. They called a code up on the floor, I run up there to find that this has just started. I was thrilled to see an old friend intubating, another friend from the rapid response team was also there. I was able to slip up close to the head in order to push drugs through the (thank you Jesus) central line and basically just be back up. There was a large group of people in the room, most of whom were just observing and being wall flowers. As things go it was a difficult intubation, this guy is very experienced, but sometimes you just have a patient that isn't in the best of condition, so to speak. This patient actually looked about 20 years older than he was, turned out he was a cancer patient. So what happened???? Well, my friend finally got the pt intubated and when he did, well, things spewed out of the tube that was pointed at me. I would say that the first shot nailed me pretty well, straight across the chest, but the follow up shot sealed it. We finished the code and I looked at the house supervisor and told her that I wanted to go home to shower, she was fine with it. EVERYONE in the room kept staring at me and mumbling things about "thanks for blocking me" or "you know there's a shower in the ER", nice supportive colleges these.

I did go home and shower. Sometimes these things basically come down to if you don't do it you will smell the stuff even if you change clothes. I feel like I'm going out with a bang but if nothing else the memories should be, well, memorial.