Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
My glamorous profession
Warning: don’t read this on a full stomach.
Did I ever mention that Alec Baldwin watched me to get into character for the movie Malice?
It’s true. And for my end-of-residency roast, I did a little stand-up comedy for my fellow residents and my attending physicians, wherein I showed this video clip from Malice:
You ask me if I have a God complex. Let me tell you something: I am God.
Stop video clip. Lights back on me. I’m shaking my head slowly, my mouth agape. Then, I say:
It’s uncanny. That is so . . . ME.
Ah, well. You had to be there. Truth is, if we’re playing God, then God has one messy, messy job. You know what I do more than anything else? I mean, as a simple percentage of time spent? I dig out ear wax. But that’s not the messiest thing I do.
I’m a PusBuster.
Pus is one of the main reasons I’m late blogging today. That, and my son talked me into playing two games of chess with him, and of course I had to watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.
In residency, I owned a tiny brown bottle full of oil of wintergreen. When it comes to pus, oil of wintergreen is your best friend. Schmear a bit of it under your nose and everything smells wonderful, even gangrene. Well, maybe not gangrene.
Somewhere along the way, I lost my little brown bottle. Could have used it last week — that pus shot two-and-a-half feet across the room. Thank heavens I wasn’t in its path. My nurse, a woman in her mid-sixties, said that was the worst thing she’d ever smelled. For a nurse (especially one in her mid-sixties!) that’s really saying something.
I’m not complaining. I like busting pus, just as I like cleaning ear wax. Nothing satisfies quite like a good spill of the yellow poo or a big fat plug of the brown-and-hairy. These are some of the happiest patients: in the case of pus, they usually experience a rapid resolution of their pain and pressure symptoms; with ear wax, they can hear again. I’ve been hugged more than a few times.
If I thought about complaining even for a moment, I would force myself to remember my comrades in general surgery, who regularly pull beer cans, beer bottles, and baseballs from people’s rectums; my comrades in urology, who remove bobby pins and other delightful items from people’s urethras; and my comrades in gynecology, who sometimes have to explain to their patients that, no, tampons do not dissolve, and it’s a bad idea to stuff one in after the other.
See? I have it easy. Only the eye docs have it better.
We’re medieval barbers, that’s all we are. Sometimes I try to explain that to my patients. Usually, I stop myself before they get that glazed, wide-eyed look.
D.
PS: Here’s the US Military’s latest recruiting video (NOT). Hat tip to Daily Kos for linking to this biting satire.
Heh! I used to have an aide job in the surgery and the worst thing I’ve ever smelled was a bowel resection – giant puddles of blood (burst aneurysm) were second 🙂
I know I probabaly shouldn’t ask, but why and where do you have to deal with pus? Do people’s ears pus-up like my labrador’s did? (In his case it was the flappy bit and the vet cut it open and I’d have to break it open every day and squeeze (and I wouldn’t tell anyone else that ;o)))
Vanilla extract works, too. Someday I must tell you why I still cannot look at a foot-long hot dog without shuddering….
I’ve watched the biggest, meanest soldiers on the planet turn into sobbing heaps of grateful goo after one of our docs lanced a blood-filled hemmorhoid for them.
Yeah, I’m wondering what it was that you were squeezing to cause it to squirt across the room. I’m sooo glad to hear that it didn’t hit you. Have you ever had that happen? Like full on in the face? Ewww…
I guess the fact that no one has yet to comment on the tampons and other “stuff” found in various body cavities makes me an innocent, but how stupid do you have to be not to know you don’t leave tampons “up there”?
The pus squirting your poor nurse….double euuu.
I think the happiest moment of my Christmas break came December 26 when the doc across the street removed a pencil eraser-sized ball of wax from my 3yo’s infected ear. NOW we could get the Oticaine in! She slept! She didn’t cry! She was a happy toddler again! and I was one grateful mom. You’re not just dealing with pus and wax, you are providing real relief from pain.
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Shrug. I’m a horse owner and hence, witness to the most accident prone species on Earth. Seeping, revolting wounds are common with equines.
Puss, smuss, no biggie.
Um… I have this friend, and um, he accidently left a tampon he was experimenting with in his butt, and my friend can’t get it out now…and this friend was wondering…
Wow! Pus is popular!
Crystal, everyone has their gross-out special du jour. Bad breath laced with alcohol and blood is my own personal heave-ho.
Jona, here’s a short list: abscesses anywhere on the scalp, face, or neck; peritonsillar abscesses; deep neck abscesses.
PBW: I can imagine very well, thanks ;o)
Anduin, no, I’ve never once been nailed. I have been barfed on, however. Twice.
Sis: she didn’t get it on her. She just objected to the aroma.
Blue gal, thanks ;o)
Pat: I’ll try harder next time.
Rob: like the new pic. Consider tongs.
Robot you crack me up.
When my dog became elderly she made very stinky carpet messes. I used vick’s vaporub under the nose to make the cleanup bearable. I learned that from Silence of the Lambs. See – Horror movies can be educational.
Bravo, Doug! Ninety-nine percent of the time it is nigh impossible to gross me out. (I mean, really — is there anything worse than toddler puke consisting of curdled milk??) You just struck it rich with the one percenter. Congrats.
Ick.
K., off to very quickly read something else to get this out of my brain.
My mom was a nurse, so hearing about pus and strange items in the nether regions never bothered me.
When I went to nursing school, I was mentally prepared for the nasties, but vomit completely grossed me out.
Until I had kids. Now I can fling puke, snot, and poo with the best of ’em. I dunno about pus, though, we’ve been blessedly deprived of infected wounds in our house, and I ain’t gripin’ a bit!
Heh heh, Maureen, I learned how to swear watching Linda Blair in The Exorcist.
And it keeps getting funnier every time.
-Michael Keaton, Beetlejuice
Hehe, admit that you not only get things out of peoples’ ears, you also shove things into peoples’ noses.
Hey Doug,
It looks like Blogger won’t let me comment on your posts from today. I get a message saying they couldn’t fulfill my request. Whatever that means.
Also, I checked at my blogs, and when I did a test post, it ate my posts from last night.
I got an e-mail from a friend who couldn’t post comments on my blog, either.
Freakin’ weird!
I have never seen such a detailed dissertation on pus in my life.
My problem is while I was reading it, the Spam song from Monty Python kept running through my head, only it was more like, “Lovely Pus, wonderful pus….” But you get the idea.
I tried to post this last night and your blog was eating posts. I was also having problems connecting. It kept giving me the “Forbidden Access” error. I thought it was just me, but I’m relieved that it wasn’t.
You’re right about one thing though. When an abcess clears there is a moment of such pristine and shining relief that you feel almost dizzy with happiness. A definite crowd pleaser.
Of course if you were to run through a crowd lancing abcesses willy nilly, that might cause a variety of problems that even the relief of pressure would not alleviate. But maybe if you hummed the Spam song it would help with that.
Very good blog. Do you mind if we blog roll you?
Hedgehog
best phrase of the day:
lancing abcesses willy nilly.
Actually I think a lot of good phrases include “willy nilly”. A little bit goes a long way.
speaking of language . . .I’m so proud. Today my son used the words “hoi polloi” and “penultimate” and used them correctly, too.
Hi folks. Yes, it looks like blogger is eating all my posts — three, and counting, that I’ve posted since this one. I’m not going to try any more until it looks like Blogger has fixed itself.
In the meantime, I am going to download that program Pat J. and Dean use for their blogs. Can’t remember the name. I’ll figure it out.
The wintergreen use reminds me of that scene in Silence of the Lambs where they all glob Vicks Vapor Rub under their nostrils before examing the body.
Douglas,
I can’t believe I actually read this post from beginning to end. My knowledge of medicine is this: People Have Innards.
Lovely job with your blog, BTW. Thanks.
[…] Remember this post, where I dropped some names in the hopes my old pals would find me by egomaniacally googling their own names? Great idea, but it didn’t work. My pal Sharon (whom I’ve known since Mrs. Bisetti’s kindergarten class) found me because I dropped a reference to Malice, cuz she had a bit role in the movie. I think you were in scrubs, Sharon, but I knew it was you. No one else in that Hollywood OR knew how to act. […]