Urgh. Today was an 11-hour day (do not believe the government bullshit about the European Working Time Directive - it is code for not paying us for working out of hours), and it ended with my having to aspirate the drain from a pancreatic pseudocyst.
In English, this means attaching a big syringe to a piece of plastic tubing which had been passed through someone's abdominal wall and into the pseudocyst, then left there so that any gunk that built up there would come out through it. A pancreatic pseudocyst, again hopefully in English, is a big collection of the aforementioned gunk which forms near the pancreas, normally after a nasty bout of inflammation of the pancreas.
The patient in question is a charming lady who'd been in and out with this problem for months and months, and was waiting to see the specialists to see if she could have it chopped out (not always a good idea). It was meant to be being flushed regularly, but this was very rarely recorded by our desperately overworked nursing staff and I suspect not done as often as it should be.
On my way to do the procedure, I checked her results, then got my plastic apron and gloves on and got to work. The thing was normally stiff to start with thanks to all the clotted muck in there, and on this occasion it was particularly bad - so I gave an extra syringe-heave...and with awful predictability, the syringe basically exploded, leaving me spattered in stuff the colour and texture of runny dog poo. And smell - god, the smell.
Worst of all, I knew it wasn't poo: it was group C streptococcus sensitive only to clindamicin.
I envied the patient her ignorance.
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