The year after I graduated, I worked with another pharmacist who was taking a gap year before starting medical school. She wanted to specialize in - hang onto your seat - PEDIATRIC ONCOLOGY. When she told me this, I replied, “Well, I guess somebody has to do that” and her face lit up and she replied, “It’s the happiest place in the hospital.” (Oooookay…) ETA: She ended up specializing in infectious diseases, and last I heard, she was living in Florida and had a practice composed mainly of AIDS patients, which is not quite as difficult as it was 30 years ago.
Spoilered for obvious reasons: I just can’t imagine what doing abortions on a regular basis would do to a doctor. Not because of the whole life controversy, but knowing about the desperate circumstances that led those women to make such a decision. I volunteered at a free clinic when I was in school, and for a couple years afterwards, and the only time a woman came there requesting one (we weren’t set up to do that and gave her a referral) was also the only really incredibly upsetting experience I had there, and I wasn’t even directly involved. And this was a situation where continuing the pregnancy would probably have been life-threatening.
As for physicians going into non-patient-centric specialties like research or pathology, I remember reading a book about SIDS and it had a chapter about the pathologist who was the main person consulted whenever there was any doubt about how these babies died. As a medical student, she loved studying oncology, and the night before she started her oncology rotation as an M3, she couldn’t sleep because she felt like a little kid on Christmas morning.
So, she shows up at the hospital, and her preceptor tells her that there’s a patient on the floor who is in her 40s and has a type of leukemia that at the time was untreatable and she would be dead in a few weeks - oh, and by the way, you have to tell her this. She walked into the room, introduced herself, and on came the faucets. She cried more than this woman’s whole family put together, and at one point, the dying woman was comforting HER and said, “Hey, it’s OK. It’s not your fault.” That’s when she knew she couldn’t be an oncologist.
My mother was an Army nurse on Okinawa in WW2 and she had no problem with gore and blood. She did have a problem with eye surgery and whenever she had to assist in such an operation she would trade any other kind of duty to get out of it.
Registered Nurse for 12+ years here. I suspect that, to a large degree, medical professions only appeal to those who aren’t bothered by that kind of thing in the first place. Any residual squeamishness is soon eradicated. Mostly.
That said, I can handle anything but poop. If you have a bowel accident on my watch, sorry, but you’re not getting cleaned until someone else is available. But it all works out because I’m happy do things other nurses don’t want to. Every nurse has his or her own bugaboo. Most hate wound care, but it’s my favorite thing to do - I can go up to my elbows in a gooey stage 4 ulcer with no problem. Some can’t suction trachs without gagging, but it doesn’t bother me a bit.
I think my main issue with poop is the smell. Normal poop is bad enough, C-diff is worse, and the odor from a GI bleed is straight from the bowels of hell itself. Hey, nature programmed us with the same odor-triggered revulsions as everyone else.
Blood, vomit, urine, feces, all part of the territory. Decomposing bodies like finding someone who has been dead for a few weeks. Instant hurl. I’m a little gaggy after that but usually i get over it a few minutes later.
RN’s like many medical professionals have a broad spectrum of work environments. Some are more prone to certain forms of unpleasantness. many folks pursue certain specialties just to avoid their non-preferred body fluid/ick forms. Much like my issue with decomp. As an EMT, long dead to the point of obvious decay was not really my department. I was more specialized for freshly dead and or trying to achieve freshly dead.
I was told my insta barf at decomp was part of a reflex to try and prevent us (as a species/mammal) from eating or retaining rotting meat. Since taste and smell are tightly linked, your body does not always recognize what you’re smelling is not something you are eating, assumes the worse and evacuates stomach just in case.
My first few weeks in the hospital lab I gagged a LOT. Then I learned to detach and think of whatever I was handling as a specimen to be dealt with. Possibly the worst smell ever was an empyema. Man, that stayed with me for a while. The only thing I still have trouble with from time to time is sputum. Really have to not think about it too much to avoid gagging. Fortunate, these days I don’t do much microbiology so don’t encounter it too much.
When I was getting certified in massage our anatomy instructor was a professor at the Stanford Medical School so we had an optional field trip to the cadaver lab there. When I was a senior in HS, I was the biology lab assistant for a course which dealt a lot with prepping formaldehyded specimens for class, so I’d come prepared with a trick I’d been taught there, a roll of Wint-O-Green Lifesavers.
I passed them out with the instructions, crush one in you mouth, inhale through your mouth and exhale slowly through your nose. It was greatly appreciated.
I’ve also heard that Vicks Vapo-Rub is excellent for disguising unpleasant odors.
We used to keep peppermint and wintergreen oil in the pharmacy and would send a bottle up to the floor whenever a nurse requested it, usually for a dying patient who for whatever reason was giving off a foul odor.
For those of you who have been in practice for a long time, is it really true about the “terminal cancer smell”? I haven’t seen or heard references to it for quite a few years.
At the mortuary, one of the guys who worked in the prep room was a big MF, not afraid of anything or anyone (I heard that he backed a 300+ lb guy against the wall and picked him up off the ground in a pre-fight) and would swear up a storm. But I saw him run out of the room yelling “DOO DOO!” when a body was turned over. Love ya Maxie!!!
Not saying she made up the story, but I’ve never heard of an attending ducking a situation like this and laying it on a med student who’s never even seen the patient before.
It’d be a terrible idea based on the potential medicolegal repercussions alone.
Can’t remember which one, but DesertRoomie and I were watching a movie that had a scene of an autopsy on a body that had been fished out of water after a couple weeks. The pathologist, his helper and the FBI agents in attendance all had white goo smeared on their upper lips. “What’s that white stuff?” DR asked.
My vet eagerly does all kinds of surgeries I think might squick me out a bit, but she absolutely can’t handle cat drool. What? It’s clear and odorless! And why cat drool only, not dog drool?
According to popular culture/movies (less so in real life) Vicks’ VapoRub (with ingredients including menthol, camphor, turpentine etc.) is the smell-killer of choice, though it supposedly also acts to reduce nasal congestion which is not what you’d want.
I never saw anyone use the stuff during an autopsy, though fortunately in my limited forensic path experience there was only one body well past its sell-by date, and the odor was bearable.
I had an inflamed cyst near my shoulder blade that my GP was injudiciously poking when it suddenly exploded, painting the exam room’s wall and ceiling with blood and yellow-green pus, and some black stuff that was never (to me, anyhow) properly identified. I heard my GP yell two loud expletives, and I never saw nor heard from him again. His partner came in (very quickly) and cleaned and packed it, and since I couldn’t reach the area myself and my (now-ex) wife wouldn’t go near it, continued to do so until I healed, even though because I worked 12-hour shifts, it meant he had to come in early or stay late just for me. He never charged me or my insurance a penny for the follow-ups, and told the staff to treat me as one of the practice’s concierge patients (which was a thing I knew nothing about until after it was all over). Later, when I tried to get him as my primary physician I was told I couldn’t have him because he had gone BACK into the military as a surgeon. Wherever he is now, I hope he is healthy and wealthy and happy.
Also according to “popular culture”, if you have old vinyl records that get scratchy, you can rejuvenate them by rubbing Vicks VapoRub on the grooves. This supposedly only worked on recordings of Baroque classical music. Vivaldi and stuff of that genre.
Love ya Maxie!!!