# Do medical professionals ever hurl? \[TMI\] **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 10, 2004, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-medical-professionals-ever-hurl-tmi/279189 "2004-12-10T19:15:53Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Dr\_Paprika](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dr_paprika/32/3042_2.png) [@Dr\_Paprika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr_Paprika)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-medical-professionals-ever-hurl-tmi/279189/21 "2004-12-11T04:51:56Z")
Abcess isn’t so bad if you use the special slotted spoon and light it on fire. And you wondered what REALLY made Van Gogh go over the edge. ---
**Author:** ![irishgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/8edcca/32.png) [@irishgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/irishgirl)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 11:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-medical-professionals-ever-hurl-tmi/279189/22 "2004-12-11T11:38:14Z")
Never thrown up. Got dizzy in theatre once, but it was in India, I’d be standing holding a retractor for over an hour in an OR with no A/C, so I think that was what caused it, as it was a routine hysterectomy and nothing gross. Seeing 5 kidney dishes of pus drained from a paravertebral TB abcess and a D&C on a woman who weighed 250kg are probably the grossest things I’ve seen, but other people may differ. Neither made me want to throw up. I think 2 years of anatomy really helps you get over squeamishness, especially since the formaldehyde smell stays with you for hours after you leave the lab. ---
**Author:** ![LorieSmurf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/a587f6/32.png) [@LorieSmurf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LorieSmurf)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-medical-professionals-ever-hurl-tmi/279189/23 "2004-12-11T12:21:21Z")
I’m a nurse, and the only time in my experiences that I’ve seen nurses puke over something is if they are pregnant and are suddenly hit with a nasty smell in a patient room. One time a pregnant friend of mine (an RN) was helping a little 4 year old girl with cystic fibrosis. The little patient had to get gastric tube feedings of Vivonex. This shit smells nasty mixed up. The little girl always had a problem tolerating her Vivonex (she puked it up a lot), and it so happens that while this nurse was in there, the little girl started puking it up, which makes it smell doubly nasty. This nurse started gagging, handed the girl the puke basin, and promptly went to the patient’s own bathroom and started puking in the toilet. ---
**Author:** ![kellner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c2a13f/32.png) [@kellner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kellner)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 12:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-medical-professionals-ever-hurl-tmi/279189/24 "2004-12-11T12:21:55Z")
It wasn’t a profession, just alternative civilian service, but: If you have bandages on your chest, change them once in a while, before you have a one-square-foot black spot where your left breast was. It smells even more impressive than it looks. Interestingly that didn’t bother me that much at the time, although usually I am not very good at handling such things. I even passed out once while operating the pump during a pleura punction. ---
**Author:** ![norinew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/eb9ed0/32.png) [@norinew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/norinew)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-medical-professionals-ever-hurl-tmi/279189/25 "2004-12-11T12:55:46Z")
> [@Vlad/Igor](#): > > Oh, and I once had a urine sample so full of active white cells it was bubbling like a carbonated soft drink. Hey, I _gave_ a urine like that once! I knew I was good and sick, and went to see my urologist. He took one look at the sample in the cup and said "Where the hell’d you get this? Out of a _sewer_? He had his nurse calling to hospital to make arrangements to have me admitted before he had even properly analyzed it. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2004, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-medical-professionals-ever-hurl-tmi/279189/26 "2004-12-11T17:35:54Z")
mrAru had an appendix go boom on a monday, and on the operating table on friday his doc said nothing about the smell, but he turned around and upchucked from the smell… See, mrAru’s mom is a nurse, and she was convinced it was a regular stomach ache…so it got mostly ignored until he hadn’t been able to keep anything down for about 3 days and started upchucking bile. He now has a huge scar because they had to go back in, and a smaller scar from the drainage area. What is it about medical personnel and their families not getting the best attention medically? :smack: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-medical-professionals-ever-hurl-tmi/279189.md?page=1)