Puke Room

[READ THIS FIRST- I've modified the patient names and some situations in order to preserve protected health information (PHI)]


I brought in Sarah from the ER Waiting Room to the only available bed in the only available 2-bed bay in the department. She was vomiting a lot and she was totally dehydrated. Jack started the IV, did some phlebotomy, and charted her history while I helped her get settled in and took her vitals. She asked for a big basin in addition to hers so she would have more storage space for her seemingly unstoppable puke galore. A few hours, nausea meds, and lots of tissues and buckets later, she finally ceased from sharing us her previous meals that we weren't really interested in. Thank God she is okay.

"EKG to the screen room, EKG to the screen room". Realizing that I was the only one around who is getting paid to do an EKG, I went to the screen room and got this patient with chest pain. I was having chest pain myself too, kinda- It is already 3 in the morning and my heart misses my bed so much. I did the EKG and found an irregular heart rhythm on Loida, a sweet old lady. I showed her EKG to the ER doc and he signaled me to bring her over to the next available bed- right in the same bay as Sarah's, and right next to her. Cool. Sarah's asleep, this bed just got cleaned 3 minutes ago after another patient got discharged, and It's a good location for treating chest pain patients- it's close to where the crash cart (that stuff with the defibrillators and...stuff.) is. We got Loida settled.

After a repeat EKG that showed a normal heart rhythm, the ER doc figured out that it was just epigastric pain...Loida was just having indigestion.

Sure enough she needed a basin because she's been wanting to vomit the entire time. She required less basins than Sarah, but hers was worse. Her emesis had some sort of fecal material. What does this mean? The entire bay (picture this- it's an isolated room with separate ventilation ducts and temp controls) smelled like FUCKING SH*T! AND PUKE! Combine the two and you get an olfactory disaster! The freaking puke smell woke up Sarah, and guess what? She started puking again! Both of them had vomit in their containers and ALL OVER their sheets.

In a matter of seconds, that isolation bay turned into puke bay.

The worst part about it is that Jack and I had to help clean them. Thank God I'm premed- I'm not gonna deal with cleaning crap for the rest of my life! What's bad though? I had to dispose of the puke buckets. With puke in it. And lots of it. Not in the trash cans in the room, but in the waste room- a small, humid room about the area of a phone booth that houses a huge crapper and the cleaning materials. I had gloves, of course, but the unfortunate news was that the masks were nowhere near accesibility.

I had to bravely stride to the waste room and threw the good stuff into the flusher. Man. I had the most animated exit out of a room ever. I think I was laughing and shouting aaaaah as I was rushing outside.


Before the end of my shift at 6am, I thought of checking the bay where Sarah and Loida had been (they got beds on the medical floors by then)- the signs of the previous disaster were undetectable. It was solid clean (thank you, housekeeping). I then checked on the waste room, like a mischievous kid looking for trouble (and fun).

I thought I've already had my most animated exit out of a room ever. Until that moment.