RN vs. RT

This weekend I learned something very important about myself: I hate phlegm. I find it revolting. My gag reflex starts to act up when someone starts coughing and I can just hear all of the mucus in their lungs prepare for a journey to the world.

Ugh.

Nasty.

Grossness to the extreme.

I was telling my preceptor about how I need to get over this problem (in the ICU half of the patients are on ventilators and need to be suctioned. Ewwww, suctioning out phlegm) and he told me this story.

Way back in heaven, there was a group of people who were going to become Respiratory Therapists and Nurses when they came to earth. They were standing together in a room talking, when the room slowly starts to fill up with poop (never mind about the weirdness of poop existing in heaven). Eventually the room starts to fill up with poop so that it is up to their necks. Into the room walks a patient on a ventilator who coughs up a huge loogie. All of the nurses duck to avoid it, while the RTs keep their heads above the poop and get a face full of snot.

Yes, I'm definitely a nurse. I'd rather clean up poop any day than deal with loogies.

And I'm so grateful there are plentiful RTs on the ICU to clean up all that crap. (Maybe a pun was intended. . . . .)