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Saturday, October 11, 2008

Butt burps

I promise that this whole blog will not be all about butts. Let me just start off by telling you this brief story before I lead into my story from clinical....I have been babysitting for a family from my old church for about 7 years that has two boys and a little girl. For some reason either one of the parents had decided they did not like it when their kids used the word fart, so instead, to this day, they call it a butt-burp...that being said I will now tell you about my patient from clinical and come back to this above story.
So I was at clinical one evening assigned to a patient with a fresh colostomy. He was only 2 days post op and was not wanting to do much of anything. Being the great nursing facility that it is, we were not going to let him not do anything but just lay there because that delays healing, so we convinced him that he was going to walk around in the halls. It took 2 nurses and myself to get this man out of bed. The two nurses assisted him from each side and I stood in front of him for extra safety precautions. 1 2 3- and he's up in a standing position facing me. On the journey up he let's out a LONG, LOUD, EXPLOSIVELY STRONG belch, in my face none the less. That alone was rather disturbing to me, but that's not all. When I say explosively strong I mean it vibrated his cheeks and the gust of wind was so strong that it blew my hair out of my face. Patients with fresh colostomies are prone to experiencing a lot of gas. This man however, could not expell gas from the rear as most of us do, but the gas that was dwelling in his intestines had to be forced back up and out. So like I was saying, this belch was explosively strong. I had never smelled something so aweful come from someone's mouth. It ranked like S***!! I tried to contain myself the best I could and not make a face at this bomb that went off in my face, when the patient asked me (while still in the middle of the belch) "Is this normal?". In my mind the only thing I was thinking was, "HELL NO! IT IS NOT NORMAL TO FART OUT OF YOUR MOUTH!" but being the skilled professional that I am and having the best effective communication training, I smiled at the patient and assured him that it was normal to be experiencing gas because his bowels were waking up from the surgery. So I ask you this, (who ever could possibly be reading) if a butt can burp what do you call it when you fart out of your mouth?

2 comments:

aly said...

I would assume a mouth fart. Or an oral flatulence, perhaps. I think I like that better...

Valerie said...

Hahaha! Great material for your second entry!
Does anyone think its normal to let your kid say fart? I think I will.