Is anyone like me?

[Citan]

 

 

 

[Bambi]

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[HalfBaked]

Well personally, I never ever had a problem with blood or watching any kind of surgeries. I had friends in medschool show me some pretty gruesome stuff, and it never did anything to me. I have donated blood a zillion times without being affected the slightest.

Until one time, I was doing a dietetics internship in dialysis and I got to watch a nurse perform a routine dialysis for a patient. And honestly, it's practically nothing at all. A needle is inserted in a patient's arm and blood start being filtered. But when the nurse inserted the needle in the patient's arm, I looked up and saw her eyes, and saw she was in pain because she had had so many dialisys sessions before that her skin could barely stand being pierced over and over again. All the area was blue. And then the blood started rushing in the tubes to be filtered. 

And then I started feeling weak. I felt like I had cotton in my head. It started getting super hot. I kept seeing her face contorted in pain and her blueish skin in my mind and I felt for her, for what she had to endure. I felt so bad I couldn't listen to the nurse's explanations. I pretended having to go blow my nose and I walked out of the room to get some fresh air. I did not understand what was happening. Then, I went back feeling fine again. And then he started injecting things again, and I knew I couldn't stay, so I left. I entered the bathroom just in time to vomit everything I had in my stomach. I never vomited like I vomited that day. It was tsunami-like. Sorry for the details, but you can see how affected I was. 

And I got extremely worried because, I knew I wanted to go in medschool and I never had such a reaction to blood, so wth was happening to me. And I talked about it with my parents who both used to be doctors and they told me it was a normal feeling. That from time to time you may get sick, but the more you'll do them the less you'll be affected by them over the years until it feels very natural. 

I think what triggered this reaction was imagining over and over again my patient's pain. My hypothesis is that when we get to see it on films, or even in real life but without knowing the person behind the surgery, we dont feel as empathetic and we're less likely to be uncomfortable by the procedure. But when, you associate a face, feelings, emotions it becomes all too real you're cutting up a human being and it can be quite overwhelming. I try, momentarily during those procedures, to cut out extraneous information I have about the patient. Like while being respectful, all I see is flesh and blood, no human behind it. But as soon the procedure is over, it's back to seeing the patient as a whole of course.

I'm not sure if that helped but that was my experience!

[shikimate]

With autopsies you have to make sure your N95 mask fits tightly and is used per instructions.

 

For beginners the smell from GI tract  gets many people. One can try turning away when they are stringing out the bowels. 

 

(unless of course it's a decomp case, then all bets are off, no N95 will save you lol)