Not so glamorous

I had an experience this week that I will remember forever, though not in the way I would have thought before embarking in this career. **A warning that this story is kind of gross, so if you're not inclined, please feel free not to read any further.**

My patient has cancer and is in the hospital this week for chemotherapy. She was complaining of abdominal pain and constipation, so I prescribed some medicines to help her along that route. The next day, she was still uncomfortable and told me that it had been weeks since she had had a bowel movement. I got an X-ray of her abdomen and found that she was very much impacted, which is the medical term being really backed up with stool that is so hard that the body can't move it out. At that point, no medicines will really work, and that leaves only one option: manual disimpaction. That is exactly what it sounds like and is pretty much the yuckiest job in all of medicine. I just felt so awful for my patient who was in so much discomfort, and I just couldn't wish such a job on anyone else. So I put on a mask and gown, and then another gown for good measure, and did the job myself.

Apparently I opened the floodgates because the next morning I heard that she had put out an additional 15 pounds of stool overnight. The relief on my patient's face, however, was immeasurable. It reminds me why my job, though not always glamorous, still allows me to touch lives in ways that few others could.