What's the craziest thing you've seen in the ER?

Two people came in through the ambulance bay, and they were Smurf Blue.

I was like, 'woah.'

I was like, 'that's interesting.'

I was like, 'whats that all about?'

A guy with the thing you use for guacamole, I guess to grind it.

I don't know what that thing's called.

He put that up his rectum and...

We see people sticking stuff up their butts maybe every once every couple months.

What's the worst smell you've experienced?

I don't know if you wanna hear this, but I guess bloody diarrhea.

Does that count?

You know, it's so hard because when you do it every day, you're used to it.

I recently smelled a really pungent vomit.

I've smelled vomit before, but I don't know why this time it just really hit me.

What still grosses you out?

Body odor still really bothers me.

So, when I get those patients, I kinda just throw on a mask and I'm like, 'oh, I'm sorry, I'm coughing, I'm not feeling well,' but it's really because they smell really bad.

So, I don't get grossed out by things, but when I hear the story, though, of how some people get hurt, that grosses me out.

Has an incident ever freaked you out?

I remember I passed by a room and one patient actually was already somewhat restrained, but had monster strength and just came out of...

He lifted the whole stretcher up.

I was like, 'is that real?'

There was a guy that came in one time and I unwrapped his foot and there was maggots all over his foot, and it was my job, lucky me, to go and clean up the maggots, and the maggots pretty much ate down to the bone.

How often do you have to look up a diagnosis?

Every day.

I mean, things are changing all the time.

You see a lot of the same things all the time, and then once in a blue moon you'll get a...

You'll get something that you don't know at all.

The other doctors might actually talk amongst each other and ask each other, 'oh, what do you think this is?' and they bounce off of each other.

Definitely when I first started out, I was like, "oh, yeah, I definitely know what you're talking about.

I'm just gonna go over there just to get your medication."

Yeah.

What's the most rare condition or disease you've seen?

She had this fainting condition.

We had to Google it, and it was real.

It was a real thing, and I'd never seen it, but she had something that said I always faint, this is normal for me.

I faint and, you know, this happens all the time.

This was a baby like six months ago, and he had this condition where his heart just wasn't working properly, and he was gonna need a heart transplant at six months to survive.

We coated him for a while, and then we...

We sent him to another hospital.

I don't know what happened to him after that, but that was probably one of the most rare conditions I've seen in the ER.

Sorry.

Next one.

Do you eventually become numb to trauma?

One of the things that actually a lot of us have tried to do is that if a patient passes, we'll actually pause at the end of the trauma and actually have a moment of silence to just honor the patient.

That makes you more conscious of what you're doing, and it's just not just another person coming through a door.

When the patient first comes, you kinda have to be numb to just get through the day and get through whatever you need to get through, but then once all of it's done, you're like, 'oh my gosh, I can't believe that just happened to somebody.'

Anything could happen to anyone at any time, so we have a appreciation for life after each shift where we talk to each other about it.

You know what I call it, though?

I really think ER nurses are a jack of all trades, and that's why I'm so proud to be an ER nurse in particular because I think we do so many different things.

So, I mean, I love it.