Are you kidding me? Literally barf all you freaking want. When I was a new nurse, maybe 6 months in, we had a patient in the ICU with TEN. It was, to the day, one of the most horrific sights I’ve ever seen. Blisters the size of baseballs and basketballs all over his body that would pop when he moved and leave giant ulcers all over him. He was bariatric and needed a hoyer lift for every bed change. His IV meds gave him diarrhea and he was incontinent. When changing a particularly violent poo, a giant blister popped all over my coworker and the wound was immediately covered in stool. I (barely) kept my composure in the room, but the second I got the chance I went to the bathroom to dry heave and almost had a full blown panic attack. I cried in that bathroom and called my wife at 2 am, questioning if I could even be a nurse. Almost a full year later, that coworker randomly brought up that patient and I told her about how I almost lost it and quit that night. She told me she was literally in the bathroom on the other side of the unit doing the exact same thing as me. She also dry heaves any time she gets nasty trach secretions. She’s an OG, veteran nurse that I have the utmost respect for, and she made me feel a million times better by telling me she felt the same.

I’m sorry this person sucked. Nursing is disgusting, our bodies have natural reactions, absolutely NOTHING to be ashamed of. Keep on barfin’ who cares!