My problem has always been wearing a surgical mask. I don't know why but toward the start of every OR rotation I'd get woozy and have to leave the OR. It was never the subject matter, it was just the mask. You can imagine how easily convinced the surgeons were. I even got one well meaning talking to about how if "blood" bothered me so much I should look into something other than ER. To this day I've never gotten bothered by anything when I wasn't wearing a mask.



On the related topic of worst smells ever I was taking sign out one morning, so it's 2 ER attendings and about 6 ER residents, not a group easily offended by a smell. We were talking at the board and I stepped on the pedal for a trash can to toss something and It hit me. WHOOMP! This smell just enveloped me and was one of the worst experiences of my life. I looked up with this pained expression and one of my interns started to ask what was wrong. Then it hit them. I've never seen such an august body of physicians flee from something so fast. They all agreed that it was the worse smell of their lives as well. I don't know what it was. We think it was the sheets off the bed that an expired pt had been on for several hours with this fetid, diarrhea leaking out pre and post mortem. We'll never know for sure.