The time I gagged.

Poop does not bother me. I live for poop. I can clean other people asses faster than I clean my own.
Occasionally and particularly bad smelling batch of shit will make my breath catch in my throat but I have never gagged over poop. Ever.

Enter Mr. Hard-to-Extubate. We'll refer to him as HTE for now. HTE was of the grungy variety. You ICU nurses know the type. Always stinky. No matter how many baths or what soaps you use. More teeth missing than present. In fact, we taped the tube in one of his gaps so he couldn't gnaw on it anymore. The wife was a piece of work too.

But I digress.

It was a typical day. Report, rounds, meds, wash, rinse, repeat. Nothing terrible exciting going on. Until HTE decides to move his bowels. We roll him, clean him, clean him, clean him some more. Then stand back and wonder why the hell he's not getting clean.

Upon a closer look, we see a little black things encircling his exit point. Tons of them. In the skin. Like watermelon seeds.

"C!! Come look at this!" I called out to my bump-popping precepted-me-as-a-new-nurse coworker.

"What?!" she yelled, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed like were about to call a code or something.

"Look at these blackheads!"

Her eyes lit up like a kid at Christmas, reaching for a pair of gloves.

Then she gets to popping.

Every watermelon-seed-black-head she squeezed out had me retching and thanking the nursing gods that the toilet was only two feet away.

Thank goodness poor stinky Mr. HTE was still pretty sedated because I was rather close to vomitting in his face.

I don't know if it was just the nasty concept of having ass-hole blackheads, the size of them, or a combination. But my stomach still turns everytime I think about it.

And now I have trouble eating watermelon.