Pseudomonas

My patient was a cachectic, elderly African American man with an amazing afro and a tumor the size of two soccer balls which was recently resected from his abdomen. As you can imagine, this left quite the gigantor sized hole around his middle, which necessitated a hefty skin graft and me, the intern, caring for this graft with thrice daily dressing changes. I did not mind this, as this man had a wonderful sense of humor and always a good show on the tube when i came to visit. All was fine and well with our soap operas and chats and daily wound care until the fever and the white count and that putrid greenish foam began to bubble up out of his insides.
Infection.
Pseudomonal infection to be exact. For those of you wise enough to have a job that has nothing to do with this bug, I've located some expert advice from Wikipedia on the subject. They explain that "P. aeruginosa is a rod shaped bacteria that secretes a variety of pigments, including pyocyanin (blue-green), fluorescein (yellow-green and fluorescent), and pyorubin (red-brown). It also has the ability to live at 42°C and thus is capable of growth in diesel and jet fuel, where it is known as a hydrocarbon-utilizing microorganism (or "HUM bug"), causing microbial corrosion." Obviously not a bug you wanna joke around with. So our team assessed and deliberated and decided to step it up a notch. Our three times daily dressings would now involve delicately removing pieces of dead tissue and nasty pus, pouring liters of Dakin's solution (ie. super smelly bleach) all over the man's middle, and then topping it all off with a thick juicy icing like layer of white silvadene cream (an antibiotic ointment). Fine by me, I thought. More time for the most recent All My Children episodes. Everything was going smoothly until one Saturday evening when i decided on tuna salad for dinner. I stopped by the cafeteria and returned to my call room with what i would consider as a better than average tuna salad sandwich. On whole wheat. I sat down to enjoy my dinner, had one bite and then remembered I'd completely forgotten about the third dressing change of the day. I pushed the food aside and went to collect the dressing materials. For some reason this evening the pseudomonas was a little extra bubbly and upon mixing with the silvadene icing became a very drippy pale green lumpy substance which splashed up out of the wound in my general direction with the repeated bleach washings. I dodged the drippings and once finished with the task headed back to my tuna. I went to take the first bite, when suddenly a few small dollops of creamy tuna slid out from the bread and onto my right forearm. I looked down at the dollop and did something right then that I will always regret. In what I can only explain as a ravished interns reflex, I leaned down and licked the drop of tuna from my arm. And then I stopped. Looked up. Dropped the sandwich. And thought about the very odd texture and taste of the substance in my mouth. It wasn't quite tuna. No, not like most tunas I'd had with the typical mayonnaise aftertaste and crunchy sweet pickles. No this was creamy and oddly bland, but with a distinct salty sour aftertaste and the fumey fragrance that was all to familiar, thrice daily to be exact. But how could, what could, no that could not have happened. And yet it had. I just put PSEUDOMONAS IN MY MOUTH!!!!!!!!!!!! OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG. I darted for the bathroom. Locked. Who is in there??!?!?! I scream in a muffled voice as I attempt to block off all entrances to my esophagus and airway scared to death about the possible repercussions of a pseudomonas ingestion. I begin banging on the door with my fists and kicking and finally an annoyed nurse emerges and I lunge toward the sink with one hand under the faucet and one hand firmly planted on the soap dispenser button allowing copious amounts of sudsy antiseptic to fill my insides. After a full hour of intractable vomiting and douching my intestines i emerged mostly alive and vowing to never be in the same room with tuna again.