Hi Nikki,

I worked in a lab in a children's hospital in the early 70's and remember
the mucoid pseudomonas we would culture from the lungs of kids with CF. It
would cover the entire plate with a thick, glistening green/blue mass that
would slide down the plate when you tilted it. It was the grossest thing I
ever saw, almost like something from a science fiction movie. Smelled like
grapes.

Sharon

On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 4:27 PM, Nikki Lee <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Dear Friends:
>
> Back in the early 70s, I loved Intensive Care Unit nursing. The notion of
> ICU grew out of Recovery Room, where some folks took too long to recover
> and
> had to be kept and monitored until they got stable enough to leave.
>
> In the neurological/neurosurgical ICU where I began my nursing work,
> pseudomonas and his good buddy klebsiella were *the* nasty superbugs. This
> is 1970-74 and was true in every ICU I worked in until R. Adams Crowley's
> Shock Trauma Unit at the U of Maryland. There, the nurses dipped their
> hands
> in a betadine solution. There were none of those nasty germs and many
> nurses
> had no skin on their hands.
>
> I'll always remember their particular smells, of fountains of burbling dark
> red syrup bubbling out of trach tubes and the green odoriforous discharge
> of
> pseudomonas. and 21 young year old me there, gloved, wielding a suction
> catheter and breathing through her mouth.
>
> Yikes. They're back. I think they were the impetus for the first
> cephalosporins, maybe or even gentamycin? (I could definitely be wrong
> here!)
>
> warmly,
> Nikki (Schultz) Lee, who started her hospital nursing career in the ICUs of
> the old Bellevue Hospital, where at least one of the clerical and
> housekeeping staff was a junkie. That world was full of drama. (St.
> Elsewhere was the TV show modeled on a Boston version of Bellevue.)
> The hospital was crawling with young handsome medical men of all ages and
> ranks and nationalities. I had unlimited energy and would work doubles for
> fun. Such zest.
>
> I saw erysipelas there and fulminating breast cancers. Belleuve was one of
> the best training grounds because of the depth and variety of exposure.
>
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