Spill

The nurse came in early in the morning. "So much fluids!" she exclaimed when she saw the tank of mum's stomach fluids, which has been extracted through her NJ tube and collecting in a tank next to the bed. There was around 1.5 litres full. No wonder before she vomited so much!

The whole night, I slept on the sofa and could here the a pressure pump constantly decompress and compress, sigh and heave. Whenever I opened my eyes, I could see mum lie there with a long tube extending out of her right nostril. I'll have to get used to the "new look". It doesn't disgust me, for it is just the way we can at best deal with mum's health dilemma. I don't know if it was mean or interpreted as such, but the tube I said reminds me of an elephant's trunk.

Clumsily the nurse spilled the tank, and the foul, foul stomach juices flooded part of the room close to mum's bed. The stench immediately filled the room. It's a smell of something rotting, of blood, of acid... A smell if I only get a whiff of it can easily make me gag and want to throw up. It's the smell I've had to deal with every time mum has thrown up in a bag, for I take the bag and empty the contents into the toilet bowl to flush away. But however many times you deal with the smell, it gets to me every time.

And this time it was a flood. A pool of brownish liquid, containing god knows what kind of waste water the bowels secrete and mum cannot expel through natural means...

For a while after the spill, I could still smell it, and it was nauseating. I mopped the floor, two times, and a cleaning lady came by and used some bleach. Still the stench of bodily fluids hung in the air.