3:33am July 19, 2014

TMI: Stomach mucus is the same exact stuff as nose mucus.

I know this may be TMI for a lot of people.  But so… the hole that my feeding tube goes into my stomach through is called a stoma.  And (especially when the tube has pulled out recently and loosened the stoma, which then has to grow more tightly around the tube again) mucus leaks out around the edges of the stoma, which has to be cleaned every day.  Which is one of the purposes for those cute little pads I wear around my tube, it keeps the mucus from getting on my shirt.  Your stomach has a mucus lining to keep it from digesting itself.

So anyway.

Today, when wiping away an extra large glob of mucus, I was able to smell the mucus.

And it smells exactly like mucus smells when you blow your nose.

Therefore, stomach snot is the same stuff as nose snot.  It smells the exact same.  It looks the exact same.  It’s all snot.  And it’s disgusting.

How disgusting?  I have caregivers who are fine with watching bile (with possible elements of food and blood in it, including some truly gnarly blood clots) drain out of my g-tube into a cup for an hour.  But who get seriously grossed out when they see the stomach snot around my stoma.  I think it’s because it’s snot where snot isn’t supposed to be.  Or something.  But it definitely grosses them out and they don’t like helping me clean it.  It gets extra gross when blood gets mixed in, which happens occasionally if the stoma gets injured or if my stomach is bleeding more than usual (I have an old injury in my stomach that acts up sometimes, it’s too minor to do anything about but it does produce blood and blood clots).

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