Something Smells Fishy

Working in a surgical ward in the first few days of January guarantees the fact that you will see many "New Year's Eve/Alcohol-Induced" injuries. Living in South Africa, these injuries are mostly the result of assault.

Night shift handed over to me, and because I was dreaming of my warm bed, I didn't hear exactly what they said, but gathered that a patient, Brian's, belongings were in the fridge.

I went to go put a name tag on what I assumed to be colddrink or something along those lines. However, upon opening the fridge, all I found was a brown paper bag, within which was a polystyrene cup. In the polystyrene cup was a nose. A human nose. Trying to (quite literally) put the pieces of this puzzle together, I went on a quest to find Brian. Indeed Brian had no nose. I don't know what else I was actually expecting. His nose had been bitten off in a fight.

The plastic surgeons soon got to work and realized it would be difficult (and kind of disgusting) to re-attach a nose that had been in a polystyrene cup in a fridge with temperatures that aren't really regulated. Plus, it was kind of old and shrivelled up.

Instead, the surgeons decided to perform a skin graft and basically just cover the open flesh and bone (rather than let Brian look like a person instead of Michael Jackson). This is the part I never quite understood. They took a skin graft from the back of his head - on his scalp. A scalp which was, I might add, covered in hair. I performed wound care for Brian and it really didn't look too bad until a couple days after the op, when his nose started sprouting little black hairs. A few more days passed and Brian eventually had a totally hairy nose.

Suddenly though, the hair had disappeared. I was so happy for Brian until I found him in the bathroom shaving his nose with a razor. That explained that, then.