After certain abdominal surgeries, passing gas can help relieve pain. I learned yesterday that farting is such a powerful healing tool that even fake farts can make someone feel better.
My patient was a grade-school aged boy recovering from a painful operation to his leg. He paged me to his room for pain medicine and as soon as I began examining his IV, he let out an extremely large fart. I looked at his face and could tell he was trying not to laugh, so I smiled and said, "Feel better now?" Both he and his sister burst out laughing. This laughter led to several more drawn-out farts, and it did not take me long to realize that there was a fart machine involved. "Where is it?" I asked with a smile. He pulled out from under his sheet a little remote-operated machine. Wow, the whoopee cushion has gone high tech! His doctor had ordered that he get up and out of bed several times each shift, but he had not been willing to walk around yet. Applying my hard-learned critical thinking skills from that awful experience I call nursing school, I said, "Want to have some fun with that?" His whole face lit up and he shouted, "Sure!" I grabbed his crutches and handed them to him. I gave his sister the fart machine and I took the remote. "Let’s go for a walk by the nursing station," I casually said. His mom laughed and his dad hid his face in his hands. Peter* slowly climbed out of bed and our journey began. At first he was slowly navigating down the hall. When he passed the extremely busy nursing station, I pushed the button on my remote. A loud but quick farting noise was immediately heard, and Peter hunched over forward and put his hand on his stomach. A few nurses and doctors paused and looked up, but no one said anything. As he stood there, I pushed the button again. This time the machine picked a long, diarrhea-sounding noise. Peter took off on his crutches moving down the hall. The nurses all looked around at each other, and my coworker Donna said to him, "Are you ok?!" He replied, "Yea, I *INSERT LOUD FARTING NOISE*, uh…" His sister was laughing so hard she was almost crying. Donna was obviously trying to stay composed, but after another push of the button, she could not control herself. As she started laughing, so did Peter, followed by most people at the nursing station. "I think I should go back to my room," Peter said, and as he began going back down the hallway, I accompanied him with the appropriate sound effects. When he finally returned to his room and was filling his parents in on his performance, he could not stop smiling. "How’s your leg feeling," I asked, expecting it to be pretty sore after walking around. "Oh, it’s great!" he answered, surprised. Two hours (and numerous times retelling his story) later, he still was not having any pain.
