Conversations with Perry and Friends: Jon Bloom, M.D.

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It was a smell you don’t forget, said Jon Bloom. He was a third-year medical student at the University of Pittsburgh on a rotation in the emergency department. “You basically still know nothing,” Bloom said. As the thick bandages were removed from the women’s legs, the pungent odor of Pseudomonas and Staphylococcus aureus bacterial infections hit the room.

“You remember those smells very vividly, and you could see the amount of gangrene that had affected her legs. And I, even with my limited understanding, knew that she was going to lose both limbs and likely not leave the hospital. And that was really the first time I'd seen this complication before that just devastates vulnerable populations,” Bloom told Perry Cohen, Pharm.D., during the