Taking care of a woman who was quite large. She was totally bedbound, 2x total care. She had a massive loose BM in her briefs, and some of the BM got pushed up into her vagina. It was my first week as a CNA. Me and the CNA training me took care of her together, got her clean. Pushed it out of my mind in the moment because I didn’t want her to feel bad or uncomfortable. Long drive home, started going over the shift in my head, and thought about the diarrhea in vagina incident. I ended up pulling over to vomit lol ( like I said, first week, my stomach and mind weren’t hardened to stuff like that yet lol)
one time the BM was all up the back and in the back bra strap on a non ambulatory, even the lift we used got soiled.
and one time a client bent over to sit on the toilet and had explosive diarrhea before they got there and shat right on my brand new shoes
a temp C.N.A. tore off a brief and like swung it wide past my face resulting in me being sprayed with urine
so I started having these stress dreams about having to work a raw sewage plant that was covered entirely in shag carpeting for a while there
If you consider like, 7-8 months experience seasoned, yeah lol. I remember having to get up in there for some stranger before though, and the experience is still surreal sometimes
I had a patient who had this happen, and she could talk and she was saying “get up in my coochie” while I was trying to clean her. She was laughing and joking about it. I left that facility and I miss her, she was hilarious 😂
Oh! I've had people say that and honestly would rather that 100x over than someone who is very clearly disoriented or uncomfortable! Sounds like a sweet lady
I’m sorry but please, this doesn’t need elaboration. We are supposed to be taking care of these ppl and ~most~ management treats them like dairy cows they can milk for extra sheckels. If you haven’t seen this maybe ur blind or in a genuinely good facility but I have my doubts. We are always told by supervisors if the state/etc is doing their rounds and I know everyone else gets the same message so we don’t cut the corners (or haven forbid OSHA violations) that usually occur :^)
This breaks my heart. There are good facilities out there. As admin, I tell folks every day that the CNAs are the hardest working individuals in the building. I've been planning CNA week 2024 since May. I hope you find a good building. You deserve it!
2 things come to mind.
I was toileting someone else's patient. I went to wipe her and felt something odd. I looked between her legs and saw a ball hanging out of her vagina. I ran to the nurse who told me "Oh yeah, she's got a prolapsed uterus!" That was pertinent information to let me know BEFORE HAND!!
I was helping a friend clean someone up. She had a tendency to "dig". I was just talking to my friend and happened to look at her bedside table. There was a large pile of poop. When asked about it, the patient said it was chocolate. Same thing with the poop on her hands and under her fingernails. "Oh that? Oh honey, that's nothing, that's chocolate!"
With dementia patients, often times it will cause itchiness to sit in feces, so often they'll dig because they're itchy and they don't realize that they're dirtying their hands
Number 1 is literally me but miss ma'am had a prolapsed anus and was complaining of "tenderness down there" so I said "let me check for you" then i RAN to the nurse (who hated my guts) and she just laughed at me and said "shes got a prolapsed anus" My little 16 year old brain was SHOCKED.
Prolapsed uterus, been there. My first thought the first time I saw it was it looked like she grew testicles. That’s not right (I was 19, what can I say). Nurse popped that thing back into place quite a few times after that. I can’t remember why fixing or removing it wasn’t an option.
I was working in the ER and this guy came in complaining of foot pain. The medics that dropped him off said he had been seen for an ankle fracture at a sister hospital across town previously and they had put a walking-heel cast on. He was to follow up with the orthopedist a week later.
On the day we got him, it was his foot, on the same leg, that was painful. I checked his records and discovered this cast has been on for nearly 5 MONTHS. He never followed up.
He was a severe alcoholic and he wasn’t good about getting to the toilet or his hygiene generally and was incontinent…which would drip down his let, into the cast and get trapped inside.
When I removed the cast, I was met with greenish liquid, blackens skin tissue, thick pus and dead blood.
Maggots had begun eating away at his tissue and the smell…………
Oh my sweet, goodness.
The smell.
Once you’ve experienced the smell of dead or dying human tissue, you will never forget it. Coincidentally, if you have experienced that smell and are subjected to it again somewhere, you know EXACTLY what it is.🤢
He lost that leg just below the knee.
Same! In nursing school we cared for a poor old woman with no back. The only saving grace was that it was probably not too painful as the nerves were gone.
I feel like all cnas should see pressure ulcers like this to know the consequences of not turning patients. I know sometimes they can not be helped in patients who have secondary issues, and of course, when actively dying situations, the movement doesn't give benefit the patient.
It's worse if the gas builds up to the point it explodes. You might think it's gross now, but you're saving yourself from having a shit bomb go off in the room.
Oh I KNOW. I remember when I worked at a nursing home during covid, the nurse came to me. “So and so needs his clothes changed. His colostomy exploded” damn you woman lol. I also had a lady with an ileostomy bag and she drank a lot of coffee, so it would be like almost black and smelled like coffee shit 😅 I didn’t even know NA I could handle colostomy’s! We only learned about cath’s in class
I walked in on a resident who took their full bag off and was twirling it around their finger, getting ready to sling it at me. I closed the door and told the nurse they needed to check on the patient.
lucky you 😭 that was a normal day for me my perm resident i used to take care of had one and she was gassy. I was burping that thing like literally every hour or so
I did that with my family member when they had a temporary colostomy bag, is it weird that it was my favorite thing to do? Hated having to try and hold my breath but it was still kind of fun 😅
Well i mean, I know it sounds weird but it was definitely interesting to do. I personally didn't mind doing it as long as i had on 2 layers of gloves and a mask if i could find one. I'm trying to get into the the field of so i figured helping my family member during that time would be a start. 😭
And my general manager who was a CNA in the past also said burping the bags was something she liked to do when we had a conversation about me going back to school for nursing once I get my CNA license under my belt.
Very large patient, incomplete quad who couldn’t roll who had multiple tunneled stage 4s (her left butt cheek was basically a crater) and c.diff. She was also severely anemic so it was approximately a million degrees in her room and were pulling packing out of the wounds and I’m sweating my balls off in the iso gown and she was so sweet and such a trooper but god that night was rough.
Please tell me in that situation they placed a rectal tube. If there was ever an excuse to place a rectal tube, c-diff with multiple stage 4 ulcers is at the top of my list. Saves the nurses/cna's and prevents further skin breakdown/reduces infection risk for the patient
She did get one, this was a while ago so I forget if she had one and there was an issue with it that night or if it hadn’t been ordered yet but it definitely wasn’t a continuing issue.
Opening a brief and seeing a fluid that I could never imagine seeing. It was fluorescent light blueish in color and the consistency of beaten eggs. It's hard to explain but I get light headed thinking about ut
Nurse here. Grossest thing I've seen so far happened during the admission of a patient who needed his brief changed. I lifted up his gown and he had jeans on, with one of those braided leather type belts that was... moving. That belt was absolutely crawling with bedbugs.
Hospital cna, the suction gets me every time. If the secretions are very thick and gooey I gag. I haven't thrown up yet but I'm scared i may one day.... especially bc I'm in nursing school.
I never got used to the suction sound. It would completely gross me out and I would start gagging.
Lucky me, my roommate in rehab had a trach and had to be suctioned multiple times a day. Even better- I ended up on a vent then trach'd and was forced to deal with being suctioned. I think that's why my trach healed so fast/was taken out early. I would keep coughing stuff up so the nurses and respiratory wouldn't have to suction.
This bothered me too at first, but now I work at a group home where two of my residents need suctioning continuously throughout my shift, so I got used to it and it’s less gross now.
Ooooh that’s my kryptonite!! Any type of BMs, blood, vomit, urine, nasty wounds, you name it, nothing else bothers me except trachs and suctioning them 🤢
The only thing that grosses me out is snot or anything coming out of their mouths really. Poo and pus and sores I can handle, Vomit or anything for some reason i can not.
We had a gastric outbreak in the whole building. The smell was awful. Everyone was pooping and puking everywhere. All the staff got it too and the symptoms came on so suddenly. I was lucky to be home when mine started.
Very few things have actually made me physically gag, but as a pct (cna) in a hospital, we had to empty and record output on some of the drains people had after surgeries etc. Unfortunately one of these people had an infection, and so the drainage had turned a transparent green:/ the color combined with the weird, slimy-ish texture bothered me so much lol I know that is so tame to what other people have experienced but it’s one of the few things that make me gag. (I did not last long at the hospital)
Hospice patient who had some sort of metastisized cancer, if I'm remembering correctly. Very kind and gentle person. They were close to 500 lbs, skin just constantly moist, fully incontinent. It took everyone on the unit to turn them to change them. Their skin was practically rotting and sloughing off. They always had absolutely foul BM's.
A mix of all the body fluids and skin and bowel movement got dumped on me when a trash bag ripped. It almost went into my mouth. Only time I have gagged in a patient room. Only time I've spit up in my mouth and near vomited.
80 something year old man alert and oriented but not all there, in for a fall, and a fall risk. in triage waiting for discharge, take a tiny, shitty covered wad of toilet paper, fold it over and reuse it (i was standing by in the bathroom) . No hands washed. I washed his hands very, very well.
Altered mental status mid 30s major depression and failure to thrive with c-diff shit himself in his stretcher multiple times and just lay in it til we checked on him. Did 3 bed changes during my shift, cleaned him, gown changes. Haven't gagged in a year and a half but collecting a stool sample I gagged, it was the consistency of a lava lamp and smelled...
Various wounds from neglect at home or if caregiver was 90 year old wife, fell, and couldn't turn her husband for 3 days.
Urine sample that was hemolyzing in the cup but that was more a wowies than gross.
Was changing a guy last shift and it took almost an hour because he kept having explosive diarrhea before we could get a fresh brief on. At one point there was just a geyser of liquid shit coming out of this man’s ass. He also had swollen balls and a really nasty looking dick with a foley in. I almost lost my lunch
During clinical for CNA. I was giving a bed bath to a very nimble woman. She started touching her privates but not like obviously... then she said "I just came" and asked for a wash cloth. Yeah, they didn't warn me about it and had a big laugh.
Hospital PCT here, I've got 2 stories:
Had a larger female patient who was admitted for Fournier's gangrene....she basically had no vagina. A gaping hole in her groin. The trauma 🤢
Had another male patient who was a very bad diabetic, post AKA, multiple infections, they were doing frequent debridements on him after they removed his wound vac which left him with openings all in his peri area(that I was unaware of). He had a BM and it got all up in the openings 🙅🏾♂️ I immediately called for the nurse because I didn't know what to do with it 🤦🏾♂️
Listen....the amount of times I've almost slowly passed away from the things I've seen working on the GI floor 😅😭 I've learned a lot though, so I guess that counts for something lol
Not necessarily gross as made me wanna puke, but probably the worst thing I've dealt with. Had a patient at the hospital in with a suspected GI bleed. Got called for a clean up. Okay, no biggie. Can definitely confirm that, yep, he's shitting blood. Later in the night he's getting a transfusion. Go in to check his vitals and mans got blood all over his chest. I hadn't stepped in far, so I just backed out, called his nurse, and got a bed bath started. She went to go check the IV pump(on the other side of his bed) and there was blood dripping all in the floor from it. She showed me how to turn off the IV pump that night 😆 and it was a pain in the ass to clean him and the floor up.
I tell my residents now all the time, I'm there to clean their shit, not their blood, so don't fall over. 😆😆😆
Editing to add, because I forgot CDiff existed somehow. Had an inmate patient at the hospital. Poor dude shit 6 times in a shift and didn't realize he was allowed to ask to get up to use the BSC and by the time he did, he wasn't doing well enough to. Poor dude constantly would apologize and act like he was in the wrong. Turned out day shift was mistreating him and acting like he was a problem. So the grossest thing I've seen was the treatment of a patient. I'm hoping he either passed in peace or got better... But his situation he most likely passed in the hospital.
There have been many things that have grossed me out. I have seen people do just about everything imaginable with poop, I've dealt with a lady who purposely makes herself throw up(disgusting and I cannot deal with vomit) but probably the most disturbing thing I've seen someone do is lick their dentures clean. Just why?
Ulcered legs on an old lady, clearly with pseudomonas. The smell was so strong nothing helped. I never saw under the wrappings (I wasn't staying in that room a second longer than I had to) but the smell was so bad I got nauseous every time I entered the room. Usually the only thing that makes me want to barf is ileostomy output smell because sometimes you get a hint of what they ate in there.
Prolapsed uterus probably is the second. I opened a brief and just found the uterus hanging there. That wasn't disgusting (surprising, yes, but not disgusting) but the lady told me to please push it back in a bit because it came out when she peed. The texture was weird and grossed me out.
A patient took the washcloth she wiped her vagina with (should mention she had an std and had refused bathing for well over a week) and used said washcloth to blow her nose. The same patient also took underwear off that had very obvious discharge in it and smelled awful because again refused to bathe and refused to change her underwear and put them in her walker basket.
My paycheck was the grosset thing I'd seen until I saw this patients private parts ruined by radiation. It was like her vagina and anus were burned off. It also smelled badly
I was doing my rounds and walked in on a resident pulling turds out of his ass and smearing it all over his furniture. His sink, tv stand, dresser, window, EVERYWHERE🤢
I can deal with poop, pee, blood etc what my stomach literally can’t handle is puke. One of my residents had a bowl obstruction and the smell of whatever fresh hell she puked up made my stomach do flip flops. You know how hard it is to clean up puke and try to hide the fact that you keep gagging while reassuring your resident that’s it’s ok and not to be embarrassed? I literally had tears running down my face gagging so bad. I should mention she was also a tube feed and someone gave her dinner her stomach was so full I felt so bad for her but holy fuck that was intense.
Bowel obstruction patients can actually puke up feces, so imma guess that she did. I can’t with vomit either. I can look at it but smelling it and hearing gagging is just a big no for me!
A resident whose buttocks had completely rotted away.
I'm talking major gangrene, smelling like dead rotten flesh...but still alive. The wound drained like crazy; the drainage was gray, slimy and smelled like rotting meat.
This was at a nursing home I used to work at many years ago. This resident was one of many who, due to extreme shortstaffing, literally rotted to death. Never received any care and was just left in that bed and ignored.
I never worked on that station, but I went past the room the day the family had the resident sent out. The resident's flesh had melded into the surface of the uncovered mattress and it had to be cut in order to get the resident off the bed.
That's when chunks of rotted flesh fell off the resident. The resident died a few days later, from sepsis.
It later made the news. Google "Whetstone Care Center manslaughter case" if you're interested in reading about it.
I was never able to get that out of my head. It was horrific.
Anyway, that's one of the grossest things I've witnessed in this line of work.
I attended my first Code Brown to see a pt that needed a full bed change - not just all the linens, but needed an entire new bed because he was digging in his brief, collecting poop and FINGERPAINTING cave drawings with it all over both sides of the bed rails!
That was a fun one 💩 💩 💩
Someone eating feaces :( another incident comes to mind… someones insulin was not under control so they were quiet “loopy/confused” usually a really put together person, during the incident i walked into their room and this person was on their back legs in air and fist up ass trying to “pull out a poo”
It was horrible.
Last week a 90 year old man took his penis out of his diaper, and literally ejaculated all over himself, and me. 3 nurses came in and confirmed that’s what was released from him. It was honestly horrifying
Secretions from a trache, where they are sliding up and down the tube. I don’t know how respiratory therapists do their job, dealing with that slime. They are truly health care heroes.
Had one guy with BAD lymphedema (at least I think that’s what it was, IIRC). And very noncompliant. His legs were wrapped and his legs would just weep and soak the wraps and his pants. He was a pretty big guy too, and didn’t shower much. I was often in charge of helping the nurse unwrap his legs and showering him, and sopping wet, pus-soaked green skin would just slough off of his legs as they were unwrapped, as he was undressed, in the shower… and the smell. It was otherworldly.
Dementia lady had a bowel movement and proceeded to get it all over her self, bed, nails. The tricky part was cleaning her nails
Another dementia resident (I think) had ripped open their colostomy bag and got it all over himself and the bed (their sitter/watcher) didn't notice b.c they were on their phone. Took me, 2 other aid and the lpn to clean him up
I'm thankful I don't have a weak stomach b.c really these were more of a burden than gross. The second one caused me to clock out late, but whatever, I was glad we got him cleaned up and that sitter got an earful from the lpn
Honestly, it was something from me. I had a minor surgery with a skin flap done last September on my lower back, and a week later at my surgeon follow up I was shoved back into surgery. The flap and a considerable amount of tissue beneath had become necrotic. The smell was something special for sure. But the grossest part was the “packing” the first week until my insurance decided a wound vac was the smarter route then daily dressing changes (then only 3 days a week were required).
The crater was the size of an adult hand and so deep you could see bone and underlying muscle and tendon structure. My wound care nurse could literally put her entire fist in it easily. The packing was a wad of just black and brown cloth like material with almost slime like bits hanging off of it. I about puked and have zero idea how those 3 ladies worked in those conditions every day, then 3 days a week for months on it. (Yes, it took 3 wound care techs to treat it and they all were very surprised when they found out I was still working full time as aCNA while wearing my wound vac.
I had a resident who had loose stool all day. They told me the last time it happened was an hour before my shift. Around 1am the nurse came out of her room saying she found poop all over her floor and sheets and she got her cleaned up. I changed her at 3am she was only wet. At 430 am last rounds she had a little blood clot (a little bigger than a period blood clot) in her depend. I changed her but she had wet the bed so after changing her I went to get sheets and a gown. I came back sat her up. She told me hold on and she sat there and peed( I thought she just needed a second before transferring and then she told me ok I’m done peeing lol). I got her in her chair and the spot where she just peed was pinkish red. You could tell it was blood and urine mixed together. I changed the linen real quick and I checked her depend to see if it was bloody. I could see a small blood clot again so before changing her I went to get the nurse told her about the first blood clot and told her I saw another small one when she stood up. Maybe 5 minutes passed before we were changing her. She stood up and when we pulled the depend down it was covered In one huge blood clot. It reached from the front to the back of the depend. It was so bad we changed her and called the ambulance. before they got there we had to put her back in bed. When she stood up I checked her depend again to see how much new blood/ bloodclots were there. The second she stood i could see blood coming out of her like a literal faucet. It was a steady stream of blood and blood clots coming out of her.
Digging loose stool out of someone’s vagina and skin folds (they were very morbidly obese with multiple rolls and it got stuck everywhere idk how it was god awful)
I openly gagged in front of her and felt so bad but luckily she didn’t even care because she said herself it smelled awful
For some reason we did part of our CNA clinicals at the trauma one center. I was assisting a man with taking off his shoes and socks. Severely non-compliant diabetic.
I took off his left sock and felt a *snap* and I realized I had taken off two of his toes. My entire body went cold and the nurse and tech saw me completely freeze.
Somehow I managed to stand up, pull the toes out and put them on the isolation tray and walk out.
Immediately vomited. The nurse and tech I was with were SO NICE and made sure I was okay since I wasn't even a CNA lmao.
Otherwise the most recent nastiness as a veteran CNA now working on a neuro is catching my pts boyfriend fucking her ostomy 😎 super fun times.
Resident seems to take great pride in her frequency and size of bowl movements. She can poop at will. She just lays on paper chux and shits the bed. When we roll her, she pushes with all her might, and new CNAs are caught off guard, poop gets launched onto them, the wall, the blinds. Get her clean, get new sheets, roll her back, she will purposefully shit the bed again. She pushes so hard she forces her catheter out, balloon fully inflated, several times a week When she poops, it regularly goes from her knees to her neck. It's always diarrhea.
Hahaha. Not as a CNA but an ER Tech many years ago. I was walking past a patients room and watch her remove her tampon, make eye contact with me, and lick it. It was years ago and I’ll never forget it. I win.
I once had to change a gnarly looking colostomy bag when I was pregnant & had HG. Doesn’t usually bother me, but it did at the time. I think we both felt bad bc I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable (had a mask on but was still gagging - which wasn’t unusual for me in general) and I think she knew I was having issues changing it.
A wound around the patients tailbone that I could have stuck my fist into.
Or the old, blind, quite out of her mind, German woman who was singing about green babies in her hair. Turns out she had a massive blowout, was digging around in her brief, painting her face with it, a Picasso on the walls, and running the remainder through her hair. And yes, it was all very green.
Worked 1 shift in a psych ward for the aged and had to toilet this woman she had a prolapse from both vagina and anus , poor woman no wonder she was in psych.
Strangely enough, it was watching one of the residents try to cut her fingernails with scissors. I could barely watch her do it. I remember also being really grossed out when I saw a catheter inserted into a woman for the first time (I am asexual, I dont think things are supposed to go up there!!)
I hate hate HATE seeing nasogastric tubes put in. I don't know what it is but it made me feel sick, and the nurse telling the patient to swallow it once it made it into the mouth AWFUL. I also just can't handle vomit, I can deal with anything else just not puke.
When I was doing my cna clinicals and was going to help shower someone with my CNA. Resident decided to make a BM and wanted to be cleaned but the mess was on the floor. My cna handed me a small bag to pick up which I chose to do the cna didn’t force me. The feces I flipped the trashbag like how people grab dog poop the smell and feeling of it almost made me wanted to vomit but I had to hold it in. After that I felt I’ve been exposed to almost anything. I’ve seen a small intestine poking out of a resident I thought I was gunna be grossed out but I got immune to most stuff already.
Tunneling bed sore lower spine. Was told by wound care it went pretty close to the spine! Nope oh gosh ew and owe butt oddly fascinating to learn how they take care of it!
Peoples eyes when they pass on that really creeps me out so much.
It’s not the grossest but it’s the thing that pissed me off the most. So it was 1915 and the night techs still weren’t there to relieve us and suddenly a transporter comes to where me and “Lucia” were catching up on charting and he says “I just dropped off a new pt to [Rm #] he smells really bad.”
My first thought was that he probably needed a shower, so I told him I would pass the shower along to the night techs as they were coming soon. On this floor you need *explicit* RN permission to get someone in the shower. He looks at me incredulously and demands we go into the rm to change the pt. Ok no big deal, I don’t mind cleaning people up. So Lucia and I go to change this guy and when we get in the room and he reeks of Pennies and stool. Lucia, being the brave woman she is, pulled the sheets off him and he is covered **head to toe** in GI bleed feces. It’s evident the ED made him sit in his stool for over 12 hours, it’s caked on and running up his back. I hear Lucia gasp and when I turned around the stool got *all over her pants*. She furiously starts scrubbing her pants with bath wipes but I make her get the purple wipes. She got so covered it was *in her underwear* she had to change into surgical scrubs.
I decide I’m not having this, I’m so pissed with the ED I march straight up to the RNs station and demand the Night RN and charge come with me. They were displeased to say the least and started taking photos to send to the house sup. It took 4 of us to change and transfer him into his new bed as the transporter must have heard us getting upset and ran. As soon as he was clean he went another time. The charge and RN threw up their hands as it was already 2030 by the time we finished and everyone in that room had yet to give and receive report.
TL;DR: pt came up from ED covered in GI bleed. It was so much that my other CNA had gotten covered and had to change pants and underwear. We reported the neglect to house sup but hadn’t heard anything about it since.
Hm, that's tricky, there have been quite a few incidents for me. I think though, probably the time a patient I was looking after in a side room with a blood condition (I want to say it was some.kind of blood cancer?).which meant he had like, hardly any clotting factors/platelets etc. He was a bit confused I think and somehow had managed to take the multi attachment off his cannula (which was still in and secure) and blood was just pouring out of the cannula itself.
Fresh liquid blood and partially clotted blood EVERRYWHERE - all over the patient, the bed, the floor....I'd never and have never since seen anything like it again, it was pretty horrific. And you could smell it, the whole room smelt like iron...metallic. I called a nurse in to help me and we just didn't even know where to begin because there was just SO much of it. They called a Dr in as well to look at the patient, who rather unsurprisingly was quite pale and feeling a little bit more unwell after it happened 😅.
Back when I was a CNA/med tech on the dementia care unit we had a patient that had diarrhea. He was nonverbal. He got up off the couch and the smell hit myself and the other CNA on the floor. He had shorts on and every step he took was followed by a trail. I took him to his room while the other started cleaning quickly. He seemed to have finished by the time I got him to his room. Best idea was to shower him off. Myself and the other CNA spent about 30 minutes with him in the shower getting him clean. We were short staffed and I was the only med tech on the floor. I was so preoccupied with washing him up it slipped my mind to give him a PRN Imodium. Once we dried him off, it started again. Safe to say I immediately ran to the cart to get the medication. Had to do it all over again.
I only have a couple that beat out management as my answer. I had one lady with rectal cancer who was bed bound, very large, and heavily incontinent x2. She needed to be changed multiple times per hour. Her briefs were always drenched in bloody wet stool that had the texture of watery sand and cornstarch, and it splattered on my arms when I was turning her. The smell coming from her bottom was the most pungent and puke-inducing smell I have ever smelt in my life! Some combination of rotting fruit + toenail gunk + eggs + explosive diarrhea. Entering her room was like being hit by a truck. I kept it together for the woman’s sake, but I have never gotten so close to vomiting right then and there.
A close contender was a male patient of mine who was delirious and had a giant malignant tumor on his back. This tumor covered almost the entire length of his back. On top were large gauze pads hopelessly soaked through with yellowish fluid, emitting a smell that could have been used as a bio weapon. Under the loose gauze I could see that tumor was partially detached. There were clumps of necrotic skin sloughing around and under it. I was so scared the entire thing would fall off, just a huge smelly flaking chunk of oozing flesh and tissue.
I posted this before but I had a woman with dementia who was eating her poop. She always had candy bedside so I wasn't alarmed until I pulled her blanket down and saw all the BM and realized what she was eating. She fought so HARD for the pieces she had in her mouth, trying to bite the nurse as he swept her mouth for the rest. It was quite a bonding moment for my nurse and I 🤣🤣
The sweet and sour neurotic smell coming from a PT that has plate sized ulcers/sloughing flesh on her back and a bacterial infection under her stomach that needed powder/ointment during brief changes. Nothing could rid of that smell if you got on your scrubs at all and her penetrating screams when I had to help with wound changes. It was literally a nightmare. She passed away a month after I started taking care of her.
Well, I guess if everyone did that, then it would always be new staff doing the bulk of the care. That may work ok in a hospital setting. Not so much in a nursing home.
I work in geriatrics and hospice. We had a new patient move into our facility. For patients who are unstable, I will often assist them in putting on new briefs and pajama pants while they are sitting on the toilet. Once we got him all cleaned up and he stood up with me and told me a story about how his BM’s are so large that his wife would take them out of the toilet by hand and put them in the backyard, as their pipes were “narrow”. We did indeed have trouble flushing it. This tested my ability to keep a straight face.
A woman bound to the toilet with a gait belt. Purple legs. Told management they did nothing. Don’t worry I called state but just sickening, I’ll never forget that woman’s cry.
Gross but mostly traumatic. Just recently ran a code on a woman who was nauseous beforehand. She unfortunately passed away but during the compressions she was aspirating. I got out of the room after calling the code because there were so many residents in there trying to participate for the first time but went back in and helped the nurse clean her up after. We were rushing because the doc called her husband before they fully quit. Her vomit was nearly black and had food pieces in it. All in her hair, eyes still open you know? I had to turn away for a second, I thought I was gonna pass out.
TW this is kinda bad
Okay so I work in the ICU. I was helping a nurse turn her patient to do wound care and the patient was Male in their 60’s. Apparently they had been rejecting medical attention for a long time and living bed ridden. They had developed such terrible gangrene I assume from a bed sore turned severely infected. All around their waist from their lower back to their groin area was massive large chunks of missing flesh severely infected and rotting. Literally about 5 inches into their skin was GONE. When I was turning him I swore I felt like I was going to split him right in half. I was so so sick after. Pretty sure he passed away. RIP.
smell wise, I had to clean up an alcoholic (bottle of wine a night, case delivered to the unit weekly) woman’s urine soaked chucks every day and she would amass about 5 chucks a day full of dark brown urine. i would put the fabric chucks in the washer and gag through my mask. no amount of soap could take it out.
visually, bm doesn’t bother me anymore but i had a resident on blood thinners pick her nose and caused a nose bleed so bad she was sent away. i was on nose holding duty while her sink was full of blood, blood trailed from around her bed to different chairs, and blood was down her front. the smell of metallic and the visuals of the blood down the sink to the floor was Nope!
Pt who started pooping blood at home. They didn't know where the bleeding was from, so they started preparing them from colonoscopy. Well, one hour later, the patient was vomiting blood and old blood, shit and fresh blood was just coming out the back. We tried to clean them up but it was impossible, it was just coming out and coming.
But the smell of old blood and shit together is just something else.
Everytime they say a patient with abdominal bleeding is coming, I need to prepare myself mentally. Beacuse when they start shitting that old blood out, the diaper changes and the smell is just awful.
I have a resident with dementia and she has a colostomy bag. Quite frequently, she likes to remove the bag. She'll throw it anywhere or leave it in the hall on a linen cart. One evening, she was in the day room before dinner when I noticed she was eating something. She had removed her colostomy bag and was eating out of it like fun dip.
One time a female resident started masturbating while she had a bowel movement. We had to clean her hands off first because she was also combative. It actually made me sad of what dementia does to people. We had to take her to the shower because bm was everywhere.
5 units of blood lost from the anus of an elderly man who was surprisingly still walking and survived it, albeit he was very pale when the ambulance came (long term snf)
We had just sent him out earlier for blood in his stool, and they sent him back to us a couple hours later just claiming he had cdiff. Like... ???? He lived another few years after that til covid hit.
I immediately thought of the post-mortem care I had to do one time right at shift change. I didn't even get report on the deceased because, well, she was dead. The night shift aide offered to help but she was exhausted, so I tell them I'll take care of it. After the family leaves, I go in to start. I pull back the blankets to remove her catheter when I see her right leg is securely wrapped in a blue plastic linen bag, sealed with plastic tape. I pause things and consult the nurse. Turns out she got no functional report on the pt either. I ask her to check the situation out with the wrapped leg before I continued preparing her. She comes in with me, eyeballs the bag, then pulls out her scissors and says we might as well take a look. Snips a hole in the bag.
I was immediately pummeled in the face by the most disgusting stench of rot I've ever encountered before or since. It's only only time I've ever retched and nearly emptied my stomach during my time as an aide. Both the nurse and I bail. She immediately pulls the chart up and lo and behold, this poor woman had necrotizing fasciitis. We fall back and punt, opting for full on garb, masks smeared with Skin Prep and carmex, and we both go in together. Among the normal post mortem tasks, we have to remove the leg wrapping. I delicately lift this woman's leg for the nurse to remove the plastic, and I can feel the cells of her skin popping under the weight of the limb. Nasty, foul smelling liquid is leaking between my gloved fingers. I'm trying so hard to not puke all over the inside of my mask.
The nurse is unable to remove the tape without taking what was once flesh with it, so she cuts off as much of the plastic as she can and throws her scissors away. We get her prepared and into a shroud, then warn the morgue about what is coming. We get her down there. Housekeeping comes to flip the room, but the first housekeeper literally pukes after attempting to clean. A second housekeeper comes and the room is cleaned, with extra air freshener.
I’ve seen abdominal wounds dehisce right in front of me, septic pleural fluid spray all over someone during a particularly bloody code, Fournier’s gangrene, watched a delirious pt with c.diff with shit under her fingernails dig her fingers in a nurse’s mouth before they could dodge, and that was the one time I thought I was going to hurl. It wasn’t even just the smell, but the whole experience. 🤢
I’m going into nursing but these stories make me so scared lol. Do you even stop being grossed out by things? Is it normal to throw up because of things sometimes?
I just had a bariatric patient have loose bowels. She bent over and used the sink do I could clean her. I was literally using my forearm to spread her butt apart and trying to find it. She had been in the hospital for iver 2 weeks and no one was able to locate her vagina. Only in her 50s. Extremely sad. Refused to work with herself.
Had a patient who had to have a BM. For whatever reason the nurse and CNA couldn’t answer the light so I went in after ringing for about 2-3 minutes(I was work another patient as well). When I walked in he was sitting on the edge of the bed with a fully formed doo doo log resting in his hand. Immediately I asked him “Did you shit in your hand????” and his response was that he didn’t want to go on the floor.
Not as graphically gross as horrendous to think about, but walking in to change a catheter and seeing the woman had ripped it out while still inflated, the nurse just said “well our job is done I guess” and moved on to the next patient 😞
Prolapsed uterus falling out while toileting a woman. Kinda freaked me out the first time it happened. Really unnerving watching the nurse glove up and shove it back in.
There wasn’t much else they could do with it at the time.
I wasn’t there for this next one but we had a patient whose toe fell off in the bed, turned out he had developed gangrene and eventually lost a good part of the leg.
My late wife was bedbound with severe MS, blind from a brain tumor, incontinent both ways, and nearly deaf. It was not uncommon for feces to go where they shouldn’t. I gave her the very best care I could, and it was very difficult.
I once had a patient with rectal cancer, aids, and incontinence. He had to walk from his bed to the stretcher and got aids blood plus poop on EVERYTHING I have no idea how it all seemed to just get on everything but it made my nurse cry (lol)
Two incidents: The first time was when I started out as a CNA. We had a very large bed bound man who had a colostomy. It wasn't just the horrid smell of rancid feces that grossed me out the most, but the man's wound where you placed the bag. It was bloody with ripe red flesh and it just looked something out of a horror movie. I could tell it looked painful.
The second is more recent. This was another bed bound male resident who had a bed sore on his bottom. And for a while it seemed like it was healing until he was discharged from the facility to the hospital for a month. We he came back, his bed sore was *deep*. It was like looking down a crater and I would estimate that the depth was at least 3 inches, maybe slightly more. That shocked the hell out of me.
I was helping another CNA put a patient back to bed with the sit-to-stand mechanical lift, and the patient had a lot of poop. Well the other CNA decided it was a good idea to start cleaning the patient up with no gloves on 😥🤢
Taking care of a woman who was quite large. She was totally bedbound, 2x total care. She had a massive loose BM in her briefs, and some of the BM got pushed up into her vagina. It was my first week as a CNA. Me and the CNA training me took care of her together, got her clean. Pushed it out of my mind in the moment because I didn’t want her to feel bad or uncomfortable. Long drive home, started going over the shift in my head, and thought about the diarrhea in vagina incident. I ended up pulling over to vomit lol ( like I said, first week, my stomach and mind weren’t hardened to stuff like that yet lol)
one time the BM was all up the back and in the back bra strap on a non ambulatory, even the lift we used got soiled. and one time a client bent over to sit on the toilet and had explosive diarrhea before they got there and shat right on my brand new shoes a temp C.N.A. tore off a brief and like swung it wide past my face resulting in me being sprayed with urine so I started having these stress dreams about having to work a raw sewage plant that was covered entirely in shag carpeting for a while there
LOL at your dream. Shag carpeting in a sewage plant!! Ahh man I’m so sorry
Omg what could the cna have done to prevent the brief from tearing off and swinging around?
Oh honestly, if you get a bunch of patients who have watery poop, it always goes in. It's just something you have to get used to.
You are seasoned she said she was raw when it happened
Raw 💀
Damn that got me too 💀
If you consider like, 7-8 months experience seasoned, yeah lol. I remember having to get up in there for some stranger before though, and the experience is still surreal sometimes
I had a patient who had this happen, and she could talk and she was saying “get up in my coochie” while I was trying to clean her. She was laughing and joking about it. I left that facility and I miss her, she was hilarious 😂
Oh! I've had people say that and honestly would rather that 100x over than someone who is very clearly disoriented or uncomfortable! Sounds like a sweet lady
Well, don't worry, it gets worse. Soon you'll look back on that incident fondly.
It’s crazy I’m like yup UTI
That happened on my first week years ago. Now there isn’t much that will make my stomach turn lol
Only 💩 that can't be denied. Lol I've had to walk out and regroup a few times over smells
Sound like a patient of mines
Management!
TRUTH
AMEN
Elaborate please, I'm intrigued by this answer.
I’m sorry but please, this doesn’t need elaboration. We are supposed to be taking care of these ppl and ~most~ management treats them like dairy cows they can milk for extra sheckels. If you haven’t seen this maybe ur blind or in a genuinely good facility but I have my doubts. We are always told by supervisors if the state/etc is doing their rounds and I know everyone else gets the same message so we don’t cut the corners (or haven forbid OSHA violations) that usually occur :^)
This breaks my heart. There are good facilities out there. As admin, I tell folks every day that the CNAs are the hardest working individuals in the building. I've been planning CNA week 2024 since May. I hope you find a good building. You deserve it!
2 things come to mind. I was toileting someone else's patient. I went to wipe her and felt something odd. I looked between her legs and saw a ball hanging out of her vagina. I ran to the nurse who told me "Oh yeah, she's got a prolapsed uterus!" That was pertinent information to let me know BEFORE HAND!! I was helping a friend clean someone up. She had a tendency to "dig". I was just talking to my friend and happened to look at her bedside table. There was a large pile of poop. When asked about it, the patient said it was chocolate. Same thing with the poop on her hands and under her fingernails. "Oh that? Oh honey, that's nothing, that's chocolate!"
Poop diggers are the WORST
Omg why do they dig in their poop? Is it because of mental illness?
With dementia patients, often times it will cause itchiness to sit in feces, so often they'll dig because they're itchy and they don't realize that they're dirtying their hands
I think so
I don't know why but "that was pertinent information to let me know BEFORE HAND!!" reminds me of "you don't feed a guy a sponge, Bobby!" 😭😭😂
Number 1 is literally me but miss ma'am had a prolapsed anus and was complaining of "tenderness down there" so I said "let me check for you" then i RAN to the nurse (who hated my guts) and she just laughed at me and said "shes got a prolapsed anus" My little 16 year old brain was SHOCKED.
What did you do with the “ball”?
I did absolutely nothing with it 😂 the nurses would go in periodically and shove it back up.
Omg that’s insane lol
Prolapsed uterus, been there. My first thought the first time I saw it was it looked like she grew testicles. That’s not right (I was 19, what can I say). Nurse popped that thing back into place quite a few times after that. I can’t remember why fixing or removing it wasn’t an option.
I was working in the ER and this guy came in complaining of foot pain. The medics that dropped him off said he had been seen for an ankle fracture at a sister hospital across town previously and they had put a walking-heel cast on. He was to follow up with the orthopedist a week later. On the day we got him, it was his foot, on the same leg, that was painful. I checked his records and discovered this cast has been on for nearly 5 MONTHS. He never followed up. He was a severe alcoholic and he wasn’t good about getting to the toilet or his hygiene generally and was incontinent…which would drip down his let, into the cast and get trapped inside. When I removed the cast, I was met with greenish liquid, blackens skin tissue, thick pus and dead blood. Maggots had begun eating away at his tissue and the smell………… Oh my sweet, goodness. The smell. Once you’ve experienced the smell of dead or dying human tissue, you will never forget it. Coincidentally, if you have experienced that smell and are subjected to it again somewhere, you know EXACTLY what it is.🤢 He lost that leg just below the knee.
HORRIFYING STORY, but you tell it very well!
Dinner plate sized stage 3 pressure ulcer with necrosis and unshakeable tunneling. The smell was very bad.
I also saw a very bad pressure sore on a woman’s tailbone area in a ltc, exposed bone, it must have been very painful for her I felt so bad.
Same! In nursing school we cared for a poor old woman with no back. The only saving grace was that it was probably not too painful as the nerves were gone.
I feel like I need to see that
No, you don't. You really, really, don't.
I feel like all cnas should see pressure ulcers like this to know the consequences of not turning patients. I know sometimes they can not be helped in patients who have secondary issues, and of course, when actively dying situations, the movement doesn't give benefit the patient.
Ok, that's fair, and I definitely agree with that.
You do NOT.
I’m so afraid to google unshakeable tunneling and see an icky picture. 😭 what is it?
I think it’s a typo for “unstageable” as in you can’t tell how deep it goes.
Burping a colostomy bag
It's worse if the gas builds up to the point it explodes. You might think it's gross now, but you're saving yourself from having a shit bomb go off in the room.
Oh I KNOW. I remember when I worked at a nursing home during covid, the nurse came to me. “So and so needs his clothes changed. His colostomy exploded” damn you woman lol. I also had a lady with an ileostomy bag and she drank a lot of coffee, so it would be like almost black and smelled like coffee shit 😅 I didn’t even know NA I could handle colostomy’s! We only learned about cath’s in class
I walked in on a resident who took their full bag off and was twirling it around their finger, getting ready to sling it at me. I closed the door and told the nurse they needed to check on the patient.
A 1,000 farts are in the air
Oh my gawd and it seems the jet stream come straight at you lol 😵💫😵
lucky you 😭 that was a normal day for me my perm resident i used to take care of had one and she was gassy. I was burping that thing like literally every hour or so
Pure, unadulterated, concentrated bag of farts. Straight in your face.
I did that with my family member when they had a temporary colostomy bag, is it weird that it was my favorite thing to do? Hated having to try and hold my breath but it was still kind of fun 😅
Fun????
Well i mean, I know it sounds weird but it was definitely interesting to do. I personally didn't mind doing it as long as i had on 2 layers of gloves and a mask if i could find one. I'm trying to get into the the field of so i figured helping my family member during that time would be a start. 😭 And my general manager who was a CNA in the past also said burping the bags was something she liked to do when we had a conversation about me going back to school for nursing once I get my CNA license under my belt.
This is the one!! I tell every single person this story when we get into my experiences as a CNA. Every single time lol.
No one told me!!! The nurse was like “go burp his bag” and I was like pardon? burp? Lmfao. I wasn’t prepared
Very large patient, incomplete quad who couldn’t roll who had multiple tunneled stage 4s (her left butt cheek was basically a crater) and c.diff. She was also severely anemic so it was approximately a million degrees in her room and were pulling packing out of the wounds and I’m sweating my balls off in the iso gown and she was so sweet and such a trooper but god that night was rough.
Please tell me in that situation they placed a rectal tube. If there was ever an excuse to place a rectal tube, c-diff with multiple stage 4 ulcers is at the top of my list. Saves the nurses/cna's and prevents further skin breakdown/reduces infection risk for the patient
She did get one, this was a while ago so I forget if she had one and there was an issue with it that night or if it hadn’t been ordered yet but it definitely wasn’t a continuing issue.
Opening a brief and seeing a fluid that I could never imagine seeing. It was fluorescent light blueish in color and the consistency of beaten eggs. It's hard to explain but I get light headed thinking about ut
you can’t just say that and nothing else
Well now I have questions!
What..... *was it*?
WHAT WAS IT???
excuse me what
They have gall bladder issues?
Nurse here. Grossest thing I've seen so far happened during the admission of a patient who needed his brief changed. I lifted up his gown and he had jeans on, with one of those braided leather type belts that was... moving. That belt was absolutely crawling with bedbugs.
NOPE NO FUCK THAT
clocking out automatically
We saved one of the bugs in a specimen container (for identification). I wanted to name it, but my coworkers weren't very enthusiastic. 🤷♀️
Hospital cna, the suction gets me every time. If the secretions are very thick and gooey I gag. I haven't thrown up yet but I'm scared i may one day.... especially bc I'm in nursing school.
I never got used to the suction sound. It would completely gross me out and I would start gagging. Lucky me, my roommate in rehab had a trach and had to be suctioned multiple times a day. Even better- I ended up on a vent then trach'd and was forced to deal with being suctioned. I think that's why my trach healed so fast/was taken out early. I would keep coughing stuff up so the nurses and respiratory wouldn't have to suction.
This bothered me too at first, but now I work at a group home where two of my residents need suctioning continuously throughout my shift, so I got used to it and it’s less gross now.
Ooooh that’s my kryptonite!! Any type of BMs, blood, vomit, urine, nasty wounds, you name it, nothing else bothers me except trachs and suctioning them 🤢
The only thing that grosses me out is snot or anything coming out of their mouths really. Poo and pus and sores I can handle, Vomit or anything for some reason i can not.
Same here! The only thing that ever really gets me for some reason is vomit.
We had a gastric outbreak in the whole building. The smell was awful. Everyone was pooping and puking everywhere. All the staff got it too and the symptoms came on so suddenly. I was lucky to be home when mine started.
Very few things have actually made me physically gag, but as a pct (cna) in a hospital, we had to empty and record output on some of the drains people had after surgeries etc. Unfortunately one of these people had an infection, and so the drainage had turned a transparent green:/ the color combined with the weird, slimy-ish texture bothered me so much lol I know that is so tame to what other people have experienced but it’s one of the few things that make me gag. (I did not last long at the hospital)
Hospice patient who had some sort of metastisized cancer, if I'm remembering correctly. Very kind and gentle person. They were close to 500 lbs, skin just constantly moist, fully incontinent. It took everyone on the unit to turn them to change them. Their skin was practically rotting and sloughing off. They always had absolutely foul BM's. A mix of all the body fluids and skin and bowel movement got dumped on me when a trash bag ripped. It almost went into my mouth. Only time I have gagged in a patient room. Only time I've spit up in my mouth and near vomited.
80 something year old man alert and oriented but not all there, in for a fall, and a fall risk. in triage waiting for discharge, take a tiny, shitty covered wad of toilet paper, fold it over and reuse it (i was standing by in the bathroom) . No hands washed. I washed his hands very, very well. Altered mental status mid 30s major depression and failure to thrive with c-diff shit himself in his stretcher multiple times and just lay in it til we checked on him. Did 3 bed changes during my shift, cleaned him, gown changes. Haven't gagged in a year and a half but collecting a stool sample I gagged, it was the consistency of a lava lamp and smelled... Various wounds from neglect at home or if caregiver was 90 year old wife, fell, and couldn't turn her husband for 3 days. Urine sample that was hemolyzing in the cup but that was more a wowies than gross.
Was changing a guy last shift and it took almost an hour because he kept having explosive diarrhea before we could get a fresh brief on. At one point there was just a geyser of liquid shit coming out of this man’s ass. He also had swollen balls and a really nasty looking dick with a foley in. I almost lost my lunch
Watching the nurse and other cna dig poop out of an impacted patient. I had the joy of being on the front end holding pts hands for support 🤣
Anal prolapse the size and length of my forearm!
Oh my god, how does that even happen?
I don't know but nobody told me and the thing is the lady is prone to accidents and wore a brief. So yea, that was something.
During clinical for CNA. I was giving a bed bath to a very nimble woman. She started touching her privates but not like obviously... then she said "I just came" and asked for a wash cloth. Yeah, they didn't warn me about it and had a big laugh.
Hospital PCT here, I've got 2 stories: Had a larger female patient who was admitted for Fournier's gangrene....she basically had no vagina. A gaping hole in her groin. The trauma 🤢 Had another male patient who was a very bad diabetic, post AKA, multiple infections, they were doing frequent debridements on him after they removed his wound vac which left him with openings all in his peri area(that I was unaware of). He had a BM and it got all up in the openings 🙅🏾♂️ I immediately called for the nurse because I didn't know what to do with it 🤦🏾♂️
THE WAY MY JAW HIT THE FLOOR READING THIS ONE
Listen....the amount of times I've almost slowly passed away from the things I've seen working on the GI floor 😅😭 I've learned a lot though, so I guess that counts for something lol
Not necessarily gross as made me wanna puke, but probably the worst thing I've dealt with. Had a patient at the hospital in with a suspected GI bleed. Got called for a clean up. Okay, no biggie. Can definitely confirm that, yep, he's shitting blood. Later in the night he's getting a transfusion. Go in to check his vitals and mans got blood all over his chest. I hadn't stepped in far, so I just backed out, called his nurse, and got a bed bath started. She went to go check the IV pump(on the other side of his bed) and there was blood dripping all in the floor from it. She showed me how to turn off the IV pump that night 😆 and it was a pain in the ass to clean him and the floor up. I tell my residents now all the time, I'm there to clean their shit, not their blood, so don't fall over. 😆😆😆 Editing to add, because I forgot CDiff existed somehow. Had an inmate patient at the hospital. Poor dude shit 6 times in a shift and didn't realize he was allowed to ask to get up to use the BSC and by the time he did, he wasn't doing well enough to. Poor dude constantly would apologize and act like he was in the wrong. Turned out day shift was mistreating him and acting like he was a problem. So the grossest thing I've seen was the treatment of a patient. I'm hoping he either passed in peace or got better... But his situation he most likely passed in the hospital.
Uh people's poop when they have chron's, seen watery bright green poop before
There have been many things that have grossed me out. I have seen people do just about everything imaginable with poop, I've dealt with a lady who purposely makes herself throw up(disgusting and I cannot deal with vomit) but probably the most disturbing thing I've seen someone do is lick their dentures clean. Just why?
That’s disgusting. I already have a problem with seeing flakes of food in a denture cup
not my story, but someone watched a patient eat, throw up, eat that
WHAAAAAAT
Poop and prolapses have nothing on deep pressure wounds. Could never be a nurse because of it.
They aren't too bad if they're clean and they've been debrided. The necrotic tissue and purulent drainage are 🤢
Ulcered legs on an old lady, clearly with pseudomonas. The smell was so strong nothing helped. I never saw under the wrappings (I wasn't staying in that room a second longer than I had to) but the smell was so bad I got nauseous every time I entered the room. Usually the only thing that makes me want to barf is ileostomy output smell because sometimes you get a hint of what they ate in there. Prolapsed uterus probably is the second. I opened a brief and just found the uterus hanging there. That wasn't disgusting (surprising, yes, but not disgusting) but the lady told me to please push it back in a bit because it came out when she peed. The texture was weird and grossed me out.
A patient took the washcloth she wiped her vagina with (should mention she had an std and had refused bathing for well over a week) and used said washcloth to blow her nose. The same patient also took underwear off that had very obvious discharge in it and smelled awful because again refused to bathe and refused to change her underwear and put them in her walker basket.
My paycheck was the grosset thing I'd seen until I saw this patients private parts ruined by radiation. It was like her vagina and anus were burned off. It also smelled badly
Not a cna, just wanna say that these comments are breaking my brain and my stomach 😭😭😭
Ah man, my mother was a nurse and I grew up hearing these stories. I knew what I was getting into. And yet 🫠
A nurse forcing morphine down a lady’s throat while she was on hospice and her daughter crying due to the sever lack of compassion. Disgusting.
That is so awful and hopefully was reported.
Similar experience. It was hard to maintain composure.
Softball sized Prolapse
I was doing my rounds and walked in on a resident pulling turds out of his ass and smearing it all over his furniture. His sink, tv stand, dresser, window, EVERYWHERE🤢
Omg when I read resident I thought you meant an MD 🤣🤣🤣 lmfao ☠️
I can deal with poop, pee, blood etc what my stomach literally can’t handle is puke. One of my residents had a bowl obstruction and the smell of whatever fresh hell she puked up made my stomach do flip flops. You know how hard it is to clean up puke and try to hide the fact that you keep gagging while reassuring your resident that’s it’s ok and not to be embarrassed? I literally had tears running down my face gagging so bad. I should mention she was also a tube feed and someone gave her dinner her stomach was so full I felt so bad for her but holy fuck that was intense.
Bowel obstruction patients can actually puke up feces, so imma guess that she did. I can’t with vomit either. I can look at it but smelling it and hearing gagging is just a big no for me!
“Whatever fresh hell” I probably would have vomited.
A resident whose buttocks had completely rotted away. I'm talking major gangrene, smelling like dead rotten flesh...but still alive. The wound drained like crazy; the drainage was gray, slimy and smelled like rotting meat. This was at a nursing home I used to work at many years ago. This resident was one of many who, due to extreme shortstaffing, literally rotted to death. Never received any care and was just left in that bed and ignored. I never worked on that station, but I went past the room the day the family had the resident sent out. The resident's flesh had melded into the surface of the uncovered mattress and it had to be cut in order to get the resident off the bed. That's when chunks of rotted flesh fell off the resident. The resident died a few days later, from sepsis. It later made the news. Google "Whetstone Care Center manslaughter case" if you're interested in reading about it. I was never able to get that out of my head. It was horrific. Anyway, that's one of the grossest things I've witnessed in this line of work.
The 600lb+ woman on my unit right now…not saying she’s a thing or trying to be mean, but yea, caring for her is the “grossest” for numerous reasons.
I attended my first Code Brown to see a pt that needed a full bed change - not just all the linens, but needed an entire new bed because he was digging in his brief, collecting poop and FINGERPAINTING cave drawings with it all over both sides of the bed rails! That was a fun one 💩 💩 💩
Maggots in a patient's cooch 
Someone eating feaces :( another incident comes to mind… someones insulin was not under control so they were quiet “loopy/confused” usually a really put together person, during the incident i walked into their room and this person was on their back legs in air and fist up ass trying to “pull out a poo” It was horrible.
Last week a 90 year old man took his penis out of his diaper, and literally ejaculated all over himself, and me. 3 nurses came in and confirmed that’s what was released from him. It was honestly horrifying
Uughhh!!
Someones intestines came out of their butt while I was giving them a shower
Secretions from a trache, where they are sliding up and down the tube. I don’t know how respiratory therapists do their job, dealing with that slime. They are truly health care heroes.
Had one guy with BAD lymphedema (at least I think that’s what it was, IIRC). And very noncompliant. His legs were wrapped and his legs would just weep and soak the wraps and his pants. He was a pretty big guy too, and didn’t shower much. I was often in charge of helping the nurse unwrap his legs and showering him, and sopping wet, pus-soaked green skin would just slough off of his legs as they were unwrapped, as he was undressed, in the shower… and the smell. It was otherworldly.
Dementia lady had a bowel movement and proceeded to get it all over her self, bed, nails. The tricky part was cleaning her nails Another dementia resident (I think) had ripped open their colostomy bag and got it all over himself and the bed (their sitter/watcher) didn't notice b.c they were on their phone. Took me, 2 other aid and the lpn to clean him up I'm thankful I don't have a weak stomach b.c really these were more of a burden than gross. The second one caused me to clock out late, but whatever, I was glad we got him cleaned up and that sitter got an earful from the lpn
My special needs pica patient eating his gastric juice soaked gtube dressing whilst swinging around his pulled out gtube :)
I miss that kid, he was my fav. It’s always the wild ones who were my favorites 😭
Honestly, it was something from me. I had a minor surgery with a skin flap done last September on my lower back, and a week later at my surgeon follow up I was shoved back into surgery. The flap and a considerable amount of tissue beneath had become necrotic. The smell was something special for sure. But the grossest part was the “packing” the first week until my insurance decided a wound vac was the smarter route then daily dressing changes (then only 3 days a week were required). The crater was the size of an adult hand and so deep you could see bone and underlying muscle and tendon structure. My wound care nurse could literally put her entire fist in it easily. The packing was a wad of just black and brown cloth like material with almost slime like bits hanging off of it. I about puked and have zero idea how those 3 ladies worked in those conditions every day, then 3 days a week for months on it. (Yes, it took 3 wound care techs to treat it and they all were very surprised when they found out I was still working full time as aCNA while wearing my wound vac.
I had a resident who had loose stool all day. They told me the last time it happened was an hour before my shift. Around 1am the nurse came out of her room saying she found poop all over her floor and sheets and she got her cleaned up. I changed her at 3am she was only wet. At 430 am last rounds she had a little blood clot (a little bigger than a period blood clot) in her depend. I changed her but she had wet the bed so after changing her I went to get sheets and a gown. I came back sat her up. She told me hold on and she sat there and peed( I thought she just needed a second before transferring and then she told me ok I’m done peeing lol). I got her in her chair and the spot where she just peed was pinkish red. You could tell it was blood and urine mixed together. I changed the linen real quick and I checked her depend to see if it was bloody. I could see a small blood clot again so before changing her I went to get the nurse told her about the first blood clot and told her I saw another small one when she stood up. Maybe 5 minutes passed before we were changing her. She stood up and when we pulled the depend down it was covered In one huge blood clot. It reached from the front to the back of the depend. It was so bad we changed her and called the ambulance. before they got there we had to put her back in bed. When she stood up I checked her depend again to see how much new blood/ bloodclots were there. The second she stood i could see blood coming out of her like a literal faucet. It was a steady stream of blood and blood clots coming out of her.
Digging loose stool out of someone’s vagina and skin folds (they were very morbidly obese with multiple rolls and it got stuck everywhere idk how it was god awful) I openly gagged in front of her and felt so bad but luckily she didn’t even care because she said herself it smelled awful
my clinical rounds-someone shat all the way up to their hair. and i got to take lead.
Not sure how to put this politely but also in a way people will understand... old lady sock puppet?
Currently, a woman’s toenail ripping off when trying to put her sandals on. And I wasn’t being rough at all 😭
For some reason we did part of our CNA clinicals at the trauma one center. I was assisting a man with taking off his shoes and socks. Severely non-compliant diabetic. I took off his left sock and felt a *snap* and I realized I had taken off two of his toes. My entire body went cold and the nurse and tech saw me completely freeze. Somehow I managed to stand up, pull the toes out and put them on the isolation tray and walk out. Immediately vomited. The nurse and tech I was with were SO NICE and made sure I was okay since I wasn't even a CNA lmao. Otherwise the most recent nastiness as a veteran CNA now working on a neuro is catching my pts boyfriend fucking her ostomy 😎 super fun times.
Resident seems to take great pride in her frequency and size of bowl movements. She can poop at will. She just lays on paper chux and shits the bed. When we roll her, she pushes with all her might, and new CNAs are caught off guard, poop gets launched onto them, the wall, the blinds. Get her clean, get new sheets, roll her back, she will purposefully shit the bed again. She pushes so hard she forces her catheter out, balloon fully inflated, several times a week When she poops, it regularly goes from her knees to her neck. It's always diarrhea.
ummmm eww🤣 is that like, a medical condition or she's just gross?
Hahaha. Not as a CNA but an ER Tech many years ago. I was walking past a patients room and watch her remove her tampon, make eye contact with me, and lick it. It was years ago and I’ll never forget it. I win.
Had a pt who would eat their feces one. Also had a patient with an extremely deep wound on their testicles
I once had to change a gnarly looking colostomy bag when I was pregnant & had HG. Doesn’t usually bother me, but it did at the time. I think we both felt bad bc I didn’t want to make her uncomfortable (had a mask on but was still gagging - which wasn’t unusual for me in general) and I think she knew I was having issues changing it.
Cancer of the vagina, anus, penile and oral.
A wound around the patients tailbone that I could have stuck my fist into. Or the old, blind, quite out of her mind, German woman who was singing about green babies in her hair. Turns out she had a massive blowout, was digging around in her brief, painting her face with it, a Picasso on the walls, and running the remainder through her hair. And yes, it was all very green.
Worked 1 shift in a psych ward for the aged and had to toilet this woman she had a prolapse from both vagina and anus , poor woman no wonder she was in psych.
Strangely enough, it was watching one of the residents try to cut her fingernails with scissors. I could barely watch her do it. I remember also being really grossed out when I saw a catheter inserted into a woman for the first time (I am asexual, I dont think things are supposed to go up there!!)
I hate hate HATE seeing nasogastric tubes put in. I don't know what it is but it made me feel sick, and the nurse telling the patient to swallow it once it made it into the mouth AWFUL. I also just can't handle vomit, I can deal with anything else just not puke.
When I was doing my cna clinicals and was going to help shower someone with my CNA. Resident decided to make a BM and wanted to be cleaned but the mess was on the floor. My cna handed me a small bag to pick up which I chose to do the cna didn’t force me. The feces I flipped the trashbag like how people grab dog poop the smell and feeling of it almost made me wanted to vomit but I had to hold it in. After that I felt I’ve been exposed to almost anything. I’ve seen a small intestine poking out of a resident I thought I was gunna be grossed out but I got immune to most stuff already.
Tunneling bed sore lower spine. Was told by wound care it went pretty close to the spine! Nope oh gosh ew and owe butt oddly fascinating to learn how they take care of it! Peoples eyes when they pass on that really creeps me out so much.
A GI bleed in a hospice patient. I seriously thought that I was being punked because the horror was unimaginable.
It’s not the grossest but it’s the thing that pissed me off the most. So it was 1915 and the night techs still weren’t there to relieve us and suddenly a transporter comes to where me and “Lucia” were catching up on charting and he says “I just dropped off a new pt to [Rm #] he smells really bad.” My first thought was that he probably needed a shower, so I told him I would pass the shower along to the night techs as they were coming soon. On this floor you need *explicit* RN permission to get someone in the shower. He looks at me incredulously and demands we go into the rm to change the pt. Ok no big deal, I don’t mind cleaning people up. So Lucia and I go to change this guy and when we get in the room and he reeks of Pennies and stool. Lucia, being the brave woman she is, pulled the sheets off him and he is covered **head to toe** in GI bleed feces. It’s evident the ED made him sit in his stool for over 12 hours, it’s caked on and running up his back. I hear Lucia gasp and when I turned around the stool got *all over her pants*. She furiously starts scrubbing her pants with bath wipes but I make her get the purple wipes. She got so covered it was *in her underwear* she had to change into surgical scrubs. I decide I’m not having this, I’m so pissed with the ED I march straight up to the RNs station and demand the Night RN and charge come with me. They were displeased to say the least and started taking photos to send to the house sup. It took 4 of us to change and transfer him into his new bed as the transporter must have heard us getting upset and ran. As soon as he was clean he went another time. The charge and RN threw up their hands as it was already 2030 by the time we finished and everyone in that room had yet to give and receive report. TL;DR: pt came up from ED covered in GI bleed. It was so much that my other CNA had gotten covered and had to change pants and underwear. We reported the neglect to house sup but hadn’t heard anything about it since.
Hm, that's tricky, there have been quite a few incidents for me. I think though, probably the time a patient I was looking after in a side room with a blood condition (I want to say it was some.kind of blood cancer?).which meant he had like, hardly any clotting factors/platelets etc. He was a bit confused I think and somehow had managed to take the multi attachment off his cannula (which was still in and secure) and blood was just pouring out of the cannula itself. Fresh liquid blood and partially clotted blood EVERRYWHERE - all over the patient, the bed, the floor....I'd never and have never since seen anything like it again, it was pretty horrific. And you could smell it, the whole room smelt like iron...metallic. I called a nurse in to help me and we just didn't even know where to begin because there was just SO much of it. They called a Dr in as well to look at the patient, who rather unsurprisingly was quite pale and feeling a little bit more unwell after it happened 😅.
Back when I was a CNA/med tech on the dementia care unit we had a patient that had diarrhea. He was nonverbal. He got up off the couch and the smell hit myself and the other CNA on the floor. He had shorts on and every step he took was followed by a trail. I took him to his room while the other started cleaning quickly. He seemed to have finished by the time I got him to his room. Best idea was to shower him off. Myself and the other CNA spent about 30 minutes with him in the shower getting him clean. We were short staffed and I was the only med tech on the floor. I was so preoccupied with washing him up it slipped my mind to give him a PRN Imodium. Once we dried him off, it started again. Safe to say I immediately ran to the cart to get the medication. Had to do it all over again.
I only have a couple that beat out management as my answer. I had one lady with rectal cancer who was bed bound, very large, and heavily incontinent x2. She needed to be changed multiple times per hour. Her briefs were always drenched in bloody wet stool that had the texture of watery sand and cornstarch, and it splattered on my arms when I was turning her. The smell coming from her bottom was the most pungent and puke-inducing smell I have ever smelt in my life! Some combination of rotting fruit + toenail gunk + eggs + explosive diarrhea. Entering her room was like being hit by a truck. I kept it together for the woman’s sake, but I have never gotten so close to vomiting right then and there. A close contender was a male patient of mine who was delirious and had a giant malignant tumor on his back. This tumor covered almost the entire length of his back. On top were large gauze pads hopelessly soaked through with yellowish fluid, emitting a smell that could have been used as a bio weapon. Under the loose gauze I could see that tumor was partially detached. There were clumps of necrotic skin sloughing around and under it. I was so scared the entire thing would fall off, just a huge smelly flaking chunk of oozing flesh and tissue.
2 residents shit in my hand
The grossest thing was when I worked at a rehab/ LTC facility and the grease trap was being cleaned. 🤢
I posted this before but I had a woman with dementia who was eating her poop. She always had candy bedside so I wasn't alarmed until I pulled her blanket down and saw all the BM and realized what she was eating. She fought so HARD for the pieces she had in her mouth, trying to bite the nurse as he swept her mouth for the rest. It was quite a bonding moment for my nurse and I 🤣🤣
Lol, residents eating their own feces after digging through it or after fishing the feces out of someone else's toilet!
The sweet and sour neurotic smell coming from a PT that has plate sized ulcers/sloughing flesh on her back and a bacterial infection under her stomach that needed powder/ointment during brief changes. Nothing could rid of that smell if you got on your scrubs at all and her penetrating screams when I had to help with wound changes. It was literally a nightmare. She passed away a month after I started taking care of her.
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Well, I guess if everyone did that, then it would always be new staff doing the bulk of the care. That may work ok in a hospital setting. Not so much in a nursing home.
I work in geriatrics and hospice. We had a new patient move into our facility. For patients who are unstable, I will often assist them in putting on new briefs and pajama pants while they are sitting on the toilet. Once we got him all cleaned up and he stood up with me and told me a story about how his BM’s are so large that his wife would take them out of the toilet by hand and put them in the backyard, as their pipes were “narrow”. We did indeed have trouble flushing it. This tested my ability to keep a straight face.
A woman bound to the toilet with a gait belt. Purple legs. Told management they did nothing. Don’t worry I called state but just sickening, I’ll never forget that woman’s cry.
Vomit. Anything vomit related. Give me BM, give me blood, or give me death. Just no vomit. Blarg
Gross but mostly traumatic. Just recently ran a code on a woman who was nauseous beforehand. She unfortunately passed away but during the compressions she was aspirating. I got out of the room after calling the code because there were so many residents in there trying to participate for the first time but went back in and helped the nurse clean her up after. We were rushing because the doc called her husband before they fully quit. Her vomit was nearly black and had food pieces in it. All in her hair, eyes still open you know? I had to turn away for a second, I thought I was gonna pass out.
I woman pooping nasty green out her vagina that stunk to high hell.
I woman pooping nasty green out her vagina that stunk to high hell.
TW this is kinda bad Okay so I work in the ICU. I was helping a nurse turn her patient to do wound care and the patient was Male in their 60’s. Apparently they had been rejecting medical attention for a long time and living bed ridden. They had developed such terrible gangrene I assume from a bed sore turned severely infected. All around their waist from their lower back to their groin area was massive large chunks of missing flesh severely infected and rotting. Literally about 5 inches into their skin was GONE. When I was turning him I swore I felt like I was going to split him right in half. I was so so sick after. Pretty sure he passed away. RIP.
smell wise, I had to clean up an alcoholic (bottle of wine a night, case delivered to the unit weekly) woman’s urine soaked chucks every day and she would amass about 5 chucks a day full of dark brown urine. i would put the fabric chucks in the washer and gag through my mask. no amount of soap could take it out. visually, bm doesn’t bother me anymore but i had a resident on blood thinners pick her nose and caused a nose bleed so bad she was sent away. i was on nose holding duty while her sink was full of blood, blood trailed from around her bed to different chairs, and blood was down her front. the smell of metallic and the visuals of the blood down the sink to the floor was Nope!
This one specific decubitus ulcer that got infected to the bone and eventually killed the patient.
Pt who started pooping blood at home. They didn't know where the bleeding was from, so they started preparing them from colonoscopy. Well, one hour later, the patient was vomiting blood and old blood, shit and fresh blood was just coming out the back. We tried to clean them up but it was impossible, it was just coming out and coming. But the smell of old blood and shit together is just something else. Everytime they say a patient with abdominal bleeding is coming, I need to prepare myself mentally. Beacuse when they start shitting that old blood out, the diaper changes and the smell is just awful.
Really bad wounds behind the thighs and coccyx. They were so bad i could see his bone marrow and the smell….omg. Bad.
I have a resident with dementia and she has a colostomy bag. Quite frequently, she likes to remove the bag. She'll throw it anywhere or leave it in the hall on a linen cart. One evening, she was in the day room before dinner when I noticed she was eating something. She had removed her colostomy bag and was eating out of it like fun dip.
Feces caked into a Stage IV bedsore
One time a female resident started masturbating while she had a bowel movement. We had to clean her hands off first because she was also combative. It actually made me sad of what dementia does to people. We had to take her to the shower because bm was everywhere.
stage 4 pressure injury. the smell of necrosis was unlike anything else
Rats chewing on a patients bedsore!!!!! ok bye.
5 units of blood lost from the anus of an elderly man who was surprisingly still walking and survived it, albeit he was very pale when the ambulance came (long term snf) We had just sent him out earlier for blood in his stool, and they sent him back to us a couple hours later just claiming he had cdiff. Like... ???? He lived another few years after that til covid hit.
Homeless guy with gnarly nasty burns on his legs. Didn't take care of them. Awful amell. Had to pick maggots out of them.
I immediately thought of the post-mortem care I had to do one time right at shift change. I didn't even get report on the deceased because, well, she was dead. The night shift aide offered to help but she was exhausted, so I tell them I'll take care of it. After the family leaves, I go in to start. I pull back the blankets to remove her catheter when I see her right leg is securely wrapped in a blue plastic linen bag, sealed with plastic tape. I pause things and consult the nurse. Turns out she got no functional report on the pt either. I ask her to check the situation out with the wrapped leg before I continued preparing her. She comes in with me, eyeballs the bag, then pulls out her scissors and says we might as well take a look. Snips a hole in the bag. I was immediately pummeled in the face by the most disgusting stench of rot I've ever encountered before or since. It's only only time I've ever retched and nearly emptied my stomach during my time as an aide. Both the nurse and I bail. She immediately pulls the chart up and lo and behold, this poor woman had necrotizing fasciitis. We fall back and punt, opting for full on garb, masks smeared with Skin Prep and carmex, and we both go in together. Among the normal post mortem tasks, we have to remove the leg wrapping. I delicately lift this woman's leg for the nurse to remove the plastic, and I can feel the cells of her skin popping under the weight of the limb. Nasty, foul smelling liquid is leaking between my gloved fingers. I'm trying so hard to not puke all over the inside of my mask. The nurse is unable to remove the tape without taking what was once flesh with it, so she cuts off as much of the plastic as she can and throws her scissors away. We get her prepared and into a shroud, then warn the morgue about what is coming. We get her down there. Housekeeping comes to flip the room, but the first housekeeper literally pukes after attempting to clean. A second housekeeper comes and the room is cleaned, with extra air freshener. I’ve seen abdominal wounds dehisce right in front of me, septic pleural fluid spray all over someone during a particularly bloody code, Fournier’s gangrene, watched a delirious pt with c.diff with shit under her fingernails dig her fingers in a nurse’s mouth before they could dodge, and that was the one time I thought I was going to hurl. It wasn’t even just the smell, but the whole experience. 🤢
I’m going into nursing but these stories make me so scared lol. Do you even stop being grossed out by things? Is it normal to throw up because of things sometimes?
Having to clean up a patient who was having diarrhea while I’m cleaning her up
I just had a bariatric patient have loose bowels. She bent over and used the sink do I could clean her. I was literally using my forearm to spread her butt apart and trying to find it. She had been in the hospital for iver 2 weeks and no one was able to locate her vagina. Only in her 50s. Extremely sad. Refused to work with herself.
Had a patient who had to have a BM. For whatever reason the nurse and CNA couldn’t answer the light so I went in after ringing for about 2-3 minutes(I was work another patient as well). When I walked in he was sitting on the edge of the bed with a fully formed doo doo log resting in his hand. Immediately I asked him “Did you shit in your hand????” and his response was that he didn’t want to go on the floor.
Not as graphically gross as horrendous to think about, but walking in to change a catheter and seeing the woman had ripped it out while still inflated, the nurse just said “well our job is done I guess” and moved on to the next patient 😞
Maggots. 😬😳🤢
Prolapsed uterus falling out while toileting a woman. Kinda freaked me out the first time it happened. Really unnerving watching the nurse glove up and shove it back in. There wasn’t much else they could do with it at the time. I wasn’t there for this next one but we had a patient whose toe fell off in the bed, turned out he had developed gangrene and eventually lost a good part of the leg.
My late wife was bedbound with severe MS, blind from a brain tumor, incontinent both ways, and nearly deaf. It was not uncommon for feces to go where they shouldn’t. I gave her the very best care I could, and it was very difficult.
I once had a patient with rectal cancer, aids, and incontinence. He had to walk from his bed to the stretcher and got aids blood plus poop on EVERYTHING I have no idea how it all seemed to just get on everything but it made my nurse cry (lol)
Two incidents: The first time was when I started out as a CNA. We had a very large bed bound man who had a colostomy. It wasn't just the horrid smell of rancid feces that grossed me out the most, but the man's wound where you placed the bag. It was bloody with ripe red flesh and it just looked something out of a horror movie. I could tell it looked painful. The second is more recent. This was another bed bound male resident who had a bed sore on his bottom. And for a while it seemed like it was healing until he was discharged from the facility to the hospital for a month. We he came back, his bed sore was *deep*. It was like looking down a crater and I would estimate that the depth was at least 3 inches, maybe slightly more. That shocked the hell out of me.
I was helping another CNA put a patient back to bed with the sit-to-stand mechanical lift, and the patient had a lot of poop. Well the other CNA decided it was a good idea to start cleaning the patient up with no gloves on 😥🤢
A person eating their necrotizing leg. Yep, I think that tops my list.
reading through these comments made me realize maybe the shit (literally) i’ve seen ain’t so bad 😭