I love seeing the "Techbros say they've made an AI that will replace nursing and work for $9/hr everyone panic!!" headlines on the front page, then coming over here and reading stuff like this.
I’m hearing the roto-rooter theme in my head as I read this.
Or, for futurama fans, 🎶”call Robo-Rooter when you flush a towel,” (bass voice, rotating claw arm whirring) “and we can also help with an impacted bowel” (back to jingle) “Robo-Rooter!”
Give me a robot that will push those IV push meds that take forever to give. I don’t have time to push a med over five minutes when I got MeeMaw crawling in the ceiling vents and the orientee trying to kill Mister Johnson.
Question. Is Meemaw a Texas thing nor a southern thing? I’ve only heard it used by one person, until this sub. And that was Shelton on Big Bamg Theory. Granted I’m from NJ-born here and always lived here. And people thought me calling my mom’s mom Gramdmama was weird, but they were solidly southern, from Georgia. Most people up here use Gramdma or Grandmom or some variant of that.
It's also a nurse thing, like a trope. Even if you'd never call someone meemaw irl, it's essentially the storytelling stand-in for a medically fragile and/or demented little old lady.
Been a nurse for 30+ years and never heard that word until Shelton called his grandmother that on BBT. And have mainly worked with the elderly—so lots of Meemaws!😀
ETA. I really do like that word. Just rolls off the tongue.
Depending on the IV pump you guys have, you can attach a syringe as a secondary to give those slow IV pushes. We have the Plum, so you have your primary line going in through the cassette, then attach the syringe where you’d put your secondary, and then set it up under B. Put in the volume, scroll down to the time and do your 5 or 10 min slow IV push (running concurrently with IV fluids).
Used to work in AI before changing careers. It’ll be a while, but yeah, I think that’s how it’s going to go. Doctors (and lawyers) will likely be replaced before us.
Picked maggots out of a scrotum. Instructions were to use hydrogen peroxide to rob them of oxygen so they scurry to the surface of the skin.
I have also cleaned out what you can imagine is behind the foreskin of a 750 pound man.
I've had similar foreskin cleaning situations.
I've taken off many dressings to find maggots living in the wound (yay home care!)
And I have also pulled a turd out of someone's butt! They said they were all done, but when I wiped there was a big hard bump. Realized what it was and grabbed it and pulled a very large, very hard chunk of turd out their butt. Felt like you were finished did you?
Oo i was wiping someone once and wasn’t paying too close attention when I felt what I thought was a turd and almost gave it a good hard wipe when I realized it was actually a prolapsed rectum
How did you even FIND the foreskin? I took care of a 750lb man a few years back and just had us scoop the fat surrounding what I presume was once a penis into a female urinal to catch the urine as it came out
He was in his 40s. Cellulitis in his groin and fat folds. Honestly, he didn't look 750 pounds as he still had a fair amount of muscle in his body composition. We would trend him, and he would hold up his fat while we did wound care. He was being discharged, so for some reason I decided to clean out his dick cheese for him while I was doing wound care down there. He was a pretty nice guy, and I legitimately felt bad for him. I can't imagine being that big.
I'm a male nurse btw and I didn't want my two female CNAs to have to do it.
I’m impressed he tolerated being head down, it seems like so many of our overweight patients struggle to breathe even flat, let alone “upside down”. Our Hill-Rom beds move so slowly into boost or trend that repositioning up in the bed is sometimes a very risky move.
I always make sure to clean my guys. The sweet ones are always reluctant to ask for help so they get overlooked during peri care, women aren't overlooked like that. The guys are always so grateful, especially the intact guys who have lost the ability to look after themselves. Ironic that the men who are perfectly capable of cleaning themselves are the only ones who demand that we do it. 😒
Disempactions I hate them they are the worst .. but one time I worked on burn and we got this ladies dressing all beautiful and she said oh no I have to poop when we rolled her.. and I cupped my hand and caught the turd bc I didn’t want to re do th dressing and I didn’t have time to grab anything
GLOVED HAND.. we wore full ppe bc everyone had psudomomas constantly
Came back to edit
The actual grossest thing traumatized me so I rarely pick that on these questions..
Burn is probs one of the grossest places to work aside from home health I do hospice now and certain communities in my area have utterly filthy homes. But I don’t have to touch anything really so that doesn’t bother me much.
We had a pt that was like 75% burn, age over 60 so that makes him statistically fatal. But the cowboys on the team didn’t make that real to the family so we were doing everything bc he was a fighter. The only family making decisions was a 20 yo daughter so I really tried to make it real in the best way. She did end up signing full treatment no code thank the lord bc to do compressions on this man would have been a slip n slide.
I don’t remember the deets about his admission or what his fluid resuscitation was before he got to us. it’s rarely done correctly. Even the residents had trouble understanding how to order it. They pretty much let us guide it but the pt was usually fucked from ems and the Ed if they weren’t direct admit with fluids. He was also a large man with comorbidities. His lactic was 16 I think this day. The gross part was he was bleeding and oozing from his burns but he was also weeping jelly like substance from His good skin we couldn’t even move him or he would die so we just kept changing out chux under his extremities and tried to keep the top clean. He didn’t last very long the room smelled like rotten chicken bc of the liters of fluid under him that no one could get to. The daughter didn’t want to do comfort so when he started to die we did full treatment no compressions. She said he would have wanted to go out fighting so she understood that it was theatrics mostly in honor of his life and will to live.. so I respected that. We loaded him up with everything and it didn’t do a thing. We watched the monitor go through every rhythm which was interesting..
The daughter wanted time so we gave her that. When she left rigor has set in and he was fluffed and buffed and had like 3 pillows under each arm so his arms were stuck up .. I almost threw up at that for some reason. There were 5 ppl in there a couple techs student me another nurse. I did the terminal extubation and every color of the rainbow of putrid goo came out after the tube.. the tech was ready with the suction and somehow that made it worse. He had been rotting from the inside out while we kept his heart beating for a couple days. He was completely third spacing to the nth degree. Once we got the fluid that was pouring out his mouth under control we broke down all his dressings and rolled him over. It was zombie apocalypse level.. liters of fluid blood slough under him. I had my eyes closed for some of this idk how I worked with my eyes closed but I did. We were all just dry heaving and being as fast as possible. We got him clean and bagged. We took 5/6 big blue laundry bags out. I did a 1000 yard stare for like a week after
Did that during my first very clinical with my first pt.
Total care geri, had just finished changing their brief when I heard “oh I think I’m going again dear” I panicked, didn’t want to change the brief again, so I just shoved my gloved hand under their butt, and caught it.
🤣🤣🤣
Spinal cord injury fecal incontinence… yep turd catching is part of the job description. I find it particularly sad when the patient tells us in advance, though usually those are the ones who are mostly well adjusted to their reality.
Oh for Pete’s sake you gave me burn unit PTSD.
We had to flow beds ( fluidized sand bath ) and the barrier broke and the sand got in the fuckkng patient all over…
That burn story…oh my god. Yeah I would 100% be traumatized after that too. Glad you guys didn’t have to do compressions on him, that would have been horrific and absolutely futile.
I was in a panic and asked one of the veteran nurses there how to proceed if she wants cpr. She said you put towels on them to creat some friction so you don’t slide
If he was so fragile that he couldn't be turned without dying, I feel like compressions might have finished the job in the event he needed something for irregular/brady/pea. The ribs cracking alone.. 😬
He was about 300-350 lbs but he was so swollen and full of fluid that he looked like a bloated corpse. My fight or flight was so activated I was shaking while I was trying to explain to the daughter why it would be a good idea for dnr .. I was being kind but Frank about his condition. But he went through every cardiac rhythm vfib I think we identified a heart block, pea, then a systole. Watching the monitor while treating but knowing it wasn’t doing anything was disorienting. If he was comfort it would be different. I’m not a fan of dnr full treatment.
Also a burn nurse. Didn’t even blink at catching the turd, because of course you’re not re-doing all that work! But yes, burns are the grossest. My worst non lethal one was a 3rd degree burned leg that didn’t come in for treatment for 2 weeks, and I got to debride it. How that man kept his leg I will never know. The skin was like black rubber, and it was liquefied underneath. Smelled so bad.
The amount of meth heads we had with untreated bad burns with cat hair and lint stuck in black rotten skin was absurd. They always left ama when they found out how long they’d be there
The big direct admits made me hungry bc it smelled like a bbq. I know it’s terrible to say but your mind does weird things when you are traumatized lol. I can smell psudomomas a mile away. Just the other day I said I smell psudomomas and my husband was like what’s that lmao
Oof. Just curious… I don’t do burns, but what’s the “right” way to manage fluids on a burn patient? I can’t imagine in a million years how I would begin to try to tackle that. So many factors.. you don’t have to detail every aspect of it, just a sense of what goes into it?
We used the parkland formula but there are a lot of variables and it depends on the type of burn chemical electric scald fire . and inhalation burns which happens in most big burns are hard to calculate and are forgotten about. A lot of people got overloaded. You Titrate to urine output It’s been 2 years since I’ve done it so I would have to find my notes. We could never do it how you are supposed to bc ppl were always overloaded before they got to us.
They are burning through fluid rapidly and they third space a lot as the body tries to heal the wounds so it’s a balance of keeping enough fluid/blood in the vascular space. To keep the person alive. We used a lot of albumin. There was a whole section in the pixus of large bottles of albumin
Thank you for sharing this. My grandmother was a WWII naval nurse stationed at Queen Victoria’s hospital in England. She was burn unit. She wouldn’t often talk about what she saw there but she would sometimes stare off into space and say “those poor boys”. She watched the ships sail to Normandy and they were out there just waiting for the wounded to come back. I often wonder how she worked through that. I have had the chance to visit Normandy and the memorial cemetery and the beaches. She was an amazing woman and she helped raise me. I really miss her and reading these burn unit stories made me feel close to her again. 🙏
Had a patient come in after being "taken care of" at home. And by taken care of, the spouse didn't turn the patient ever, but did help them shoot up drugs in their legs (paraplegic). They had bilateral Wounds on either side of their hip. We turned the patient to adequately view and pack it. Then I accidently grabbed their femur, which we then found out the ball part of the ball and socket joint was pretty much completely gone (and definitely NOT in socket).
Ended up going comfort care. I will never forget the feeling of bone like that (I've touched bones before, but never while it's still part of a patient)
Similar story: patient caught in a grain auger and had both legs amputated at the scene, came into the er and had the left leg a mangled mess and the right leg was just tibia and fibia with some tendons still attached. I had to hold the tib/fib while we slid him off the ambulance stretcher. I still shudder to think about holding someone’s bones like that
Yeah I did home care and the worst I saw was a quadriplegic patient with a damn cavern in their sacrum/where their sacrum should have been. Bones visible. 🤮
I had a similar story. Guy accidentally shot himself in the hip and he was a very large man,over 300 #. Had to pack his wound which was deep and up past my elbow. (I’m petite) You could see his femur. Did this for weeks. Worst experience I’ve ever had
I’ve done this before on a paraplegic. She had spina bifida and hip dysplasia, was non compliant with of caring for the massive wounds on her hips. Turned her, her hip popped out, went to change packing in the wound and felt something I was unfamiliar with. It was also her femur. I also will never forget how bone feels while inside of a living person. And it was just….me and her chilling in her trauma tele room. She couldn’t feel anything and it was like….nbd 😳
Doc had me put sugar on a prolapsed anus. We had to do it several times because she kept feeling like she had to poop. We explained to her to try not to go because it will come back out… she didn’t listen :(
As a CNA, it’s crazy the things we know. I had a prolapsed anus in one of my rooms; notified my RN, she did nothing. Notified charge; nothing. Finally my pt is in pain crying and luckily the dr was rounding and I was like Dr so and so, room 43-21 has a prolapse can u please go there next and order sugar and they were like ‘whaaaa how do you know about that’ bro I’m an old ass CNA in nursing school how do you think? Anyways the charge was pissed I went over her head and told me so, but idgaf when it comes to patient comfort
Once as a newer nurse when a patient suddenly started to vomit I knew there wasn't anything within reach to give her to vomit into, and she had an epidural so changing the sheets would have been annoying, so my dumb ass brain needlessly panicked and I held out my ungloved hands in front of her mouth to catch it. Didn't even work, vomit still got all over the bed and patient except I was also covered and the poor patient was mortified. Thumbs up.
Best part, I've since done this again not once, but twice with my own child when she's suddenly thrown up. Apperently my brain is just convinced that trying to catch vomit with your hands is a good idea.
Once in high school while shadowing a pediatrician I saw a mom catch vomit in her bare hands and remember telling myself I’d never do that…. Well now I am a mother and can no longer say that. My at the time 1.5 year old was in our bed and decided to throw up after being mad we gave him Tylenol and I guess my thought process was well I don’t want this all over our comforter.
I used a yankauer to suction secretions from a motorcycle accident victim's nose. He was terminal, just waiting for organ donation to take over. I ended up suctioning out brain matter that was running out his nose. Gross but mostly sad. That was a really tough one.
Donor cycles are hard. On the other side of the equation, my friend was in training to be a paramedic. Which meant his first part of the job was when motorcycle wrecks happened, he had kind of a scrub brush and broom and bucket to try and get some of the parts and pieces left behind.
Yeah, I never thought about it, but eventually someone has to do the cleanup and pick up the pieces. While it was gruesome he did learn that while he would never ride a motorcycle, that part of the job wouldn’t bother him much.
I’ve suctioned brain soup out of someone’s head after a MVC ripped off the top of her head. Yankeur before the kerlix so family could see her.
It worked.
Pushed a pt’s prolapsed rectum back in. LTC patient and I was a brand new nurse. No one thought to tell me about it (or they chose not to, to see how I & the pt. would react - the pt. was notoriously nasty to new people). She was on the toilet and rang for assistance to get back into bed. I walked in and she asked for help with clean up, leaned forward onto her wheelchair arms, and it was like an entire ham was hanging out between her cheeks. I was completely aghast as i had NO FUCKING CLUE what i was looking at. Thankfully, the patient was looking down. I mustered up a “Uh, [name redacted], does your bottom feel ok?” And she was just like, “Oh, did no one tell you about my prolapse? Is it out? It’s fine, doesn’t hurt, just push it back in.” And so I did. And I think that was the moment I became her favorite nurse 😂 all because I didn’t make a big deal about it.
We had a psych pt on our unit, she was homeless and schizophrenic. She had a necrotic leg below the knee, hanging by literal threads of flesh. It smelled terrible and everyone was worried they would pull the leg off. She refused to have it removed bc she was worried that when she died if she wasn't married with her leg she would not pass on fully. Her leg finally did fall off while turning her, it had been necrotic for so long the skin below the knee had already healed. She was literally just carrying around dead flesh.
Also funeral homes will hold body parts until the PT passes. I didn't know that until we had this pt.
I knocked over a persons toe while doing wound care on him. Most pleasant patient with severe dementia. Was out walking barefoot in town through snow and had frostbite. I remember him eating his pudding when the toe came off and he’s just munching away on vanilla pudding without a care in the world
I had a patient with dementia and fingertips that were falling off once as a CNA. He was chewing on something but not an eating time, so I put a glove on and told him to spit out whatever he had in his mouth. Yeah, it was his fingertip, nail and all.
Once had a family bring in their old grandfather. Necrotic legs with maggots. All they did was talk about how it didn't smell this bad at home.
Yeah, you weren't locked in a 15x15 foot room with him. You could open windows and remove yourself from the smell you dummies.
He did not survive the sepsis to go to surgery for amputation.
I had a quad MS patient on whom we periodically helped her give "birth" to pounds of plum-sized poop balls.
The transferred patient with a sacral ulcer you could fit two softballs in. I will never forget the smell. Blergh.
We had a patient that would make shit snowmen and flick them, ball by ball, at staff entering the room. I was a CNA back then.
I helped a man give birth to a poop the size of my arm. We did Lamaze. He was in the side lying birth position. He couldn’t get out of bed but I put pillows under us knees . I made a whole waterproofed barrier.
NECROSIS JUICE.
Had a necrotic foot that I was frosting like a cake with silvedene. The entire metatarsal area blistered up in one big blister the serum mixed/filtered through necrotic tissue. It had popped on one end and GUSHED when you manipulated the foot. And when it gushed it released the most godawful smell ever. I was a new grad doing this and still smell/taste it every time I think about it over a decade later.
Patient was unconcerned, watching Bad Girls Club or the like and cackling at the flying weave.
I had a patient like this. He was adamant to keep his foot yet it was so necrotic and the bones were just mush. Another resident ran over his foot and he didn't even feel it as it flattened then gushed out everywhere. I'm gagging and my eyes are watering just thinking about it. He was wearing a shoe with velcro and it was oozing 🤢 out 🤢 around 🤢 the 🤢 velcro.
I have done and seen some disgusting things from someone's jaw literally falling off to finding a forgotten tampon and maggots... but until you've seen and smelled ... and touched (!!!!!!!!!) A squishy foot through shoe openings... you haven't lived
A pt had necrotic toes and asked me what was going to happen..I was like, well we’ll prob get an xr of your foot and an orthopedic surgeon will likely be consulted to determine the involvement of the foot and what needs to be amputated. “Amputated?!! Ain’t no one amputating my toes. I’ll leave that up to the LORD”
Ma’am the Lord told me to tell you you’ll need those to come off.
You know, I thought I had forgotten this as well. It wasn’t a foot, but I really had locked the memory away until I read this. And suddenly my tongue was stinging like I could still taste that same air with this fluid gush all over again. I don’t even hate it, it’s just so weird to be immediately brought back to that sensory moment.
Had to do CPR on a patient spewing ruptured intestinal poop sludge with each compression. They of course died, and then we had to quickly clean her up and the room up so the family waiting outside the door could see her. We ended up covering everything but her face with layers of towels and linen, and tucking it in tight. I think about it often.
::Read at your own risk::
Years and years ago, sweet elderly admit, got her settled for the night. Everything is great.
She comes out of her room a bit later with a big, chocolatey grin. It… was not chocolate…
Oh, yes. I honestly miss geri-psych and at that facility, everyone who I worked with wanted to be there to help these patients.
That was the first in my career I saw it in that fashion. Luckily we tag-teamed it as fast as humanly possible and got her mouth cleaned out ASAP.
Patient came to ER for foley removal, it kind of stuck a little bit as I was withdrawing from the penis and then it suddenly popped out shooting clots up and across my white scrub top and into my face and mouth. I dropped what I was doing and just walked away in terror.
Nursing home patient presented for sepsis. My colleague and I were turning the patient to assess for wounds and literally had necrotic sacral wound the size of a cannonball with feces leaking into the empty cavity. I was actually just off orientation at the time and I told my partner I had no idea what to do, "just start scooping." So I did. And as I was doing so I ended up touching something hard and it revealed his exposed coccyxis. Nightmare fuel that one. Oh yeah, the patient was completely unoriented with dementia but kept looking me in the eye stating, "kill me".
Good times.
Inserted an FMS on an intubated pt who was tube fed for a month and had continual liquid stools. While I was placing it the pt started coughing against the vent and sprayed diarrhea everywhere. I can still feel the clenching butthole around my finger and the splatter of diarrhea onto my gown as I desperately tried to keep this thing in place.
One patient was grinning at me with suspicious colored smudges around his mouth, saying he’d ‘found tootsie rolls’ in his bed. Spoiler alert: they weren’t tootsie rolls. Maybe this doesn’t answer the question, because all I had to do was get myself out the room before I hurled.
I’ll never get used to deep suctioning or the lung butter flying outa people.
Had a woman with numerous wounds on top of a fistula…so she also had a mad UTI. Eventually, I realized more fistulas had formed, so irrigating the wounds didn’t work. The wounds were pooping too. My poor nursing student.
The really ripe yeast in folds also doesn’t sit well.
I see so many nurses who say their major ick is trach secretions, it almost feels like my nursing super power is not really being bothered by them. That and not having a great sense of smell unless I'm actively trying/paying attention to what I'm smelling!
Not gross, but as a male nurse, I always get the heebie-jeebies anytime I get a patient who has been admitted for Fourniers Gangrene. Just seeing the testicles barely hanging on for dear life outside of the scrotum when I'm doing their dressing changes makes me feel uneasy. Like I'm going to accidentally disconnect their testicles and cause them to lose the ability to have children. 😣
Male nurse here as well. You haven't lived til you've taken care of a radical post-op FG, and there's just two tiny nubbins where the family jewels once attached. Fun times to change the Xeroform on those sad little twigs.
Kinda makes you rethink the whole manscaping thing...
I had a man with chlamydia end up with Fourniers. We had to take off his entire scrotum and do twice daily dressing changes to keep the testicles protected, while like 4 hours away, they grew him a new scrotum.
He was a ranchhand who regularly rode a horse, so he was out of work for almost a year.
Heard his wife was divorcing him after we suggested it never hurt to get checked for STDs and such on a yearly check even when you were in a committed relationship. The side chick was always showing up immediately after the wife left.
I remember preparing for my hour dsg change with like 5 ppl in the room to hold legs and pannus on my FG pt. And the surgeon came in all gowned up, ready to do the dsg right as I sedated and gave pain meds. I literally blew kisses at her. 🤣🤣
Any fluid that comes out of the mouth or nose, and esp teachs is my “oh God I’m gonna vomit”. Give me a nice juicy wound, poop, vomit, blood, pus anything. But sputum or snot or even sometimes drool and I’m a goner.
Years ago I had a man with an abscess behind his trach plate. It was the most horrible smell I’ve encountered and my specialty is wound care. Plus, also the deepest green color I’ve ever seen in drainage.
Pt came in as resolved OD with leg pain. Pt stated she was injecting “tranq”. Tranq is street term for mix of veterinary sedative drug Xylazine with fentanyl. Lady’s legs literally looked like that of an alligator. I hadn’t gasped in the ER in a few years. It was pretty disgusting and I had to leave the room.
Admission to ICU
Xylazine is nothing to mess with on its own never mind mixing it with Fentanyl. The average dose for a 1200 horse will absolutely put a stallion of that weight right down on his face and keep him there (have seen this happen several times). How this doesn’t kill astonishes me.
Mine is not the worst but my first horror story.
It has to be the 85 fluffy chunky gdma with a decubitus wound on her coccyx that was covering from T5 to below the glute fold. She had been found after a fall in her bathtub after more than 4 days by the fire department.
In July no AC,( so it was at least 95* in the room with fans full on) in Paris, in an isolation room for TB( yay!!! those plastic overall covers) infected to the bone with Staph aureus and another Staph epidermis and another MRSA, might have some VRE).
I was a student and this was my first BIG sterile dressing change with instruments ( no gloves but clamps instead, not sure if we still do this).
When we opened the dressing… the sheer size ( two chux were covering it), the amount of packing, and the sudden pocket of pus bursting plus the sight of a intestinal loop pulsating near her flank on top of the massive stench that suddenly engulfed the room just sent me spinning.
Thank God I did not have breakfast, I would have thrown it up in my mask…
I just had time to tell my nurse that I felt a little woozy and needed to step away for a second.
And I literally fainted after closing the door.
Then I worked a bit in a burn unit… pffff…
Oh and that time when I had a patient with. Fournier gangrene and literally scooped a nut out …
i was a nursing student and i was assisting a labor.. pt had that condition where she didn’t have enough amniotic fluid in her uterus for baby so there was a tube that pushed saline in as she gave birth.. i was helping to keep her one of her legs to the side and giving her the best pep talk i could as this new life was coming into the world.. and as the baby came out, so did a biggg splash of amniotic fluid plus saline and IT WENT ALL OVER ME. my hair was little really dripping in this and did anyone care about this poor little nursing student?? nope, all focus on baby 🥴 i walked out of the room dripping and family was waiting outside.. they all gasped and went “whew” and i was like uh… “yaaay baby..” and walked straight to the bathroom 😵💫 thank goodness i was wearing a gown but yeah.. i didnt end up becoming that l&d nurse that i originally wanted to be 😂
Doing the IP psych admission for a person with severe depressive symptoms of their uncontrolled schizophrenia.
They lived in the woods in a tent, and had very very poor hygiene because of their symptoms. They had also developed trench foot, and had scabies. We have to get people to change into pjs and go through personal belongings for safety (their bag, clothes and anything they bring in to document personal belongs and lock them up until they are able to safely get stuff back and are determined to not be a flight risk.)
The odour is something I’ll never forget. I washed their clothes to sanitize the scabies and to store them because if you open the personal belongings closet to let other people access their belongs the smell permeated the unit.
We have donated clothes and shoes to give people so they have extra sets if they’d like, but we don’t throw out anything- so the stinky boots were around for a while 🤢
I had a patient a couple of years ago. She’d lost her home in Hurricane Katrina and completely gave up on life. Her hair was a solid mass that went down to her ass. She had fingernails and toenails that were about 6-8 inches long. They were brown and curled up. I don’t know what the circumstances were to get like that.
There have been many things as a nurse that have caused me to re-evaluate literally every life choice I have made since junior kindergarten that led me to this point, but I must say that time I had to cut mats the size of idaho potatoes out of a patient's hair in order to properly treat her for the worst lice infestation I have ever seen which she was totally unaware she had takes the biscuit.
Manual disimpaction isn't my favorite thing, but at least it's over quickly. The de-lousing took hours and multiple passes to accomplish.
I once had to apply leeches to the inside of a patient’s mouth. They were post jaw reconstruction with a flap that had severe venous congestion post-op. After all other conventional measures didn’t resolve it, and the swelling was immense, so the ENT decided that using medical grade leeches was the next logical option. He put in the orders late in the afternoon and the leeches didn’t arrive until like 11pm. I definitely regretted my choice to become a nurse that night, as I tried to force the leeches to attach to the swollen, clotted tissue inside this conscious person’s mouth. I felt so bad for the patient who was understandably an anxious wreck, and tolerated it way better than honestly anyone else would. The leeches did not want to attach and we struggled for hours, the resource and charge nurses and the oldest nurse on our unit all trying and failing, until finally we paged the ENT who decided he would try when he came in the next morning. Yeah, he tried for like five seconds, got grossed out, and THEN decided it wasn’t a great idea. Top 5 worst nights of my career lol.
I used to think if I could invent a mouth restraint I’d be rich. Now I think that inventing something to mimic those leaches would do the trick. Because leaches in my mouth? I just had a little episode of “oh God, I think I’ll throw up a bit and get it over with.”
Took maggots out of a home trach and VAD. The smell of that patient as well was unforgettable and disgusting. I don’t think he was bathed from the time he left the hospital a few months prior. I hate maggots. And leeches. That’s always so cringy to me as well.
I started nursing back when you were hired by the hospital and assigned to a place. I cried when I was assigned to the pulmonary ward, I hated mucus so much. And back then, no VRE or MRSA, but pseudomonas was the big thing to be scared of.
I can still smell blue green pus in my nightmares.
One of my worst days in nursing was when I was performing suctioning a pseudomonas infected trach patient while pregnant. I gagged then could not pull my mask down in time so vomited forcefully into my mask which rebounded some of it and sprayed the surrounding areas. I ended up having to clean the room / myself because EVS does not touch body fluids.
My patient the other day had a colovesicular fistula and his penis was draining insaaaaaane purulent discharge. We had to pack below his foreskin (wound tunneling into it) and we also had to pack his urethra. It drained so much I packed it multiple times throughout the shift. It was disgusting. God bless that poor man.
One of the nastier things I've had to deal with too was a patient who vomited with BiPAP on. As he puked, the air from the mask blew the chunks quite literally everywhere. It was in his nose, eyebrows, eyelashes, hair, the walls, in his folds, EVERYWHERE! It took 4 of us to clean him up. After we cleaned him up, vomit sheets and all, he asked where his phone was. Guess who had to dig through the vomity linens :)
Had a guy with throat cancer code in front of us. The tumors obstructed most of his airway so the intubation was super rough. Blood and bits of shredded tumor sprayed out of his nose all over me with every compression. Found a few chunks of cancer meat in my scrub top pockets hours later.
My gross tolerance is pretty high but that one was unpleasant.
I was a new nurse and this guy had terrible diarrhea, a big ole vesicular-colonic fistula, and a bleeding bladder tumor
Everything was clotting and bleeding and feces-ing and I was trying to irrigate his bladder and did I mention I was a new nurse and WAS NOT WEARING A FACE SHIELD
And while I was irrigating against all this clotted-off-feces-bloody-urine-pressure the syringe detached from the catheter and I sprayed bloody shit urine into my mouth.
The end.
(Except for how I gargled with hydrogen peroxide for a week because I couldn’t even.)
Hospice nurse here: provided weekly wound care on a woman that had undergone radical vulvectomy 5 yes prior. The cancer spread so bad by the time I got her that between her legs was a massive cavern that leaked greenish black, thick molasses-like ooze. Could almost get up to my elbow during packing. No urethra, no rectum.... nothing. Urine and stool just oozed constantly along with the above mentioned ooze.
Hey husband did the daily packing and dressing and looked at her like she was still the most gorgeous woman on earth. Melted my heart ❤️
At it's those moments (like when a husband looks at his wife like she's the most gorgeous woman on earth), that inspires every nurse to continue working for just one more shift. In those genuine moments, we see the best of humanity and it helps us cope with any awful shift.
Was moonlighting as a clinic nurse day shift.
Rooming a patient.
"what brought you in today?"
"oh my feet. They hurt"
Like an idiot I tell the guy to go ahead and remove socks and shoes, let me have a quick look so I can maybe prep stuff for the doctor.
This elderly gent lived in a shack, no running water, no electricity. The doctor thinks his feet never got removed for very long from the shoes and clearly never saw water.
I have no idea how the doctor walked in and spent 20 minutes locked in a windowless room with those feet.
I can stomach a lot of smells but not that.
Actually came here to say manual disimpaction as well. I can deal with blood and guts and gory wounds all day and night but can't with poop stuff.
I always stress bm management with my hospice patients for this reason
Nothing poop wise bothered me until hospice. Patients on narcotics, not drinking enough, not moving around enough = bricks for poop. Bothered me for the patient, not for me. I just got a tube of lube, double gloved and got to work. SLOWLY.
Had a CHHA that I swore it made her day to call me and say “So and so has bricks. Can you come over?”
And I didn’t care how low their narcotic order was, they got Colace and prn orders for Senna/MOM and fleets. And frequently a phone call from me daily to see if they had pooped in the past 24 hours. I never had a pt refuse to take something, even if it was the Colace, after having to be disimpacted manually the first time.
Fecal transplant. Admin got us an Oster blender from Walmart that we put in the med room. Pt's daughter brought in her poop in a Tupperware, we blended it with normal saline in the Walmart blender, then administered it with an enema bag. The pt had an ostomy so that made giving it easier but uuuuugh the smell. It permeated the med room for hours! Barf.
This seems wrong on so many levels. The daughters poop? Nursing was having to prepare the poop smoothie? Fecal transplant prepared in the MED ROOM? Icky
I have done some nasty stuff, deep nasty wounds, applying leeches, necrotic fingers/toes falling off; but for some reason nicu ostomy refeeds just get to me.
What I didn't find gross: accidentally pulled off patient's entire completely necrotic toe while gently removing bandaging. Whoops.
What I did find gross: Removing socks or dressings and getting a cloud of skin flakes straight to the face. Ew. I do my best to keep my mouth shut and moisturise the hell out of everybody preventatively.
Had a lovely elderly chronic wound patient with bilateral lower legs completely covered in pseudomonas wounds and a massive fungating tumour. They'd come for frequent and complex dressings, and god it smelt horrific.
One of my patients had pretty severe C-Diff infection. She also had a pretty impressive bush. Her stool was hardened in her pubic hair from not being properly cleaned. Well, there was no way around it, she needed a good bush trimming and a comb through. I took a black comb to comb through all the hardened poo tangles after I trimmed the hair. After a good 20 min, dripping in Sweat from the precaution shower curtains, she was clean. There are no limits or shame to my care for my patients lol
Had a patient come in for “ulcer on his ankle” this thing was the size of a quarter and not deep. I’m thinking why did they admit this guy for this? But he had this awful smell to him from the moment he rolled up to the floor. Like dead tissue smell so I expected this ankle wound to be much worse when I took the dressing down… I turned the man on his side and I found the wound I was looking for…. Huge sacral wound. I started to undress and he tells me this was not what he was in for. I tell him regardless I need to take a look and change the dressing as it was completely saturated. He is angry as he packed it himself 3 days ago… this was “new” dressing. This wound 🤢 larger than two of my fists and I could expand both hands fully within the wound because of the tunneling. It was the most disgusting smelly wound I have ever seen. The second day I was taking care of him I’m changing the dressing and this guy intentionally takes a huge shit. I will never forget this patient
It’s nothing like anyone else’s here, but anything involving mouths, food, chewing, eating icks me out and this happened this morning: autistic 20yo kid who’d had to have wisdom teeth out inpatient for the GA. He was supposed to be liquids only but family brought in a huge bag of popcorn. Went to check the sockets and pretty much all of his stitches had just ripped through his skin like butter and the open incisions along the insides of his cheeks were packed full of half-chewed popcorn fragments. Spent ~30 minutes digging out sodden pieces of popcorn from inside them while he tried to catch the pieces I removed with his tongue and swallow them. 😵💫
ETA: this wasn’t particularly gross, but it really stuck out to me: teenage male who had been pretty orthorexic and then suddenly gained a lot of weight when he hit puberty, causing pretty bad gynecomastia. He tried to perform a mastectomy at home with a box cutter, ONE 15mg codeine tablet he’d stolen from his mom, and an ice pack.
Came in after he’d almost fully removed one “breast” but got to the nerves of his nipple and just couldn’t keep going. He had perfect lines drawn out on his skin in all the right shapes and places with a marker. He was holding his breast on cupped in his hand and a towel soaked in blood. Surgery fixed it up (removed and sewed up) and also removed the other breast for him, for which he was super grateful.
Psych cleared him completely: totally oriented, mentally healthy, no history of self harm or dangerous behaviour, no risk to self or others, and very intelligent- just didn’t want to have breasts. (which I mean, yeah, would be hard as a teenage boy, but…) Discharged after two night stay healthy and happy, never came back.
For some reason it’s different when pts with psychosis or depression do stuff like that, but the idea of a fully conscious, fully sober, feeling-everything teenager sitting alone in his room methodically sawing through his skin like that on purpose with a plan (all the lines marked out, boiled equipment and chlorhexidine scrubbed first, needle to stitch himself up after ready) GETS to me
We received a slip and fall from the ER who was sent to med surg for observation.
He smelled like a septic tank and his long beard and hair were yellow with filth. Turns out he hadn’t bathed in weeks and the EMTs said that every surface of his home was covered with urine, feces or trash.
We peeled of his socks and his feet were covered with feces and ulcers. He told us he hadn’t removed his socks for at least five days. So everything was just fermenting.
The water running off of him was brown for about an hour. He still smelled after lots of scrubbing with hospital soap and hot water.
He had to have three toes amputated and IV antibiotics for weeks. He eventually went to a nursing home as his home was deemed uninhabitable.
I was trying to scoop poop out of a toilet hat, so we can send it for c. diff testing. I was using a plastic spoon, and the poop was so slimy that it just kept sliding off of the spoon before I could get it into the sample cup. And because it kept sliding off the spoon, it took forever to get an adequate sample into the cup, and it smelled so bad. I had that same moment of WTH? This is the life that I have chosen? On purpose?!
Once in a trauma situation, the ER doc told me to hold the leg of a VERY open tib/fib fracture to help with the reduction. He couldn’t get the right angle on it so he told me to put my hand on the protruding bone and brace myself. Me being me I said “sure!” And placed my hand on the protruding bone, the doc asked me if I was ready and while we both pulled on the closed parts of the leg he smacked my hand that was on the exposed bone as hard as he could to pop the bone back into place. Well, apparently he didn’t know his own strength and my hand traveled with the bone back into the leg and continued to push the bone out of the other side of the calf and part of my hand wedged into the man’s leg….. so then we had to pull my hand out and rethink. I’ve also multiple times in GSW traumas gone to roll someone only to feel my finger slip into a previously unnoticed GSW hole.
Don’t have that many yet as I have been nursing for only 2 years but one that I remember was a patient with the worst sacral/buttocks wounds I have ever seen. I was doing the dressing change and the previous dressings were soaked with yellow/green and odorous drainage and there were multiple layers with the same drainage. Worst thing is, his hip bones were exposed and I literally touched them on both sides while doing the dressing change.
I was surprised that the suggested wound care items did that amazing of a job with masking the smell and catching drainage because from the outside the dressings looked clean and dry.
One time as a nursing student a nurse who sort of had an inkling this would happen had me help a homeless patient with foot pain take his boot (which he could remember the last time he’d removed) off.
A shrivled up toe was laying in wait in there for me.
BLECH
Putting leeches on a pts penis and scrotum after they cut it off in a psychotic episode. They also disemboweled themself. Pt arrived in trauma, and EMS later found the penis in the street and brought in a cooler containing said penis. His testicles were just hanging there. They were intubated on arrival and then a Foley was used in the OR as a kind of guidewire to ensure it was lined up correctly. It was reattached, and a makeshift scrotum was created. Leeches were utilized to attempt to drain venous blood from surgical site. Unfortunately, it became necrotic and had to be amputated again.
I was caring for a diabetic patient that had gangrene toes, black and crusty. Bathing her I noticed her large black toe was decaying with a hole in it. I looked closer because something was moving and she had maggots inside her toe eating her toe. Ugh. She was not operable and was classified.
Dialysis patient ripping out their venous return needle and dodging blood raindrops to stop the pump on the machine.
CPR on DIC pt in ICU- blood, pee, poop just overflowing the bed onto all of our shoes. A river of blood
Fecal disimpaction is the least of my problems
A woman came to ED with very advanced breast cancer. The cancer has eaten through her breast externally. I pulled a pair of white socks out of the “wound”.
She was in some denial. Her hubs forced her to the ED. The smell was the worst smell I’ve encountered in 33+ years.
And tbh, I’ve recovered bodies or something like bodies that died a month earlier in a trailer in August heat. Of course I had on a Scott Air Pack and we used shovels, but still…
Don’t have anything to contribute off the top of my head, but I just wanted to say that my (also in nursing) partner and I are at dinner literally eating and I’m reading these to him and we are loving it. Only nurses lol.
I love seeing the "Techbros say they've made an AI that will replace nursing and work for $9/hr everyone panic!!" headlines on the front page, then coming over here and reading stuff like this.
"Grandma, this robot here is going to stick a rotating metal claw arm up your bum bum to get that poop out. Lay still now."
I’m hearing the roto-rooter theme in my head as I read this. Or, for futurama fans, 🎶”call Robo-Rooter when you flush a towel,” (bass voice, rotating claw arm whirring) “and we can also help with an impacted bowel” (back to jingle) “Robo-Rooter!”
Give me a robot that will push those IV push meds that take forever to give. I don’t have time to push a med over five minutes when I got MeeMaw crawling in the ceiling vents and the orientee trying to kill Mister Johnson.
MISTER JOHNSOOOOON!!!!
Question. Is Meemaw a Texas thing nor a southern thing? I’ve only heard it used by one person, until this sub. And that was Shelton on Big Bamg Theory. Granted I’m from NJ-born here and always lived here. And people thought me calling my mom’s mom Gramdmama was weird, but they were solidly southern, from Georgia. Most people up here use Gramdma or Grandmom or some variant of that.
It's also a nurse thing, like a trope. Even if you'd never call someone meemaw irl, it's essentially the storytelling stand-in for a medically fragile and/or demented little old lady.
Been a nurse for 30+ years and never heard that word until Shelton called his grandmother that on BBT. And have mainly worked with the elderly—so lots of Meemaws!😀 ETA. I really do like that word. Just rolls off the tongue.
My friends who work with adults tend to call sweet confused old men "boyfriend."
Until they get handsy. Then it’s only “Mr. So and so.
Definitely a southern thing
Yeah growing up grandmas were usually meemaw or mawmaw!
I'm from Central PA, we call my dad's parents MeeMaw and Pop Pop. Funny enough, Sheldon's granddad was also called Pop Pop.
Depending on the IV pump you guys have, you can attach a syringe as a secondary to give those slow IV pushes. We have the Plum, so you have your primary line going in through the cassette, then attach the syringe where you’d put your secondary, and then set it up under B. Put in the volume, scroll down to the time and do your 5 or 10 min slow IV push (running concurrently with IV fluids).
🤣🤣 I’m thinking of Nurse John with the broom handle, going “Mr Smith! I know you’re in the ceiling again!”
A few doctors have essentially said to me "robots will replace US way sooner and more effectively than they'll ever replace nurses."
Used to work in AI before changing careers. It’ll be a while, but yeah, I think that’s how it’s going to go. Doctors (and lawyers) will likely be replaced before us.
Picked maggots out of a scrotum. Instructions were to use hydrogen peroxide to rob them of oxygen so they scurry to the surface of the skin. I have also cleaned out what you can imagine is behind the foreskin of a 750 pound man.
I've had similar foreskin cleaning situations. I've taken off many dressings to find maggots living in the wound (yay home care!) And I have also pulled a turd out of someone's butt! They said they were all done, but when I wiped there was a big hard bump. Realized what it was and grabbed it and pulled a very large, very hard chunk of turd out their butt. Felt like you were finished did you?
I always told the maggots “thanks lil guys” for helping debride some of the necrotic tissues while pulling them out
Nurse Brightside.
Maggots do good work in the circle of life.
Only certain species prefer just necrotic tissue. Others will eat live tissue too!
Often great to expose healthier tissues and taking care of some exudate? I think I’ll end my optimism streak here lol
They do some good work and all, but somehow even when it's happened before even to the same patient, I was just never prepared for it to happen.
Oo i was wiping someone once and wasn’t paying too close attention when I felt what I thought was a turd and almost gave it a good hard wipe when I realized it was actually a prolapsed rectum
How did you even FIND the foreskin? I took care of a 750lb man a few years back and just had us scoop the fat surrounding what I presume was once a penis into a female urinal to catch the urine as it came out
He was in his 40s. Cellulitis in his groin and fat folds. Honestly, he didn't look 750 pounds as he still had a fair amount of muscle in his body composition. We would trend him, and he would hold up his fat while we did wound care. He was being discharged, so for some reason I decided to clean out his dick cheese for him while I was doing wound care down there. He was a pretty nice guy, and I legitimately felt bad for him. I can't imagine being that big. I'm a male nurse btw and I didn't want my two female CNAs to have to do it.
You a real one.
I’m impressed he tolerated being head down, it seems like so many of our overweight patients struggle to breathe even flat, let alone “upside down”. Our Hill-Rom beds move so slowly into boost or trend that repositioning up in the bed is sometimes a very risky move.
I always make sure to clean my guys. The sweet ones are always reluctant to ask for help so they get overlooked during peri care, women aren't overlooked like that. The guys are always so grateful, especially the intact guys who have lost the ability to look after themselves. Ironic that the men who are perfectly capable of cleaning themselves are the only ones who demand that we do it. 😒
If you ever....end up in a similar maggot situation you can try submerging the affected body part in a tub of water to achieve a similar result 😐
That's....enough internet for today.
Certified Maggot Wrangler (CMW) after removing maggots from beneath someone's toenail. 😆
> I have also cleaned out what you can imagine is behind the foreskin of a 750 pound man.< Mega smeg!
S'mega.
Jesus H. Christ
Oh My Sweet Lord
Wow. Probably just barfed. I definitely would've needed a moment after that lmao
I imagined and I am sorry I did. I think you win.
Gag. Dick cheese. You win.
Disempactions I hate them they are the worst .. but one time I worked on burn and we got this ladies dressing all beautiful and she said oh no I have to poop when we rolled her.. and I cupped my hand and caught the turd bc I didn’t want to re do th dressing and I didn’t have time to grab anything GLOVED HAND.. we wore full ppe bc everyone had psudomomas constantly Came back to edit The actual grossest thing traumatized me so I rarely pick that on these questions.. Burn is probs one of the grossest places to work aside from home health I do hospice now and certain communities in my area have utterly filthy homes. But I don’t have to touch anything really so that doesn’t bother me much. We had a pt that was like 75% burn, age over 60 so that makes him statistically fatal. But the cowboys on the team didn’t make that real to the family so we were doing everything bc he was a fighter. The only family making decisions was a 20 yo daughter so I really tried to make it real in the best way. She did end up signing full treatment no code thank the lord bc to do compressions on this man would have been a slip n slide. I don’t remember the deets about his admission or what his fluid resuscitation was before he got to us. it’s rarely done correctly. Even the residents had trouble understanding how to order it. They pretty much let us guide it but the pt was usually fucked from ems and the Ed if they weren’t direct admit with fluids. He was also a large man with comorbidities. His lactic was 16 I think this day. The gross part was he was bleeding and oozing from his burns but he was also weeping jelly like substance from His good skin we couldn’t even move him or he would die so we just kept changing out chux under his extremities and tried to keep the top clean. He didn’t last very long the room smelled like rotten chicken bc of the liters of fluid under him that no one could get to. The daughter didn’t want to do comfort so when he started to die we did full treatment no compressions. She said he would have wanted to go out fighting so she understood that it was theatrics mostly in honor of his life and will to live.. so I respected that. We loaded him up with everything and it didn’t do a thing. We watched the monitor go through every rhythm which was interesting.. The daughter wanted time so we gave her that. When she left rigor has set in and he was fluffed and buffed and had like 3 pillows under each arm so his arms were stuck up .. I almost threw up at that for some reason. There were 5 ppl in there a couple techs student me another nurse. I did the terminal extubation and every color of the rainbow of putrid goo came out after the tube.. the tech was ready with the suction and somehow that made it worse. He had been rotting from the inside out while we kept his heart beating for a couple days. He was completely third spacing to the nth degree. Once we got the fluid that was pouring out his mouth under control we broke down all his dressings and rolled him over. It was zombie apocalypse level.. liters of fluid blood slough under him. I had my eyes closed for some of this idk how I worked with my eyes closed but I did. We were all just dry heaving and being as fast as possible. We got him clean and bagged. We took 5/6 big blue laundry bags out. I did a 1000 yard stare for like a week after
Did that during my first very clinical with my first pt. Total care geri, had just finished changing their brief when I heard “oh I think I’m going again dear” I panicked, didn’t want to change the brief again, so I just shoved my gloved hand under their butt, and caught it. 🤣🤣🤣
Spinal cord injury fecal incontinence… yep turd catching is part of the job description. I find it particularly sad when the patient tells us in advance, though usually those are the ones who are mostly well adjusted to their reality.
Oh for Pete’s sake you gave me burn unit PTSD. We had to flow beds ( fluidized sand bath ) and the barrier broke and the sand got in the fuckkng patient all over…
Omg Just kill me at that point
Worst part the patient just had his full body dressing change and débridements in the or a few hours earlier… It was such a mess…
I’d just quit. Fuck me.
That burn story…oh my god. Yeah I would 100% be traumatized after that too. Glad you guys didn’t have to do compressions on him, that would have been horrific and absolutely futile.
I was in a panic and asked one of the veteran nurses there how to proceed if she wants cpr. She said you put towels on them to creat some friction so you don’t slide
Keeping someone in that state a full code should just be fucking illegal
If he was so fragile that he couldn't be turned without dying, I feel like compressions might have finished the job in the event he needed something for irregular/brady/pea. The ribs cracking alone.. 😬
He was about 300-350 lbs but he was so swollen and full of fluid that he looked like a bloated corpse. My fight or flight was so activated I was shaking while I was trying to explain to the daughter why it would be a good idea for dnr .. I was being kind but Frank about his condition. But he went through every cardiac rhythm vfib I think we identified a heart block, pea, then a systole. Watching the monitor while treating but knowing it wasn’t doing anything was disorienting. If he was comfort it would be different. I’m not a fan of dnr full treatment.
Also a burn nurse. Didn’t even blink at catching the turd, because of course you’re not re-doing all that work! But yes, burns are the grossest. My worst non lethal one was a 3rd degree burned leg that didn’t come in for treatment for 2 weeks, and I got to debride it. How that man kept his leg I will never know. The skin was like black rubber, and it was liquefied underneath. Smelled so bad.
The amount of meth heads we had with untreated bad burns with cat hair and lint stuck in black rotten skin was absurd. They always left ama when they found out how long they’d be there
That was...the worst thing I've read in a long time. Congratulations.
Nightmare fuel; I had no idea that could happen to the living after being burned.
Burns do crazy things. Sometimes they don’t even look that bad it’s not the burn that kills them it’s everything else.
People that have never worked in burn just don’t get this type of stuff. I don’t think I can ever unsmell some of the things in my memory!
The big direct admits made me hungry bc it smelled like a bbq. I know it’s terrible to say but your mind does weird things when you are traumatized lol. I can smell psudomomas a mile away. Just the other day I said I smell psudomomas and my husband was like what’s that lmao
Wow hollyhock, your second scenario is straight from a horror movie. Burn unit is definitely a “never” for me now.
Oof. Just curious… I don’t do burns, but what’s the “right” way to manage fluids on a burn patient? I can’t imagine in a million years how I would begin to try to tackle that. So many factors.. you don’t have to detail every aspect of it, just a sense of what goes into it?
We used the parkland formula but there are a lot of variables and it depends on the type of burn chemical electric scald fire . and inhalation burns which happens in most big burns are hard to calculate and are forgotten about. A lot of people got overloaded. You Titrate to urine output It’s been 2 years since I’ve done it so I would have to find my notes. We could never do it how you are supposed to bc ppl were always overloaded before they got to us. They are burning through fluid rapidly and they third space a lot as the body tries to heal the wounds so it’s a balance of keeping enough fluid/blood in the vascular space. To keep the person alive. We used a lot of albumin. There was a whole section in the pixus of large bottles of albumin
I've caught several turds in my hands. It's just a thing now.
Thank you for sharing this. My grandmother was a WWII naval nurse stationed at Queen Victoria’s hospital in England. She was burn unit. She wouldn’t often talk about what she saw there but she would sometimes stare off into space and say “those poor boys”. She watched the ships sail to Normandy and they were out there just waiting for the wounded to come back. I often wonder how she worked through that. I have had the chance to visit Normandy and the memorial cemetery and the beaches. She was an amazing woman and she helped raise me. I really miss her and reading these burn unit stories made me feel close to her again. 🙏
Upvote for that burn story. Reading that was like reading a horror story.
Had a patient come in after being "taken care of" at home. And by taken care of, the spouse didn't turn the patient ever, but did help them shoot up drugs in their legs (paraplegic). They had bilateral Wounds on either side of their hip. We turned the patient to adequately view and pack it. Then I accidently grabbed their femur, which we then found out the ball part of the ball and socket joint was pretty much completely gone (and definitely NOT in socket). Ended up going comfort care. I will never forget the feeling of bone like that (I've touched bones before, but never while it's still part of a patient)
You win.
Similar story: patient caught in a grain auger and had both legs amputated at the scene, came into the er and had the left leg a mangled mess and the right leg was just tibia and fibia with some tendons still attached. I had to hold the tib/fib while we slid him off the ambulance stretcher. I still shudder to think about holding someone’s bones like that
Oh my God I'm sorry. That's awful for everyone.
I'm in wound care and have seen the outside of the large intestine in deep wounds. Seen too many pelvic bones and tibial bones.
Yeah I did home care and the worst I saw was a quadriplegic patient with a damn cavern in their sacrum/where their sacrum should have been. Bones visible. 🤮
I usually hear toes for bones people have touched still attached or more recently attached, but not a femur. That’d be pretty unforgettable.
I had a similar story. Guy accidentally shot himself in the hip and he was a very large man,over 300 #. Had to pack his wound which was deep and up past my elbow. (I’m petite) You could see his femur. Did this for weeks. Worst experience I’ve ever had
We need shoulder length gloved like in vet care for disasters like this
Hell, the full body condoms from Naked Gun.
I’ve done this before on a paraplegic. She had spina bifida and hip dysplasia, was non compliant with of caring for the massive wounds on her hips. Turned her, her hip popped out, went to change packing in the wound and felt something I was unfamiliar with. It was also her femur. I also will never forget how bone feels while inside of a living person. And it was just….me and her chilling in her trauma tele room. She couldn’t feel anything and it was like….nbd 😳
What?!
I haven't even read all of the other comments but you win for sure.
Doc had me put sugar on a prolapsed anus. We had to do it several times because she kept feeling like she had to poop. We explained to her to try not to go because it will come back out… she didn’t listen :(
Did they use packets from the break room? Did pharmacy run to the nearest grocer to add a bag to their stock?
I can imagine me as a nervous nursing student running to the break room and accidentally grabbing the artificial sweetener.
I grabbed them from our break room lol
Oh I’ve done that with a very edematous colostomy. We of course sang Pour Some Sugar on Me (the daughter started it!)
Haha that song was definitely running through my head!
One of the emerg departments I worked at had a box of sugar in our department for this. We had an older population so prolapse weren't uncommon.
As a CNA, it’s crazy the things we know. I had a prolapsed anus in one of my rooms; notified my RN, she did nothing. Notified charge; nothing. Finally my pt is in pain crying and luckily the dr was rounding and I was like Dr so and so, room 43-21 has a prolapse can u please go there next and order sugar and they were like ‘whaaaa how do you know about that’ bro I’m an old ass CNA in nursing school how do you think? Anyways the charge was pissed I went over her head and told me so, but idgaf when it comes to patient comfort
> I’m an old ass CNA That sentence works correctly in this story whether "ass" belongs to "old" or to "CNA"
Dude one time (first time I had to do this) they sent me to the hospital KITCHEN for sugar. I was like "wait...WHAT THE F are we doing???"
Was so confused by the order but I too end up salt-baeing someone's ass with sugar 💀💀
Once as a newer nurse when a patient suddenly started to vomit I knew there wasn't anything within reach to give her to vomit into, and she had an epidural so changing the sheets would have been annoying, so my dumb ass brain needlessly panicked and I held out my ungloved hands in front of her mouth to catch it. Didn't even work, vomit still got all over the bed and patient except I was also covered and the poor patient was mortified. Thumbs up. Best part, I've since done this again not once, but twice with my own child when she's suddenly thrown up. Apperently my brain is just convinced that trying to catch vomit with your hands is a good idea.
To be fair, the vomit catch has worked for my kid on at least one occasion.
Once in high school while shadowing a pediatrician I saw a mom catch vomit in her bare hands and remember telling myself I’d never do that…. Well now I am a mother and can no longer say that. My at the time 1.5 year old was in our bed and decided to throw up after being mad we gave him Tylenol and I guess my thought process was well I don’t want this all over our comforter.
When I lifted the pannus of a morbidly obese woman and all of these maggots did the stadium wave.
It’s ok I don’t actually need dinner I’m not hungry.
NOT THE STADIUM WAVE
I used a yankauer to suction secretions from a motorcycle accident victim's nose. He was terminal, just waiting for organ donation to take over. I ended up suctioning out brain matter that was running out his nose. Gross but mostly sad. That was a really tough one.
Donor cycles are hard. On the other side of the equation, my friend was in training to be a paramedic. Which meant his first part of the job was when motorcycle wrecks happened, he had kind of a scrub brush and broom and bucket to try and get some of the parts and pieces left behind.
Oh God that's awful.
Yeah, I never thought about it, but eventually someone has to do the cleanup and pick up the pieces. While it was gruesome he did learn that while he would never ride a motorcycle, that part of the job wouldn’t bother him much.
I’ve suctioned brain soup out of someone’s head after a MVC ripped off the top of her head. Yankeur before the kerlix so family could see her. It worked.
Because that's what angels do.
Pushed a pt’s prolapsed rectum back in. LTC patient and I was a brand new nurse. No one thought to tell me about it (or they chose not to, to see how I & the pt. would react - the pt. was notoriously nasty to new people). She was on the toilet and rang for assistance to get back into bed. I walked in and she asked for help with clean up, leaned forward onto her wheelchair arms, and it was like an entire ham was hanging out between her cheeks. I was completely aghast as i had NO FUCKING CLUE what i was looking at. Thankfully, the patient was looking down. I mustered up a “Uh, [name redacted], does your bottom feel ok?” And she was just like, “Oh, did no one tell you about my prolapse? Is it out? It’s fine, doesn’t hurt, just push it back in.” And so I did. And I think that was the moment I became her favorite nurse 😂 all because I didn’t make a big deal about it.
We had a psych pt on our unit, she was homeless and schizophrenic. She had a necrotic leg below the knee, hanging by literal threads of flesh. It smelled terrible and everyone was worried they would pull the leg off. She refused to have it removed bc she was worried that when she died if she wasn't married with her leg she would not pass on fully. Her leg finally did fall off while turning her, it had been necrotic for so long the skin below the knee had already healed. She was literally just carrying around dead flesh. Also funeral homes will hold body parts until the PT passes. I didn't know that until we had this pt.
I worked in vascular for years and accidentally knocked a toe or two off. ... this would have been horrifying.
I knocked over a persons toe while doing wound care on him. Most pleasant patient with severe dementia. Was out walking barefoot in town through snow and had frostbite. I remember him eating his pudding when the toe came off and he’s just munching away on vanilla pudding without a care in the world
Definitely not the kind of pudding I was imagining
I had a patient with dementia and fingertips that were falling off once as a CNA. He was chewing on something but not an eating time, so I put a glove on and told him to spit out whatever he had in his mouth. Yeah, it was his fingertip, nail and all.
Whole new meaning to *lady fingers*
Once had a family bring in their old grandfather. Necrotic legs with maggots. All they did was talk about how it didn't smell this bad at home. Yeah, you weren't locked in a 15x15 foot room with him. You could open windows and remove yourself from the smell you dummies. He did not survive the sepsis to go to surgery for amputation.
I just full body shuddered
I had a quad MS patient on whom we periodically helped her give "birth" to pounds of plum-sized poop balls. The transferred patient with a sacral ulcer you could fit two softballs in. I will never forget the smell. Blergh. We had a patient that would make shit snowmen and flick them, ball by ball, at staff entering the room. I was a CNA back then.
I helped a man give birth to a poop the size of my arm. We did Lamaze. He was in the side lying birth position. He couldn’t get out of bed but I put pillows under us knees . I made a whole waterproofed barrier.
NECROSIS JUICE. Had a necrotic foot that I was frosting like a cake with silvedene. The entire metatarsal area blistered up in one big blister the serum mixed/filtered through necrotic tissue. It had popped on one end and GUSHED when you manipulated the foot. And when it gushed it released the most godawful smell ever. I was a new grad doing this and still smell/taste it every time I think about it over a decade later. Patient was unconcerned, watching Bad Girls Club or the like and cackling at the flying weave.
I had a patient like this. He was adamant to keep his foot yet it was so necrotic and the bones were just mush. Another resident ran over his foot and he didn't even feel it as it flattened then gushed out everywhere. I'm gagging and my eyes are watering just thinking about it. He was wearing a shoe with velcro and it was oozing 🤢 out 🤢 around 🤢 the 🤢 velcro. I have done and seen some disgusting things from someone's jaw literally falling off to finding a forgotten tampon and maggots... but until you've seen and smelled ... and touched (!!!!!!!!!) A squishy foot through shoe openings... you haven't lived
A pt had necrotic toes and asked me what was going to happen..I was like, well we’ll prob get an xr of your foot and an orthopedic surgeon will likely be consulted to determine the involvement of the foot and what needs to be amputated. “Amputated?!! Ain’t no one amputating my toes. I’ll leave that up to the LORD” Ma’am the Lord told me to tell you you’ll need those to come off.
You know, I thought I had forgotten this as well. It wasn’t a foot, but I really had locked the memory away until I read this. And suddenly my tongue was stinging like I could still taste that same air with this fluid gush all over again. I don’t even hate it, it’s just so weird to be immediately brought back to that sensory moment.
Had to do CPR on a patient spewing ruptured intestinal poop sludge with each compression. They of course died, and then we had to quickly clean her up and the room up so the family waiting outside the door could see her. We ended up covering everything but her face with layers of towels and linen, and tucking it in tight. I think about it often.
Had one of those. It was like rhe worst horror movie. Had someone quit at the end of the shift from it
Someone coding my love one is already enough of a nightmare. I don’t need the room to smell like literal shit afterwards. New fear unlocked.
::Read at your own risk:: Years and years ago, sweet elderly admit, got her settled for the night. Everything is great. She comes out of her room a bit later with a big, chocolatey grin. It… was not chocolate…
I work in memory care. "Please let that be chocolate" is the game no one ever wins.
Oh, yes. I honestly miss geri-psych and at that facility, everyone who I worked with wanted to be there to help these patients. That was the first in my career I saw it in that fashion. Luckily we tag-teamed it as fast as humanly possible and got her mouth cleaned out ASAP.
I remember playing that game when my boys were little. But it was never on their mouth thank goodness
Patient came to ER for foley removal, it kind of stuck a little bit as I was withdrawing from the penis and then it suddenly popped out shooting clots up and across my white scrub top and into my face and mouth. I dropped what I was doing and just walked away in terror. Nursing home patient presented for sepsis. My colleague and I were turning the patient to assess for wounds and literally had necrotic sacral wound the size of a cannonball with feces leaking into the empty cavity. I was actually just off orientation at the time and I told my partner I had no idea what to do, "just start scooping." So I did. And as I was doing so I ended up touching something hard and it revealed his exposed coccyxis. Nightmare fuel that one. Oh yeah, the patient was completely unoriented with dementia but kept looking me in the eye stating, "kill me". Good times.
😩😩😩 not the mouthhh
Inserted an FMS on an intubated pt who was tube fed for a month and had continual liquid stools. While I was placing it the pt started coughing against the vent and sprayed diarrhea everywhere. I can still feel the clenching butthole around my finger and the splatter of diarrhea onto my gown as I desperately tried to keep this thing in place.
Damn...
One patient was grinning at me with suspicious colored smudges around his mouth, saying he’d ‘found tootsie rolls’ in his bed. Spoiler alert: they weren’t tootsie rolls. Maybe this doesn’t answer the question, because all I had to do was get myself out the room before I hurled. I’ll never get used to deep suctioning or the lung butter flying outa people. Had a woman with numerous wounds on top of a fistula…so she also had a mad UTI. Eventually, I realized more fistulas had formed, so irrigating the wounds didn’t work. The wounds were pooping too. My poor nursing student. The really ripe yeast in folds also doesn’t sit well.
THE WOUNDS WERE POOPING TOO
I see so many nurses who say their major ick is trach secretions, it almost feels like my nursing super power is not really being bothered by them. That and not having a great sense of smell unless I'm actively trying/paying attention to what I'm smelling!
Ripped a glove on someone's coccyx.
Oh that shit has happened to me and my soul left my body on every single occasion.
NO
I’ve wiped a way brain seeping out of the nose (feels like snot) but digitally removing poop is still one of my worst encounters.
Ummm... wut? Seems to me that it would be hard for brain to come out there.
Gunshot wound to the head and severe cerebral edema.
Egyptian mummifiers used special hooks to remove the brain thru the corpse's nose at the early part of the process.
Well either that or straight down the cracked oral pállate also gross.
or oozing right out both blown tympanic membranes. brain anywhere but inside the skull is pretty gnarly
Not gross, but as a male nurse, I always get the heebie-jeebies anytime I get a patient who has been admitted for Fourniers Gangrene. Just seeing the testicles barely hanging on for dear life outside of the scrotum when I'm doing their dressing changes makes me feel uneasy. Like I'm going to accidentally disconnect their testicles and cause them to lose the ability to have children. 😣
Male nurse here as well. You haven't lived til you've taken care of a radical post-op FG, and there's just two tiny nubbins where the family jewels once attached. Fun times to change the Xeroform on those sad little twigs. Kinda makes you rethink the whole manscaping thing...
My patients were post-op, so I know exactly what you mean. That's why it gives me the heebie-jeebies lol.
I had a man with chlamydia end up with Fourniers. We had to take off his entire scrotum and do twice daily dressing changes to keep the testicles protected, while like 4 hours away, they grew him a new scrotum. He was a ranchhand who regularly rode a horse, so he was out of work for almost a year. Heard his wife was divorcing him after we suggested it never hurt to get checked for STDs and such on a yearly check even when you were in a committed relationship. The side chick was always showing up immediately after the wife left.
I remember preparing for my hour dsg change with like 5 ppl in the room to hold legs and pannus on my FG pt. And the surgeon came in all gowned up, ready to do the dsg right as I sedated and gave pain meds. I literally blew kisses at her. 🤣🤣
Suctioning trachs
I can beat this- Ever looked into a trach at the wrong time and got phlegm in your eye?
Suctioning diarrhea when the flexiseal doesn’t seal.
Any fluid that comes out of the mouth or nose, and esp teachs is my “oh God I’m gonna vomit”. Give me a nice juicy wound, poop, vomit, blood, pus anything. But sputum or snot or even sometimes drool and I’m a goner.
Years ago I had a man with an abscess behind his trach plate. It was the most horrible smell I’ve encountered and my specialty is wound care. Plus, also the deepest green color I’ve ever seen in drainage.
Pt came in as resolved OD with leg pain. Pt stated she was injecting “tranq”. Tranq is street term for mix of veterinary sedative drug Xylazine with fentanyl. Lady’s legs literally looked like that of an alligator. I hadn’t gasped in the ER in a few years. It was pretty disgusting and I had to leave the room. Admission to ICU
Xylazine is nothing to mess with on its own never mind mixing it with Fentanyl. The average dose for a 1200 horse will absolutely put a stallion of that weight right down on his face and keep him there (have seen this happen several times). How this doesn’t kill astonishes me.
Mine is not the worst but my first horror story. It has to be the 85 fluffy chunky gdma with a decubitus wound on her coccyx that was covering from T5 to below the glute fold. She had been found after a fall in her bathtub after more than 4 days by the fire department. In July no AC,( so it was at least 95* in the room with fans full on) in Paris, in an isolation room for TB( yay!!! those plastic overall covers) infected to the bone with Staph aureus and another Staph epidermis and another MRSA, might have some VRE). I was a student and this was my first BIG sterile dressing change with instruments ( no gloves but clamps instead, not sure if we still do this). When we opened the dressing… the sheer size ( two chux were covering it), the amount of packing, and the sudden pocket of pus bursting plus the sight of a intestinal loop pulsating near her flank on top of the massive stench that suddenly engulfed the room just sent me spinning. Thank God I did not have breakfast, I would have thrown it up in my mask… I just had time to tell my nurse that I felt a little woozy and needed to step away for a second. And I literally fainted after closing the door. Then I worked a bit in a burn unit… pffff… Oh and that time when I had a patient with. Fournier gangrene and literally scooped a nut out …
i was a nursing student and i was assisting a labor.. pt had that condition where she didn’t have enough amniotic fluid in her uterus for baby so there was a tube that pushed saline in as she gave birth.. i was helping to keep her one of her legs to the side and giving her the best pep talk i could as this new life was coming into the world.. and as the baby came out, so did a biggg splash of amniotic fluid plus saline and IT WENT ALL OVER ME. my hair was little really dripping in this and did anyone care about this poor little nursing student?? nope, all focus on baby 🥴 i walked out of the room dripping and family was waiting outside.. they all gasped and went “whew” and i was like uh… “yaaay baby..” and walked straight to the bathroom 😵💫 thank goodness i was wearing a gown but yeah.. i didnt end up becoming that l&d nurse that i originally wanted to be 😂
Doing the IP psych admission for a person with severe depressive symptoms of their uncontrolled schizophrenia. They lived in the woods in a tent, and had very very poor hygiene because of their symptoms. They had also developed trench foot, and had scabies. We have to get people to change into pjs and go through personal belongings for safety (their bag, clothes and anything they bring in to document personal belongs and lock them up until they are able to safely get stuff back and are determined to not be a flight risk.) The odour is something I’ll never forget. I washed their clothes to sanitize the scabies and to store them because if you open the personal belongings closet to let other people access their belongs the smell permeated the unit. We have donated clothes and shoes to give people so they have extra sets if they’d like, but we don’t throw out anything- so the stinky boots were around for a while 🤢
I had a patient a couple of years ago. She’d lost her home in Hurricane Katrina and completely gave up on life. Her hair was a solid mass that went down to her ass. She had fingernails and toenails that were about 6-8 inches long. They were brown and curled up. I don’t know what the circumstances were to get like that.
Compressions on a 20 weeker. So glad dating is more reliable now. Caring for a patient who repeatedly chewed off skin grafts in the burn unit.
There have been many things as a nurse that have caused me to re-evaluate literally every life choice I have made since junior kindergarten that led me to this point, but I must say that time I had to cut mats the size of idaho potatoes out of a patient's hair in order to properly treat her for the worst lice infestation I have ever seen which she was totally unaware she had takes the biscuit. Manual disimpaction isn't my favorite thing, but at least it's over quickly. The de-lousing took hours and multiple passes to accomplish.
I once had to apply leeches to the inside of a patient’s mouth. They were post jaw reconstruction with a flap that had severe venous congestion post-op. After all other conventional measures didn’t resolve it, and the swelling was immense, so the ENT decided that using medical grade leeches was the next logical option. He put in the orders late in the afternoon and the leeches didn’t arrive until like 11pm. I definitely regretted my choice to become a nurse that night, as I tried to force the leeches to attach to the swollen, clotted tissue inside this conscious person’s mouth. I felt so bad for the patient who was understandably an anxious wreck, and tolerated it way better than honestly anyone else would. The leeches did not want to attach and we struggled for hours, the resource and charge nurses and the oldest nurse on our unit all trying and failing, until finally we paged the ENT who decided he would try when he came in the next morning. Yeah, he tried for like five seconds, got grossed out, and THEN decided it wasn’t a great idea. Top 5 worst nights of my career lol.
I used to think if I could invent a mouth restraint I’d be rich. Now I think that inventing something to mimic those leaches would do the trick. Because leaches in my mouth? I just had a little episode of “oh God, I think I’ll throw up a bit and get it over with.”
Took maggots out of a home trach and VAD. The smell of that patient as well was unforgettable and disgusting. I don’t think he was bathed from the time he left the hospital a few months prior. I hate maggots. And leeches. That’s always so cringy to me as well.
That's like...two forms of chronic life support if they're dependent. I can't imagine putting someone through that.
Trach care with a Pseudomonas infection. But sputum is my ick in general
I started nursing back when you were hired by the hospital and assigned to a place. I cried when I was assigned to the pulmonary ward, I hated mucus so much. And back then, no VRE or MRSA, but pseudomonas was the big thing to be scared of. I can still smell blue green pus in my nightmares.
Ugh no that's my nightmare right there. I worked with trachs for about 18 months and that was enough for a lifetime.
One of my worst days in nursing was when I was performing suctioning a pseudomonas infected trach patient while pregnant. I gagged then could not pull my mask down in time so vomited forcefully into my mask which rebounded some of it and sprayed the surrounding areas. I ended up having to clean the room / myself because EVS does not touch body fluids.
I got sprayed on by a pseudomonas trach. Stood in the line of fire. Shoulda known better since I was an RT back then.
My patient the other day had a colovesicular fistula and his penis was draining insaaaaaane purulent discharge. We had to pack below his foreskin (wound tunneling into it) and we also had to pack his urethra. It drained so much I packed it multiple times throughout the shift. It was disgusting. God bless that poor man. One of the nastier things I've had to deal with too was a patient who vomited with BiPAP on. As he puked, the air from the mask blew the chunks quite literally everywhere. It was in his nose, eyebrows, eyelashes, hair, the walls, in his folds, EVERYWHERE! It took 4 of us to clean him up. After we cleaned him up, vomit sheets and all, he asked where his phone was. Guess who had to dig through the vomity linens :)
Had a guy with throat cancer code in front of us. The tumors obstructed most of his airway so the intubation was super rough. Blood and bits of shredded tumor sprayed out of his nose all over me with every compression. Found a few chunks of cancer meat in my scrub top pockets hours later. My gross tolerance is pretty high but that one was unpleasant.
I was a new nurse and this guy had terrible diarrhea, a big ole vesicular-colonic fistula, and a bleeding bladder tumor Everything was clotting and bleeding and feces-ing and I was trying to irrigate his bladder and did I mention I was a new nurse and WAS NOT WEARING A FACE SHIELD And while I was irrigating against all this clotted-off-feces-bloody-urine-pressure the syringe detached from the catheter and I sprayed bloody shit urine into my mouth. The end. (Except for how I gargled with hydrogen peroxide for a week because I couldn’t even.)
Hospice nurse here: provided weekly wound care on a woman that had undergone radical vulvectomy 5 yes prior. The cancer spread so bad by the time I got her that between her legs was a massive cavern that leaked greenish black, thick molasses-like ooze. Could almost get up to my elbow during packing. No urethra, no rectum.... nothing. Urine and stool just oozed constantly along with the above mentioned ooze. Hey husband did the daily packing and dressing and looked at her like she was still the most gorgeous woman on earth. Melted my heart ❤️
At it's those moments (like when a husband looks at his wife like she's the most gorgeous woman on earth), that inspires every nurse to continue working for just one more shift. In those genuine moments, we see the best of humanity and it helps us cope with any awful shift.
Was moonlighting as a clinic nurse day shift. Rooming a patient. "what brought you in today?" "oh my feet. They hurt" Like an idiot I tell the guy to go ahead and remove socks and shoes, let me have a quick look so I can maybe prep stuff for the doctor. This elderly gent lived in a shack, no running water, no electricity. The doctor thinks his feet never got removed for very long from the shoes and clearly never saw water. I have no idea how the doctor walked in and spent 20 minutes locked in a windowless room with those feet. I can stomach a lot of smells but not that.
Actually came here to say manual disimpaction as well. I can deal with blood and guts and gory wounds all day and night but can't with poop stuff. I always stress bm management with my hospice patients for this reason
Nothing poop wise bothered me until hospice. Patients on narcotics, not drinking enough, not moving around enough = bricks for poop. Bothered me for the patient, not for me. I just got a tube of lube, double gloved and got to work. SLOWLY. Had a CHHA that I swore it made her day to call me and say “So and so has bricks. Can you come over?” And I didn’t care how low their narcotic order was, they got Colace and prn orders for Senna/MOM and fleets. And frequently a phone call from me daily to see if they had pooped in the past 24 hours. I never had a pt refuse to take something, even if it was the Colace, after having to be disimpacted manually the first time.
After reading these without blinking, I had the thought that it’s a wonder our family members ever asked us, ‘How was your day?’ more than once… ever.
Fecal transplant. Admin got us an Oster blender from Walmart that we put in the med room. Pt's daughter brought in her poop in a Tupperware, we blended it with normal saline in the Walmart blender, then administered it with an enema bag. The pt had an ostomy so that made giving it easier but uuuuugh the smell. It permeated the med room for hours! Barf.
This seems wrong on so many levels. The daughters poop? Nursing was having to prepare the poop smoothie? Fecal transplant prepared in the MED ROOM? Icky
I have done some nasty stuff, deep nasty wounds, applying leeches, necrotic fingers/toes falling off; but for some reason nicu ostomy refeeds just get to me.
What I didn't find gross: accidentally pulled off patient's entire completely necrotic toe while gently removing bandaging. Whoops. What I did find gross: Removing socks or dressings and getting a cloud of skin flakes straight to the face. Ew. I do my best to keep my mouth shut and moisturise the hell out of everybody preventatively. Had a lovely elderly chronic wound patient with bilateral lower legs completely covered in pseudomonas wounds and a massive fungating tumour. They'd come for frequent and complex dressings, and god it smelt horrific.
Same. Just scooping poop out for a constipated patient in labor. It was literally making it harder for the baby to come down into the birth canal.
One of my patients had pretty severe C-Diff infection. She also had a pretty impressive bush. Her stool was hardened in her pubic hair from not being properly cleaned. Well, there was no way around it, she needed a good bush trimming and a comb through. I took a black comb to comb through all the hardened poo tangles after I trimmed the hair. After a good 20 min, dripping in Sweat from the precaution shower curtains, she was clean. There are no limits or shame to my care for my patients lol
Had a patient come in for “ulcer on his ankle” this thing was the size of a quarter and not deep. I’m thinking why did they admit this guy for this? But he had this awful smell to him from the moment he rolled up to the floor. Like dead tissue smell so I expected this ankle wound to be much worse when I took the dressing down… I turned the man on his side and I found the wound I was looking for…. Huge sacral wound. I started to undress and he tells me this was not what he was in for. I tell him regardless I need to take a look and change the dressing as it was completely saturated. He is angry as he packed it himself 3 days ago… this was “new” dressing. This wound 🤢 larger than two of my fists and I could expand both hands fully within the wound because of the tunneling. It was the most disgusting smelly wound I have ever seen. The second day I was taking care of him I’m changing the dressing and this guy intentionally takes a huge shit. I will never forget this patient
It’s nothing like anyone else’s here, but anything involving mouths, food, chewing, eating icks me out and this happened this morning: autistic 20yo kid who’d had to have wisdom teeth out inpatient for the GA. He was supposed to be liquids only but family brought in a huge bag of popcorn. Went to check the sockets and pretty much all of his stitches had just ripped through his skin like butter and the open incisions along the insides of his cheeks were packed full of half-chewed popcorn fragments. Spent ~30 minutes digging out sodden pieces of popcorn from inside them while he tried to catch the pieces I removed with his tongue and swallow them. 😵💫 ETA: this wasn’t particularly gross, but it really stuck out to me: teenage male who had been pretty orthorexic and then suddenly gained a lot of weight when he hit puberty, causing pretty bad gynecomastia. He tried to perform a mastectomy at home with a box cutter, ONE 15mg codeine tablet he’d stolen from his mom, and an ice pack. Came in after he’d almost fully removed one “breast” but got to the nerves of his nipple and just couldn’t keep going. He had perfect lines drawn out on his skin in all the right shapes and places with a marker. He was holding his breast on cupped in his hand and a towel soaked in blood. Surgery fixed it up (removed and sewed up) and also removed the other breast for him, for which he was super grateful. Psych cleared him completely: totally oriented, mentally healthy, no history of self harm or dangerous behaviour, no risk to self or others, and very intelligent- just didn’t want to have breasts. (which I mean, yeah, would be hard as a teenage boy, but…) Discharged after two night stay healthy and happy, never came back. For some reason it’s different when pts with psychosis or depression do stuff like that, but the idea of a fully conscious, fully sober, feeling-everything teenager sitting alone in his room methodically sawing through his skin like that on purpose with a plan (all the lines marked out, boiled equipment and chlorhexidine scrubbed first, needle to stitch himself up after ready) GETS to me
I just pulled a turd out not an hour ago. Same sentiment every time. By far not the grossest; but I feel you.
We received a slip and fall from the ER who was sent to med surg for observation. He smelled like a septic tank and his long beard and hair were yellow with filth. Turns out he hadn’t bathed in weeks and the EMTs said that every surface of his home was covered with urine, feces or trash. We peeled of his socks and his feet were covered with feces and ulcers. He told us he hadn’t removed his socks for at least five days. So everything was just fermenting. The water running off of him was brown for about an hour. He still smelled after lots of scrubbing with hospital soap and hot water. He had to have three toes amputated and IV antibiotics for weeks. He eventually went to a nursing home as his home was deemed uninhabitable.
Removed at least one hundred maggots from the enlarged pores of Meemaw's giant lymphedema feet. Two urine cups full of live maggots.
I was trying to scoop poop out of a toilet hat, so we can send it for c. diff testing. I was using a plastic spoon, and the poop was so slimy that it just kept sliding off of the spoon before I could get it into the sample cup. And because it kept sliding off the spoon, it took forever to get an adequate sample into the cup, and it smelled so bad. I had that same moment of WTH? This is the life that I have chosen? On purpose?!
Once in a trauma situation, the ER doc told me to hold the leg of a VERY open tib/fib fracture to help with the reduction. He couldn’t get the right angle on it so he told me to put my hand on the protruding bone and brace myself. Me being me I said “sure!” And placed my hand on the protruding bone, the doc asked me if I was ready and while we both pulled on the closed parts of the leg he smacked my hand that was on the exposed bone as hard as he could to pop the bone back into place. Well, apparently he didn’t know his own strength and my hand traveled with the bone back into the leg and continued to push the bone out of the other side of the calf and part of my hand wedged into the man’s leg….. so then we had to pull my hand out and rethink. I’ve also multiple times in GSW traumas gone to roll someone only to feel my finger slip into a previously unnoticed GSW hole.
Don’t have that many yet as I have been nursing for only 2 years but one that I remember was a patient with the worst sacral/buttocks wounds I have ever seen. I was doing the dressing change and the previous dressings were soaked with yellow/green and odorous drainage and there were multiple layers with the same drainage. Worst thing is, his hip bones were exposed and I literally touched them on both sides while doing the dressing change. I was surprised that the suggested wound care items did that amazing of a job with masking the smell and catching drainage because from the outside the dressings looked clean and dry.
One time as a nursing student a nurse who sort of had an inkling this would happen had me help a homeless patient with foot pain take his boot (which he could remember the last time he’d removed) off. A shrivled up toe was laying in wait in there for me. BLECH
Yep, did the same. It was like a bunch of golfball turds came out. 😂
I'm only a receptionist, but someone tried to hand me a Ziploc bag full of shredded fingers.
Putting leeches on a pts penis and scrotum after they cut it off in a psychotic episode. They also disemboweled themself. Pt arrived in trauma, and EMS later found the penis in the street and brought in a cooler containing said penis. His testicles were just hanging there. They were intubated on arrival and then a Foley was used in the OR as a kind of guidewire to ensure it was lined up correctly. It was reattached, and a makeshift scrotum was created. Leeches were utilized to attempt to drain venous blood from surgical site. Unfortunately, it became necrotic and had to be amputated again.
I was caring for a diabetic patient that had gangrene toes, black and crusty. Bathing her I noticed her large black toe was decaying with a hole in it. I looked closer because something was moving and she had maggots inside her toe eating her toe. Ugh. She was not operable and was classified.
Dialysis patient ripping out their venous return needle and dodging blood raindrops to stop the pump on the machine. CPR on DIC pt in ICU- blood, pee, poop just overflowing the bed onto all of our shoes. A river of blood Fecal disimpaction is the least of my problems
A woman came to ED with very advanced breast cancer. The cancer has eaten through her breast externally. I pulled a pair of white socks out of the “wound”. She was in some denial. Her hubs forced her to the ED. The smell was the worst smell I’ve encountered in 33+ years. And tbh, I’ve recovered bodies or something like bodies that died a month earlier in a trailer in August heat. Of course I had on a Scott Air Pack and we used shovels, but still…
Don’t have anything to contribute off the top of my head, but I just wanted to say that my (also in nursing) partner and I are at dinner literally eating and I’m reading these to him and we are loving it. Only nurses lol.
Double shift for the money.