Interesting or Different Anatomy:What have you encountered?

Nurses General Nursing

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We recently had an adult patient that was born with one ventricle. He had surgery to correct this as a baby, but I found it very interesting. If I was a pediatric cardiology nurse I may see this more often, but not in ophthalmology.

I also "have a friend" who has a dual chamber, unihorn uterus. Many jokes during pregnancy of being like a cow (the chambers).

I was just curious what you have seen while out and about in our wonderful world that is Nursing. Please share.

Specializes in PDN; Burn; Phone triage.
interesting about bactrim...what is TEN? I saw a medical show where a girl survived SJS after taking OTC cold medicine...

TEN is basically a more severe version of SJS, although I believe there is some dispute about that. :) Our docs classify anything as TEN if the patient has more than 30% skin involvement and/or mucosal involvement of more than two systems. Motrin guy was 99% TBSA skin sloughing. His eyes sloughed/inflammed to the point where they were sewn shut at one point. All the skin from his mouth sloughed. Finally the lining in his lungs went as well.

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Specializes in ER.

Had a patient the other day that had no inferior vena cava... all the collaterals took over.

Someone with a Left Ventricular Assistive Device frequents our ER. Always fun to pull out the stethy for that assessment.

Not as exciting, but I have an uncle with a horseshoe kidney, a brother with a bipartate patella... meaning it's two bones instead of one, nephew born with a fused skull (had the surgery to make manual fissures). Friend's son has no femur on one side... they amputated the foot off his shortened leg so he could better use a prosthetic and lead a more normal, active life.

I shined my penlight in someone's fake eye once and it tripped me out for a second until he was like "that one's fake". Made me feel relieved and stupid at the same time.

Cool stories, bros!

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I don't have a xiphoid process and my L7 transverse process is about 2.5x normal size, which causes pain the opposite side! We're all a little different as a kind doctor told me.

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Specializes in NICU, Peds, Med-Surg.

Wow, interesting thread! I've not seen anything unusual ....

Appropriate staffing...

OMG....THANK YOU for that laugh!!!!!:roflmao:

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As a nicu/peds cicu nurse I could go on and on with this one, things that make me wonder how any person is every born "normal". The ones that stand out: conjoined twins with two very different and very rare heart defects, a baby with an anencephlocele in the face (traditionally in the back of the head) with the brain protruding from the mouth/nose which was split on either side of the face (had some inventive ETT taping with that one, didn't want to tape it to the brain!), a middle aged woman with hypoplastic right ventricle (not rare for me in the cicu) BUT being born some 50-odd years ago had been sent home to die and never received corrective surgery, the fact that her body managed to find it's own way to sustain itself it pretty amazing.

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Specializes in NICU, Peds, Med-Surg.

NRS Karen....WHOA! Thanks for posting those (I only watched the second one

P.S....Am I the only one who wondered WHAT that instrument was on the "OB/GYN" part....the one that looked very 1800's with what looked like little SPIKES on it? :no:

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Can not remember correct name. Every organ was a mirror image. Heart on right side. Liver on left.... two women with urinary meatus inside lady parts. Young women. I worked geriatics once pulled ba ck the sheet thought I saw crowning. ????? 80 something women. Her uterus prolapsed.

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YES! Please!

Not all that unusual but had a gentleman with hypospadia; his urethral opening was on the underside of his member about an inch or 2 below the tip. He had a foley but we had a policy of d/c'ing catheters before sending patients to a SNF. He also had a little blind indentation at the tip. We got a call from the SNF that he went to asking how we had catheterized him. Yep-they were poking at the little blind "eye" at the tip-poor man! Shows you need to include those little details in your discharge notes!
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Specializes in NICU, Peds, Med-Surg.

miasmom.....when I was a brand new nurse, I was floated to post-partum/GYN floor. When the offgoing nurse mentioned an elderly woman's uterus "falling

out all the time, and we just shove it back in", I thought for SURE she was testing my gullability!!! :yes:

I was soo thankful it didn't happen while I was her nurse, and to this day, I have never seen one, even though I floated to GYN many, many times and have since worked with MANY elderly women. We have a resident whose rectum is also known to prolapse; but I haven't seen that, either.

I felt stupid that I didn't know about this back when I was brand new; because I figured SURELY** we went over this in school!?!?! I assumed I either didn't read that part in the book, or maybe we actually did NOT learn about this in school.....can't remember now!?

**and don't call me Surely :roflmao:

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Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.
Can not remember correct name. Every organ was a mirror image. Heart on right side. Liver on left.... two women with urinary meatus inside lady parts. Young women. I worked geriatics once pulled back the sheet thought I saw crowning. ????? 80 something women. Her uterus prolapsed.

I talked about this earlier in the post....Dextrocardia....Dextrocardia situs inversus

**and don't call me Surely :roflmao:
LOVE that movie.....We have clearance, Clarence......rodger, Roger.....what's your vector, Victor
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You don't see old ladies with uterine prolapse as much as we used to because since health insurance for dependents became more accessible in the 60s and 70s, more women had regular GYN care, and they got their prolapses repaired surgically. Some of us oldsters remember pessaries (which are not those cute little South American rodents) of near-infinite design and origin as SUITs (something up in there). Potatoes, even. Sometimes they sprouted. Ah, the good old days.

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Specializes in LTC,Hospice/palliative care,acute care.

I've seen dual uterus both in a patient and a family member. I cared for a woman with a really enlarged privy parts (really,abnormally large) It did make it very easy to place the foley...In LTC in our older gals we often find the urinary meatus in unexpected places.If they can follow directions it helps to ask them to cough after you swipe the area with a povidine swab.It will wink at you.

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