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| No. 20 | 
Mar 15, 2001, 08:06 PM
Oh my, nursejanedough, popping out the glass eyeball- now that is sick!
 | | Advertisement Sponsored Links | | | | No. 21 |
Mar 15, 2001, 08:15 PM
Well I'm a steel stomached ER nurse and the thing I've done that most grossed me out was when I was looking after a woman who fell ot of a window through a pointy tree and into a garden. She partially scalped herself and I had to peel back the scalp and pick the leaves, dirt and flowers off her skull while she waited to go to theatre. The weirdest thing was taht she was awake and none of thsi was causing her any pain, kinda hard to make small talk was difficult!
| | No. 22 |
Mar 15, 2001, 08:20 PM
Bring on the snot, bring on the gross wounds, I can take it. I can handle blood, seen liver clots from upper and lower GI tract - no problem. BUT, don't even TELL me about your period, and PLEASE don't make me help with any kind of vaginal bleeders. I can do the childbirth thing, I'm talking after the birth, or before the baby, or whenever any woman, no matter the age, hemmorhages from there. I cannot handle it! I get weak in the knees, in the small of my back, and I get a weird sensation in my Achilles tendons, like I am going to go out!
Another thing that grosses me out is colostomies. My aunt has a new ostomy, and she was talking about how she had lost all her modesty in the hospital. Well, she certainly had, as she proceeded to lift up her robe, at home, and emptying the colostomy as I was washing my hands in her BR. Gosh I want to be there for this woman, but the one thing I have such a hard time with, and I can NEVER get them to stay on without leaking, in 20 years as a nurse! When she started doing that in front of me, I thought I would never eat again, and thought surely I may have to think about taking my own life if I ever had to have one myself. Maybe it was just too close to home too.
| | No. 23 |
Mar 15, 2001, 09:31 PM
The thing that really gets to me is mucus.I had a patient bring me a lugie in a ziplock sandwich bag one day and I almost lost it!I do night/weekend call for my MD's and this patient had called with upper respiratory symptoms.I asked the usual questions and I guess she thought having a productive cough was pretty serious.When she presented for her appt.she presented me with the lugie! It was very hard for me to react in a professional manner.Once the wave of nausea passed, I calmly asked her to put the sandwich bag back in her purse and make sure she let the MD see it!Then I found a quiet place and laughed and laughed!
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| | No. 24 |
Mar 15, 2001, 10:12 PM
Oh my goodness you guys are all HILARIOUS! Chicken feathers?!?!? And TIM, you're so funny!  I laughed a lot reading these ones...
I can talk about anything, and it doesn't bother. And although some things gross me right out, it's not like it would make me loose my appetite. But I have to agree with some of you..."crotch rot" is something that really bothers me. Sometimes people let it get so bad that you can smell it down the hall. And old people's pee? Never have I smelled anything so strong!  eek! (I work on a Long Term Care Unit as well)
But I had to save the best one for last. We have this small lady on our floor. Another NA and myself were doing last rounds and we could smell something in her room (we knew that she had been picking and fecal smearing the past few nights). So we went in to see how bad it was and we walked in and saw....that her lips were brown! She had eaten her poop and then gone back to sleep! We washed out her mouth and brushed her teeth and rinsed out her mouth, and it was still coming. I asked her..."Do you have a yucky taste in your mouth?" "Yes," she says...no doubt! 
Amanda 
And although I have never seen a trach, I have heard how gross they are.
| | No. 25 |
Mar 15, 2001, 10:14 PM
Originally posted by moonchild20002000:
The thing that really gets to me is mucus.I had a patient bring me a lugie in a ziplock sandwich bag one day and I almost lost it!I do night/weekend call for my MD's and this patient had called with upper respiratory symptoms.I asked the usual questions and I guess she thought having a productive cough was pretty serious.When she presented for her appt.she presented me with the lugie! It was very hard for me to react in a professional manner.Once the wave of nausea passed, I calmly asked her to put the sandwich bag back in her purse and make sure she let the MD see it!Then I found a quiet place and laughed and laughed!
I am currently an NA soon to be RN and I must say the most horrific smell is the GI bleed. Infected stage IV pressure ulcers come in a close second. Peeeewwww!!! | | No. 26 |
Mar 15, 2001, 10:33 PM
We had a resident in our facility that had extensive surgery to her face, removing her eye, most of the roof of her mouth on one side and part of her nose, due to cancer. We had to clean her oral cavity twice a shift. I absolutely could not do this no matter how hard I tried. We had to take dressings down through her eye socket and clean all the mucous and food from her eye, mouth, and nose as is was open and allowed everything to mix. And to make it all even worse, she could watch you with her other eye. Even after 20 years experience with many kinds of situations I could not do this. Thank goodness my Supervisor was a gem and found someone else to do it that didn't hurl at the thought. I get the weemies just thinking about it!!!!
| | No. 27 |
Mar 15, 2001, 10:50 PM
Pancreatic drainage. That foul smelling milky-white drainage. Yuck Originally posted by kday: Okay, people. It's time for a nice, fun, light-hearted discussion to blow off some steam.
WHAT FREAKS YOU OUT? What bodily fluid can't you STAND? What wound gives you the absolute WILLIES? It doesn't matter if you're an ADN, BSN, LPN, CNA, PQRST, ABCDEFG...every body gets the heebie jeebies over SOMETHING...even you stomach-of-steel ER nurses!
Mine is eyeball injuries/surgery...aaaaaaaaaackkkkkkk!! Gross! Makes my skin absolutely CRAWL. Or when someone gets a little cut on their finger/toe/whatever and then squeezes it to make it bleed!! Bleah!! Then there's the ever-popular RESPIRATORY SECRETIONS. I can handle poop, pee, amniotic fluid, lanced boils, pus, whatever...but give me a nasty snot-filled trach, and I'm OUTTA THERE.
Share, share, share people! | | No. 28 |
Mar 15, 2001, 10:55 PM
Oddly, i enjoy suctioning trachs. The thing that grosses me out is having to put a foley in an obese female who hasn't seen a shower in a few days the odor just makes me gag. THE grossest thing I have ever encounterd end up not being soo bad, i floated to another floor to be at the desk and there was a agency LPN who was working that day and got a GI bleed as an admission, coming from snf she was in waaaaaaaaay over her head with this patient as she was crashing real fast, her hg went from 10 to 6 in an hour! Anyway i told the nurse i would take this patient and get her as stable as we could and get her to the unit, she was thankful and said she would get her off the bed pan, she comes running out to me and said in a real quit voice "I think her intestine came out her rectum" I bolted into the room expecting the worst and took a quick look and thought Damn, thats gross, upon closer review, and after catching my breath, I noticed that it was a tie from her gown that was in the bedpan and was bloodied, but it was still gross.
| | No. 29 |
Mar 15, 2001, 11:07 PM
Without a doubt, roppy sputum from a trach!! I can handle any amount of blood, drainage, and wounds..........but I have trouble not heaving when I encouter a trach with thick and roppy sputum that doesn't want to budge. I will never get used to it!
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