What Freaks You Out?

Jenni811, RN · Aug 28, 2011

poop!!! I hate poop. as a med/surg nurse i have to deal with it everyday, and i keep waiting for it to get more tolerable. But i hate wiping peoples butts. Call me nurse cratchet, but i encourage patients to do it themselves if they can. Because 1) i hate doing it and 2)What do they do at home? If they can wipe their butt at home there is no reason they cannot wipe their own butt unless they are a bilateral arm amputee.

When i get patients who goal for the day is to poop, i think to myself "well you can count on it happening on the next shift because no way am i sticking my fingers up your butt to make you poop" i'll give you laxatives, i'll give you whatever you need to poop and feel comfortable, but i'm NOT going there or resorting to that. Call me evil, but ew.

Jenni811, RN · Aug 28, 2011

Oh, and to add, i get really grossed out by ileostomy. They are smellier, runnier and messier than colostomy. Sick! Luckily we don't get many of them, and if we do it is because they have had it for a while and deal with it themselves.

Do-over, ASN, RN · Aug 28, 2011

When the "smell of death" lingers in a room - especially when they are admitting a new patient there.

Am I weird (don't answer that) or do other people smell it?

kalevra, BSN, RN · Aug 28, 2011

This post having exactly 666 replies when I posted this.

Raven Sierra, BSN, RN · Aug 28, 2011

Lumbar punctures. *shudder I just can't deal with them. You can poop, puke, bleed or whatever...no worries; I'm not saying I enjoy it, but it's okay. But LPs (or epidurals/spinals)...ugh. It's the long needle and the "pop" and I can totally "feel" what the patient feels because I've had 3 (1 LP, 1 spinal, 1 epidural). The LP is worst.

Otherwise, I am not a huge fan of trach goo, especially those big lugies that get stuck in the Yankauer. Eww. I also was the lucky recipient of a nice splash of GI bleed from a NG tube that pulled out...it was in my hair and all over my scrubs. That was gross.

But LPs are the worst for me.

I worked with an ex-military nurse who would lose it when dislocated joints were repositioned; he also hated anything to do with finger/toe nails. Another one of our nurses (also ex-military) couldn't stand eye injuries; they gave him the creeps. They were awesome ED nurses, but I remember they told me, "Everyone has their 'thing' - the thing they can't stand." When I said I didn't, they said, "You just haven't found it yet. Just wait." And LPs are my thing.

Raven Sierra, BSN, RN · Aug 28, 2011

Fun and Games at Work
Nothing freaks me out but, I did make a female co-worker nearly vomit once.
I showed her what she thought was a swab culture from a particularly well known and much discussed wound, which I promptly ate in front of her. "Umm, tastes like chicken", I said. It was peanut butter!
Two years later she married me!

My husband did something similar to his coworkers. Big specimen cup of darkish "urine" on the counter...DH walks by and says, "Whose is this? It's not labeled." No one knows what patient it belongs to, of course. DH takes a big swig, tastes it like it's a fine wine, and says, "Well, sodium's a little high." Everyone is staring at him, open-mouthed..... :jester:

It was apple juice.

tcvnurse, BSN, RN · Aug 31, 2011

Thing that most grosses me out is sputum, hands down. I do TCV surgery, so TCDB and IS is a HUGE deal. Which makes people cough up such lovely nasty stuff that they save to SHOW ME. *weeps*

I would gladly trade a trach patient for a fresh ostomy any day of the week.

FazzDazzle · Sep 2, 2011

I'm still a nursing student but have been very good about poop, urine, blood, pus, etc. My story is one of an PCT I helped one day.... I walked in the room to find liquid poo all over the floor, the side of the garbage and on the pct's shoes. I guess she spilled the hat that was in the commode. I offered to help her clean it up since i wasn't busy. I almost accepted what she said until she ran into the pt's bathroom and starting gagging and dry heaving into the sink. She still didn't want my help and of course I didn't listen at that point. :)

mitral · Oct 1, 2012

This is just too good to lose track of

registerednutrn, BSN, RN · Oct 1, 2012

Oh I have gotten grossed out and laughed reading this. I have a problem with luggies but manage ok but when I told a 13 yo we needed a stool sample and she came out and said there is something wrong with my poo and I went and look and it was full of little squirmies it was all I could do not to barf right then and there. Called the doc and told her she might want to add an O&P to the lads. Gross!!!!!!!!

Nepenthe Sea · Oct 5, 2012

Okay, I have been a nurse for just over a year, and spent a year as a tech in SICU/MICU. I have seen some pretty disturbing stuff in that short time (Lots of trauma), but nothing has gotten to me yet. EXCEPT this one thing. I have had this patient that is a middle-aged man with CP. He is a total care patient, lives in a nursing home. The one time he was my patient he had to have a condom cath because he had massive excoriation on both buttocks and upper thighs, and the doctors said that he got too many frequent UTIs to use indwelling caths. Well, the same guy came back to our hospital a few months later, and although he wasn't my patient, I helped clean him several times, and I could not believe what I was seeing. He now has a foley catheter in place, and nobody seems to know how this happened, but the glans and part of the shaft of his member has split open. It is very freaky-looking, for lack of a better term. When the nurses were cleaning around the catheter, I would have to turn my head because it made me feel sick. If you can't visualize what I'm describing, try googling 'subincision' and you will see what I mean, except that the pictures on google will be intentional body modifications and they will look "healed". This one is "fresh", and you can see what the inside of the member looks like. I don't know why it creeps me out so bad, but it seriously does. Like, I think I would have a hard time performing cath care for the guy if he was my patient again.

Kyrshamarks, BSN, RN · Oct 6, 2012

midgets dressed as clowns. that really freaks me out