OK c'mon fess up everyone. There is ONE absolute most worst nursing proceedure that everyone can't stand to do, but you have to when the time arises...what turns your stomach and ties it in a knot for hours after and makes you dred doing it it hours before?????
For me, it's trach care! Uuuuuuugggggggghhhhhhhhh!
I dred doing it. I love when I come on duty and the traches are all nice and clean, but it seems they never stay that way for long. After awhile they become all gooey and bubbly and crusty and then I have to come along and clean this stuff. My God! It's times like this I wonder why I couldn't wait to be a nurse! I mean what was I thinking??? And it's times like this I'd rather be cleaning my cats litter box! The most disgusting part of it all is when I'm almost finished and Joe patient gives a good cough and out flies a loogie and lands on the freshly made bed linen...I can't stand it!!!Why people find this stuff fasinating I'll NEVER know. I'd rather be doing a code brown in all honesty.
So what makes you want to launch your lunch? Don't be shy, tell us why!
Once when I was working in ER, we admitted a MVA. This fellow had flipped his motorcycle off the road and onto a camper. We were a working and working on him. He needed a little suctioning, so I started a little nasal suction and one of the other nurses starting crying, "Oh yuk, yuk, look. I looked and I was suctioning brain tissue out of his nose. That is the grossest thing that I ever saw. Needless to say, the guy didn't make it.
There isn't much I can't handle. I rank mucous and ileostomies at the top of unpleasant. But .... ED nurse that I am.... the only thing that wobbles my gastic intactness....is crepitus. BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR..gives me the WILLIES!!!!
I'm just a wee lil student, so I haven't had the gross out privileges that some of you have had. I don't mind trachs, I haven't had any up close and personal experiences with ostomies (oh, but I am looking forward...) The only thing that has turned my stomach and caused me to have dry heaves so far is the smell of this little elderly woman's urine. I swear, that smell followed me all day long. The very MEMORY of it makes me sick right now.....:stone ICK!!!!
Anyhow, I salute you, the Allnurses Queens and Kings of Grossout!!
Get out your barf-bags and I'll try to finish this story.
.....the smell
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I'm sorry, my son just came in and is bugging me to take him to the store. We've been snowed in for the last three days and I guess it's time to slide down this mountain for a supply run.
I will return.....C.
Grab those barf-bags and prepare to heave.....
I braced myself and entered the room, determined to ignore my screaming olfactory neurons. I closed off my nose and was breathing through my mouth, thinking, "this might help," when I began to notice a most unpleasant taste developing in my mouth, like rotting fruit or spoiled chicken.
It was time to assess my patient. Thinking she was asleep, I leaned over, touched her gently, and called her name. She exploded into a gutt-wrenching cough which expelled pea-sized chunks of liver-colored lobules at lightning speed and one of those loogies landed on my neck. And just for a second.....I froze. Before I could reach up and knock it off, it dropped down somewhere.....between "Thelma and Louise". You catch my drift?
By then I was breathing hard, the unforgetable stench of decomposing flesh and gangrenous gas produced by Clostridium perfringens. This has to be the foulest smelling organism in the universe, and can also be fatal for the host in as little as 30 hours.
But now was not the time to back down. I refused to dwell on the location of that foul-fated loogy. This patient was critically ill and needed help yesterday. So now we're back to the assessment.
Hold on to your barf-buckets, the best is yet to come.
I could feel something.....a bubbling, crackling movement, just under the skin.....
And then I heard a rustling sound....something sinister was lurking below.
I am going into my first semester of nursing clinicals and I was feeling really excited about getting to do some hands-on work with patients. Now, all these posts have gotten me questioning my sanity of even going into nursing. Now, I am not one to deal with gross things very well. I have a bad gag reflex, although I have gotten better about that since having 2 kids. I am just wondering how you nurses go on to eat lunch after dealing with one of these nasty situations. I am thinking that I am going to be getting pretty skinny after seeing all these situations. Also, what do you do id a patient gets your uniform all dirty..do you keep a spare with you or what, and also who washes the contaminated uniform? Thanks so much fo answering my questions:kiss
I'm only a student doing my pre req's, so this may sound like a stupid question, but what was it that was making the rustling noise? ( I have to know or I'll never quit thinking about it!):imbar So, please put me out of my misery~~lol~~
Can't think of what my most disgusting procedure would be.
Can tell you what the nastiest thing in the world is though....someone who smells like stale urine.
Never had to perform lady partsl exams but the earlier post would probably be super nasty. I always wondered what the gyn. and nurses thought about some of the trash monsters who show up at the the gynecologist's office or probably even worse.......the health dept.
I am going into my first semester of nursing clinicals and I was feeling really excited about getting to do some hands-on work with patients. Now, all these posts have gotten me questioning my sanity of even going into nursing. Now, I am not one to deal with gross things very well. I have a bad gag reflex, although I have gotten better about that since having 2 kids. I am just wondering how you nurses go on to eat lunch after dealing with one of these nasty situations. I am thinking that I am going to be getting pretty skinny after seeing all these situations. Also, what do you do id a patient gets your uniform all dirty..do you keep a spare with you or what, and also who washes the contaminated uniform? Thanks so much fo answering my questions:kiss
but what was it that was making the rustling noise? ( I have to know or I'll never quit thinking about it!):imbar So, please put me out of my misery~~lol~~
RNanne
70 Posts
Once when I was working in ER, we admitted a MVA. This fellow had flipped his motorcycle off the road and onto a camper. We were a working and working on him. He needed a little suctioning, so I started a little nasal suction and one of the other nurses starting crying, "Oh yuk, yuk, look. I looked and I was suctioning brain tissue out of his nose. That is the grossest thing that I ever saw. Needless to say, the guy didn't make it.