What Is Your Most Gross, Yucky, Disgusting Nursing Horror Story?

[yazisizit]

I was working a night shift on a tele floor as a new Nurse.

We had this one poor old lady who was confused and was restrained as usual for her safety. She was our designated resident nightmare geri from hell, so she was placed near the Nurse's station.

So we are chilling out at the Nurse's station, chatting and trying to get through another night...

Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I see our lady in question standing in the dimly lit doorway of her room!

I instantly leap out and run to her. As I approach her, she appears to be falling towards me, so I meet her in a bear hug...my arms around her waste, and her arms around my shoulders.

As I catch the lady, I notice a very strong smell of feces, and I feel something warm on my hands, arms and shoulders...

My fellow heroes come in behind me, and as the lights are turned on, my worst fears are instantly realized.

Yes, I caught the poor old lady with a good old bear hung football catch, but I was also covered in the lady's feces.

As I look at her, she has feces smeared all over her arms and hands... (and even her face!)

And of course, now so did I!

[thegreenmile]

Sorry guys, these stories cant hold a candle to the $&*+ I see on the inpatient psych ward, some I cant bear to repeat. But this, while working outpt program is probably the funniest now that I look back on it.

ACT (Assertive Community Treatment) Program patient, goes to local pharmacy, across the street from my office building, carrying a brown paper bag with some reddish brown substance shadowing through, she approaches the counter, tells the pharmacist, "I need to make a deposit", confused and bewildered, he replies "this is the pharmacy, the bank is next door". She seriously states "No, you dont understand, the Lithium secreted in my menstral cycle needs to be deposited so I can get a refill".

[BigBee48]

I worked at a SNF, a long time ago, before we even had units for alzheimers. We had the half doors, where you

can shut and lock the bottom half, so they could look out and see what was going on. We delivered her food tray, when I went to pick it up, it had several big tirds on it. She did this often, and when we tried to bath her, it was always on her hands, and under her nails. She also ate it many times. And then yrs later when I worked in an alzheimers unit, we had a gentleman who had a penile implant. We were always finding other women in his bed. One time a women, who was in his bed, her husband came to visit, and found her in his bed,oops. Actually we had this happen several times:yeah:He was a very nice man, not even a prevert when we showered him. Go figure. I'm also remembering working in the SNF, many yrs ago, we had young people, the were MR (at that time they were not dx very good) they would always put their hand up to the wrist in their mouth and suck on it, so needless to say the smell and slimmyness of their hand was almost more than I could bare, we used a type of hand restraint (but they managed to get it to their mouth anyway). I became an ICU nurse, and worked in LTAC, so suctioning trachs, mouths and so on is not a problem, but the hand thing was unreal:down: Any way I have forgotten more stories than I can remember.

[talaxandra]

What's worse? His family had him on treatments and full code. If he got sick, we had to give him antibiotics... They never got to say goodbye to this poor man because they were always hoping he'd snap out of it, and now they have to suffer with losing him on a holiday. How sad.

I think that's one of the worst horror stories on this thread

[morte, LPN, LVN]

I think that's one of the worst horror stories on this thread

frankly, i think they got what they deserved.....

[talaxandra]

Oh, I wasn't thinking of the idiot family - I was thinking of the poor, tortured patient kept alive for over 30 years because his family thought he'd "snap out of" Alzheimer's.

[Hygiene Queen]

Oh, I wasn't thinking of the idiot family - I was thinking of the poor, tortured patient kept alive for over 30 years because his family thought he'd "snap out of" Alzheimer's.

... and that ticks me off to no end.

Gosh darnit, you'd think people would say to themselves, "Hmmmmm... Dad's got Alzheimer's. I guess I better learn something about that... gee! Look what I found out! It says here it's a degenerative disease that WILL NEVER BE CURED!!!! Gosh..."

But do they do this? Nope. Just keep up the denial.

And the patient ends up suffering worse because of that denial. That story was a perfect example.

Now, that said... the grossest think I have seen lately? A patient licking all the styrofoam cups by the coffee pot and them stacking them back up like new.

Fortunately, I saw that and could throw those cups out before someone grabbed a "clean" cup... but I only saw that at that time... who knows how often he had done that with no one looking!?

BLECH!

[island40]

I'm laughing so hard I might pee my pants!!!!

[island40]

I've been nursing for 16 years so I have the usual poop, pee and assortied liquid stories but the funnies thing happened when I was a patient. I had my ileostomy converted to a kpouch at cleveland clinic and got an ileus. About 5 days post-op I and still on liquid only diet I told the nurses I was nausiated. I only had that little bean shaped basin and put my call light on for something more usefull. No answer and when I started to projetile vomit green liquid over the foot of the bed my room mate started yelling "nurse, nurse!" The nice young lady who rushed into the room came to a stop at the end of my bed- and you guessed it- got splatted with about 500ml of green liquid spewing from my mouth. Sorry....but I told you I was nausious.

[nitenite]

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEW! Puke is one of my Kryptonites.

[Fuzzy]

I think I've posted this one before, but here goes! I was a fairly new nurse in a nursing home & we had a bedridden patient with an enormous abcess on his back...it actually looked like an infected zit.

All shifts were dressing & cleansing this wound, he was on ATB's as well. I had to change the dressing & cleanse it one day & the (male) aide I had asked to assist me in holding this fellow on his side told me "I can take care of this problem, RIGHT NOW!!!"

Ronnie proceded to apply pressure around the abcess & popped that sucker right open! It shot across the bed & landed on the wall behind me....it looked like someone had thrown a raw egg against the wall! I was horrified!

It took a couple days to quit draining & heal up, but it did in less than a week. After many weeks of "treating" this nasty thing, an aide (& not a really good one for that matter) remedied the problem in a day!

This guy must have worked at a vet hospital. We see all kinds of abscesses on all species of animals (except humans). Abscess popping is an art to some technicians. They can shoot the cheesy, pureulent, mucousy, bloody pus and aim it in any direction. Maggots are also common especially in the summer. Warble maggots are the worse as they are large, yucky, brown and spiney. One of them is the size of a small kitten. I won't go into some of the really necrotic tumors that I have seen over the years. Certain smells certainly bring back memories...not good ones either.

Fuzzy

[sarahbellum]

I have a new one....

We had a new post op ostomy who wasn't the problem, her husband was. We have several PCT who are barely 18 and two had walked in the patient's room to find him buck naked in the chair. Neither of them had enough sense to call security.

I had the patient the next day and was warned about the husband. I went into her room to get her ready for discharge and she asked if she could shower. Her ostomy bag was leaking so I said she could shower and then I would have her put her ostomy bag on afterward and do return demo.

I told our PCT to stay out of the room, her husband was coming to get the patient. When the patients shower call light went off, I didn't think anything of it and walked into her room to find her bathroom door wide open and (I gag thinking about it)

Her husband was naked in the shower with her and had his FINGER IN HER OSTOMY and an erection (I'm pretty sure he was getting ready to put something else in her ostomy). I screamed and then I told him "You put your clothes and and wait for the patient in the waiting room!" then I told the patient "I will not help you with your ostomy bag with him in here!"

After he left, I had to help her with her bag and she acted as if nothing had happened.....

It takes a lot to nauseate me, but I just about lost my lunch on that one.....What is wrong with people!

BTW I called security but by the time they were there he and the patient were long gone.....

[diane227, LPN, RN]

At the county hospital where I used to work we saw maggot wounds daily. But the smell was better than if they did not have maggots. One of the worst things I saw was a man who lived alone who had diabetes with severe peripheral neuropathy. He just could not take proper care of himself. Somehow he got to the ED and his toes were gone. Very swollen feet and legs. It turns out that the rats in his house were eating his toes off.

The other thing that used to come in all the time were people with cockroaches in their ears. Sometimes they would be alive and moving around and you you would have to put oil in the canal to smother the roach so you could get it out. Sometimes they would come in and the roach would already be dead then you had to pick out all the pieces.