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!

[WillowNMe]

"Well he wanted to play in it so I thought I should let him finish

b4 I cleaned him".

oh... My... Gosh....

You just have to wonder about some people.....

[netglow, ASN, RN]

Jesskidding, I just might have called a code if I was you just to get some help. Seriously.

[jesskidding, LPN]

Yeah, looking back I should have. I guess I just wanted to everyone to know that I was capable of doing the job.

Next time I will ask for help! :)

[CherryAmes_RN]

Before becoming a nurse I was an aide at 2 seperate MH/MR facilities. Many of the patients had pica, 2 of my 3 stories involve this:

1. Resident with colostomy would constantly pull off his bag. One day I went in to awake him & help him get ready for class. I found him sitting up in bed, picking undigested carrots out of his colostomy bag like popcorn.

2. Two residents sitting on couch next to one another. Resident A has a large emesis, and as I get up to assist him, Resident B reaches over, grabs a handful of it, and slurps it out of his hand.

3. Female resident in her 20's would be inc. of BM, while on her menses & fingerpaint with the "mixture" on the wall, bed, and in her braids.

4. In clinicals on med surg, I go to do my very first solo dressing change. Remove bandages, maggots fall off of this mans leg, he proceeds to tell me that they "came from home." At this moment, his doc enters room & I ask him about it. He tells me to leave them in the wound bed. (I know that they are used for wound therapy, but really? How about getting some lab bred, sterile maggots!)

I've seen a lot of gross stuff, but those are the only stories worth telling. Cheers!

[netglow, ASN, RN]

:thankya:

[Jenni811, RN]

I work in a cardiac and pulmonary unit. I got a patient that was in with respiratory distress. He had severe Cerebal Palsy that left him unable to speak or verbalize is needs. He normally lives in a nursing home and his parents visit everyday. just awesome awesome parents, but with their advancing age they needed help with his cares.

He was very well cared for by his parents, they always kept a close eye on his cares.

Anyway...so we get this patient, and i go with the CNA to assist in night time cares. I was showing the CNA our new suction/toothbrush system we can use on patients like this. It's specifically made for patients who can't really open their mouths alot and are difficult to do oral care on. So i go to do this (im the first one to do this in the hospital as he was recently admitted). And i suctioned out this black blob of something. I think to myself....but he can't eat (G tube), why would he have this in his mouth?? I asked the CNA to grab a flash light. I took the flash light to his mouth...OH MY GOD!!!! it was ALL black gunk. How this got missed by docs assessment? i have no idea.

It was just covered in black dried crud. I started getting the loose stuff out. This warranted a page to the doc. He got up, not happy with me paging him this late. he looked in his mouth "my god!!!" he said. We were literally SCOOPING this black crud out of his mouth. I called up Respiratory therapy thinking they may have some guidance. they turned on humidified oxygen with a mask to loosen it up. This black crud started turning to this black goop. It reminded me of tar. literally looked like tar. So we continue to SCOOP it out of his mouth.

Low and behold, his respiratory distress gets better!

Go figure :icon_roll

Needless to say, this nursing home got a big talking to because oral care was not being done properly (obviously). It was the most discusting thing i ever dealt with, also one of the saddest. You felt so bad for this patient that he couldn't verbalize what was wrong. Given i'm sure the docs at our facility looked in his mouth, but it was really difficult to see because he opened his mouth only enough to fit our mouth swabs in. Nothing else. So it is easy to miss, but does NOT give a reason for this to have happened to this patient.

[xtxrn, ASN, RN]

This was definitely more disgusting in person..... oh, for scent-transmission......

I was working med-surg/ortho (small hospital) and we had a 40-something (A&0x3) guy who was just foul. He filled a urinal, flung it across the room and yelled "someone get the "f" in here and clean this up" (that was my cue to change the prn Foley to an inserted Foley-- his nurse was thrilled (I was in charge and she was livid with this guy, who she'd put up with for a few nights in a row-she enjoyed inserting that one :)). Well, this little dreamboat also had some aversion to being clean. It was getting bad. I'm all for patients having as much control as they can in an unfamiliar setting, but this guy was altering the ozone layer. Another nurse had him a week or so later- and she came out of the room to the station and told me she couldn't go in the room one more time, or she'd get sick. (the smell was really bad). Picture green fumes as the door opens.... I told her I'd meet her in there if she got the no-rinse shampoo cap, foam bath, and mouthwash... I'd get the towels and bed linen. She asked what we were going to do if he refused.... (oh- forgot to mention he was also a known drug user in a perma-haze....would grin and fall back to sleep when I'd flush his IV when the pump beeped 'occluded'....I was using saline....). I told her not to worry about it. If anybody got mad, I'd take the blame.

SO we ambushed him. Had the shampoo cap on him before he woke up. When he did, I told him to take the washcloth, and wash between his legs (had the sheet covering him- but could tell he was dangling the washcloth, and doing nothing to remove the layers of crud). I told him to wash like he was going to church.... he looks up and says "ohhhhh..... I need to go home"..... I looked back and grinned "hey, this is working out well for both of us"... His nurse was then working on his back, and she stops dead. She mumbles a few things and finally says "just come look at this".....I walk over to that side of the bed, and someone (we suspected his ex-wife who had been visiting- and maybe bringing druggy 'goodies') had TAPED a Heinz mustard packet to his back. This was in an area where there were cultural practices, which I honor whenever it's safe- so I asked him if the mustard packet was there for a reason- he had no clue it was there. He then had to suffer more by sitting in the chair for 5 minutes to get the nasty linen changed (he hadn't let anyone touch him or the bed ).

As far as I could see it, it was a safety issue for him, and a health issue for the staff, and other patients/visitors in the area. It was that gross...

[iamnotawaitress]

Well, once while aspirating a peg tube I got some stomach fluids in my eye. Had to go to the ER for that one.

Once I had a patient with spina bifida. I walked in to see him for the first time for morning rounds, and he complained that the night nurse must have made his Picc line bleed. No, he was covered in s**t from head to toe.

Later on that night, I was going to clean up more of his s**t and another nurse went in to help me. When I turned the pt. to her side so I could clean him, he had explosive diarrhea everywhere, including his callbell. It smelled like a barnyard and therefore I promptly threw up into my gloved hands.

Gross!!

[s2udeus]

I love the feces story. Gross yet courageous.

[Laboratorian]

I saw green sperm today.

And it was very thick...and very green.

It was green sperm. :uhoh21:

[No Stars In My Eyes]

I saw green sperm today.

And it was very thick...and very green.

It was green sperm. :uhoh21:

:eek:Eeeyech! One wonders, were it viable, WHAT it might produce. (shiver,shudder,tremble):eek:

[Laboratorian]

Hmmmm, I never thought of how an extreme bacterial infection could affect viability. How big are clap cells? That would be funny if the sperm got confused and started digging in a clap cell.