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!

[FranEMTnurse, CNA, LPN, EMT-I]

About 5 years ago I was a CNA. There was a large woman on my floor that had both legs amputated due to DM. Being the size she was and not very healthy, she had really given up on life in general. She hit the call bell to be put on a bedpan. Needless to say the pan disappeared under her size, but that's not the bad part. When I came back to take her off, she was so large she could not wipe herself (#2), so I, being the pleasant CNA I was, proceeded to clean her. She was a dark skinned African American lady so I did not notice the "raw" area around her rectum. When I wiped she yelled and clenched her butt cheeks, which lodged my hand in there!!!!! Her "gluteal cleft" was so "deep" that my whole hand seemed to disappear, all the way up to the edge of the glove!!!!! I had to quickly pat her thigh with my other hand and tell her "OK sweetie, you're going to have to relax and take some deep breaths and let me have my hand back." I was so scared the glove was going to be sucked off and I was going to have to go in after it. Well, she relaxed, I got my hand back (glove and all), and have been much more careful to notice any raw spots on anyone's bottom!!!

:lol2::lol2:That's a good one

[RetiredTooSoon]

Turns out the stuff is comming out of her lady parts- Nasty nasty Nasty. A sample was sent to /the lab as well as a U/A. The urine in the foley was clear yellow w/o any blck stuff.

lab calls back... sample is stool. Ends up she has a fistula btw her bowels and uterus and stool was comming out the WRONG hole. can u believe it.

I can believe it. I worked with a urologist, caring for a woman (~25 years old) who had not followed up after a cervical cancer dx & removal of early cancerous cells and as a result, the cancer recurred. She didn't seek help until she had both rectolady partsl and urolady partsl fistulae, meaning that both urine and stool were coming out her lady parts. Prognosis? Less than 2 years.

Had she followed up with her OB/Gyn after the initial dx and treatment? Probably a normal lifespan, although she may have had to face a hysterectomy when the cancer recurred.

[RetiredTooSoon]

Not my story, but this should qualify:

I was changing into street clothes after working a shift at the hospital and got talking to a tech from the lab. I mentioned that a tissue bank (they take eyes, skin, bones, tendons, heart valves, etc from decedents for graft/transplant, then process said tissues so they can be used by the surgeons) was being transferred into the facility. She turned white, shuddered and told me this story:

Some years prior, she was working a night shift at the Red Cross' lab. The Lion's Eye Bank was in the same facility, with enucleations often being done by local physicians and then the eyes shipped, rather than an Eye Bank team being paged to do uncomplicated harvests.

At night, the lab staff were the ones called to receive the incoming eyes. They would then take the box upstairs (clearly labelled "Human Eyes") to the Eye Bank's lab, take out the paperwork, open the foam cooler inside the box, take out the little bottles holding the eyes and put them in the fridge for the team to process the next morning.

It was about 2-3 a.m. when the call came from Transport that a pair of eyes was ready for pick up. She went down, signed for the delivery and headed for the Eye Bank. She noticed the box was a good bit heavier than usual, but figured the sending hospital had used a new brand of cooler pack she'd heard about.

She got up to the Eye Bank, opened the box, took out the paperwork, quickly glancing for the consent form and donor info sheet and set it aside, then lifted the lid of the foam cooler and screamed: the reason for the extra weight of the box was that there was an entire human head in the box. Face up.

Apparently, there had been a vehicular accident that resulted in a decapitation. The physicians at that site either didn't know how to do an enucleation on a severed head or didn't want to try and just sent the entire head to the Eye Bank, expecting the Bank team to handle it the next morning.

They had made notation of the head being in the box, but it was at the bottom of the bundle of paper, which she hadn't checked-the consent and donor info page were at the top, which was all she was required to look for. She shoved the entire cooler into the fridge, left a note about its contents for the Eye Bank staff and then went to the ladies' room and shook for a good 20 minutes or so before returning to work.

She was very thankful to learn that the new tissue bank would be handling all its own harvests and that she would not be called on to make any deliveries to their lab. Poor thing still had nightmares some 10 or so years later.

[mnnurs4u]

These stories are hillarious! Only a nurse would laugh at this disgusting stuff... My most disgusting story is when I was working in ER,well, there's more than one, but here goes.

It was near the end of my shift with only a couple minutes before I could punch out. A patient was coming y ambulance that would've been my patient, so I said I'd help settle him. BAD IDEA!!!! She was an older womn, her husband had been taking care of her at home for daaayyyyys. She smelled so bad, so unkempt...her husband had been using paper bags to keep the moisture off her body!!! The true test was turning her to get these paper bags out from underneath her. I don't think I can describe completely how horrible it was.... there were maggots everywhere from top to bottom... I turned several shades of color and the ambulance service had to bring me a chair to sit down. we found out shortly thereafter that she had lice too....nice. Makes my skin crawl!!!!!

[lynnieg]

All I can say is...oh, my.

I become an official nursing student on January 5. I've been curious as to whether or not I'll be a good nurse.....I think I have what it takes; while these stories have made me a little on the queasy side, I managed to hold down my hot wings, LOL. Some of them have even made me laugh.

I'm really excited about becoming a nurse.

My mother was a nurse; she had lots of stories to tell throughout her career. On her first night as a student nurse in the ER she saw--like someone else here--a gunshot wound to the head.......she also saw a doorknob in a man's rectum.

This story isn't mine--and I hope it doesn't offend anyone.......my sister told me the story, from an OB nurse she knows. It would seem my sister's nurse friend went to check the dilation of a patient, and the woman's husband and one of his friends were in the room as the nurse checked her. After checking the patient, the father-to-be's friend told the father-to-be that he'd give him $20 if he'd lick the nurse's finger.

:trout:

[Natkat, BSN, MSN, RN]

This story isn't mine--and I hope it doesn't offend anyone.......my sister told me the story, from an OB nurse she knows. It would seem my sister's nurse friend went to check the dilation of a patient, and the woman's husband and one of his friends were in the room as the nurse checked her. After checking the patient, the father-to-be's friend told the father-to-be that he'd give him $20 if he'd lick the nurse's finger.

:trout:

That's more immature than gross.

Congratulations on being accepted into nursing school. You're in for an amazing experience.

[Christie RN2006]

Not the grossest, but this rates right up there... The other day I was helping one of our other nurses clean his new admit up. The new patient had global aphasia, so he couldn't tell us what was going on. Well I look over at the patient and I told the other nurse "um he looks like he is getting kinda gaggy" Immediately after I said it, it was like old faithful erupting. The patient had projectile vomiting that shot straight up in the air and unfortunately I happened to be in the line of fire... The other nurse just stood there and looked at me as I am slowly looking down to see the massive amounts of puke running off the side rails and to my dismay, it was running down my brand new scrub pants too. Needless to say, I made the charge nurse come in and help him finish cleaning up while I ran to find clean scrubs.

[fey_lassRN]

Two particular stories come to mind. I used to work in a rural hospital. Years ago in OB when we still did enema's. I gave this woman her enema and hundreds of worms were swimming in the bed pan. The specimens were sent to the lab and she had like 6 different kinds of worms. Her baby was in isolation the whole time she was in. It was a vag delivery and back then they stayed for 3 days. Those 3 days seemed so much longer. Poor child, she must be 20 years old or so by now. I hope it she doing better than her mother was at that age. Second, just last week we had a morbidly obese woman on med/surg who stunk and we decided to bath her pronto. As we undressed her she had cockroaches in her clothes. When lifting up her belly flap to clean, yup, out ran another of those little suckers. Can you imagine having cockroaches crawling in your clothes and on your body? oohhhhh makes me shiver just thinking about it again. I have also seen some pretty nasty gangrene cases. People from the hills that never took care of their diabetes, or probably didn't even know they were diabetic. The rural hospital could be very interesting !!! Yuck !!!

OMG, I thought I was the only one with that story! I, too, worked in a small rural hospital. No enema, but Hemobate will induce forceful pooping. We did that woman a favor, no telling how long those squiggly worms were in her colon. Despite the hospital being all about budgets, we were told to throw all the linens in the incinerator.

[nursemomo]

Well, my story kinda pales in comparison...but this grossed me out. I had a postpartum, young girl that had a very "involved" boyfriend. She had a stat c-section, after laboring for several hours. I went to in and out cath her, and she was very puffy downstairs. I couldn't get a good grip on her to do the cath. I took off my gloves and explained it wasn't sterile anymore, and that I needed another nurse to help me do the procedure. Her boyfriend (who had stared at what I was doing the whole time) walks up to me, puts his hand on my shoulder, and tells me "I can spread her open for you". EWWW!! I wanted to retch, and throw his hand OFF my shoulder! Bleh

[danissa, LPN, LVN]

That last post is disgusting!!! I'm sorry that you had such a gross individual to deal with nursemomo!! would have thrown his hand along with his pervy a$$ out! How do some folk get to be so dispicable?? Auuurghhh! skin crawlin !

[Seamless LVN]

I was an LVN student, going in for my first female foley catheterization....

was ready to remove the old one, then realized that there was some really..really old poop stuck to her pubic hair, which in turn wrapped itself around the old cath tubing FIRMLY securing it into place. anytime that tubing was tugged she would holler ! so it was like 100 degrees in that room, im bending over drippin sweat trying to cut this poo dread with scissors from her vajay-jay, so i could pull this dang cath out.....

that was pretty stinkin nasty.....seriously, this thing was ANCHORED.

my instructor had never seen anything like it....

oh yeah, and all the soury cottage cheese you find under old dudes foreskins....

"I think i just puked in my mouth a little"......

[LiverpoolJane]

Last week we had a really confused aggresive patient admitted, she seemed to loose the aggression but remains confused.

A member of staff enterred the sluice just in time to see this patient swig urine out of a jug - somebody elses I might add - apparently one of the patients had left it there ready to be decanted into a 24 hour urine collection container!

It transpires that she drinks a bottle of whiskey a day and I can only assume she thought that is what it was.