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

p.s. He was played by Ed Begley, Jr. In this case, it was probably an old-fashioned reel mower which adds a whole 'nother dimension to this.

Knew of a Vietnam veteran who claims that when he was in the Army doing hand to hand combat, a buddy of his that was right next to him had his head completely blown off with a hand grenade. He said his buddy was still running for a while without his head. Uhhhh?!! What?!!!!

Knew of a man who was in a construction accident in which hot, black tar was poured on his from head to toe. Imagine the task of removing all the black tar off of him. Anyway, when they cleaned him up large chunks of skin and flesh had to go with the tar. His head, face, torso, and arms sustained the bigger blunt of his injuries. The man is completely bald and severely disfigured to this day. Poor guy; I really do feel sorry for him!

Years ago, a young girl was sitting in the back of a public bus (I can't mention the company's name for legal reasons). Anyway, she had her head sticking completely out of the window while the bus was at a main pick up point restin. No problem.

Well, the bus driver knew she was going to leave pretty soon. And she was alos late with her route. So when she saw that the young girl was still yacking away to her friend outside, she warned the young girl to bring head inside her inside before take off. She told the youngster who was about 15 or 16 at the time that she didn't want her head to be smashed against one of their utility posts. So the girl complied for a second.

However, whe she saw that the bus driver was no longer paying attention to her, she proceeded to prat away at her friend outside again.

Well, by this time, the bus driver is taking off. And I mean she started and drove off furiously as she was in a big hurry. Well, guess what happened to little Miss Chatterbox? You guess it! Her head went smack right into a green utility post -- partly decapitating her. Fortunateley, one of the companie's supervisors was there waving the bus driver down in her company van.

Surprisingly the young girl lived. But she was severely disfigured and crippled for life. I believe I seen this girl many years later. She had a large bald spot and scar from the back of her neck to the back of her head. Her face and head were lumpy and bumpy; and she walked with a very strange gait. She also seemed to be a little mentallly handicapped. She reminded me with someone with sever cerbralpalsy. That's the best way I can describe it.

As for the bus driver, she needed intense therapy and medication after that incident. And she didn't drive the bus for a while.

I feel so sorry for both victims really.

Since this incident, all buses in our city have been designed with passenger windows that don't exceed more than six inches.

Oh, and the supervisor who flagged down the bus driver could not, at fist glance, identify what she saw hanging out of the window. To her, it was just a very swollen, unidentifiable object. But after a few more seconds, it really sunk in that what she saw was a very injured passanger.

I have a few more stories. But I'm getting a little disturbed writing down this stuff.

But I bet you first responders have worst stories!

In fact, some of the other stories I've read on this thread (I'm finally done reading them all!) are pretty gruesome. The psych pt pulling out his roommate's eyes really did it for me! That's the stuff nightmares are made out of!!!

LOL as a CNA for 14 years, not a one of these is shocking to me. In fact I have experienced worse things. I am now in an RN nursing program so that I can at least get paid something for what I do. I think keeping a sense of humor about things makes all the difference in life.

Many, many years ago...

O.K I have two I can write about. All the players in this drama are dead or have moved on.
GSW to head..several intracranial procedures..head resembling a rotting halloweeen pumpkin ..meaning the top of the head collasped inward, you know, where you would put the candle inside the pumpkin???
This required several dressings each day...rather gross since the brains inside were liquefying and it was beyond disgusting..the smell was like the large animal disposal dump..but less bearable if you can believe that.
One large chunk of liquefying tissue oozed over the cranial opening and like ectoplasm..seemed to consciously crawl...slithering...drip by drip over the side of the head onto the surface of the bed. Observing this as dispassionately as possible..all I could hear in my head was the refrain from The Wizard of Oz..."If I only had a brain"
This was unpleasant. And a horror for this poor person's family. Despite our best efforts, it was impossible to hide the extensive decomposition.

The next case was a patient who had a massive intracranial hemorrhage, an aneurysm, was pregnant, emergently delivered of a beautiful, viable fat baby in our ICU. She became brain dead. Family couldn't cope despite massive support from so many services and our staff support for the family. She turned green, I mean like that green alien woman from Star Trek who was hitting on Captain Kirk...The family thought that we weren't keeping the patient clean since she smelled so horrible, like the first case above. Well, I decided to fix that. With one of our physicians..we throughly washed out the cranial cavity with sterile saline..suctioned everything that came out..the liquefied malodorous tissue, rebandaged the head with a full head dressing..almost impossible as she had no skull just above her eyebrows...missing skull extending around her head about the same level as her eyebrows..her head had caved in just like the patient in the first story...there was absolutely no odor left...Threw out all the the containers with the contents of this wound care..used an odor neutralizer. Washed and dressed the patient and wrapped her up warmly since she would essentially become whatever the temperature of the ambient air around her was... and brought her grandparents back in.
It was tragic and horrifying. Like the first case above, I remember all the details of each of these patients and their families.
For the record, both of these events occured during the time when many families simply refused to believe that their loved one was irrevocably dead..all because the patient was on a ventilator, supportive medications for blood pressure...whatever...still had a heart rate/beat..some degree of a blood pressure..generally minimal blood flow detected by cerebral blood flow study...some families would become angry and agressive when approached about the futility of continuing care..
In the second case the grandparents and some other family members repeatedly told us that "Like Lazarus, Jesus will heal her and we all should just be patient".. Now that was hard. I did offer my opionion at that point...I said "God does what He thinks is right..we can accept this or not, either way..its God's decision". I also told them that "prayer is important, even necessary..asking doesn't guarantee we'll get what we want..but perhaps if we're lucky, we'll have a better understanding of God's will if we don't."
Usually I'm very patient in these situations..but in this particular case..I simply had to respond to the complaints that we were all "Godless heretics" and "non believers" I also told them that "many of us are Christian and we grieve with them". In the end, the family and our staff were o.k. with each other..In this case, it was the family, even more that this patient who needed nursing care and cultural understanding of their particular religious beliefs. They only needed to know that we cared.

Actually, thinking about this subject, I believe I could write a couple of dozen of these stories without even trying.

Well, hope you like these

Eeka

Once upon a time there was a pt called "Hocker" He was a frequent flyer. I did not know why they called him this. One night late I went in to check on him during my rounds. I walked over to the other side of the bed and suddenly my foot slipped and down I went...Fortunately for me I cught myself and stood up. I turned on the light and a large round spot on the floor was covered in phelm. I almost went knees down into it. I was a very new nurse at the time. I was told by resp. that he did this all the time and they were always suprised about the lg amt he could expectorate in a very short amount of time. I always look before I step to the side of bed you cannot see from the door ever since that experience. Needless to say I was teased about this for a long time.


TuTonka

I used to be a prison nurse and three incidents come to mind the first was one of the inmates who whenever he came to the infirmary he would constantly masturbate. Well one day a nurse yelled at him and told him what he was doing was disgusting the next day I was called to his cell to find him sitting on the floor in a pile of blood he had what was left of his penis in his hands and he was hacking away at it with a schick blade he had remoded from the handle. He managed to lop off about 80% of it when I stopped him all the while he was yelling "your disgusting you need to come off "When I left he was peeing through a catheter. .
The other story was about an officer who comitted suicide while at work by shooting himself in the chest with a shot gun. He locked himself up in the control room and the only way to get to him was when the lieutenant an ex special forces sargent climbed the tower wall then unlocked the door to the control room. When I arrived here was the officer trying to do CPR on this young kid. I knew it wwas hopeless as he had a quarter sized hole in his chest and a big gaping hole in his back. He screamed at me to do something so I put my hands underneath and just put them in the hole in his back a pretended to knead his heart for cardiac massage for a bit. I tell you there is nothing grosser then putting your bare hands in a body there was also nothing to knead even if I could as he blew out his heart. . The officer did not make it but for some reason it gave the Lieutenant piece of mind that we did everything we could.
The last story is about a young social work intern who spent 6 weeks with a very mentally disturbed inmate. (this inmate was given life without parole for the 2nd time because he killed his cell mate and tried to hide him by cutting him up and trying to flush him down the toilet. he almost got away with it until he got caught trying to get rid of the head). She made a mistake and told the inmate that tomorrow would be her last day with him. I was in SHU (special housing unit : it was where we housed the worst of the worst patients). When I over heard one of the officers say he had not seen the intern in awhile. I immediately ran to the inmates cell to find him and the intern on the ground he had her head in his hands and he was trying to cut off her head. He got through all of one and half of the other carotids, blood was just spurting everywhere it was so sureal. I screamed and the swarm of officers arrived subdued the inmate and got her away from him . I immediately applied pressure to her neck and truthfully we would have lost her if it were not for one of the officers. He was a vietnam vet medical aide and he literally held her carotids together until we got to the hospital. (the inmate when he heard the intern was leaving wanted to keep her with him forever so if he could not have her alive he would have her dead). Thanks to this officer,she is alive and well and still working at the prison as a social worker. I lasted 6 years at that prison.

That social worker still works there! Wow, I do not have words for this...

I know I already posted on this at least once, but I had another one a few days ago. I had a pt in for a minor procedure on her toe and all was going well, or so I thought. I don't know why I happened to look up at the pt's face, but there she was, dry-heaving. I hurried to get an emesis basin and got it there in time BUT she had been covering her mouth when the dry-heaving started and her hand was still there when I came with the pan. I'm sure you can guess what happened. Yep, vomit sprayed EVERYWHERE. Down the pt, on the floor, on the walls. And it was the WORST smelling vomit my nose has ever had the pleasure of inhaling. I don't usually get grossed out by vomit, but I started to gag and left the room in the most calm manner possible. Had to get someone else to clean it up but could still smell it all day! EW!

WOW! If it weren't for HIPAA, I would suggest you write a book! That's CRAZY!

I had been an RN for 5 years in charge of an Ortho/Neuro unit. One night the supervisor begged me to come in extra and be in charge on the medical unit, whcih I had done before. This particular night I got report from the day nurse. There was one patient that had been admitted during the day with terminal stomach cancer, she was a DNR, and "stable" Of course an hour after I got there, the woman up and dies. I was called to the room by the LPN, and was horrified to see this lady weighed over 600lbs and was in a special bed. Her family was hysterical, we called in their minister and they waited till some family members arrived to have a prayer service. I was finally able to speak with her son and get funeral home information, so I called the funeral home and as tactfully as I could suggested they bring a very big stretcher and some extra manpower; they would have to come up to the unit to retrieve the body as it would not fit on one of our gurneys to go to the morgue. The nursing supervisor and I decided to tell the funeral home to come up the back elevator after visiting hours so we would not upset other families and visitors. They arrived at 9 pm, bringing the strongest stretcher they had, and a body bag. Things went downhill from there. It took about 10 people to transfer the body to the stretcher and into the body bag...literally the funeral guys were stuffing this poor woman into the bag. They finally get on to the service elevator, and as they get the stretcher all the way in, the elevator dropped down four inches from the landing. Once they got downstairs they then had the problem of trying to get the stretcher up the four inches so they could get out. Suffice it to say that a tow truck was involved. I felt so bad for this poor woman, but looking back 25 years it was just a comedy of errors. The bad part was that the family sent me a card after the funeral, thanking me for treating their family so well despite their loved one's "Handicap" If only they knew.....