Your most amazing wounds and gore!!!! Anyone care to share?

Specialties Wound

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Hey, y'all! Okay, I know this could get a bit scary, so if you're not into this kind of thing, please move on! This has the potential to become VERY GRAPHIC. Disclaimer over. ;>) However, I'm figuring that if this topic could keep us entertained for HOURS on a slow night, surely some of you have some stories to share that get your eyes gleamin' as well. ;>P A PICU nurse who was floated to my unit the other day was telling us about a pediatric organ donor they had had recently. She was invited to witness the actual surgery and the 'claiming' of the organs that were being distributed to various recipients. She said that, despite the sadness and overwhelming loss she felt when the patient was declared clinically dead (she'd taken care of that little girl for weeks and had become very attached to her and her family), she could not help but be completely fascinated by witnessing the procedure. She hadn't been in surgery since nursing school, and she said she just could not get over seeing the cavity open and empty like that after the organs had been 'claimed'. This got us started on our favorite gross-out wound and cavity stories, and you know NURSES, who can freak out a burly man in a nanosecond with stories of pus, blood, flesh, and insects!!! We, I admit, were laughing our butts off and enjoying every minute of it, all the while cackling that our husbands would have fled the room fifteen minutes ago in absolute horror. Call it stress relief. So, in continuing with that conversation, I thought I'd see if y'all would like to contribute. I promise you that your stories will be recounted truthfully, down to the stickiest, smelliest detail!!! should we ever get another slow night (which, considering the trend, will be NEVER!!). Here are some of mine... mine come from nursing school, as I am a relatively new grad and have been NICU nursing since graduation. In nursing school, during our MICU rotation, I had a lovely older woman who had undergone a TAH. The surgeon had accidentally nicked her bowel, and after multiple trips to OR to attempt to repair the damage, she had developed a fistula and was leaking fecal matter into her now spacious abdominal cavity. She had this ENORMOUS abd dressing that had to be changed, and being the student-nurse-gopher that I was, it was my job, along with two other nurses in attendance, to change it! I swear, it took almost TWO hours to change this sucker. Her entire abdominal cavity was open, and when I removed the packing, I got to see EVERYTHING. I know, I'm a dork, but it was totally spectacular. This brownish, thick, melted-milkshake fluid was leaking out, and when it touched my gloved hands for the first time, it was so warm it SCARED ME! I actually jerked my hands back because I was startled! When she had been rinsed suffeciently, it was time to repack the wound. I kid you not, my entire hands were inside of her abdomen, and I felt like a surgeon! We just kept packing and packing and packing and I thought, dear God, there's no way she can hold all of this inside her! She was on one of those vacuum-seal doodads, with the sponge? I forget what they're called now... we packed the sponge in and applied this HUUUUUUUUGE op-site. Realize, I was in SCHOOL and was just totally blown away by this! I went home high on endorphins and grinning like a psychopath. Ahhhhhhhhhhh, the gore. Just something about it, you know? :>)

ok,ok......i love wounds, too !! my husband says i'm sick, but its not that i love gross stuff, i love anatomy and love to see how stuff heals ..but the bugs do gag me. i work home health ( LOVE IT !! can't believe i get paid to do it !! ) and one of my co-workers had a dressing change on a little lady. seems like the wound was full of maggots....my friend started crying, went all to pieces, we all were grossed out too.........anyway, i love wound vacs, too cool.........but the "best" wound i ever had was a 40 yowm, quad r/t mva.......wife did not take care of him, and when we got him he had a decub from his iliac crest to the back of his knee that you could hide a football in. the docs wanted to take his leg off ( only a small amount of tissue was holding it on ) but the wife, who never came to visit, said " NO !! That would be cruel !!" HA! Needless to say, he passed away not long after, i stiill think she should go to jail......( his was the only wound, so far, that the smell made my knees buckle when the dsg came off......) i can hold my breathe pretty good.......i have about decided to go back to school for the ET nurse thing.......just love it !

About, hmm, two years ago, I was assisting an LPN change extensive dressings on a patient. Basically, this guy was dying from cancer from the inside out. We didn't know the exact extent of the cancer because the family did not want any furtherinvestigations, but it was amazing that this guy was still holding on.

Okay, this is especially stomach turning [warning!]

Anyway, his skin was just basically failing. It was just full of tears. We were working on his elbow, and I was holding it, while the other nurse changed the dressing. She king of pulled a white stringy thing out from an opening that she was trying to cleanse.

We both got pale. Um, I think this is a tendon, she said. I agreed. Bad, bad flashback!

Specializes in Critical care.

I have many wound stories. But a couple of the better ones include- opening a ladies' chest, and pedestrian v. auto, and a man with necrotizing fascitis from a spider bite.

First lady- was about 3 hours post CABG. I come on at 7p, anyhow getting report from dayshift. The lady had already been extubated, she was extubated within an hour of getting to SICU. Well, she was not tolerating it very well, having some resp. problems, though was holding her own on 100% NRM. Anyhow, getting report from dayshift goin over the drips she was on at least 7 drips (Dopa, insulin, inocor, IVF, aprotinin, esmolol, and others), anyhow whle we are in the room, she starts looking bad, so I'm like I'm getting the 8p labs early. She had four chest tubes, the two medistinal tubes just stopped draining anything as I was pulling the labs. Not 5 minutes after lab picked up my blood, this ladies HR begins going down, she had been in SVT around 160 hence the esmolol, well it just keeps going down, of course I shut off the esmolol, we give her atropine, etc, she goes asystole despite this, call the code, the ER doc and team arrive, ER doc is tubing her, I am on the phone with the surgeon explaining what is happening, of course I'm like I think she is bleeding medastinally, and surgeon doesn't disagree, anyhow he says is there someone there who can crack her chest, so I'm like the ER doc is tubing her right now he is the only one, so he gets on the phone with the ER doc, hangs up and says he wants us to crack her chest as she is probably bleeding inside, DUH. So the first thing to go wrong is the cardiac arrest tray is missing, so we give him the chest tray, and we do this really fast, slap on the betadine and cut, he went through her ribs making a thorcatomy incision, a very large one, pulling her ribs apart with his hands, sticking his hand in to feel for stuff, so he needed help from someone since she was my patient, it was me, so I got on sterile gloves, and handed him things, of course he had to point at them, cause I'm no OR nurse. But anyhow we continued, he getting into the chest, while I was squeezing this ladies heart through her ribs, that was a unique feeling. Anyhow, surgeon got there and we got her chest opened all the way, she had huge clots all inside her mediastinum. We coded her for almost 2 hours. We did it all, internal defib, internal compressions. She died. Anyhow now for the wound it was huge, her chest was split from neck to xyphoid, and then down through the left thoracotomy incision that was really large. Anyhow I helped the surgeon wire her chest and watched him close her.

Second wound- sad pedestrian v. auto, young 22 yo female was out with her friends, got hit and dragged about 200 feet by a drunk driver, he felt something under the car but didn't stop, she was very sick, she had all 4 ext. broken very badly, she had massive internal injuries, she had head injury, she was a sick one. Of course they took her to surgery immediately after the helicopter landed with her, anyhow left her abdomen open with all her swollen intestines, large and small both hanging out, wrapped in this clear sterile dressing that was stapled to the wound edges, plus they had to amputate her legs both of them BKAs. And they left them open, it was definitely an anatomy lesson. This poor girl arrest the night she got to the SICU after the long hours in OR, she just went asystole, we got her back, she was in the hospital for a long time almost 3 months, and she arrested at least 2-3 times every month, the girl did wake up sort of, though she was not able to follow commands, she did nod sometimes to questions, it was very sad, the docs, nurses, soc. worker and family sat down many times, finally, the parents said no more, and she arrested for the last time during dayshift after almost 3 months in the SICU. The drunk driver was tried for murder after she died. What is worse is the driver and family knew one another and the driver knew the girl.

Third wound- man with necrotizing fascitis from a spider bite. It was another anatomy lesson- all 4 extremities cut along each side due to compartment syndrome, his dressing changes alone took almost 2 hours. And usually 2 people, he was there for a long time too, so he got stable sort of, got trached, off his pressors, still getting bu** load of antibiotics. I changed his dressings many times by myself. It was definitely anatomy 101, his legs were cut from ankle to hip, and it took about 30 kerlix per leg to pack them, pushing them up into his buttocks and lower back. He lived and was transferred out eventually to the floor, but arrested or was a DNR by then and he died.

Anyhow those are my good wound stories, have many more..But must work on school work now......

TO ALL OF YOU THAT HAVE SUBMITTED YOUR STORIES , THEY ARE VERY GOOD AND GRAPHICAL, I TO HAVE SOME PERSONAL GORIE STORIES TO SHARE BUT NOT AT THIS TIME, AS I AM ONLY A 'CNA/MSP' GOING AFTER MY MEDICAL ASSISTANT'S DIPLOMA, AND CERTIFICATION, AND AFTER THAT AM CONTEMPLATING GET MY RN ON LINE......BUT AFTER SOME OF THESE STORIES I WONDER IF I HAVE SOME OF THE GUTS THAT IT TAKES TO DO SOME OF WHAT IS NEEDED IN THE FIELD , EVEN THOUGH I'VE HAD MY SHARE OF GG AND OPEN TO THE BONE SORES AND DRESSINGS, ALONG WITH CHANGES OF THE SAME....AS A CNA/MSP, HAD I HAD THE MONEY WHEN YOUNGER I WOLD HAVE BEENA BRAIN SURGEN, WHAT A UNIQUE COMPUTER GOD HAS CREATED.....ANY WAY AT SIXTY IN JANUARY2003 I WOULD STILL LIKE TO BE AN ER OR SURGICAL RN.........MY HEART GOES OUT TO ALL OF I HAVE A SPECIAL PLACE IN MY HEART FOR ALL ''CARING NURSES''

''GOD WAS THE GREATEST ENGINEER AND SCIENTIST AND STILL IS'' :kiss

Once nursed a guy who had a LARGE skin cancer on his r shoulder that was about 20 cms across. Looked like a baby horta ( of Star Trek) sitting on his soulders! Mets everywhere, is it just me or do "cats eyes" freak everyone out? Hated oncology.

Originally posted by JonRN

We once had a s/p CABG guy in the SICU whose sternum became infected requiring removal of his sternum. We had to do wet to drys right on his heart. If he took a deep breath, your fingers would be entrapped until he breathed again. You could actually take his pulse right off of his heart when the dressing was out.

Pappy

Pappy, I think you and I have been in the same places or our lives are intertwined some kinda way. I saw a guy like that too. Two guys in fact. The one guy--his chest sucked air when he breathed-like a slurping sound. One of the worst wounds was on a paraplegic who used to shoot up in his hips. Got infected to the bone, so they removed his hip bones. Dressing changes took about an hour. Another was a woman with MRSA in a leg incision. They "debrided" it and wanted wet to dry packing TID. The had removed the entire calf muscle. We were packing Dakins soaked kerlex on top of the bone.

Hi Molly.....this was in the SICU at the VA in Indy. We also had a couple of guys with PVD so bad they had to have hip disarticulations both hips. Another challenging dsg. change. I had nightmares about those guys and called them magician's assistants because they looked like David Copperfield had sawed them in half. They finally just rotted away and died. Poor guys. I knew one of them for a long time, back when he had both of his legs and was walking around. He trained a lot of surgeons because they whittled him away about an inch at a time. PVD is every bit as bad as cancer IMHO.

Pappy

You can visit http://www.rotten.com for the severe trauma photos and other things like many of you described above. Botched suicide, motorcycle injury, etc.--it's all there. But just remember that I warned you in advance. On the other hand, if you approach the experience in a mature way, you might learn something. It could be an enlightening experience to newcomers and the uninitiated.

Specializes in Specializes in L/D, newborn, GYN, LTC, Dialysis.

I consider myself quite emotionally/mentally mature but regard that site as disgusting and NON educational; just fodder for sick entertainment. But that is just my opinion; I don't deign to speak for others here.

I do homecare, and get my fair share of bad wounds. One of the worst was this diabetic who was in a wheelchair. One leg had an AKA, and the other was missing a few toes. His butt was the worst. There was a large open wound about 8" in diameter, and over half the buttock was missing. They would only allow us an hour in there to get him out of the chair onto the bed, and do the dressing. Sometimes he'd have been incontinent of stool, so you had a reall mess to clean up. The dressing went right to the anal verge, so if he pooped, the dressing got it too. We used Acticoat on the infected areas. We knew it was never going to heal because he sat in the wheelchair all day and refused to go to bed for pressure relief. The apartment was not air conditioned, and in hot weather, he would pour cold water over himself and sit in front of the fan. Of course, then he'd be sitting in a puddle of water, which was just great for the wound on his bottom.

He lived with his son, and the son also had diabetes and CA of the prostate. They moved out of our district, and then I saw in the paper that he'd died not long after. His son died about a week later. I still don't know if he committed suicide, or died from hypoglycemia. He was by no means terminally ill from the cancer.

Very sad situation.

The photos are often from ER. They are not any worse than the posts you have read above. In fact, many of those posts are so descriptive I think Stephen King could learn from them. I certainly did. Many of you taught me how much I have not seen yet.

EWW wounds...

I remember my first week as a new RN I had to do a dsg. change. I heard the wound was a "comlicated" I said ok... well the little chubby lady was so cute, with her covers up to her ears, it was an abdominal wound. When I lift up the covers AH!!!!!!! All I saw was tegaderm and HER INTESTINES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Her stomach was OPEN, you could see the intestines it was the most horrifying thing. When I did the dsg. I had to kind of put her intestines back in!! thank God she had a VAC Dsg. but JEEZZZ what dsg!!!

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