Things that make you go "EEEWWW"

Nurses General Nursing

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Stevielynn's thread about the nursing home with the signs on the food carts brings up (oops, no pun intended:D ) something that happened at work yesterday that turned even MY cast-iron stomach. I was the PRN helping with admits, and as I was charting vitals on one new pt., this lady came running up to me holding a patient gown literally dripping with fresh emesis and hollering that her mother was throwing up, and would I come quickly?

I followed her to the patient's room (even after she refused to give me the gown so I could deposit it in the linen barrel and NOT have a trail of slightly used vegetable soup running down the hall) and found a very confused elderly woman sitting up in bed, naked, with vomit EVERYWHERE--all over the bed, on the floor, even in her hair. Worse yet, she was just about to start eating again, apparently having already forgotten being sick, and seemingly unaware of the fact that she'd baptized the tray along with everything else!!

Well, it was all I could do to hang onto my own supper, and I had no choice but to deal with it alone because even the aides were too busy with vitals on the fresh post-ops we'd just gotten. Half an hour later I emerged from the room, smelling ghastly and feeling somewhat under the weather, but by gosh that little lady was nice and clean and her daughter pleased as punch with the service. At least I got a thank-you out of it.....but I hope I don't have to deal with anything like that again any time soon.:eek:

The one thing that stands out is: during OR clinicals, the Sounds and smells of an AK or BK amputation. the sight of it did not bother me ( I can handle pretty much all the eeeewwwy stuff, no problem). But I have always remembered the smell and the sounds of those.

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Specializes in Trauma, Teaching.

THe one that gave me the shudders was assisting draining a sinus infection, the ENT put a large gauge needle up the nare, then pushed into the sinuses through the bones alongside the nose. Massive sound of CRUNCH. ughhh. My orientee grad nurse wasn't bothered in the least. Lots of green pus came pouring out, and the patient felt a lot better, but still...........

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Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.

AAAACK!! Reminds me of this gentleman I took care of at a LTC facility some years back, who'd had cancer in his sinuses and literally had half of his face removed. You could see all the way inside his skull......worse, you had to spray what was left of his mucous membranes with H2O every 2 hours around the clock to prevent them from drying out. Of course, this was extremely uncomfortable for him as well as unpleasant for us, and I'm sure he was as thankful as we were when he passed on a few weeks after admission. Poor guy......I've always felt bad for him, because he was alert and aware of our revulsion, even as much as we tried to hide it.

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When I was first out of RN school, I worked at a LTC pm shift. I was to change a pt's tube feed and bag. I got all my stuff together and walked in. The room was dark so I turned on the light to find her bed, pajamas and her covered with poop. She appeared sound asleep with her mouth hanging wide open. As I got closer to the bed I saw she had dug herself out and painted everything within reach, then I leaned over and looked in her open mouth to see a chunk of poop stuck to the roof of her mouth.:eek:

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:roll Same bat place, same bat time. Confused little old lady who was incont of BM. As I was headed north from one end of the hall and the other nurse was headed south from the other end, just befor our paths crossed, a giant turd flew between us east to west and landed on the floor. We both looked at each other and then into the room it came from. The little old lady had a bm in her pants and took her pants off and shook em out.

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Specializes in ER/PDN.

My motto is "Give me blood, give me guts, just don't give me vomit." I can even handle poop. Tonight was bad though.

This guy had fallen off of a horse and busted his wrist. Usual Reduction is surgery but the pt. had had tacos for dinner. Needless to say, we all smeeled them. He vomited 5 times before I could get him his Phenergan. I just about lost the bad cafeteria food we had for dinner. YUCK!!!!!!!!!

Melissa

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Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.

Reminds me of when I was close to the end of my first pregnancy, and I'd fixed this marvelous lasagna that my friend, whom I'd invited for dinner, advised me not to eat because "when you go into labor, you shouldn't have anything in your stomach that you wouldn't want to see again". I ate it anyway, and sure enough, I went into labor that very night. My friend was right, too: lasagna is one of those dishes you NEVER want to see on the return trip. Ugh.:imbar

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Specializes in 5 yrs OR, ASU Pre-Op 2 yr. ER.

Anything involving hot sauce, jalapenos, or Mexican food in general are things i don't want to see for a return visit to my mouth.

I had the flu back in 98 for 3 weeks. The last "solid food" i had before the pocelain praying began was a salami sandwich on rye with horseradish and mayo with swiss cheese, and pasta salad. To this day i cannot look at salami or smell it without getting grossed out. And salami is a sandwich option for our patients. And of course 90 percent of those that can have it want it.:rolleyes:

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I have heard it said, that green chili, tastes just as good coming up as it did going down, any one with experience here. hee hee:chuckle

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No experience here, URSULA, but LMAO over that one!

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Yuk reading all this brings back memories. I have become soft I guess, you just don't see much of this stuff in L&D. I used to work cardiac, EMS, and some med surg and had a cast iron stomach.

The final straw that made me move into L&D was the night I had an elderly (hardly with it and hardly alive) man on go lightly for a bowl prep. He couldn't realay make it to the commode even though it was right next to his bed and he had to go every 3 - 5 min, nasty liquid and rancid smelling stool. He couldn't tolerate sitting on the commode between stools so I pretty much camped in his room to help him over to the potty.

Well we made it about half the time and the other half it ended up on the walls an once it got into the heater vent and filled the room with a smell that no deodorizer would remove. Now you have to realize that I was very used to this smell and had a reputation of having the strongest stomach on the floor. But as I knelt there cleaning BM out of the heater vents and having had changed my scrubs twice already because it had splashed on me, something hit me, that this man would most likely be dead by this time the next day and that he was really suffering. not only did he have pain and weakness from multiple aliments but now we had given him go lightly and made his bowls all crampy and he had to get up and down which was really painful to him + he was very embarrassed and the smell was I'm sure bothering him more then me. I love giving hospice type care but this wasn't what we were doing for this man. He was receiving a surgery he would most likely not recover from and spending his last few hours swimming in poop. That made me sick and after that I just couldn't do it anymore.

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, PCVICU and peds oncology.

i can handle the grossest of the gross most times, but there are always those moments... the toughest time i've ever had was with a young boy who had been creamed by an suv. he was pretty much gone when he got to the unit, but resus efforts persisted for some time. at one point, his art gases were coming out pink, he was so hemodiluted by all the crystalloid. he was oozing from every orifice, wound and puncture. of course, he didn't make it. he had already gone when i came on shift and lucky me, i was the resource nurse for the night. we had to leave the body behind the curtain for several hours to let him "gel". even at that, when we turned him, he spewed fluid from his mouth. he was cold and wet, and the smell is still in my nose (i have a sinus infection so that's saying something!!) to this day. he smelled just like raw chicken that had been left out on the picnic table for a week in the sun. i'm gagging just thinking about him.

another one that caught me by surprise was a teenager who had been run over by the tractor he was driving. it ran right over his head. i was helping to suction his ett and when i stabilized my hand on his cheekbone, it moved!

then there was the teenager who was in the process of switching drivers in a jeep at 80 mph when it flipped and dumped him out... he had a traumatic amp of the right leg at mid thigh, but that wasn't the worst. he had also ripped his scrotum from shaft to rectum. ouuuuuuch!!! (i wonder if it was like having an episiotomy? at least he was anaesthetized for the first four days... )

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