What Freaks You Out?

LadyNASDAQ · Jan 11, 2002

Originally posted by JennieBSN
Okay, people. It's time for a nice, fun, light-hearted discussion to blow off some steam.

WHAT FREAKS YOU OUT? What bodily fluid can't you STAND? What wound gives you the absolute WILLIES? It doesn't matter if you're an ADN, BSN, LPN, CNA, PQRST, ABCDEFG...every body gets the heebie jeebies over SOMETHING...even you stomach-of-steel ER nurses!

Mine is eyeball injuries/surgery...aaaaaaaaaackkkkkkk!! Gross! Makes my skin absolutely CRAWL. Or when someone gets a little cut on their finger/toe/whatever and then squeezes it to make it bleed!! Bleah!! Then there's the ever-popular RESPIRATORY SECRETIONS. I can handle poop, pee, amniotic fluid, lanced boils, pus, whatever...but give me a nasty snot-filled trach, and I'm OUTTA THERE.

Share, share, share people!

Only one thing and that I must admit I was not nauseated over lol, I almost passed out and that was an eye ball out of the socket that an ERDoc was trying to put back in.

I was so sick I was sweating and feeling very, very sick so you know what I did, I assisted him with sterile gloves and told him that I had to get used to this or else!

Cured me, quick.

I can stand most odors. GI blood, mucus, traches and all those secretions but thankfully, the patient with the eye ball was out cold and I knew where my thresh hold was. quickly. I remember that incident 10 years ago and 13 years have come and gone but the memories still linger.

kids · Jan 11, 2002

Originally posted by janmae1950
I'm still in school. I'm trying to get used to yucky stuff by forcing myself to look at pictures on rotten.com.

LOL!

Pictures of stuff gross me out...but I can handle most things 'in person'...except eyeballs!

-nancy

RN-rural · Jan 11, 2002

LOL!

Pictures of stuff gross me out...but I can handle most things 'in person'...except eyeballs!

-nancy [/b] I never saw a picture that grosssed me out, but green yucky sputum gets me--even worse if it's shooting out of a trach! I guess I knew I could be a nurse when I was able to go right to lunch after watching my first autopsy (wayn back in nursing school). Oh yeah, I don't think I would have shook the hand that squashed roaches!

Karat · Jan 11, 2002

The only thing yet that has made me repeatedly gag is the oral secretions gooing out profusely from a man with oral herpes WHILE trying to reinsert a rectal tube that has fallen out while liquid diarrhea is POURING out. It still makes me gag to this day:o

semstr · Jan 11, 2002

sorry, yes lepra is leprosy of course!

Take care, Renee

teriRN · Jan 11, 2002

What a hilarious thread, enough to make me register on this site. Projectile mucus from trachs is #1 for me, but running a close second is seeing doctors anesthetize gaping, jagged flesh to suture it. Something about those long needles going into gorey tissue....Someone mentioned disimpaction? Here's one that keeps me laughing. Was working LTC/Alzheimers and had a pt. that never made any sense (except for using the F word very clearly.) One day she starts saying "the baby's coming! the baby's coming". Took me about 20 minutes before the light bulb went on and I checked her diaper. Sure enough, there was a softball-sized ball of poop right there waiting to be dug out. Eeewwwww! Anybody with kids out there remember labor? For once this lady made sense.

Whisper · Jan 11, 2002

I can not stand to eat any food, if it has a hair, on it. I just hurl, I start to go green at the thought of it! Even if I am not the one eating it:rolleyes:

However I saw a patient on the ward sat chewing her hair and eating her tea, and volunteered to go and help change a dressing on an ulcerated leg, rather than talk to the hair eater!

Furball · Jan 11, 2002

The following dressing change was my very first solo wound care in nursing school. I have a sneaking suspicion that my preceptor was testing me.

The unfortunate gentleman was an inmate, had severe uncontrolled diabetes, had a fungal infection that ate away his left eye and palate. The dressing was a very simple DSD....no problem I thought until I removed the old one. His orbit was just a gaping hole into his skull. I handled this horror calmly and was very proud of mself but I made the mistake of inspecting the old dressing a little too thoroughly and discovered half chewed food on it! He had just eaten lunch and some of the food worked its way through the missing palate and out the eye socket. Blah!

RNKitty · Jan 11, 2002

EEWW! :eek:

nicola · Jan 11, 2002

The dressing change that was worst for me was the guy with neck CA and pseusomonas and a trach. He did his own trach care but couldn't do the dsg change. Between the green runny stuff (how clinical of me!) and the stench, I nearly lost it. Fortunately he wasn't my regular client so I only did him when I was working weekends. The miracle, and I have no idea how this happened, was that the trach was always neg. for pseudomonas!

Then there was the funny dsg change... if there is such a thing. This guy had several of his toes amputated and a big wound on his foot and up the shin that had been debrided and was slated for a skin graft as soon as there was enough healing. The object was to teach his wife to do the bid dressing change so that I could eventually go only TIW. The first time I went and started taking off the dressing, the ENTIRE family - kids, cousins etc - fled the room! The first words out of my mouth ... "Oh, that's really pretty. Look..." and then began teaching the client and his wife why it was pretty - ya know, nice pink tissue, no odor or exudate... They thought I was nuts for calling his wound "pretty". but it really was! BTW, his wife did learn how to do the dsg change and the wound healed so well they called off the skin graft! :D That was one of my favorite cases! :cool:

KRVRN, BSN, RN · Jan 12, 2002

Well, there aren't many things quite as gross as y'all have described in the NICU world, but I do have to share the thing that does gross me...

During a c-section, I find the smell of the cauterizer (is that what it's called?) sizzling with the smell of amniotic fluid and meconium and whatever else absolutely disgusting. Thank God for the mask. Too bad they're not airtight.

Rustyhammer · Jan 12, 2002

I'm sitting here eating dinner and laughing. My wife comes up behind me and reads over my shoulder and says, "I don't know how you can sit here eating pizza while reading this!"

Ahh...the non-initiated will never know!

oh, by the way, the one time I really lost it was when I went in to check on this poor demented woman. The room was dark and I turned the overbed light on and she screamed (scary enough) and she had been eating her feces. I ran out of the room, made it to the next room and tossed my cookies!

I can still see the visual.

-Russell

ps: I don't dig sputum either.