What is the freakiest thing you have ever seen at work?????

LasVegasRN · May 18, 2002

........I guess that about covers it! What kind of gift is that for a wife? A "foretaste" of what is to come?..........(Cathy W)

::::: HURLING :::::::

ya got me on that one.......whew.

KaraLea, LVN · May 18, 2002

I once had a female patient with UNTREATED Breast CA. OMG! The smell alone was enough to gag a maggot. It had eaten all the way to the outside and was just one big open, oozing, stinking hole in this woman's chest. I got my first mammogram done the next week.

caroladybelle, BSN, RN · May 18, 2002

I took care of a sinus cancer pt where the necrosis had eaten a hole through into the brain and basically performed a prefrontal lobotomy. The smell was very bad and we did dressing changes - you could see the pulsing of the blood vessels. Necrosing tumors are the worst.

Tumors in the neck or groin, invading the major blood vessels - with the slow bleeds - worrying about exsaunganation - that's always freaky.

RNinICU · May 18, 2002

Had a woman come in with an old mercury thermometer in her bladder. She and hubby had been using it for foreplay, and it "slipped" into her bladder. Had to have a cysto to remove it.

Also had a 45 year old man come in with gangrene of both legs, open areas full of maggots. I have actually seen maggots in wounds several times.

When I worked in the ED a woman came in who had fallen at home and was not found for secveral days. She had a houseful of cats and was covered in her own feces as well as cat feces. The cats had been licking her wounds, so she of course ended up septic with Pasteurella in her blood cultures. She apparently broke her finger when she fell, and then kept manipulating it until it was attached by only a flap of skin, and was mummified. Amazingly, she survived, but was in ICU for a long time

MollyJ · May 18, 2002

FB's in unnatural orifices rank right up there BUT within about 6 or 8 months my unit had 2 older men who stabbed their scrotum's with knives. One said he didn't need it anymore. Impressive swelling and oozing.

Also, anyone here remember gerbiling. That was pretty gross.

We had a psych patient that was a swallower and the local prison would occasionally send us swallowers. Patient A grabbed spinal needles off the cart and "snarfed" those. Patient B was into bed springs.

Had a couple of guys who didn't believe in underwear come in with scrotum or member entrapped in their pant's zippers. It would make me nervous to see the ED doc assemble pliers etc for the job and I don't even have a member.

Admit it--we're all people junkies!

Nurse_Bonita · May 23, 2002

Had a patient in the nursing home I used to work at with this really nasty, deep decubitus ulcer on her hip. Of course, she looked like a holocaust survivor. Real thin, actually closer to emaciated. Wouldn't eat a darn thing. Only thing keeping her alive was Ensure. Well, I went in to change her one day and she had her her index and middle fingers shoved in that decub clear to the last knuckle just playing with the darn thing. I wanted to puke. I asked her what she was doing. She just shrugged.

Same patient. Had been in our facility for about a month and all of a sudden when one of the dayshift girls was bathing her, she noticed that this patient had head lice. Well, we ended up with three other patients getting it. So we take this patient outside on the patio to treat her. It was the middle of summer and Director of Nursing said to take her outside to keep the bugs from getting everywhere. As fast as we combed her hair and treated it them little buggers were hatching and running everywhere. This woman had very short hair anyhow and the directot got permission to shave her head. That was the only way to get rid of the varmints. To this day, my skin still crawls when I think about it. :chair: YUCK!!!!!!!

joyflnoyz, LPN · May 23, 2002

The worst thing I've ever seen is where I am now working. We have a resident who had surgery for CA of the eye. Whole orbit removed, part of her nose and she's missing 1/4 of her face.

I was assigned to her one night, and changing the dressing was awful. I guess the mind shuts off to the horror of something like that, and I went into "automatic mode"

talaxandra · May 23, 2002

These are off the top of my head - I'm sure I can do better after a bit more thought :)

5) okay, more that I wasn't prepared for it - 80+ y.o. woman who came in for something completely different (malnutrition FI or something) had a lump on her nose, which turned out to be a virulent malignancy. They took her to theatre and I went to take down the dressing a couple of days later. The OR report said they'd excised the lump, but when I took down the dressing they'd removed her nose! OMG! I was so calm, and freaked when I got into the corridor: "She's got no nose! She's got to nose!"

4) my fault, all my fault - catheter draining the worst UTI I've ever seen in my life, like custard. We turned the patient over, and I tossed the catheter bag over to the other side of the bed, whereupon the burette bounced on the ground and the contents of the burette filled the other nurses' shoe. It's really hard to look as though your apology is sincere when you're laughing so hard you can't breathe!

3) same patient, different day - she'd had a THR on a previous admission, about four months earlier, and the suture line still hadn't healed. One night they turned her over, it burst, and almost a litre of pus filled the bed.

2) so glad she wasn't my patient - we had an attempted suicide being specialled by a psych nurse. Her x-rays looked as though she'd been pinned and plated, she'd stuck so many needles, pins and other bits of metal into her legs and abdo. Middle of the night, she knocked her special unconscious with an IV pole and absconded - nurse ended up in Cas for the night with a concussion.

1) saving the best (or worst) for last - elderly man with Parkinsons' used to cough up great quantities of biscuit-streaked sputum, and if you didn't get in there fast enough, when the cup was 2/3 full he'd drink it. Eurgh! More than ten years ago and it still makes me queasy!

Tara

OBNURSEHEATHER · May 23, 2002

Originally posted by talaxandra
elderly man with Parkinsons' used to cough up great quantities of biscuit-streaked sputum, and if you didn't get in there fast enough, when the cup was 2/3 full he'd drink it.

OH SHUT UP!!!!!!

OHHHHHHHHHHHHH GAWD!

Heather

LasVegasRN · May 23, 2002

Originally posted by talaxandra
1) saving the best (or worst) for last - elderly man with Parkinsons' used to cough up great quantities of biscuit-streaked sputum, and if you didn't get in there fast enough, when the cup was 2/3 full he'd drink it. Eurgh! More than ten years ago and it still makes me queasy!

Tara

That's it, I'm not reading this thread anymore unless someone passes out Phenergan.

::::: HURLING!!! :::::::

:uhoh21:

RN-PA, RN · May 23, 2002

Tara said:

1) saving the best (or worst) for last - elderly man with Parkinsons' used to cough up great quantities of biscuit-streaked sputum, and if you didn't get in there fast enough, when the cup was 2/3 full he'd drink it. Eurgh! More than ten years ago and it still makes me queasy!

Folks, I think we have a winner, and uh, please-- *urp* pass the-- *gag* --Phenergan.... QUICK!

moonshadeau, ADN, BSN, MSN, RN, APN, NP, CNS · May 23, 2002

I was just talking at work last night with some of my coworkers that very few wounds freak me out anymore. But the grossest wound that I have ever seen I can still remember quite vividly. It was a gentleman that I took care of that had some sort of abdominal surgery that the docs couldn't close on. So they didn't. He had a good hunk of his intestines hanging out and only covered with a tegaderm. I do mean a very large tegaderm, it was larger than a sheet of paper. The dressing change alone took a half an hour. And the smell. I think that I may have jinxed him as I talked out him last night and his name is in the obits today.