Please share with me your greatest code brown stories!
Mine happened too be when i was a nurse's aid and i was taking care of a woman who would call her bms her babies. She would only pass once a month and they were the size of a large grapefruit, the actual bm had to be broken up to go down the toilet when flushed.
Or........Maybe it was when my dear nursing school days when a nurses aid was doing an rectal irrigation ordered by the doctor and i was told, "oh the bm wouldn't come out right away, shouldn't be too big of a mess". It shot right back out and almost right into my face.
When I worked as a very young CNA in LTC, I was assigned to clean up a HUGE diarrhea mess left by one of the patients. The whole bed--blanket, sheets, etc.--were covered in poop. So was the lid of her lunch tray (don't know how that happened.) Ewwww :barf01: :barf01:
More recently, we had a couple of residents who liked to collect their turds--one lady wrapped her poo balls nicely in toilet tissue and tucked them away in her dresser. The other one put them on display in piles on her headboard at night. Lovely smell.
Two incidents I didn't witness, but heard about at work, involved a male resident who went to a female resident's room and proceeded to crap, standing up. Female resident comes to complain about him, the NA on duty was about to leave, so she told the housekeeper to please clean up the mess. So the housekeeper almost pukes when she sees the huge turd on the floor and almost chucked her breakfast while cleaning up the stuff.)
Another time one of the residents had projectile diarrhea ALL OVER her room (and this lady is tiny). One of my coworkers told me the room looked like a crime scene and she freaked out. Thankfully the maintenance man was there to help her get it clean.
Ok I have 2 stories. I was caring for an elderly gentleman who was a minimal assist to the bathroom. He had called for help while I was with another patient, and of course no one else went to help him. When I finally get to his room, the smell hit me. He was standing by his bed (he was wearing a gown and hospital pants) and he told me that he needed to have a BM, but I was too late. As I started to help him to the bathroom to get him cleaned up I noticed the loose stool running out of his pant legs. He drug it all the way across the room to the bathroom. I wanted to die! I sat him down on the toilet and proceeded to "mop" up the mess with towels. Housekeeping refused to come and mop until the patient was back in bed. Talk about stinky!!!
The best story is my MRSA patient who was total care and weighed about 350 pounds. She was in desperate need of a shower so the nurse and I got out the hoyer lift and put her in a shower chair. Of course her room had a bathtub instead of a shower, so we had to wheel her down the hall to the large shower. Here I am with the nurse all dressed up in gowns and gloves. We got the patient clean and rolled her back to her room. Of course we didn't notice that she was having a loose BM all the way down the hall and back to her room. It was about 150 feet of poop drops! When we got back to the room and lifted her back up with the hoyer, we realized what had happened. We had to keep her elevated with the hoyer above her bed as the stool continued to drip out into little piles. We watched in horror for about 15 minutes. We decided to clean her up as best we could and put a brief on her to finish. What a disaster!!!
Specializes in Geriatrics, acute hospital care, rehab.
Back in the late '80s when I was a CNA I was working the night shift. We were doing our q 2hr rounds when we heard this gawd awful moaning and groaning. We tracked it down to this little 90+ year old lady. We asked her what was wrong and all she would say is "the baby is comin, the baby is comin'". We tried the ol' reality orientation bit to no avail. So we went about our business, checking her attends to see if she was wet or such. Well it turned out she was starting to have a bm. So, we got her up on the commode, pulled the curtain to give her some privacy and waited for her by the sink in the room. After about 5 minutes we hear this loud THUD:stone ! We peeked around the curtain, expecting to see her on the floor. But there she was smiling away....."I think the baby is here" We got her off the commode and lawd have mercy there it was!!! This GIGANTIC chunk of poop!! All we could do was stare in amazement. (no kidding, it was the size of a brick:eek: ) How in the world this little old woman ever passed that is beyond me. I could not even flush it down the toilet. I had to to reach in the toilet and break it up by hand to get it to go down. Funny how some things ya just never forget! btw....we named it Bertha!
Specializes in Geriatrics, acute hospital care, rehab.
What is it about little old ladies saving the turd balls in the dresser?? Same thing happened to me, except when ya went in to her room you had better hoped she was in a good mood. Cuz if she wasn't she'd send those little turd balls sailing at your head!!!!!:chair:
Thank you for the compliment about my thread. I knew everyone would know what a code brown is! by the way, how do I become a premium member, that sounds very authoritative.
My CNA instructor told me this one: There was a sweet-but-confused resident who would hand out chocolate candies to anyone who would take them. One day, a student handed a chocolate to the instructor and commented that it looked stale. The instructor looked closely at the candy, thought it looked familiar, sniffed it...
The little old lady would scoop up her BMs, put them in a candy mold, dry them out, wrap them in foil, and hand them out. The nurses searched her bedroom, found a drawer and purse full of BM candies, and confiscated her candy mold. To this day, my instructor uses that story to emphasize that we should not take candy or gifts from residents or patients. What escapes me is how she managed to pull this off without people being suspicious of the smell.
I work on a surgical floor and until recently when an impacted patient came to the ER they would send them to the medical floor, and if they had no beds, to us for disimpaction. Anyway, we have this gentleman in his 80's and he is on the bedside commode after having a large volume enema. The CNA is behind him and he vagals out and fell forward to the floor causing a scalp lac and lots of blood. He also passed a large amount of stool in the shape of a top hat followed by an enormous amount of liquid stool that just keeps coming and coming. There were three of us literally wading through the liquid stool to get this now combative man back to bed. He is covered in poo and blood has covered his face. His wife who was in the lounge enjoying her dinner, heard the commotion and ran in to see him lying in the bed covered in poo and blood. She is yelling at us and he is hitting us, she slips in the poo after told not to walk in the room. Let's just say, this couple returned to the ER BOTH in patient gowns and wheelchairs. We no longer accept ER patients for disimpaction.
My CNA instructor told me this one: There was a sweet-but-confused resident who would hand out chocolate candies to anyone who would take them. One day, a student handed a chocolate to the instructor and commented that it looked stale. The instructor looked closely at the candy, thought it looked familiar, sniffed it...
The little old lady would scoop up her BMs, put them in a candy mold, dry them out, wrap them in foil, and hand them out. The nurses searched her bedroom, found a drawer and purse full of BM candies, and confiscated her candy mold. To this day, my instructor uses that story to emphasize that we should not take candy or gifts from residents or patients. What escapes me is how she managed to pull this off without people being suspicious of the smell.
boulergirl, CNA
428 Posts
I have a couple of stories for ya:
When I worked as a very young CNA in LTC, I was assigned to clean up a HUGE diarrhea mess left by one of the patients. The whole bed--blanket, sheets, etc.--were covered in poop. So was the lid of her lunch tray (don't know how that happened.) Ewwww :barf01: :barf01:
More recently, we had a couple of residents who liked to collect their turds--one lady wrapped her poo balls nicely in toilet tissue and tucked them away in her dresser. The other one put them on display in piles on her headboard at night. Lovely smell.
Two incidents I didn't witness, but heard about at work, involved a male resident who went to a female resident's room and proceeded to crap, standing up. Female resident comes to complain about him, the NA on duty was about to leave, so she told the housekeeper to please clean up the mess. So the housekeeper almost pukes when she sees the huge turd on the floor and almost chucked her breakfast while cleaning up the stuff.)
Another time one of the residents had projectile diarrhea ALL OVER her room (and this lady is tiny). One of my coworkers told me the room looked like a crime scene and she freaked out. Thankfully the maintenance man was there to help her get it clean.