Gross Me Out ? Contest | Nurses Week

[Joe V]

Month-Long Nurses Week Celebration Starts Today! Nurses Week Contest #6

You ever had those moments that you just want to barf? Of course you have! In this glorious Nurses Week contest, I want you to make us do just that. ? Is that too disgusting? 'Cmon. This will be fun. Share your 'Oh gross' moment and you can win a $100 Amazon Gift Card courtesy of allnurses Ebooks! 

More Nurses Week Contests

Contest Rules

You can submit any story but only those that follow the below rules will be considered for the $100 Amazon Gift Card.

1. Open to registered allnurses.com members only. (Free and quick to Register)
2. Each story will be reviewed for originality.
3. You must share your stories below.
4. You can submit more than one story.
5. One winner will be announced.

This contest is sponsored by allnurses Ebooks.

Quality Nursing Ebooks. Anytime. Anywhere. Our ebooks are created by nurses, educators, students, and healthcare professionals. We have one goal - To help you succeed in your nursing career.

[Heather Chasteen]

Working Neuro ICU and we had a guy come in with half his face covered in maggots. He was alert, oriented, and talking to us as we spent hours with suture removal tweezers pulling maggots off his face. It was so bad you could see his molar from the side of his face. His nose, eye socket, mouth, and check were mostly gone. It was so gross yet fascinating. He lived like this for a year before he finally came in. Apparently he had a cancerous lesion on his nose that he refused to go get it looked at. 

[CLB]

As a young Labor and Delivery nurse right out of school in 1970..we still shaved the pubic area...we also were a medical center and had an indigent population.

I admitted a young woman in active labor...pulled back the sheet to begin shaving her. There were public lice crawling all over her perineal area...then...her water broke and completely drenched my face and hair...

An experience I never wanted to repeat....gross

[SmilingBluEyes]

3 hours ago, CLB said:

As a young Labor and Delivery nurse right out of school in 1970..we still shaved the pubic area...we also were a medical center and had an indigent population.

I admitted a young woman in active labor...pulled back the sheet to begin shaving her. There were public lice crawling all over her perineal area...then...her water broke and completely drenched my face and hair...

An experience I never wanted to repeat....gross

This happened to me, too, minus the pubic lice. I was soaked from head to toe. A shower was not enough to make me feel better.

[MichellesMusings]

OK, this is something gross about me and a patient’s poop. I worked in long-term care in the beginning of my career and this one elderly patient was bed-bound and incontinent. If I was working and he had pooped the aids would call me. I loved the smell of his poop, it smelled like scalloped potatoes. I often took a potato to work with me to bake in the microwave in case I cleaned him up which made me crave a potato. 
 

Another more recent story. A morbidly obese psych patient urinated on the floor as she was attempting to transfer herself to her wheelchair and started to slide in it. We all know how much charting comes with falls, so I let her sit on my thigh/knee while I called for help. She began to urinate again, all over my shoe. I had a couple hrs left until I would be off and couldn’t leave so tried to clean out my shoe best I could but until I was able to go home I had to walk around with her urine squooshing up between my toes every step I took. 

[spotangel, DNP, RN, NP]

Michelles! Can't stop laughing! It's SO Gross!

[Daisy4RN]

I came to work that day already feeling a little nauseous. NOC nurse gave me report and  told me the pt came for constipation and needed an immediate NG. No worries, I have done this millions of times. So, I go to pt room ...start to drop tube and smell feces, I ask something like..do you feel you can have a BM now, pt states no so I proceed with tube..long story short the pt had fecal material coming from the NG and with a nasty odor I have never smelled before, it was all I could to not barf even though I couldnt stop myself from gagging. (And, I hope I never smell that smell again, ever!)

[TriciaJ, RN]

On 4/21/2021 at 11:42 AM, SmilingBluEyes said:

when I worked in an OB/GYN office, we found interesting things being used as pessaries for prolapsed uteri. The worst I ever saw was a potato. No big deal, you say? Well this one had grown roots and was pretty well planted! THAT was gross to me.

Nothing smells worse than a potato that has gone bad.  Hopefully you caught it before the smell was permanent.

[amoLucia]

25 minutes ago, Daisy4RN said:

 .....  so I proceed with tube..long story short the pt had fecal material coming from the NG and with a nasty odor I have never smelled before, it was all I could to not barf even though I couldnt stop myself from gagging. (And, I hope I never smell that smell again, ever!)

Wow! Can you spell BOWEL OBSTRUCTION???  Had a similar case once.

 

HC -  Similar pt had advanced mastoiditis that became infected. I was the NOC nurse and followed the 3-11 admission nurse. She just told me there was a new drsg to change. I removed his right side facial drsg, it was like I was looking into a bowl of wiggling spaghetti maggots.

I was a fairly new newbie. Good thing I went in with a CNA as the room started spinning. I became light-headed & dizzy. The CNA just pushed me into a nearby chair. I don't know how she finished the ear drsg - didn't care!

HC - please consider changing your screen name. Anonymity is good for  social media sites.

And welcome to AN.

[SmilingBluEyes]

51 minutes ago, TriciaJ said:

Nothing smells worse than a potato that has gone bad.  Hopefully you caught it before the smell was permanent.

the smell was horrific. How the GYN got it out was no less than a miracle.

[Deb Shaffer]

I was working in Labor and Delivery and we had a patient come in who was in the CAP program, Center for Addiction in Pregnancy. She had missed her methadone dose from the outpatient clinic that morning. She came to us because she was experiencing withdrawal symptoms, including nausea. As she waited for the order to come through for her methadone dose, her nausea worsened. I gave her the liquid methadone dose as soon as it arrived from the pharmacy, which she eagerly took. Within 5 minutes of taking it, she promptly threw it up. What happened next appalled me. She took the emesis basin and DRANK HER VOMIT!!

[CABGpatch_RN, BSN]

Not much grosses me out, but the time I was doing a dressing change for a patient in the CVICU who had a femoral art line infiltrated is one I can think of.  Apparently the art line slipped out of the artery and no one caught it or it just was  not obvious?  I will never understand.  The ENTIRE groin was completely stripped of any soft tissue.  All I saw was bone and connective tissue when I pulled the older dressing out. All the way to the coccyx.  Sadly, this patient did not make it, not because of this wound, but because of reasons that required a femoral art line to begin with.

Other super gross stuff to me is the smell of pseudomonas.  ?  There is nothing like the smell of catabolism or necrosis.

Also, GI bleeds.  When a clot the length and shape of the large bowel was discharged.  Fascinating.  Just fascinating.  This is a specific patient I am thinking about.  He was talking to me one minute and he was gone the next.

Not too long ago we used to have leeches in the med fridge.  It was like a med on the MAR.  Well, it was on the MAR.  Placing these little puppies on very specific areas was cool.  The end result of glistening new tissue was such a reward.

The human body is spectacular.  

[Hannahbanana, BSN, MSN]

The fecal NG tube story reminded me of another from my first ICU job. Guy had esophageal  cancer and, alas, an incredibly incompetent surgeon (even to my inexperienced eye) who basically snipped out his esophagus and hooked up his stomach just south of his tonsils. I’m sure it won’t come as a surprise that this anastomosis failed.

Terrible complications ensued over many weeks. After several codes the ICU team determined that it would be a mercy to let this poor man go, but surgeon wouldn’t allow it. Fortunately (I guess) his surgeon was there on rounds one morning when he arrested once again, and the ICU team stepped back and let the surgeon (try to) run the code. This time the man finally died. The sight of fecal material blurping out the erosions around the chest tubes with each chest compression, and the accompanying smell, will never leave me.