Gross me out!

During our rehab unit, one of my classmates had a patient who had a stage four pressure ulcer as a result of having been in the ICU that was so deep that she had to measure it by sticking her forearm in up to her elbow. This was apparently an improvement over the patient's condition when transferred to the rehab facility.

A patient's age and their probability of being continent are inversely related. On med-surg, it's rare to see a patient under 60. Do the math.

Thanks! That was exactly what I was looking for

I work in ICU. I had an admission come in because of fever. She ended up with a massive systemic infection and multi-system organ failure. She was a bilateral amputee from a month ago. After stabilizing her in the unit, I started bathing her. I took off some ace wraps she had on her stumps, and the staples were still there, which I found odd for a month out. Anyway, I was poking around them with a betadine swab and I poked a hole in one of the incisions because the skin was so "crusty" and dead looking. I did the same with the other leg. Maggots rushed out of both of the holes. I was horrified. I removed the staples and put chux under her stumps and hundreds of maggots rushed out. I actually had to keep wrapping up the chux and placing the (maggots and all) in the trash and laying fresh ones down. They took her and did an emergency debridment and cleaned both legs completely out. She actually survived and went home. After 10 years of nursing, this memory still makes me vomit. I threw up the whole time that pt was in surgery. Welcome to nursing.:lol_hitti

One of my patients in my med-surg clinicals had a c3-c4 contusion with a c3-c6 laminectomy that required him to be in a Miami J collar for over a month. When it came time for me to take care of him he often complained about how the collar would get wet and itchy so I let the nurse know and we ended up changing the padding around the brace (obviously he needed someone to hold c-spine if you took the thing off). When I peeled the sponges away there were things growing on them...which sadly is not the grossest part of this story.

I ended up doing a care plan on that patient some weeks later and found research that a small percentage of pressure ulcers are caused by Miami-J collars at the occipital regions of the skull. When I told a clinical professor she got this strange look on her face and proceeded to tell me about a patient with the exact same problem, only his Miami collar had been on for so long that the patient had developed some pretty heavy pressure ulcers. Bad enough that while taking care of him one day, my professor asked him to open his mouth and there were maggots in his teeth from where the ulcers had gone entirely through.

The moral of the story is to wash your Miami-J collars. And to the poster above...yeah I think I would vomit the entire time my patient was in the OR too. Cheers to you for getting through it

To the OP, you might not find yourself de-sensitized by gross stories of nursing. I think nurses just have the ability to go "oh that's nasty!" deal with it, and move onto the next task.

All this talk about maggots is making my skin crawl right now!

Wow - that is all really, really disgusting. Thanks :)

To the OP, you might not find yourself de-sensitized by gross stories of nursing. I think nurses just have the ability to go "oh that's nasty!" deal with it, and move onto the next task.

I have a pretty unnatural fear of something that would probably come up in nursing stories, and has. I'm hoping if I hear and picutre enough of this, I won't pass out right there if it ever happens to one of my pts.

LOL! This is really fun to hear, on the other hand, I wonder if I'll be able to take it and move on but great stories you all. Enjoyed reading the two and the mucous one. I hope everyone will keep posting.

You won't believe most of it until you see it, smell it and have it sloshing around in your shoes.

In clinicals right now.....

1.) Code brown. Our classmate came from one section of the floor to get all of us to help! Why? Pt was over 500 lbs and it took 4 of us to hold back her thighs, to roll her, etc. UCK!

2.) Obese woman - met. breast CA, HIV+, with a stage 4 decubitis ulcer on her backside that was 4 in deep.

(believe it or not....she was only 42, is going to die and yet was a full code!)

3.) Homeless man you could smell from the hall add in a code brown and you could hardly breathe! Funny thing though.....he was completely non-responsive and we had to do everything to get him cleaned up....then the reg. RN comes in with the man's lunch and asked him if he wanted to eat. I looked at her like she was crazy, but I guess not. This 'non-responsive' pt suddenly opened his eyes to sit up and eat! :angryfire Worse yet...he looked at his utensils like he didn't know how to use them and then ate like an animal...and yes, we had to clean him up from his lunch too.