Roaches are going to drive me out of home care!!!

Specialties Home Health

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I feel like I should be called the Orkin Nurse, and instead of a backback, I should carry an orificenal of roach-killing chemicals.

I need a roach repellant perfume or something.

Yesterday MONSTER roach appeared too close to my coat, and I swear I could barely focus on my new admit, and I admit, I skimmed that OASIs faster than fast to get the heck outta there!

Today, very clean house, in the midst of several abandoned ones boarded up in a drug-infested neighborhood, and I know that is always a bad thing, a draw for roaches and rodents, and it isn't the fault or lack of cleanliness of the people I serve but ...

People I have a serious issue, fear-factor, r/t roaches. I am not sure I could even get away w asking not to be sent there, it wouyld only mean some other poor nurse gets stuck w that many more roach motels.

Let me put it this way, if I were on that show fear factor and I could be given a million dollars to enter a room swarming w roaches, I would probably hurl at the thought.

Today, sitting in this clean rose among the thorns, and here comes da beast, crawling up the couch I was just sitting on, once again too close to my personal stuff. At least in the summer, I don't have a coat or so many pockets and stuff w me for the creepy critters to hide in.

I can't function like this, I get tunnel vision, and I do struggle to keep cool and remain non-judgemental, esp w the older folks.

Help me!! Should I seek deconditioning? I think this is NORMAL to not like roaches. Yesterday's man carried his med zippered bag in and tried to hand it to me w a monster roach on it!! I asked him to set it on the table and take out the bottles one by one so we could review it, I wasn't touching that freakin bag!!

I have been going into the dregs of the city w/o a roach-free home lately, and I can't take it much longer. I am not only afraid of these things touching me, or getting into my clothes, but of bringing them into my home by accident. My winter coat is still in my car b/c I was afraid to bring it inside. I am seriously stressing here!!!

What would you do? I have no problem w dogs, snakes, or other creatures, just bugs tarantula spiders, roaches, NASTY stuff.

Specializes in Case Management, Home Health, UM.

I used to do Home Health in a VERY rural area of south Georgia, where the Palmetto Roaches (those big suckers with wings) literally dive-bombed you, whenever you walked into a room. Anyway, there was a local exterminating company who ran a T.V. ad, describing these roaches as: "Big Enough to Tree a Hound!"

I got hysterical when I saw it, for the ad was so funny....and true.

:rotfl:

Originally posted by CseMgr1

I used to do Home Health in a VERY rural area of south Georgia, where the Palmetto Roaches (those big suckers with wings) literally dive-bombed you, whenever you walked into a room.

I've convinced myself that those things don't REALLY fly right at your face. It's a coincidence, yeah, uh-huh. It's the only thing that keeps me from going insane on the spot. :D

Guess I'm lucky not to be squeamish, But do NOT want bugs in my house (or my patients homes).

I was a kid who put spiders, bees, and other critters in jars with holes in the lid to look at. As a teen I had a crab colledtion (small crabs 16 species displayed like butterflies).

Once went to buy fresh vegetables in the country. The men were all working on machinery. Women took turns at the roadside stand. I played with a lovely happy little boy. His Mom asked if I wanted to see the house.

There were six couples and about ten kids living in one large house with goats!

Goats in the house chewing the furniture. Toddlers and one crawling baby wearing only shirts. The women casually took paper towels and wiped up after the babies and swept after the goats. No hand washing before returning to snapping string beans.Wonder how many rolls of paper towels they used? I washed those wonderful fresh veggies and strawberries VERY carefully.

A patient brought roaches into the ICU in the battery compartment of our ICU. We've had homeless men with fleas in their beard. Any patient bathed in ER is Kwelled, they don't even have regular soap.

When we bought our house there were roaches. One room had one of those accordian style doors that dropped about a hundred when I closed it.

Boric acid powder anywhere the children and pets can't go killed them all. Before that we had an apartment a block from the beach where it was impossible due to neighbors "pets" coming to our place. ALL food went into the fridge.

Chickens? Salmonella? I had a coop and was VERY careful with the eggs.

My son had pet rats with a hamster trail in his room as a teen. His sisters cat ate one that opened the cage with his hands. He cried.

Now he and his wife have one cat.

Don't let me gross you out with what I have suctioned from new admits. Worse than any horror story you could imagine.

My hats off to all the nurses who have to endure this horror of insects! I also hate them.. I have such a dislike for crickets, flies, fleas....my husband takse our daughter to the park because I hate going.

Whats this I hear about alot of roaches in South Florida? Please someone tell me some more. I wanted to move out there in a few years...but I won't if there is a huge bug problem! Is it even in the clean areas? Thanks!

I'm feeling faint reading this.....

I'd have to go on pysch meds to visit roach infested homes. Or be heavily sedated. Either way - I'd be fired because my charting would look like childs play.

Hang in there Hoolie....!

Specializes in Home Health, Hospice.

Roaches? Boric acid in powder form, sprinkled around baseboards,under beds,in closets,etc. Worked for one of my Home patients.

MAGGOTS! Now THAT'S where I have a hard time. One of my Home patients didn't like to keep a dressing on a radiation burn beneath the jawline. One day a caregiver/relative called to say she thought she saw bugs in the wound. All I can say is, .......Boy!, was that wound ever CLEAN!!

Then there's the problem of flea infestation. A patient with 4 cats, and a plastic wading pool as a litter box, (in the far corner of the dining room),and a fear of letting the cats out......well, fleas were in her wounds, on the walls, everywhere.I'd tuck my pants into my socks, and spray my legs with flea repellant before entering the house. Eccentric didn't come close to describing her. BUT.....she was fluent in 4 languages, a refugee from some small Italian town, and the daughter of some assasinated diplomat! I put up with the fleas and learned a lot.

Roaches most often "hitch a ride" on garage sale electronics. They actually LIKE soap, as it is oily.The best approach is professional extermination.....but boric acid powder works pretty well.

We are all here to help others.....so what are the "others" here for?

Specializes in Case Management, Home Health, UM.
Originally posted by spacenurse

Don't let me gross you out with what I have suctioned from new admits. Worse than any horror story you could imagine.

Try rattlesnakes and rats. This elderly couple lived in something remotely resembling a shack....and the nurses were literally running into the office, crying and refusing to go back. I went once...and never went back, either. Before I closed out my note that day, I documented my conversation with a APS caseworker, who immediately paid an emergency on-site visit. Within a week, the City had that place condemned...and those poor souls moved to safer quarters...

I must have it great.... I work in an upscale CLEAN home in a NICE St. Louis neighborhood.... BUT

A couple of years ago I worked for an agency that sent me to a tennement apt downtown... in the room of the baby I cared for an outer wall was missing covered by a BLANKET and ceiling was supported by 4 4x4 posts....... mind you we were on the SECOND FLOOR!!!

On my arrival the family ROTWILER charged me with a slathering grin and a deep throaty Grrrr.... I backed away from the dog and stepped on a pile of discarded taco bell and burger king bags which a ZILLION Mark McGwire baseball bat holding-- home run hitting sized roaches jogged out of.... Then th ekicker.. the baby roaches were platint "tag" IN and ON the vent and it's tubing circuit! I stayed long enough to call my supervisor and tell her to call Rankin Jordan Children's home for IMMEDIATE transport of this child to their facility for it's own protection. She refused. I called Social Services next.. waited an hour for them to show up. They saw the house af\greed with me and then they removed the child and I went home.

three days later the baby was BACK in that hell hole.... :confused

And get this..I got a write up for insubordination and I got removed from the case for being too "uppity". :chuckle

Go Figure.:eek: :chuckle :

SOME DAY I'll learn to type!

I am a clinical social worker in a home health agency, I get refferals often for environment, mainly insects. I was under the impression that every home health agency has social workers, do they not?

Last semester I completed my clinical rotation at this nasty convalescent home. Our instructor was showing us what kinds of different tube feeding material there was. She picked up a bottle of Jevity and there were maggots stuck to the bottom of it. We looked closer at the shelf it came from and noticed a large colony of maggots! Crawling around the bottles of jevity and on paperwork!!!! Gross!!!! Needless to say, I will never consider working at this facility! This happened right before we were to go on lunch break.

Specializes in Home Health.

Billssisbeth...OMG!!! YOU were uppity??? Unbelievable...poor baby.

Tweeite, that is gross!! But, if we are going to talk about bugs in the hospital, that is a given. I would often find roaches in the bed linens of bedbound pt's who were on TF. Roaches LOVE that stuff.

diana, yes most agencies do have MSW, but I worked for one where they just couldn't find one FT. So, we had to refer to APS or county Board of soc service directly between MSW's.

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