What Is Your Most Gross, Yucky, Disgusting Nursing Horror Story?

Here is my most gross, yucky, disgusting nursing story! Nurses Humor Article

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I was working a night shift on a tele floor as a new Nurse.

We had this one poor old lady who was confused and was restrained as usual for her safety. She was our designated resident nightmare geri from hell, so she was placed near the Nurse's station.

So we are chilling out at the Nurse's station, chatting and trying to get through another night...

Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I see our lady in question standing in the dimly lit doorway of her room!

I instantly leap out and run to her. As I approach her, she appears to be falling towards me, so I meet her in a bear hug...my arms around her waste, and her arms around my shoulders.

As I catch the lady, I notice a very strong smell of feces, and I feel something warm on my hands, arms and shoulders...

My fellow heroes come in behind me, and as the lights are turned on, my worst fears are instantly realized.

Yes, I caught the poor old lady with a good old bear hung football catch, but I was also covered in the lady's feces.

As I look at her, she has feces smeared all over her arms and hands... (and even her face!)

And of course, now so did I! :D

That reminds me of a nurse who told me years ago re a patient's colostomy - it was really disgusting looking and purulent, leaking foul smelling fluid etc. Anyway they did a swab - and results showed the patient had ghonorrhoea in her colostomy site! She was apparently a postitute and offered her clients a different kind of sexual encounter!

I often wonder how people enjoy doing things like this, and would it hurt the patient?

i wonder if this is actually a true story, anywhere? There is a nurse at our hospital who swears up and down he took care of a woman who came to A&E with an infected stoma site and it was +ve for STDs because the husband had been "using" it. I think this story floats around every hospital! I refuse to believe it's true because it's just TOO gross! (please, nobody shatter my illusion!)

Specializes in Oncology/Hematology, Infusion, clinical.
Many years ago now, I was not a RN. I worked in a clinical nursing HR unit. Anyway the RN who taught CPR and I worked together a lot on differing projects of hers. She told me an horrific story one day, and swore this was true.

She used to work as an ambo (paramedic) and she and her partner were called out to a car accident one day. She was fairly new and young. Anyway, they got to the MVA scene, and whilst one ambo assessed and worked on the people in one car, she was told to go check out the other one. She sprinted over, peered in through the wreckage and saw one lady in the front of the car, obviously dead at the wheel. But as she leaned in the car more, she saw something lying on a pillow in the next seat with a seat belt kind of around it and the pillow (everything was scrunched and messed up due to the accident). She told me she couldn't figure out what she was looking at and thought it was a small dead dog or puppy. Then, when she glanced up at the windscreen and saw what was on there, she looked back at the thing lying on the pillow, realised what it was, staggered over to the side of the road and just vomited non-stop.

She was looking at this dead woman's baby, whom the woman had placed on a pillow on the other seat, but the force of the seat belt and gravity of the car being hit had literally torn off this baby's head, so that all my friend could see was a partial stump of bloody God knows what and the baby's brains were splattered all over the windscreen. She said there were clumps of hair and lumps of brain still sliding down the windscreen, and she had never seen anything so horrific then or since. My friend quit after that incident and went into hospital nursing.

I told my cousin this story who used to put her baby on a pillow in the front seat (highly illegal now!), and she replied: 'Oh that would never happen to me, I'm very careful!' It's not YOUR driving I was worried about, it's other PEOPLE.

So many people live in denial, it really scares me.

of all the stories I've read in this thread, I'm certain this one would have landed me in some prolonged psychotherapy. I have a horror story of my own but I will spare it for the moment (or maybe until my therapy is successful, lol!)

Specializes in LTC.

2 words. GI bleed.

Specializes in Med/Surg, DSU, Ortho, Onc, Psych.
of all the stories I've read in this thread, I'm certain this one would have landed me in some prolonged psychotherapy. I have a horror story of my own but I will spare it for the moment (or maybe until my therapy is successful, lol!)

I actually cleaned that story up a bit TBH. She saw worse than that but I'm not going into it - some people on here cannot handle it.

carolmccas66...I can't believe you left out some details!!! That is a gruesome story, but it was very intriguing to me...I guess I'm weird.

My mother-in-law (Who has been a nurse for about 20 years not) and I recently traded stories..Mine from this site, of course. I was telling a story of an obese patient from here and she gave me this little treasure to share. When she was working one night (She's graveyard shift) they had a very..large patient come in. We're talking about 700 pounds here. She was working when she hears this giant..almost booming sound. It turns out that the patient had fallen. She didn't tell me of any injuries to the patient, but apparently the part that made her night was when a nurse from the second floor(This was on the third) came running up the stairs, looking scared out of her mind. Apparently, everyone on the second floor had felt it and honestly thought there was an earthquake.

Also on the same subject, she told me about a large woman who they had to put a foley catheter in. It took five people. Two on each leg to hold them far enough apart and one nurse in the middle. This middle nurse had a trash bag over her entire arm, plus a glove, but thankfully managed to find the entrance and get it in the first time! :thankya:

carolmccas66...I can't believe you left out some details!!! That is a gruesome story, but it was very intriguing to me...I guess I'm weird.

If this is about the baby who was killed in the car accident, I really think that any prospective EMS students should read them, unabridged of course, and see photos if available. It's NOT like it was on "Emergency."

There are a series of posts earlier in this thread from someone who dealt with some very grisly industrial accidents, and what REALLY happens to a body that isn't found for several days or weeks.

Specializes in LTC.

A resident at my nursing home had died at about 8am and the funeral home didn't pick him up until around 2pm. He was a large man around 400lbs. When we moved him over to the guerney (took 8 people to do) and funeral home guy strapped him in all this black stuff ran out of his mouth and into his eyes and ears and down his neck. I just kept coming out. sooo gross. we had to wrap his head with a bunch of towels and it was soaking thru them. finally the guy just zipped him up and hurried him out. Thankfully his family members were already gone.

Specializes in Geriatrics.

Ughhh. One time, the nurse and I were changing a dressing on an unconscious patient. Apparently, the patient had upset stomach. We had her lying on the side, when all of the sudden, we heard "praaaaaa". Diarrhea sprayed all over the nurse's scrubs. I couldn't stop laughing. The nurse's facial expression was priceless. :)

"by the way, some of your stories are grosser than gross. is there such a thing as "too much information"? just wondering...."

:uhoh3:i didn't mean to offend anyone here.......i really said this "tongue in cheek." if i didn't want to continue reading these stories, i would go elsewhere. my comment was really in place of a post i wrote about my very first patient in nursing school (i didn't finish nursing due to illness) and i saw how incredibly tame it was by comparison...so i was wondering out loud.

Specializes in LTC, CPR instructor, First aid instructor..

mozella re: what is your most gross, yucky, disgusting nursing horror story?


a resident at my nursing home had died at about 8am and the funeral home didn't pick him up until around 2pm. he was a large man around 400lbs. when we moved him over to the guerney (took 8 people to do) and funeral home guy strapped him in all this black stuff ran out of his mouth and into his eyes and ears and down his neck. i just kept coming out. sooo gross. we had to wrap his head with a bunch of towels and it was soaking thru them. finally the guy just zipped him up and hurried him out. thankfully his family members were already gone.

back in 2007, i vomited black stuff too. the administrator of the hospice house where i was living, had accompanied me in the er. she came to see me the next day, and told me i vomited 2 and a half litres of black stuff, and that she had never seen such a sight. i think it must have been partially digested systemic blood since i was very tachy 135> sustained plus was on 15 litres of o2 via full face mask. i don't remember most of that, nor being hospitalized, but about a week later, i went into kidney failure. my urine was also black.

my mother had a man come in to ER C/O itching on his face......it was covered in maggots!!!! My story while in clinicals assisting my instructor with suctioning a trach a large brown mucus plug hit my mouth !!!I held my composure. Been working in LTC for 8 years sorta getting used to this kinda thing. All I could think of was Welcome to nursing .