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

[yazisizit]

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!

[mmgOhioSTNA]

so i have read this thread over the last 4 months, its been awsome! i love these stories! i have 2 to share, one is my dads, long long time paramedic, and one is mine.

i am a in home nurse aid, and the agency i work for send me in first to take stock and see whats what. it is not unusual for me to be called and have to leave right away. so one tuesday night my husband, son and i are eating dinner when my job calls me to go to a ladies house. her priest called and talked to my boss and all he said was shes messy and needs help. so i polish of my dinner, put on scrubs and go. shes literally a 1/2 mile from my home. i knock on the door and when her husband opened it i could smell 'hot poop'. yes, hot, as in its 90 degrees outside and the heat is on in this house. so i introduce myself and the husband is very reluctant to let me go in her room, eventually giving in after 20 minutes. i walk in and i still dont know how to describe it. bm was on but not limited to: the radiator w/ heat on, the BSC, on every surface of her bed (not a hospital bed), the small half bath had stuff clear up to the ceiling. its in her carpet, in her hair, in her nails, everywhere. i had just eaten dinner so i was gagging, but i didnt loose it. turn our she was dying form cancer and the family couldnt get the husband to do what need done. i was one of the aids the husband would let in and it was sad when she passed 3 day later. she was so out of it. turns out the house went for sale and i drive past it sometimes, i just want to knock on the door and tell the new owners to gut the bathroom. ewww!!!

my dads is crazy. he was in the first paramedic class to come out of Akron general in ohio in the early 1980s. well he then went on to work for a private ambulance Co. in downtown Cleveland, where drug use was rampant. he went into work one day and saw 2 co-workers, one had his arm covered in alcohol, the other co worker was opening another bottle. my dad and his partner just kept asking what wrong and all they would say was: 'its the head!'. so my dad and his partner start the 12 hr shift and eventually get called to 'the heads' house. they walk into the back of this guys house and it literally was a head laying on a pillow. they couldn't see a body, (but could see the racks of pipes all over the walls lol). so they ask the 'head' what the problem was, and he said my neck hurts in this very gravely smokers voice. so keeping a straight face they ask how he injured his neck. he said he was crossing the street in his wheelchair and got hit by a mack truck. at this point my dads partner looses it and leaves the room to laugh. yep, he was hit by a truck. soooo they try to get a bp, using a baby cuff. why a baby cuff? bc the mans body was so small and to contracted it was the only bp cuff that would fit. so eventually they pack up to transport, and they look at each other to see who will pick this guy up off the bed. well my dads partner does it. now since the guy was small like a baby and had a neck injury, he slides him onto his forearm to stabilize his neck, well twhen he lifts, this guys full size member falls onto his bare arm. explaining the alcohol mentioned at the beginning....well 'the head' as he became know at the Co, was a frequent flyer who was a prescription drug dealer. he very quickly was on a no narcotics list at all the hospitals, my dad doesn't know what became of him, they joke that he send them postcards with a pic of him surfing in Hawaii. does anyone know what this guy could have had?

keep the stories coming! i love this thread and now have my sister hooked too!

[PacoUSA, BSN, RN]

Happened this weekend during clinical. I was removing a saline lock from a 2-year-old patient's arm and he was getting quite fidgety (expected of course). He was recovering from pneumonia and also had asthma. Well at one point he went into a coughing spell from the agitation and we all hear this nasty gurgling heading north. Thankfully, the dad was there to bring the basin in time to capture the expelled contents, which to my eyes look eerily familiar.

So after this experience, I will NEVER eat egg drop soup ever again ...

Yes, I know I am not even a new nurse yet and I am bound to see even more disgusting things ...

[Ekspress Skrubs2012]

Hearing that an emergency room patient reluctantly told the staff treating him, that his lover was making love to him in his ostomy. Which prompted the visit because it was infected.

[Murse537]

Well I was still in nursing school, second semester of Med-Surg on a tele floor. The patient I had been assigned to was morbidly obese (over 400#'s) and was on a vent. I had done my initial assessment and had just begun gathering the patients meds when the nurse approached me and said the patient had a bowel movement and I needed to get a stool sample. Now keep in mind, the patient had a sitter in the room with her at all times that would assist her in using the bedpan. As I'm walking to the room I'm thinking, "I just have to scoop up a little poop, make sure she's cleaned, and I'm done." Well to my surprise, I walk in the room and the sitter informs me she couldn't get the bed pan fast enough. I had to get 2 other students to help me turn her. The smell was overwhelming (she had a GI bleed.) She had a diaper on and most of the poop had been absorbed, or so I thought. I did my best to scoop up as much poop as possible, while gagging simultaneously. I cleaned her up, laid down a new diaper, and turn her back over. I look down and there is a pile of crap where her lady parts should be. My peers looked at me as I looked at them , and at that moment I knew I was on my own. One of her legs were contracted making it impossible to spread them. I had no choice but to use one hand to hold back the fat and dig in her creases of fat with the other. It seemed as though every time I went down, more poo would come out... It was never ending. I was literally up to my elbows in her fat creases and my arm was covered in crap! And I don't understand it, but it seems every time a situation like this happens the room is hot as hell! I was soaking wet, dripping sweat, but I finally managed to get her clean. I washed my arm in her rooms bathroom and went throw the soiled linens. I was traumatized as my instructor turned the corner and yells at me for not being prepared to administer meds. I stood there with my forehead still sweating, and with tears in my eyes explained that I had been elbow deep, cleaning crap out of my patients lady parts for the past 45mins while my instructor laughed hysterically in my face, and went on to say that was no excuse. It was that day that I almost gave up on nursing!

[sharpeimom]

all i can so is send you a big hug and reassure you that it will get better and worse again occasionally. once a patient laughed so hard that her uppers fell out and while i was bent over retrieving them, she threw up! all over my back, down my neck, into my bra, and into my ears and hair. even worse... there were whole undigested corn kernels throughout!:barf01:but i survived the encounter and it made me stronger

down the road with other patients.

as a student, i was making an occupied bed. the patient was in his 90's and delightful. his primary diagnosis was scleroderma. i was being very very gentle and as careful as i could because of his advanced age and his diagnosis. i washed where he couldn't reach and carried on polite conversation, and was just finishing the bed when... there it was ... on the edge of the bed. omg! i was suddenly very lightheaded! there was the index finger from his left hand! he was so kind to me. he said, "honey, it was nothing you did. it was just the disease. i knew this might happen someday and it looks like someday just became today."

[FranEMTnurse, CNA, LPN, EMT-I]

Well I was still in nursing school, second semester of Med-Surg on a tele floor. The patient I had been assigned to was morbidly obese (over 400#'s) and was on a vent. I had done my initial assessment and had just begun gathering the patients meds when the nurse approached me and said the patient had a bowel movement and I needed to get a stool sample. Now keep in mind, the patient had a sitter in the room with her at all times that would assist her in using the bedpan. As I'm walking to the room I'm thinking, "I just have to scoop up a little poop, make sure she's cleaned, and I'm done." Well to my surprise, I walk in the room and the sitter informs me she couldn't get the bed pan fast enough. I had to get 2 other students to help me turn her. The smell was overwhelming (she had a GI bleed.) She had a diaper on and most of the poop had been absorbed, or so I thought. I did my best to scoop up as much poop as possible, while gagging simultaneously. I cleaned her up, laid down a new diaper, and turn her back over. I look down and there is a pile of crap where her lady parts should be. My peers looked at me as I looked at them , and at that moment I knew I was on my own. One of her legs were contracted making it impossible to spread them. I had no choice but to use one hand to hold back the fat and dig in her creases of fat with the other. It seemed as though every time I went down, more poo would come out... It was never ending. I was literally up to my elbows in her fat creases and my arm was covered in crap! And I don't understand it, but it seems every time a situation like this happens the room is hot as hell! I was soaking wet, dripping sweat, but I finally managed to get her clean. I washed my arm in her rooms bathroom and went throw the soiled linens. I was traumatized as my instructor turned the corner and yells at me for not being prepared to administer meds. I stood there with my forehead still sweating, and with tears in my eyes explained that I had been elbow deep, cleaning crap out of my patients lady parts for the past 45mins while my instructor laughed hysterically in my face, and went on to say that was no excuse. It was that day that I almost gave up on nursing!

That was one horrible day you had dear. Hopefully, things have gotten better for you.:hug:

[Kandy83]

wow i am cna and current pre-nursing student.. these stories are giving me the hebbie gebbies:uhoh21:

[LaterAlligator]

I hate when you get those really awful smells 'stuck' in your nose. Had a pt today with a foot basically rotting off with gangrene, missing some toes already, and the smell was just so strong! And of course the patient doesn't want the blanket covering or touching that foot, so it's just wafting around freely.

There is no air freshener on earth that could even come close to covering that smell.

[FranEMTnurse, CNA, LPN, EMT-I]

We had a patient with rotting flesh once, and we placed an electric airator in her room. That helped a lot.

[JDZ344]

:: Gag ::

[Laboratorian]

recieved a specimen for a fungus culture and when i checked the source it said skin scrapings.

they were little black and white pieces and when i held it up to the light i saw that it was full of little worms moving and jumping! i liked to have died it scared the hell out of me. took it to parasitology and when we put one of the little worms on the microscope it had little hairs growing out of it's body!

turns out it was not a cup of worms but a cup of larve (they were babies!!!). and the source was correct. it had to be forwarded to another lab because we don't do arthropod ids.

#bodyliceftw

[NettaBug]

Lol! I finally reached the end of this feed! And most of these stories are hilariously disgusting!

These aren't really all that gross, but it's the grossest thing I've experienced so far.

So, right now I'm finishing up my first semester of nursing school, and our clinical rotation for this semester was in the nursing homes. On my first day, I had to face my biggest fear: a trach patient. As we come in the room and the CNA introduces the patient to us and tells us about how to shower the patient, he asks the patient a question. The patient's response: A gurgle and a large glob of mucus comes out of the patient's trach (his doesn't have a collar; nit's just an open trach) and slides down his neck. I had to control my face; the sound was just awful, and the sight of the mucus had me feeling a little weak. I had to watch the student next to me, however. She looked like she wanted to gag.

So, the CNA gets the patient ready and meets us at the shower room. The way this patient's trach is cleaned is strange: The CNA sprays some water in there and asks the patient to blow through the trach. That sound...Oh, that sound haunted me...Made me cringe...The patient was a sweetheart though!

Another story actually happened either that same day or the next week. A patient's daughter-in-law comes out and says that the patient has urinated on herself. Now, I wasn't assigned to this patient or with this CNA. But I passed by the room and decided to help. The patient's legs were so contracted that the urine pooled and soaked through her gown and top sheet, then eventually drained through some space in her legs and soaked the Chux pad. So the other student nurse and I proceed to do a bed bath and linen change. Once the patient's back was turned toward me and I began to wipe her bottom, she begins to have a BM, and no matter how much I wiped, it just kept coming! We eventually got her cleaned up and re-dressed. Such a sweet lady...