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!

[luvbug]

Okay, I have to start by saying that I have done my share of laughing as well, for the simple fact that these things have not happened to me, but I can see myself in each and every situation!! Mine aren't as bad as a lot of the other ones I have read, but I thought I would share anyway.

My three worst ones so far:

1. I had a teenager in who was complaining of some ear fullness and I thought he was going to need an ear irrigation. Sure enough, that's waht the docotor ordered. So, I get the supplies together, go in and take a look in the ear. the was was really dark, but I had seen that before. So, away I go. These little feathery things came out and I thought that was strange, so I looked in the ear again. Waht do you suppose was in there? a big bug. I asked him "do you know what is in your ear?" He says " I think I might." I said, "yep, it's a bug." He then explained that he had felt something fly in there the previous night and felt it moving around throughout the night. I was shocked, but kept my cool. with the otoscope and a special tweezer, I pulled it out--whole and still moving!! Still didn't lose it, and I don't know how, cuz that is a pretty weird thing to find

2. a gentleman from the long term care facility was dropped off for an appointment. He was out in the waiting room, using his feet to pull himself along in his wheelchair. I went out to get him, and whell him back. Next to his chair was a good sized pile of feces. I didn't know at that time if someone had brought in dog doo off their shoes or what. But, I alerted anther nurse right away, as the waiting room was full. She used gloves and a plastic bag and collected most of it. I then dared to take a whiff to see if it was human or not--it sure was!! there were footprints of it in to the room and wheelchair tracks, too. We tried to get the pt. to stay in the room so as not to spread it anymore, but to no avail. It was all over the floor. We had to get a carpet shampoo machine, and yours truly was down on hands and knees in the full waiting room cleaning it up.

3. I had a man with rectal bleeding in. He said he needed to go to the bathroom, but looked very faint and was really sweating. I told him I would need to help him into the bathroom, which was right across the hall from his room. As we were going across the hall, blood was running out over his socks and shoes from inside his pants, and he did pass out. We lowered him to the floor and proceeded to call 911. In the meantime,the flow continued. It was a rather interesting clean-up process that took over a week, as the hallways are carpeted. He did thank us a week later for saving his life.

It is for reasons like that that we do what we do. We see a situation and just go with it. Who else is going to help these people? Not your average Joe, that's for sure. I think we should all give ourselves a pat on the back and crongratulate one another on several "gross encounters of the third kind" conquered. :balloons: :chuckle

[LPN1974, LPN]

OMG, some of these stories make me wanna puke just reading them. Sickening, just sickening. I can handle most everything I've encountered in my career, but I think if someone ejaculated, s**t, p****d, puked, or bled on me, I'd have to bail out for awhile. I'd have to go get cleaned up. I couldn't just wear it for the rest of the shift.

I'm just not that strong of a person.

[FranEMTnurse, CNA, LPN, EMT-I]

A guest at the health spa where my daughters worked, complained about an bug crawling in her ear over night. Sure enough, she had an earwig in there.

[LPN1974, LPN]

OMG....I'm still reading these horror stories from hell. I just cannot believe some of this stuff, but I'm still reading.

I live in Small Town Arkansas, so I don't encounter the extremes as the rest of you do, but the nastiest one I have to tell is about the little male patient at the nursing home I worked in for awhile. He had had TB years before, and was very emaciated.

I don't remember all of the details of his DX but he'd had some kind of abcess within the chest wall, the abcess was drained, removed or whatever surgically, and left this huge hole in his chest. This had the most horrible odor I've ever smelled in my entire life. It actually smelled like a dead animal and you could smell it as you walked in the door. Several other people made the same observation. I lucked out that I was medication nurse and the tretment nurse always got the job of cleaning his wound.

But you know he was one of sweetest people I've ever met, always very polite and

gracious. A really nice man.

[LPN1974, LPN]

Oh, in my last post I forgot to ask a question.........is there a medical term for females who like to stick things.....I mean like "foreign NON human objects" into their lady partss?

Don't anyone laugh now...I had to add a few words to that, so you all wouldn't say what I thought you might say!

Seems to be that you all have encountered alot of those!

[LPN1974, LPN]

Before I became an LPN, I was a CNA. I was in a resident's room with an LPN who was performing trach care on the resident. She was an older nurse with many years under her belt (one of the best). She was leaning over the patient with her mouth open and the resident coughed forcefully out his trach and the slime went directly in her mouth. I thought I was going to loose it. She went running out of the room. She told me later "When you become a nurse..don't do trach care with your mouth open."

OMG! Some of these stories must really be ancient......like before they invented goggles and masks!

[polaris2000uk]

what's the s/p stand for?

bloomin heck, i'm meant to be doing a big important assignment, and all i do is read these darned boards! How the heck am i meant to graduate when this is all so much more interesting than my assignment of the ethical considerations of a scenario i witnessed in clinical placemet??

hIYA GOATS!

I was in tassie for about 7 years,, now a nursing student in the uk. I was in sunny devonport, r u in hobart hospital, think my ex mother in law works there, but thats another horror story all by itself!

I too am trying to work thru an assignment, but these stories are too compulsive!!!

Good luck!

[Pattiecake]

OMG! Some of these stories must really be ancient......like before they invented goggles and masks!

Some of us did work before the days of goggles and masks. When I graduated from nursing (1967) we used to sharpen and sterilize our needles for re-use. All students had to do a rotation in CSR, where the most hated job was washing the bloody gloves (sometimes it wasn't just blood either) with your bare hands, then putting them in the glove dryer with powder and repackaging them for the sterilizer when done. I could tell you some pretty gross stuff my dears, but want to save some for future posts. :chuckle :chuckle :rotfl:

[LPN1974, LPN]

I finally finished reading all these posts. Talk about gross. I have been a nurse for 30 years, but just have not ever had any situation like what some of you all describe.

I guess I've been blessed.

However I do work in Developmental/disabilities, for my state. We have a client who regurgitates often and it might land anywhere. Another client we have liked to lick it up.

We also had one child who liked to eat BM and some who would eat used Kotexes.

HMMMMMM..............I guess those are pretty gross aren't they?

I was telling some of my co-workers about some of these stories, one nurse said I must be on a Media site!!! I said, "No way! It's nurses talking about their experiences!" Then I told her about the guy someone posted about getting drunk and sticking a vibrator up his a$$, then getting sober, c/o pain, going to doc and all...she said, "See! That's Media!" We all had a good laugh about it. :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

Another nurse had to have the addy for this site.

Ahhh well, on to something else.

[TDub, MSN, EdD]

Some of us did work before the days of goggles and masks. When I graduated from nursing (1967) we used to sharpen and sterilize our needles for re-use. All students had to do a rotation in CSR, where the most hated job was washing the bloody gloves (sometimes it wasn't just blood either) with your bare hands, then putting them in the glove dryer with powder and repackaging them for the sterilizer when done. I could tell you some pretty gross stuff my dears, but want to save some for future posts. :chuckle :chuckle :rotfl:

My friend worked in the 50's at Mass General in Boston. As the most jumior nurse it was her duty to strip enema tubes of feces and then boil them to sterilize. She said she will never forget the smell of cooking poop.

[wensday, MSN, RN, APN, NP]

OK I kept it together pretty well until the fingernail one! Bodily fluids are fine, you can always wash up, but that fingernail thing made my toes curl! thank God I haven't experienced these things! Worst I think was when I worked in a nursing home and went to wake and dress etc a woman for breakfast. Went up and she was on the landing, naked apart from the poo squelching between her toes, in her hands and everywhere her hands had been incuding her hair and mouth. After heaving slightly, I led her into her room by the elbow - not covered in poo! - to find her trail. Evidently she had needed to visit the bathroom and had ignored the call bell on her pillow (was still lying there), crawled down the bottom of the bed around the cot sides, past her commode and into her bathroom leaving a lovely trail the entire way. Yes I said a commode. The lid was up and everything 'just in case'. she had then walked around in the mess and left footprints of the stuff all over her room and all over the landing. she had been over to the lift and thank God hadn't managed to find the button or i dread to think were the trail coud have lead....

I took a big intake of breath and got to work tidying up and pulled the call bell for a bit of help as she was in a huge mess.

The boss wandered in 'problem Debbie?'

Errr, I looked around pointedly....

'S**t'....(yes I did smirk) 'looks like you will be late for breakfast' and walked off.

Took me hours to get it back to normal.

She was a lovely lady, tiny and had a great sense of humour when lucid, saw her obit in the paper the other day.

[FranEMTnurse, CNA, LPN, EMT-I]

OK I kept it together pretty well until the fingernail one! Bodily fluids are fine, you can always wash up, but that fingernail thing made my toes curl! thank God I haven't experienced these things! Worst I think was when I worked in a nursing home and went to wake and dress etc a woman for breakfast. Went up and she was on the landing, naked apart from the poo squelching between her toes, in her hands and everywhere her hands had been incuding her hair and mouth. After heaving slightly, I led her into her room by the elbow - not covered in poo! - to find her trail. Evidently she had needed to visit the bathroom and had ignored the call bell on her pillow (was still lying there), crawled down the bottom of the bed around the cot sides, past her commode and into her bathroom leaving a lovely trail the entire way. Yes I said a commode. The lid was up and everything 'just in case'. she had then walked around in the mess and left footprints of the stuff all over her room and all over the landing. she had been over to the lift and thank God hadn't managed to find the button or i dread to think were the trail coud have lead....

I took a big intake of breath and got to work tidying up and pulled the call bell for a bit of help as she was in a huge mess.

The boss wandered in 'problem Debbie?'

Errr, I looked around pointedly....

'S**t'....(yes I did smirk) 'looks like you will be late for breakfast' and walked off.

Took me hours to get it back to normal.

She was a lovely lady, tiny and had a great sense of humour when lucid, saw her obit in the paper the other day.

You know you're a nurse when the first page you turn to when reading your newspaper, is the obituaries to see who died while you were not at work. I used to do it all the time, and is how I learned when a friend of mine died.