Oh no! please...please not that

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people say that everybody in medicine has got something, something that totally grosses them out.

this tissue, organ, bodily function is avoided at all costs or you'll :barf01:.

i haven't come acrossed mine yet... (i'm a little scared of what it'll be, i know its lurking out there somewhere).

what's yours?

I start my CNA classes on March 2nd, but have worked in a hospital before delivering the tray carts to nurse stations and preparing food and cleaning up the cafeteria. Anyways the only thing I am worried about and in truth am downright horrified by the idea of is "code brown". I am pretty sure I can get used to gun shot wounds, broken bones and open heart surgery but the idea of having to handle a "code brown" terrorizes me.

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Specializes in Telemetry & Obs.

As I read this thread I noticed certain posts made me think, "whatever"....but others made me grimace and have to swallow hard. Danged if it wasn't the dirty feet and ear wax posts that hit me the hardest :D

My personal demon is phlegm. I've even griped out loud in public when somebody hacks up a loogy and spits it on the ground where I'm WALKING!!

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Specializes in ER, ICU,.

I have to say....BROKEN BONES! AND DIRTY EARS!

Took my dog to the vet the other day. The vet was telling me how to clean her ears. I thought I was going to vomit!

I am an RT, I can sx, oral care, trachs, intubate, pull out dirty nasty dentures, get vomited on. But, Please someone else needs to clean the ears!!!

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Specializes in OB, NICU, Nursing Education (academic).

Wow....after reading some of these I'm so glad I only have to deal with OB grossness (and epidurals)......

I'd never make it in LTC, or OR, or neuro, or.....

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Trachs - I am just freaked out by all the mucous and the kazoo sound they make when you unhook to suction. Gives me chills. A few quarters ago when I was with another student in a pts room to suction, I was observing, the pts coughed and a huge ball of mucous shot out about 10 feet across the room. I almost passed out! Oh and letting gas out of a colostomy bag:eek: Og and I hate the smell of an unbathed, unclean pt. Poop, c-diff all that stuff doesn't bother me, but when I clean up a pt. and they haven't had a bm and it still SMELLS HORRIBLE down there - UGH

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Specializes in School Nursing.

I had a kid whose G-button started refluxing one day. I gagged every time I gave him his meds. Once it really backed up and warm stomach juices got all over my gloves. Blech. Luckily it has been removed now and all meds are oral!

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Specializes in ER I/CCU Cath lab LTC.

As soon as I would find out I was getting a GI bleed, I would start smelling them long before they ever left the ER. Wound vacs over pus-filled craters, especially if there was necrotic bone showing....oh, Lord!! I can't stand any kind of wound that's got pus involved. Those smells seem to just cling to my hair, skin & clothing, even after I've showered at home.

We have a lady now who frequently lets the gas out of her colostomy bag at mealtimes, or times when the most visitors are present. It smells like a pile of rotting carcasses and seems to replace every molecule of breathable air with it's stench. She is a recluse-type and doesn't ever have visitors, so I kinda feel that this is some kind of social comment.

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Specializes in ortho, hospice volunteer, psych,.

Suctioning someone whose secretions are so dried and/or thick that it's like trying to force almost dried

spackling paste or hardened joint compound up and out...:no::no::no:

Yuck! Shudder! Bleeccchhh! Barf! And WHY are they always right before lunch?:barf02:

sharpeimom:paw::paw:

said shar-pei is on a d-i-e-t...

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Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.

Grotty dentures and feet are my nemesis. I can handle a stage IV decub, mucus, C. diff, even a GI bleed, but teeth and toes just make me wanna HURL.

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Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.
Dirty, crusty feet. The kind when you take off a sock and create a snow storm of skin flakes. The kind with so much dead skin and crud built that there's no space between the toes. The kind with long, yellow, fungusy toe nails that curl over the ends of the toes or in every other direction.

:barf01::barf01::barf01:

But black, dried up gangrenous toes that fall off in your hand are a very close second.

:barf01:

Glad I'm not the only one to have experienced this.........it had to be about the grossest thing I've ever seen. BLECH!!!

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Specializes in ortho, hospice volunteer, psych,.
Grotty dentures and feet are my nemesis. I can handle a stage IV decub, mucus, C. diff, even a GI bleed, but teeth and toes just make me wanna HURL.

also, l-o-n-g gross crumbly old crackly unclipped toenails attached to purplish toes... shudder! with who knows what generic sticky fuzzy stinky crud stuck in between them. AACCCKKK!:bugeyes:

sharpeimom:paw::paw:

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Specializes in Management, Emergency, Psych, Med Surg.

Dirty feet that have extra long toenails that you have to clip with a bone cutter. Or some guy who has been sleeping on the street for so long that his sox are fused to his skin. BAD SMELL.

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