nitenite

A trick I do is pull out the lower lid gently and drop the drops on the little pouch between the lid and the eyeball, then I tell the pt to blink rapidly so the medicine distributes on their eye.

You never see agonal breathing when someone is dying of an injury or heart attack. People dying of terminal illnesses are always conscious and lucid up to the moment they die. Closed mouths on coma patients. You never see people in a minimally conscious state. Defibrillating through clothing is the one that makes me rage hard, though.

Yeah, you gotta watch out for those kiddos. They're short order poop factories!

A couple weeks ago I had an elderly pt hang their bare butt off the side of the gurney and spray me with diarrhea. They had a nasty case of salmonella. I threw that pair of pants away. The next day I gave everybody who attended that pt a pudding cup of chocolate pudding and they yelled at me about it for three days straight.

Utterly sweet patients with their whole lives ahead of them walk in with a stomachache and leave with a stage IV pancreatic cancer diagnosis. ? Nasty insufferable patients who waste their lives on drugs walk in with a stomachache and leave with a simple heartburn diagnosis. ?

This is still the most disturbing story in the thread for me.

There's never any agonal breathing.

Oh honey I'm so sorry. You gave him the best chance by knowing CPR and him surviving wasn't in the cards this time. The boy knew you tried to help and I am sure he was grateful even though he slipped away anyway.

Pus. Gimme anything else, but I can't handle pus. Instant gag every time.

Pts who ring the call light two seconds after I leave the room when I asked them if they needed anything else before I left.

Tonight, I had a pt with most of the skin on his right arm and side scraped off. Lots of muscle exposed. Moral of the story: don't motorcycle shirtless. At least he had a helmet on. He'll live. A few weeks ago I had a kid with a suspected hot appy puke spaghetti all over my feet. Dunno the outcome on that one. Two months ago during a code, I intubated an older woman who must have never gone to a dentist in her life. The four teeth she had were yellow or black and her gums were red and receding. She came in for an unrelated issue and didn't survive being coded.

I'll never forget the Christmas I coded a 100-something year old Alzheimer's patient because his family wouldn't sign the f***ing DNR. His sternum and ribs pretty much disintegrated and his torso looked swollen and bruised. His family was screaming and crying in the halls and they were a nightmare. A real bunch of jerks, and no it wasn't all grief. They were rude and cussed loudly in the waiting room. His family could've avoided this crisis if they just signed the DNR. This was a patient who didn't know where the heck he was or who the heck he was. The poor little skinny man in a diaper. He deserved better. I held his hand after we stopped and said I was sorry. I went into the bathroom and cried for twenty minutes after that.

I had to handle a homeless man with necrotizing fasciitis. It literally ate his testicles and his member was infected too. Rolled him over and it was all over his thighs, butt and probably up into his rectum too. Yes, there were maggots everywhere, too, just to make me not want to eat rice. I'm bringing rice in tomorrow because I'm evil.

Holy mother of all things blood and guts! EEEEEW!

Man, oh man, I remember the time I ALMOST quit because of a jerkface patient lacking in compassion. A person(Patient A) came into the ER complaining of chest pain, saying he didn't want to call an ambulance and take up somebody else's emergency spot. He collapsed as he was trying to sign in. I jumped on him and started CPR and got a code going. The butthole with a small laceration on his arm(Patient B) came over and he actually started yelling at me. "That loser is dead. Work on me! My arm hurts!" I firmly believe hearing is the last to go. We did lose Patient A despite everything we did, and I'm still heartbroken thinking the last words he heard on Earth came from somebody calling him a loser. I wanted to punch Patient B in the face SO bad. I took care of Patient A's family by telling them what to expect when they saw him because of tubes and stuff. I made sure to clean him up the best I could under the circumstances. His hair was combed and I put the rosary I found in his pocket in his hands when I folded them on his chest. His wife cried on my shoulder and I brought his daughter a glass of water. I even cried with them(I am such a sympathy crier!) and told them how nice he was when he came to the desk. They sent me flowers a few days later with a card that says "God made nurses special" to thank me. That restored my faith in humanity. Don't let the nasty patients blind you to the nice ones. You have to drill deep in the dirt to find diamonds. :)

Funniest: A man came in with a small dumbbell weight stuck in his rectum. He wanted to make his butthole stronger. Worst: Had a patient literally rip his face off in a motorcycle accident. He didn't make it. Best: I took care of a lady who nursed soldiers in WWII. She was sharp as a tack but terminal and the family panicked because her pain got severe. She was able to die peacefully with her pain managed.

Don't forget about endorphins

Hi there. I don't work in hospice, but a friend of mine does and she's seen this happen several times. A patient will be circling the drain, the family stays and stays and stays, and the minute they leave for two minutes, the patient dies. The family ends up distraught and feeling guilty. It's terrible and sad. What do you think is behind this phenomenon?

Oh God the above made me gag. Mucus is my weakness.

Document, document, document. This kind of crap escalates if you don't make it known that you won't put up with it. Good luck!

^ Eeeeeeeeeewwwwwwwww!!!!!! Couple nights ago I had something in my ER that I've never seen before and I've seen a lot. Guy on a motorcycle without a helmet somehow ripped his entire face off on gravel when he crashed. Eyeball hanging down on his cheek, no skin from forehead to bottom lip, BLOOD AND MUCUS EVERYWHERE. Not sure how long he'll live. He's in ICU all bandaged up. Mucus is my weakness too. :X (Edited to fix a typo)

Surgeons with big egos who think everyone worships the ground they walk on. ****.

I know this post is old, but it made me cry. That's just terrible. Nobody even checked on her?!

Was the link removed? I can't seem to find it

I just laughed so hard I've got people staring at me. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!