So I get report on a little lady and the nurse says she has decreased urine output. Her foley had been leaking the night before, but I added some water to the baloon and it seemed to be ok afterwards. The nurse said the CNA swore up and down that the foley was NOT leaking, so she called the doctor about the "decreased urine output."
I go into assess the pt, and she is soaking wet, plus has dried poo on her (nice). I clean her up and change out her foley (no urine return either....I hate it when that happens!)
And hour later, there is STILL urine leaking around the foley! So I break out a grand-daddy 18fr and change the foley out again, and her urine came out in gross chunks.....literally. 500 cc's of it!!! Yuck yuck yuck!!! I hate chunky urine!!! Poor little lady.
Oh my god, the maggot story, I would just die! I get ton's of homeless substance abuse pts on my floor and I am just dreading that day when I have a similiar experiece!
Traches, the other night I just had a pt aspirate tube feeds and it shot out of his trache! Then he was shooting sputum no lie, about 6 feet in the air all over the curtains, him, the bed, just everywhere!!! :chair:
Regarding the long yellow nasty toenails...when I was a CNA I was in a pt room and he was tall, lying in the bed, and had his feet crossed at the end of the bed. He had those gross, long, thick, yellow toe nails! Well, I was walking by his foot of the bed, and CUT MY ARM ON HIS NASTY TOE NAIL! AAHHHHHH I ran from the room, scrubbed, poured alcohol, you name it! Talk about disgusting!
Okay, this is a contest I didn't want to win, but I may have....
Had a pt come in, homeless, alcohol/substance abuse, sleeping in the woods, had infected feet from untreated DM. Took one look at the feet and thought to myself, double BKA, if not double AKA. He'd kept his feet in the same shoes so long, he left his little toe in the shoe. I mean, black, necrotic, bad feet. Got one of the CNA's to help me bathe him, and when we turned him over....
Don't eat and read the next part...
Maggots. He had maggots in his orifice, and they just came boiling out as we turned him. I got a couple of 10cc flushes, and was kinda "hosing off" the maggots, and they were actively exiting the rectum. The smell was incredible, sort of like the cancer smell you get off someone with mets'd cancer at the skin surface crossed with a GI bleed. The CNA excused herself, and went in the bathroom and threw up. Several other nurses and the chief CNA came in and we tried to clean up the guy. These were not pinworms or round worms, these were freakin' maggots. I wanted to get the ER nurse down there and make her clean him, since the only problem she stated was his feet; she also left the little toe in his shoe for me to find, nice....
I called his doc, and told him the situation. They did a stat CT of the pelvis and abdomen, and apparently, they guy was just full of them. They did surgery, removed a chunk of colon and rectum, as well as both feet, one AKA and one BKA, but the guy ended up coding and dying in ICU from sepsis and untreated DM.
I actually went and took a bath and changed into scrubs from the OR to drive home, because I had the stench in my hair and on my clothes.
I truly must not have a gag reflex. I read this one right after I finished lunch. One time I was talking to my nursing instructor about maggot therapy for wounds and she started turning green. I shut up.
One morning our charge nurse decided to do mouth care on one of her dying patients (oncology floor). It was OBVIOUS that this patient had NOT had mouth care done on him in a *VERY* long time, because what my charge nurse pulled out of this patient's mouth, looked like a large hairy spider that had crawled up in there and died, several days ago.
Reading that actually made me gag. I'm coming after you if I have nightmares tonight
(.....not that the others stories didn't turn my stomach)
I had a patient the other night who had obviously not taken a bath in a long, long time. When we gave him a bath, chunks of dirt and skin were coming off on the washcloths. His feet had barnacles on them. And his dentures smelled like poo. Ick.
Another thing that grosses me out is when I get someone up to the bathroom, have to stay with them because they are a fall risk, and then they don't wash their hands after wiping their butt. EWWW.
But the thing that grosses me out the worst and the only thing that will cause me to leave a room is when the patient hits on me. I had a 61 year old patient the other night, sweet guy, completely in his right mind, take me by the hand and ask me for sex. He was completely serious. And every time I went in the room to draw blood or change IV fluid, he would rub my arm and leer at me. Another time I was doing trach care on a different patient and was sterile and the guy started rubbing my tummy and making kissy faces at me. I won't tell you what some of my female patients have done during their baths.
Specializes in Med/Surge, Psych, LTC, Home Health.
I had a patient the other night who had obviously not taken a bath in a long, long time. When we gave him a bath, chunks of dirt and skin were coming off on the washcloths. His feet had barnacles on them. And his dentures smelled like poo. Ick.
Another thing that grosses me out is when I get someone up to the bathroom, have to stay with them because they are a fall risk, and then they don't wash their hands after wiping their butt. EWWW.
But the thing that grosses me out the worst and the only thing that will cause me to leave a room is when the patient hits on me. I had a 61 year old patient the other night, sweet guy, completely in his right mind, take me by the hand and ask me for sex. He was completely serious. And every time I went in the room to draw blood or change IV fluid, he would rub my arm and leer at me. Another time I was doing trach care on a different patient and was sterile and the guy started rubbing my tummy and making kissy faces at me. I won't tell you what some of my female patients have done during their baths.
Ewww, if a patient hits on me, I won't go back in the room by myself. Not that I get hit on that much. Not by patients who are in their right mind, anyway.
Which brings me to another thing that grosses me out... patients pleasuring themselves! Used to happen all the time when I worked psych.
Okay, this is a contest I didn't want to win, but I may have....
Had a pt come in, homeless, alcohol/substance abuse, sleeping in the woods, had infected feet from untreated DM. Took one look at the feet and thought to myself, double BKA, if not double AKA. He'd kept his feet in the same shoes so long, he left his little toe in the shoe. I mean, black, necrotic, bad feet. Got one of the CNA's to help me bathe him, and when we turned him over....
Don't eat and read the next part...
Maggots. He had maggots in his orifice, and they just came boiling out as we turned him. I got a couple of 10cc flushes, and was kinda "hosing off" the maggots, and they were actively exiting the rectum. The smell was incredible, sort of like the cancer smell you get off someone with mets'd cancer at the skin surface crossed with a GI bleed. The CNA excused herself, and went in the bathroom and threw up. Several other nurses and the chief CNA came in and we tried to clean up the guy. These were not pinworms or round worms, these were freakin' maggots. I wanted to get the ER nurse down there and make her clean him, since the only problem she stated was his feet; she also left the little toe in his shoe for me to find, nice....
I called his doc, and told him the situation. They did a stat CT of the pelvis and abdomen, and apparently, they guy was just full of them. They did surgery, removed a chunk of colon and rectum, as well as both feet, one AKA and one BKA, but the guy ended up coding and dying in ICU from sepsis and untreated DM.
I actually went and took a bath and changed into scrubs from the OR to drive home, because I had the stench in my hair and on my clothes.
The other night I was taking care of a trach patient who had a "bite blocker" taped in his mouth. I had been suctioning him on both sides of it and doing mouth care with a toothette, but decided that I ought to take it out to get his mouth a lot cleaner. I took it out and was useing the toothette on sucttion and it pulled up something that looked like a very long snail. I grabbed the yanker quickly and pulled this thing out of his mouth and finished his mouth care with the suction toothette. What a mess. I had never had a patient with a bite blocker before and a more experienced nurse had told me I should take it out at least once a shift to clean and I can certainly see why. That was really gross but it is part of my job. Grosser and scary to think of it staying in the patients throat.
The maggot story wins hands down. I saw a a woman with foot ulcers and she had maggots pouring out of her foot. Not medically placed, either. OMG, GROSS! Hands down, I can't do sputum. I don't know what it is about the stuff but it is absolutely the nastiest stuff in the world. I hate it in suction catheters, tissues, mouths...I hate when people hock luggies, and I watch where I walk when outside because I can't stand walking in, about, or threw sputum excretions on the ground. Yuck. Nauseated just thinking about it.
When I was in Zambia a few years ago, I had a patient who used to come in every couple days for dressing changes. She had had a mastectomy and the wound had gotten pretty nasty - the whole side of her chest, shoulder to navel, was an open sore.
Every single time I changed that bandage, I got to sit there and decide which maggots to pick off and which ones to leave in place to keep munching the dead tissue. It didn't gross me out too much at the time, but now when I look back on it? Sick.
Now, this one isn't so much gross as it is WHAT ON EARTH?! Just a week or two ago, I was taking care of a guy who was being admitted for amputation of his foot. The hospital doc came over to me with a puzzled look on her face and asked me if I could go talk to him, since I speak some Liberian English. "Alice, when my work finish, I just wan' flash one picture." It took us a while, but I finally figured out that this guy wanted to have his amputation done with just a spinal block so that he'd be nice and awake post-op in order to hold his freshly chopped foot and get his photo taken. If he had to have general, he'd like us to please hold onto the foot until he was awake and ready for his photo op. Smile for the camera?
Shopgirl1
88 Posts
Oh my god, the maggot story, I would just die! I get ton's of homeless substance abuse pts on my floor and I am just dreading that day when I have a similiar experiece!
Traches, the other night I just had a pt aspirate tube feeds and it shot out of his trache! Then he was shooting sputum no lie, about 6 feet in the air all over the curtains, him, the bed, just everywhere!!! :chair:
Regarding the long yellow nasty toenails...when I was a CNA I was in a pt room and he was tall, lying in the bed, and had his feet crossed at the end of the bed. He had those gross, long, thick, yellow toe nails! Well, I was walking by his foot of the bed, and CUT MY ARM ON HIS NASTY TOE NAIL! AAHHHHHH
I ran from the room, scrubbed, poured alcohol, you name it! Talk about disgusting!
Boy, talk about job perks huh?!