Things that gross me out....

Oh, definitely...........that's even worse than the time I changed a dressing on a diabetic's foot and two of the toes fell off into my hand. Yarrrrrrk!!!

Yep that will gross me out as well.

I also still hate suctioning trachs with copious secretions. I also can't stand mouth care on someone who hasn't had good mouth care in a while. Pulling out all that gross stuff makes me wanna hurl. I start gagging and shuddering just thinking about it.

Changing suction cannisters also grosses me out. I am so glad that the nurse assistants do that. When they aren't there I do it but am gagging the whole time. GROSS

Oh my gosh, do you wanna hear something REALLY gross????? Okay, we're all nurses and were used to the gross stuff, so here it is...

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.

On that note, I have finally decided what, on a TYPICAL day, grosses me out more than ANYTHING.... cleaning dentures!!!!! YUCK!!!!

More often than not, when I put the urinal some other place, the patient puts it back on the table next to the water pitcher.

Yeah, I second that. Most patients seem to want it put there, I guess because it's easier to reach.

Eek, and I thought my story about the nasty stuff in the guys mouth was "Too Hot For Allnurses!"... THAT takes the cake, my friend. My hats off to you for living to tell the tale...

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.