What Freaks You Out?

Jay-Jay, RN · Mar 26, 2001

The post about pressure ulcers triggered a memory of a wound care seminar I attended last year. It was before lunch (thank god!) and the presenter was showing all these looovely slides of different stage pressure ulcers and diabetic ulcers. It started to get to me, and I had to look away from the screen. As I glanced around the room, I saw I was not alone. A young lady at the table beside me had her head down on the table, and, behind me, a big, macho-looking male nurse had his head down between his knees! I was glad to know I wasn't the only one.

Somehow, I find it harder to look at pictures of this sort of thing, whereas, if it's an actual patient, often I can focus on them, and it doesn't bother me as much. Mind, there's times when you need to breath through your mouth to avoid the smell!

theboss · Mar 26, 2001

AAAAAAAAH!!! I HAVE BEEN AN LPN AND AM AN ER NURSE AND HAVE BEEN FOR 3 YEARS AND STILL AM UNABLE TO GET USED TO THE OLE LOOGIES BIT YUK YUK YUK !!!MY PARTNER AND I HAVE STOMACHS OF STEEL BUT NOT FOR THAT!!!!

[This message has been edited by theboss (edited March 26, 2001).]

student_nurse · Mar 27, 2001

I'm still a student, but during rotations the thing that grossed me out the most was a patient's tongue - he had not brushed in weeks, and his tongue was coated with white gunk. It was so disgusting. I had the job of brushing his teeth, and the image of the whole thing was a lasting nightmare!

nursedeedee · Mar 27, 2001

Originally posted by kday:
Okay, people. It's time for a nice, fun, light-hearted discussion to blow off some steam.

WHAT FREAKS YOU OUT? What bodily fluid can't you STAND? What wound gives you the absolute WILLIES? It doesn't matter if you're an ADN, BSN, LPN, CNA, PQRST, ABCDEFG...every body gets the heebie jeebies over SOMETHING...even you stomach-of-steel ER nurses!

Mine is eyeball injuries/surgery...aaaaaaaaaackkkkkkk!! Gross! Makes my skin absolutely CRAWL. Or when someone gets a little cut on their finger/toe/whatever and then squeezes it to make it bleed!! Bleah!! Then there's the ever-popular RESPIRATORY SECRETIONS. I can handle poop, pee, amniotic fluid, lanced boils, pus, whatever...but give me a nasty snot-filled trach, and I'm OUTTA THERE.

Share, share, share people!

Alright, we were just talking about this at work the other evening.. A patient of ours that had been with us a while had just died. She and her family were great people and it was sad. But none the less, death is not pretty.

I am an RN and work on a cardiac step down unit with a mish-mosh of other multisystem failure illness....they all usually do have heart trouble,..anyway, this poor person had been basically rotting from the inside out. I will spare you all the gory details,but there is NOTHING more repulsive than the smell of rotting flesh. Swollen, oozing, infected, dead flesh. Reeeeettttccchhhhh! GGGGGGGAAAAAAAAAGGGGGG!!!!!!!! I couldn't handle the post mortum care. Blood and such ran out of her mouth when we turned her. Like I said, it is a rare death that is pretty. Actually, a good topic to discuss would be some real poistive experiences about how we as nurses have comforted people who are dying........well I'm still human and death has it's gross side.

beckymcrn · Mar 27, 2001

I can't even imagine the dog thing going on I got chills just reading it! YUCK!!!!!

I don't do sputum or anything that goes with the nose-mouth connection. I can clean poop, blood doesn't bother me, but when I see someone with snot running down their face I could just barf! I can not do false teeth either yuck. Thank Goodness for gloves.

Ps I can't even think about the MAGGOTT thing eeeeewwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!

Doc · Mar 31, 2001

Anyone had a patient with Gardnerella? It smells like rotting fish - I never knew what the word "funky" meant until I got a whiff of that! The discharge coming from the pt's lady parts was yellow-grey. I was dry-retching. Later on that shift another pt had sputum that color and this time I felt my lunch rise up, but luckily didn't puke. I must have a stomach of steel.

CEN35 · Mar 31, 2001

OK well I have worked in an ER for about 5 years now. The one thing I can say, is there are days when some things bother me, and some don't.

1st all the time, any type of eye surgery.

2nd - Lugies definately do it too, if I think about it. I try to take my mind off it.

Then the best of the rest, like the I&D of a buttocks boil from a newly diagnosed diabetic. Not the looks.......but the smell. The more I think about it? It's actually the smelly things that get too me. Some of the people with GI infections that have diarrhea really reak!!!!!! I am talking the smell glides through the entire ER! Even the revived person, that the squad brought into the ER. This was someone found in their back yard naked, apparently for more than 24hrs. The squad showed up, (person still alive), and brought them into the er. They were hypothermic, and NOT alert (Thank God!), and the coded. WE started CPR, got a pulse back, and went to intubate.......when we opened her mouth, there were magotts in her mouth! However, it did not bother me like the smelly stuff. There was a lady last seen by her family 6 days prior, and found her on the floor, soaked in stool and urine.......what a smelly thing that old urine was!!!!

We had a 26 yo guy who was called as a full arrest by the squad, tubed him brought him in to the ER. Only one side of his chest was rising and falling. The ER doc did a chest x-ray, saw the mediastinal shift, and decided to decompress the chest to see if there was a pneumo (even though he was already dead). Well the smell from that compression was horrendous, and once again the stench glided through the ER causing people to head for the barf buckets.

So clearly, the smelly stuff rules.

CEN35

(Rick)

Y2KRN · Mar 31, 2001

I used to be an OR tech and I passed out once and could not stomach lady partsl or rectal warts, they used to take bets as to whether or not I could remain standing when we would have to cauterize them. Yuuuuuuuuk!

gillbee1 · Mar 31, 2001

Originally posted by kday:
Okay, people. It's time for a nice, fun, light-hearted discussion to blow off some steam.

WHAT FREAKS YOU OUT? What bodily fluid can't you STAND? What wound gives you the absolute WILLIES? It doesn't matter if you're an ADN, BSN, LPN, CNA, PQRST, ABCDEFG...every body gets the heebie jeebies over SOMETHING...even you stomach-of-steel ER nurses!

Mine is eyeball injuries/surgery...aaaaaaaaaackkkkkkk!! Gross! Makes my skin absolutely CRAWL. Or when someone gets a little cut on their finger/toe/whatever and then squeezes it to make it bleed!! Bleah!! Then there's the ever-popular RESPIRATORY SECRETIONS. I can handle poop, pee, amniotic fluid, lanced boils, pus, whatever...but give me a nasty snot-filled trach, and I'm OUTTA THERE.

Share, share, share people!

Okay, this is really gross. Many years ago, maybe 15, I initiated CPR on a patient. This was before we had the wonderful masks that we have now. I was doing mouth breathing and the old dude vomited in my mouth!!!! I ran to the bathroom and vomited immediately as the doctor was yelling at me from the code "how ya doin?" GROSS!!!! annie

lpnandloveit1 · Apr 4, 2001

I can suck snot all day (noses,mouths, trachs I don't care) pleeeeeeeeeeeeese don't hand me your teeth!!!!!! also the smell of a good old fasioned gi bleed.

lkushen · Apr 4, 2001

I can take the usual, vomit, mucos, sputum, urine, feces - OK, but here's a few that got me.

We had a patient that arrested and had seizures secondary to hypoxia. The neurologist started IV Dilantin. Withing 2 days, this obese African American female had skin just sloughing off in thick layers. We were treating her as a burn patient with dressing changes that would take 4 nurses to do just to lift body parts and turn her. Here's the gross part. I was helping another "team" of nurses in the room, lifted her arm by the elbow and hand, and the skin on her hand slid right off and LOOKED like a glove!!! I was so glad the patient was comatose. The heeby jeebies made me drop her entire arm and run from the room.

Another happened recently, had a male patient who's feet stunk so bad you could tell his hygiene was horrific. One morning, I went in to bathe him with the assistance of another RN. When she started cleaning his member, no problem. then she pulled back the foreskin. I've never seen that much cheese - even in a female!!! Disgusting. I told her she deserved battle pay for even venturing there. She did let out one heave, but kept on cleaning. Kudos for her!

My last story is about a patient from a nursing home that complained that her ear itched and she couldn't hear very well. I got out the otoscope and peered in to find maggots wriggling around in her ear!!!

Ortho stuff gets me too. My husband broke his leg last summer and got some screws and plates. I'm still traumatized by the picking up of his leg and watching the bones in the ankle shift in two. Still can't touch his leg where the plates are!

NurseCratchett, NS · Apr 5, 2001

Wow...I am a Nursing Student...Haven't ran in to anything that has made me lose it yet...When I was about 7 I walked in on my stepmother who was in the bathroom...Cleaning her glass eye...I screamed and started to cry, hysterically...She quickly tried to calm me and explain what she was doing...Wasn't long before I was begging to clean it for her...By the way what is c-diff?