What Freaks You Out?

FBB044 · Jul 14, 2001

Once found an old sandwich in between rolls of an obese patient...and I just thought that fishy smell was coming from somewhere else!

Goofball · Jul 14, 2001

Sandigapeachlpn, if somebody handed me their finger they'd cut off, I'd lose it right then and there. That's right up there with the intestinal worms in the bedpan story.

As for you guys who find all that food in peoples folds, I'm starting to believe it, since so many of you say it happens. Gee, I'm kinda jealous I never experienced that one. The only things I find in their folds, or usually stuck to their butts or backs, are things like needle caps, yanquers,syringes (one time a 60cc one) and other various pieces of medical equipment.

Zee_RN, BSN, RN · Jul 15, 2001

One of the nurse's aides on a med-surg floor I used to work on found $230 in the abdominal folds of an obese patient. Patient said she figured no one would find it there so that's where she hid it! :eek:

PammieRN · Jul 19, 2001

Definately sputum and trach goobers.....

hoolahan, ASN, RN · Jul 19, 2001

haven't read this one in a while, lmao!!

how about strange things removed from butts in the or? or should that be another thread?

when i was working in pacu, i got a call one night for "removal of foreign object from rectum." ok, i said what is in there? hamburger tongs!!

the kind with a triangle on the ends, but there was a tiny section where the metal didn't meet, so the doc felt the bowel could be pinched, and felt surgery was necessary.

i know this is not very professional, but it was all i could do not to lmao from the time of the call to the time i rolled him into the post-op ward. can you imagine, meeting your aao roomate. "hi i'm john, i had a burst appendix, what are you here for?" "well, i shoved hamburger tongs so far up my butt i needed surgery to remove them!" oh goodness, i'm laughing so hard as i write this, i will need a depends!

can you imagine the audacity of the or staff bringing the tongs out for me to give back to the pt. i said, "you're kidding, right." the or nurse looked me dead in the eye and said legally we had to offer it back to him! i can't believe it, but no one else would do it. (maybe they were pulling my leg.) hardly able to keep myself composed (especially after peeking in to the or and seeing that dignified position) i said to the pt, "legally i have to ask you if you want these back." he looked at me, so embarrassed, and quietly said "no, thanks."

once i got $hit on while turning a pt, she had diarrhea, and passed gas at the same time, like a bullet onto my shirt! they only had paper scrubs available, so i had to wear a new paper shirt home. went to get the kids from my m-i-l, and right away my 4 year old dtr (at the time) says, mommy you have a new shirt. i laughed and said someone pooped on me. since i used to do peds as well, she said, you mean one of the babies? i said, no not a baby. i'll never forget that innocent look of confusion on her face!

not sure if i said it before, but as a hh nurse now, the one thing that truly grosses me out, and makes my skin crawl is cockroaches. now if i worked in the er and pulled one out of someone's ear, i'd be passed out on the floor. even those orkin man and terminix commercials make me gag! when my sister moved to florida, she used to call me and cry, she was so freaked out about the roaches. she said linda, they're so big, and they even fly, i can't take it. eventually she got accustomed to it i guess. but that scene in men in black, with all the bugs by the dumpster, that is tossing cookies time for me!

i was doing a med prepour once, opened up all the little boxes, and out of one, a baby roach crawled out and onto my chart. i jumped, tried to get it off the chart, never found it. back at the office, i found it, squished between the carbon copies of my notes. makes my skin crawl just thinking about it. my grandma lives in a senior bldg and she keeps everything in the fridge, b/c she's convinced that roaches can't get to it there. i have a very serious phobia about roaches. i get an panicky feeling having to visit pt's in bldg's known to have roaches. then finding some bed bound pt's with roaches in their bedding....i better stop, i'm going to have nightmares!

Rita Marie · Jul 19, 2001

I can tolerate almost anything...but sometimes a patient will have a wound or something that REALLY smells foul. That turns my stomach.

And...the sight of my OWN blood. Not very brave of me, however, something has to be icky!

Oh, there was that one day when the same patient painted himself, his nurse and me twice on one shift. That was real fun. The NOD brought us scrubs from the OR with the name of the hospital stamped all over every square inch of them...so we wouldn't steal them.

Goodnight, Y'all.

Goofball · Jul 19, 2001

Hoolihan, this is one of the few places I feel that it's safe and ok to be 'unprofessional'-

it's the stuff we all think to ourselves at work but can't say it! And your post cracked me up.

As for roaches, I agree with you. Those are some freaky creepy things. I have had some bad experiences with them myself (moved into a couple places that were absolutely infested - lasted 1 night in the first one; 3 weeks in the second, trying unsucessfully to exterminate them and seal them out) horrible things, they are. Don't care for crickets, either. Our hospital gets an annual, brief infestation of them every September. Pt. told me once, "Get that cricket out of here!" I just had to tell her sorry, not this girl! I don't touch those jumping-type bugs!

suzannasue · Jul 19, 2001

I have absolutely cracked up at the things that gross out my colleagues and can truly say I must have a titanium gut because nothing affects me anymore...however,the closest I have been recently to the ultimate gross out was when one of the pts on our unit was receiving "sterile maggot" therapy for gangrene of his foot. I had no direct contact with this pt for several weeks and my co-workers were relating horror stories of how the critters were escaping from under the dressing. Then one night we heard a scream from the hall and several visitors were in a panic because the maggots were in the hall!!!!! Sure enough,there they were,sqiggling and squirming in the hallway toward the room of a pt who had just expired!!!!!!!!! :eek: We were all involved in the round-up!!!!!!! Several days later,a frustrated colleague decided to surround the dressing in a plastic bag to prevent the escape of the maggots...the next morning I heard the physical therapist in charge of the "therapy" say "he killed them"...sure enough the plastic bag had smothered the critters and more had to be ordered at a cost of $99. About a week later,this same pt had a cardiac episode and was transferred to the acute telemetry side and was MY pt. It was quiet that night and every time I was in his room I heard a very faint crackling sound and though I was losing my mind because I had checked all of the tubing and equipment and everything was functioning

properly:confused: I decided to search the room until I found the source of that nerve wracking sound and sure enough I found it coming from under the dressing on his foot...it was the sound of the maggots at the smorgasborg of flesh. Needless to say, when I was repositioning this person or giving him meds,I would turn up the volume on his TV to keep from hearing the smacking and wiggling of his" therapists"!!!!!!!

Goofball · Jul 19, 2001

We do get pretty encrusted as we gain experience, but working around maggots? eeewooooo, glad we don't do that in our hospital.

Recently we had a new Nursing Assistant orienting with us. She'd been through 1 semester of nursing school. She was observing the seasoned NA and I scrubbing liquid stool (and it didn't even stink) off a patient's decub-peppered butt; meanwhile, the pt's fresh AKA stump had a serosanguinous-saturated fluff & tegaderm dripping. To me, this is as routine a scene as wiping someone's brow with a washrag. But this poor sweet little Aide said she was going dizzy. We just sort of eased her down to the floor real quick, then jumped back in the room and finished our mess-clean and dressing change.

I was so surprised that someone would find our scene gross, but had to remember that the first time I ever saw a decub or a dead person, I was sick to my stomach and couldn't eat meat for a couple weeks. just depends what you've been exposed to for how long, I guess! :confused:

Peds_LPN · Jul 21, 2001

Ok I am a big baby but I hate vomit!!!! I am a sympathy puker and it just doesn't work for me!!!!! If someone vomits without making all that noise, I can do ok. In nursing school, I would hum to myself to get through someone puking!!! If I came down the hall humming to myself, they knew to clear the path to the bathroom!!!! HEHEHEHEHE

I LOVE BEING A NURSE!!!!! :eek:

hoolahan, ASN, RN · Jul 26, 2001

i have tried to post this at least a dozen different times, we'll see if it goes through this time. saw this in the funnies and immediately thought of this post!

Goofball · Jul 27, 2001

Originally posted by GERINRS
when Alzheimer's patients fingerpaint with their poop and pick the corn out of it to reeat it.
OK, now this one almost surpasses intestinal worms. Never have I experienced this, nor do I want to hardly even think about it.