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...aaaaaaaaackkkkkkk!! 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.
Not much gets to me. But the first, and anytime since, I had to clean up a res who finger painted their bm all over the bed, bedrails and themselves, no prob, until I realized she had it in her mouth ( shudder, gag!!!!!!) Oh, and burbing colostomy bag....peeee uuuu!!!!!
Specializes in med-surg, psych, ER, school nurse-CRNP.
The crack a tooth makes when you pull it gets me. When I did school nursing, I'd have the kiddo count three with me, and then we'd both scream as loud as we could to cover the sound. They just though I was cool, never knew the reason behind the screaming.
And the smell of a lower GI bleed will make me puke every time. I even did that with my GM. Cleaned her up and took care of her, but puked into the wastecan the whole time. Her poor nurses (she was on the floor that I worked on as an RN) called her doc and got me some Reglan, bless them, because I would not leave. Her doc knew us well, and God love him for being so nice.
Okay, I guess I'm done with lunch now. Several things give me the heeby-jeebies (or the gaggies). In no particular order:
--any abdominal wound so large that I can fit my arm up to the elbow in it and it takes 24 rolls of Kerlix per dressing change
OFF topic: I had a diabetic lady with a wound under her breast and the whole breast fit inside this wound, and this was no small breasted women either. deff a DD size. Amazingly it healed, never thought it would.
Working with an ams that came in, elderly woman, took too many narcs. We took out her dentures and placed them to the side. But apparently she put in too many of those seafoam things in her mouth to hold it up, and they didn't all come out, and it started waving in the breaze inside her mouth and made her vomit green pea color as we got it out, everyone just gasped and one started vomiting in the room.
There is very little that actually made me retch though.
Usually smells does it for me - any horrid smells. Decaying flesh when cleaning & packing large wounds or old blood turns my stomach but I've never retched or vomited - yet!
Seeing blood, vomit, etc doesn't bother me for some reason.
i'm a cna..and i cannot stand loose stool in a bedpan! i can wipe it off them, the bed, the brief, everything but i seriously gag if i have to clean it out/empty it out of a bedpan!! i have no idea why....oh and another thing...i hate spit. well not really spit, but u know that nasty thick stringy stuff from deep within?? ughhhhhahhgasdfewwwwwwwwwwww!!!!....lol i can handle everything else i've encountered so far
I can look at poop on a bed, on a floor, brief....but for some reason, the site of a bedside commode disgusts me. Don't ask me why, I have no clue. Maybe because it does not flush? I don't know.
DF-LPN
72 Posts
Not much gets to me. But the first, and anytime since, I had to clean up a res who finger painted their bm all over the bed, bedrails and themselves, no prob, until I realized she had it in her mouth ( shudder, gag!!!!!!) Oh, and burbing colostomy bag....peeee uuuu!!!!!