What Freaks You Out?

Nurses General Nursing

Published

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.

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this one is probably silly, but feet. The other day I was driving home and was at a red light on this guy on the side walk takes his shoe and sock off and starts scratching off layers of dead, crusty skin off his foot!!!:barf01:

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Specializes in ICU.

Any creepy, crawly bugs like scabies or lice. If they're on my patient, I start feeling the bugs crawling all over me, too.

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this one is probably silly, but feet. The other day I was driving home and was at a red light on this guy on the side walk takes his shoe and sock off and starts scratching off layers of dead, crusty skin off his foot!!!:barf01:

Oh... my... gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawd!!!

I would have passed out.

I hate feet too!

How about when you are showering someone... and they have the brown gunk between their toes.

Sometimes, there is soooo much it! :eek:

The texture and color reminds me of stale... um... mushrooms.

Ugh!

So, I call it "mushrooms between the toes".

I'm squirming just thinking about it.

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Specializes in Emergency, medical-surgical,.

Maggots coming out of diverse orifices and leg ulcers not treated for

a minimum of 5 years!!!

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My thing is bloody poop. C-diff poop I tolerate, I could literally open my hands and let someone barf in them, and I almost even enjoy trach suctioning....but give me a patient with an active GI bleed who has bloody, smelly, liquidy stool...ugggggh. I swear I have to concentrate so hard so the patient can't see my disgusted facial expression.

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And I did have a patient that was NPO except for the big jug of Golytely that she was supposed to be drinking a glass of every 1/2 hour. She also had a horrible food addiction. She got ahold of the jug when I was out of the room and chugged it all. Then proceeded to poop, everywhere in the room. It looked like a murder scene, but with poop instead of blood. She over-flowed the toilet, covered it actually. I threw a towel on the floor to cover a lake of poop to get to the toilet and when I tried to step over the towel, I ended up skidding across the floor on the towel and poop. I went over the the patient and she had it smeared all over her body, and was just sitting in it. By the time I was done I had multiple poopy handprints covering my isolation gown. Needless to say, I didn't eat lunch that day. All my co-workers still laugh about that day.

Gee, now I'm starting to think...just why did I become a nurse?:barf02:

I'm laughing so hard right now I can hardly breathe....I guess this is an instance when you were really thankful to have the isolation gown, no?

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Specializes in acute care.

I can usually handle gross things pretty well. However, I did get vagal a couple of times in clinicals...didn't pass out, but felt like I was about to. Once was in RN clinical while watching an intern do his first paracentesis...I thought too much about how painful it must be for the patient, and had to sit down. The other time was, embarrassingly, on the last day of my NP clinical on a hospitalist service. I had been helping the orthopedic resident aspirate a septic elbow and the patient was in obvious pain during the procedure. Same scenario as before, except it was when I stepped out and went into the med room to get something the doctor needed that I felt vagal (so at least my preceptor and the doctor didn't see it...one of the floor nurses did though). Something about watching somebody stick a huge needle deep into a patient seems to bother me if I think about it too much (I'd probably be better if I were the one doing the procedure). Kind of silly and embarrassing.

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Definitely a colostomy. Give me any other kind or color of poop but not what comes out of a colostomy!!

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Specializes in LTC.

The smell of gangrene. Anything but that, UGH.

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Specializes in drug seekers and the incurably insane..

I absolutely will not deal with glass eyes, dentures, and my facility's management.

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colostomies--uggg poop smells to start with but sitting in there, it gets just nasty!!! and joints--yeah I could never do ortho. Just thinking about knees and hips and stuff grosses me out.

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Specializes in LTC.

Oh yeah--and the LTC patient with 8" long thick fungal toenails practically on every toe! The podiatrist didn't believe us--you should of seen his face!!!!! How this guy could walk I'll never know.

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