What is the grossest thing that's happened to you???

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I really want to know what is the grossest thing that has happened to you as a nurse. Has poo or vomit flung at you? I'm super curious. Thanks to all ^_^

Specializes in EP/Cath Lab, E.R. I.C.U, and IVR.

So years ago when I was and ED nurse, now EP and Cath Lab. I had this poor little lady that had not been cared for at all. Her diaper looked like it weighed 10 lbs due to all the urine. As I tore the sides of her depends and opened it up I noticed that she had lots and lots of fleas inside of the depends, in her pubic hair, and underneath her. So I try to start getting more stuff to clean her up I notice a few black spots on my arms. The urine soaked Old lady pubic hair fleas are on my bare forearms.

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I had a confused patient one time who pulled out her FMS (fecal management system) and was sucking on it when I returned to the room to do my hourly rounds. When I tried to take it out of her hands and mouth as gently as possible, she fought me and it flung feces on my hair, my scrub top, and and on the wall. I washed my hair in the sink and wore paper scrubs the rest of the night. Not only that but she had feces all over her mouth and face. Ugh.

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I was a student nurse working with an elderly women who I put on the bed pan and she peed. I put a chux in the bedpan. When she was done, I went over to the toilet that had a shower curtain around it, so it wasn't an actual bathroom, and emptied the bedpan and was squeezing the chux so it wouldn't drip when I was moving it over to the trash can. I guess it was the smell and the sight of the urine (and other things) on the chux and it kind of slooshing around, I started dry heaving to the point where my eyes were teary. Luckily my face was behind the curtain so the patient and her son didn't see. Breathing through my mouth and thinking "Katie get it together!!", that was probably the grossest thing thus far. I just graduated school so I'll have a lot more gross things happen, I'm sure. Although nothing got on me or anything, it was just unsettling. xP

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Specializes in Psych, Corrections, Med-Surg, Ambulatory.
Projectile vomit. Black. In my hair.

Charcoal by any chance?

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Specializes in Med nurse in med-surg., float, HH, and PDN.
I was going to roll change a woman with dementia who slept with no underwear or depends on. She had a bm in bed and it was very messy, and as soon as I peeled back the covers she took a finger and smeared in through her poop and genitals and then stuck it in her mouth.

Should have handed her some Ritz Crackers, because, as Andy Griffith says " ​Mmmm-MMM! Everything's good on a Ritz!":lol2:

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Specializes in Emergency Nursing.

Giving dc instructions to a pt with an ankle fx. c/o nausea even after antiemetics; friends kept giving him blue gatorade "to help settle his stomach." Mid sentence, dude gives me a look and without warning covers me from head to toe in blue liquid... bright side all liquid, no undigested food chunks.

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Specializes in ICU; Telephone Triage Nurse.
I also remember, as Charge nurse at a hospital, I was in our tiny, one person med room, all by myself, and passed gas. Immediately after, the pharmacist stepped off the elevator and brought all the prescribed IV's into that very room, as I got out of there as fast as I could. Of course, he couldn't miss the facts of the matter, but we never mentioned it to each other.

:roflmao: hahahahaha! Nice!

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My husband had real bad gas the night my son was born via C-section from nerves and excitement. He stood to the right of my head (trying not to pass out - he wasn't professionally medical 23.5 yr's ago) and that poor, doomed anesthesiologist sat immediately behind my head to the right on a short stool - immediately behind my husband, with his face at exactly level with my husbands rear end.

Earlier that evening my husband grabbed an hour or so to go eat some Mexican food for dinner, and washed it down with several Mexican beers (for medicinal purposes due to nerves). He said his farts were so rank that even he was offended by them (and I believe him too). He said flies were dropping off the ceiling dead before they hit the ground from the noxious gas emissions he was squeaking out as quietly as humanly possible. Poor anesthesiologist! :dead:

In spite of what he endured at the wrong end of my husband's GI disturbances, they did NOT find him dead on the floor once my son was delivered.

He (my husband, not the anesthesiologist) told me all about it approximately 24 hr's later - with tears of mirth streaming down my face I breathlessly begged him to stop his story because I was laughing so hard I afraid I would rip my staples and dehisce my intestines all over the bed despite splinting my incision with a pillow ...

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A nurse coworker told me a story about a vented pt she had that had an illeus - she was in suctioning, and changing IV bags when she let out a real nasty smelling toot. Less than a minute later in strides the MD she had paged about the pt having no bowel sounds at all! :nailbiting:

He says to her, "Well the good news is at least he's passing gas!". :wideyed:

She said he seemed pretty happy about that too! :lol2:

She also felt she had no choice but to fess up that it was her. :cautious:

(Personally I would have kept that secret to the grave!) ... :blink:

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Specializes in LTC, CPR instructor, First aid instructor..

I love these stories. They give me bellylaughs.

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Specializes in ICU; Telephone Triage Nurse.
Night shift on a cardiothoracic unit - we hear moaning and retching from the ward and when we investigate, find one of our lsevere COPD patients sat up in bed, dry-heaving hard.

He caught his breath enough to tell us what happenned - he'd woken up thirsty and reached for his drinking glass - picked up his sputum pot in error.

It gets worse.

First, this chap had absolutely rank secretions - stringy, gelid, truly offensive phlegm,

Also... he was very productive.

So much so, that - rather than a regular-size sputum pot - he used one of our larger disposable denture pots overninght.

And... the pot was empty. He'd drunk every last drop.

We were horrified when we discovered that, and straightaway somebody asked him why he hadn't stopped immediately when he realised his mistake.

And that's when he said it.

"I tried to stop - but it was too slimy and my throat couldn't close down on it - it all slid down in one lump."

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I can't stop retching ... (And my son won't stop laughing)

I have a terrible time getting my yak reflex to shut down, and sputum is my kryptonite.

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Specializes in Psychiatric / Forensic Nursing.

O.K. This is really gross but every word is true. I was working as a tech in a burn unit, tasked with doing hydrotherapy and non-sharp debridement. Our tank was a "Hubbard"- style PT tank that, looking down on it, looks like a giant hour glass. I had a 65-year-old man with chemical burns over 60% of his body. He had been pre-medicated with Ketamine and morphine; went into hypovolemic shock (interstitial) and arrested in the tank. I hit the Code button and tried to start CPR. I hit the "RESUSC" switch on the lift to raise the litter he was suspended on in the water but still couldn't reach him from the side. I wasn't about to let him just pass on so I climbed into the tank and got good CPR started. The team arrived but I was still giving mouth-to-mouth (in 1970 !). The man regurgitated his high-protein milkshakes and hit me in the face. I reached into the water to splash-clean my face. What I got was a huge piece of skin I had removed from his leg during treatment just prior to the arrest. It squished against my face and slid off over my lips. I managed a few more breaths until the MD got a tube in him. We wound up putting him on a stretcher and rushing him back to our Burn ICU. By then I was vomiting so hard there was food from a former life coming out; "I don't remember eating that!" The Head Nurse gave me 50mg Phenergan IM and a fellow tech took me home. I slept well into the next day and soon returned to the burn unit. I could not eat KFC for months !! Still have PTSD triggering sometimes at barbecues and fish fries.

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Specializes in LTC, CPR instructor, First aid instructor..
I can't stop retching ... (And my son won't stop laughing)

I have a terrible time getting my yak reflex to shut down, and sputum is my kryptonite.

This really is GROSS! YUCK
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As a nurse student, I was assigned to an elder client by a district nurse (visting people in their homes). She complained already to me about the son of the patient acting weird and trying to flirt with her and putting messenges under her windshield wipers of her car. Yet, she didn't believe me and I almost got sacked (she also got all panicky and red, so I think she was trying to protect her patient, I don't know), when I told her that whilst she was taking care of another patient in another home, the guy was like making sexual remarks between his breath (used pretty vulgar language) and moaning like in a Media when I was washing him in his bed. So loud, that I think his wife heard him even, or was that his goal? Anyway, now comes the gross part: I have never EVER seen that much smegma (I never saw any before or after luckily) on a guys member before (yeah, that includes also uncurcumcised -not washed in ages- homeless people). It was one stinky thick, bit sticky whitish layer, and because of his moaning etc, I quickly swiped if off his member in 3 flicks so it flew in chunks in all directions, while being grossed out. Urgh. Clearly he had missed a few wash-ups by the other nurses, or did they avoid that area altogether? Or maybe those were other body fluids that he didn't cared to take rid off and just lingered there. The smell and texture was putrid however.

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