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 critical care, med/surg.

This was both gross and mortifying to me some 30 years ago and still makes me queasy! I was caring for a cirrhotic patient in the ICU who was dying yet determined to be the most obnoxious and disrespectful person he could in his short time left on earth. He was your typical etoh cirrhotic who neither cared about his health or those who tried to help him. So anyway, he died that night and it was my task along with a colleague to tag and bag him for the morgue. As you may or may not know, 30 years ago cirrhotics looked much worse than they do nowadays partly because of advanced medications and procedures so this guy was a gigantic bag of ascites just waiting to escape. We had slid him over to the morgue stretcher and were starting to turn him when he erupted! Yes...fluid from every pore, orifice and puncture site came pouring out, onto my gown, the stretcher the floor...everywhere. His final statement of what he thought of us! Believe me...it was disgusting beyond belief, the greenish yellow hue of ascites combined with blood and mucous was "a rainbow" as my grand-daughter would say!

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Specializes in med/surg---long term---pvt duty.

One of my grossest moments happened 38 years ago when I was a very naive, very new 19 yr old EMT student doing a clinical rotation in the ER... had a gentleman come in with an evolving MI and he vomited lima beans and beer!!! I HATE the smell of beer and I HATE the smell of lima beans.... to this day even thinking about it makes my stomach churn...

ANYTHING related to "respiratory secretions" makes me gag.... even my own kids with a snotty nose. I can do great trach care but I literally have a garbage can very close by!! The last hospital I worked had an awesome RT that would have mercy on me and take care of my trach patients' respiratory needs!

Had a patient with a very bad bowel blockage (even his breath smelled like feces) code ... as they were doing CPR, the odor of the secretions just can not be described... it was like a combination of the foulest BM mixed with rotting flesh... even the most "seasoned" staff was coming out of the room gagging!!! It permeated the entire unit and into the main corridor of the hospital and even the next day when we came on shift we could smell it. They ended up totally stripping everything out of the room down to repainting the walls and changing out the ceiling tiles!!! Months later you could still faintly smell it and we tried not to admit anyone into that room unless we had no other choice.....

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I'm sure I have grosser stories... but the one that jumped up on my consciousness: My group was out on our first clinical rotation ever. Two female students and I were in a patient room to get a dressing change experience. The RN removed the bandage, put some clean towels and linens around the "wound" which looked like a large ruddy area with a hole in the top. We had to "express" the wound. Remember those paper-mache volcano models in grade school? Yah, you guessed it. First decent press, out comes a very substantial lava flow of pus and blood. If you pressed too hard, it would shoot up quite nicely, in loads of "lava". Needless to say, but what the heck.... it took a lot of courses of expression, all of which were both colorful and foul.

One of the ladies with me was just fascinated, and determined as I was to clear out all the gunk. The other? Stood a few feet away cringing and half hidden from sight. After a couple years of preparatory classes of nursing, which she did very well...top of the class type (she was moving from a career in accounting to nursing).... quit after her first clinical day.

Never did see her again. I wonder where she is today ;-)

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The time when HIV was at it's highest peak, I was working at the delivery unit as a midwife. As I was repairing an episiotomy, a drop of blood jumped directly into one of my eyes despite the fact that I was wearing my eye glasses!

I quickly washed my eye with tap water and then had to complete the procedure after which I had to undergo all the protocols of blood testing for both me and the client and take a full course of antivirals! Whew☻

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Specializes in progressive care, cardiac step-down.

As a new grad I had a pt that needed to be straight Cathed. I'd never done it, but had placed plenty of Foleys so I thought I'd be ok. I wasn't. Face full of urine.

I was giving PO acetylcysteine (mucomyst) to a pt pre cardiac cath. I injected air into the vial and inverted it only to find that it wasn't actually a vial cap but a rubber stopper. Popped out with the air, face full of mucomyst.

A pt came to the icu after a failed AAA repair that had coded on the table twice. Came back with a vac dsg in place, but tubing was not connected to a vac, nor was it clamped. We figured this out when he coded again and blood was spurting out of the tubing with each compression.

I had just finished eating lunch one night and sat down to chart. Found a smear of something on the desk where I was charting. Discovered My sleeve was apparently covered in poop the whole time I was eating and I had no idea.

Had a pt on warfarin dc his own iv and walked into a puddle of blood on the pt and the floor. Clean the pt first, then go to wipe up the floor. The puddle on the floor had coagulated and was like a giant jello jiggler made of blood.

Any upper or lower gi contents of a pt with ischemic bowel.

Pseudomonas in a trach, as previously mentioned.

I could go on...

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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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Apologies folks - duplicate post. (Like it wasn't bad enough first time round.)

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This is a tough one, as far as body fluids go I had a little boy with diarrhea who wouldn't put on a diaper. I told him the diaper was not a punishment but if he had another accident (and they were like grown man code brown accidents) he had to at least put chucks under him. He hit the call light 5 min later and I walked into the room to see his little naked hiney inside the pink basin on the bed with stool all over his face, legs, hands, bed, side rails, floor, and ceiling (yes I said ceiling we had to replace two tiles.) As I walked in he said "I have a seriouse problem" with the most genuine straight face you've ever seen. He promised not to move while I got linen and I laughed so hard (when he couldn't see me) I almost peed on myself. The whole bath he was bragging about how he didn't really have an accident, because he got his bum in the bucket....

Another one was when a patient pulled out her chest tube right next to me and as I was lunging to put my (gloved) hand over the site some purulent pleural fluid hit me in the face... yummy

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Speaking of passing gas, in the newborn nursery once a baby farted while I was changing her diaper. She splattered the whole wall and you could see the outline of my arm on the wall... good times

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I've been spit at, and had an elderly male reach for my private areas, but the actual GROSSEST thing I can remember was stopping at Penney's on my way home from work, and realizing I still had poop all over my shoes, from cleaning up after an incontinent patient. That was years ago, when I was breaking back into nursing (after years off to raise kids) by working at a nursing home. 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.

Girl ALWAYS fart in the patient room so you can blame it on them lol

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As a Patient care Tech taking care of a Cdiff Patient. When I was done cleaning his very large poop, I noticed my gloves tore and of course I rubbed my face with it before I figured. Is over one year now but I think I can still smell Cdiff on my face.

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Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.

Years ago, in my first ICU job we had this trached guy in a rocking bed. The theory was that as the bed rocked -- head up, then feet up, then head up -- gravity would push and pull on his diaphragm, assisting him to breathe. Did I mention he had a trach? Every time his head came up, he'd cough a wad of phlegm out of that trach with enough force to propell it across the room where it would hit the glass between ICU rooms and stick there. The first time I saw this phenomonen, I was on the other side of the glass seeing the phlegm coming at me . . . . And sticking.

It was much worse to actually be in the room with him when this was happening.

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