I was working a night shift on a tele floor as a new Nurse.
We had this one poor old lady who was confused and was restrained as usual for her safety. She was our designated resident nightmare geri from hell, so she was placed near the Nurse's station.
So we are chilling out at the Nurse's station, chatting and trying to get through another night...
Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I see our lady in question standing in the dimly lit doorway of her room!
I instantly leap out and run to her. As I approach her, she appears to be falling towards me, so I meet her in a bear hug...my arms around her waste, and her arms around my shoulders.
As I catch the lady, I notice a very strong smell of feces, and I feel something warm on my hands, arms and shoulders...
My fellow heroes come in behind me, and as the lights are turned on, my worst fears are instantly realized.
Yes, I caught the poor old lady with a good old bear hung football catch, but I was also covered in the lady's feces.
As I look at her, she has feces smeared all over her arms and hands... (and even her face!)
For a gender generally so focused on their genitals, and with considerably easier access and visibility, I'm often surprised by men waiting to seek medical attention for issues in the area, often with nasty consequences.
Off the top off my head are these patients who waited way longer than I think I would have, with these conditions:
- penile cancer noted six months before presentation, resulting in amputation
- testicular cancer diagnosed at stage 3 but detected by the patient at stage 1
- priapsm for twenty hours secondary to someone else's erectile dysfunction injection
- inguinal herniation over fifteen years of more than ten meters of bowel, and
- trauma-induced gangrene of the member and scrotum requiring penectomy and bilateral orchidectomy.
*sung by very enthusiastic 9 and 10 year old scouts at camp around the campfire and as we walked
back to our cabins...
over and over and over and over . . . .
i've never heard this one before! cool beans!
i think i was "ruint" early! i also learned the words to the songs my mom, aunts, and great aunts knew from their camp days!! i also know alternate sets of words to many hymns too -- or did once upon a time!
my worst is not even a visual, it's a smell. I can handle almost anything- b.m's, etc.. but this was a morbidly obese diabetic 32 yr. old male with multiple stage 4 wounds uncared for and rotting with yeast growth, on top of that he refused showers and wound care.
I was working on my peds oncology unit and hanging blood on a sickler in with crisis. I am in his room, getting ready to hang a unit of blood. I spike said bag, and place it on the IV pole. This is where it gets gross. The mechanism to make the pole taller or shorter was apparently loose, and the pole started shrinking. I automatically extend the pole upwards. Somehow, wait for it. The spike proceeds to come OUT of the bag and I instantly look up to see what the noise is and get to be the center of my very own reenactment from the prom scene in Carrie. They immediately sent me into the patient's restroom with paper scrubs to wear to make it over to the staff shower. As I come out, one of my coworkers comes over grinning, holds out my blood filled shoes, and asks me if I want to take them home. At this point I decide I will gladly be out the $100 and just get a new pair.
Way back when I was working as a CNA I took a resident to the toilet--obviously no one had toileted him in a while because he pooped out, with great difficulty I might add, a hard stool the exact shape and size of a soup can! I had to break it up in the toilet to get it to flush.
I was working on my peds oncology unit and hanging blood on a sickler in with crisis. I am in his room, getting ready to hang a unit of blood. I spike said bag, and place it on the IV pole. This is where it gets gross. The mechanism to make the pole taller or shorter was apparently loose, and the pole started shrinking. I automatically extend the pole upwards. Somehow, wait for it. The spike proceeds to come OUT of the bag and I instantly look up to see what the noise is and get to be the center of my very own reenactment from the prom scene in Carrie. They immediately sent me into the patient's restroom with paper scrubs to wear to make it over to the staff shower. As I come out, one of my coworkers comes over grinning, holds out my blood filled shoes, and asks me if I want to take them home. At this point I decide I will gladly be out the $100 and just get a new pair.
Way back when I was working as a CNA I took a resident to the toilet--obviously no one had toileted him in a while because he pooped out, with great difficulty I might add, a hard stool the exact shape and size of a soup can! I had to break it up in the toilet to get it to flush.
You just reminded me of the time a resident peed on her chux.
When we rolled her off of it, the pee was in the perfect shape of the Dairy Queen sign.
It was so stupid and random, and we were so dang tired and bleary-eyed, that we doubled over laughing.
Only truly funny if you are just run-down tired and it's close to midnight, I guess.
back to the genital stories, i was working as a scrub tech and some idiot came in with a "ring" on his buddy, that apparently had been there for at least 72 hrs according to the guy. We think that recreational drugs were involoved, his appendage was black...the urologist pretty much skinned it and he had to have skin grafts later on. Yes, not three days later another idiot came in with the same thing(drugs again) It sounded like he had that on for at least a week . Unfortunatly he ended up like Mr Bobitt, because there was no blood flow to that appendage, black as can be, lucky me, I was on call on both occaisions... That was extremely creepy... :sofahider
FranEMTnurse, CNA, LPN, EMT-I
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