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!)
Well, this one time in clinical, I was tasked with administering soap suds enemas until clear on a patient.
This compaction was so severe, that we could hardly even get the tubing beyond the feces in the rectum. So, the RN I was working with pulls the tube out, and the tip is clogged with fecal matter. She proceeds to squeeze the bag in order to try and dislodge the fecal matter, and it shoots out right across me face, and onto the wall I ended up double gloving, and went digging. Got most of it cleared before clinical was over.
I don't think I can beat your stories, but I do get creeped out by patients with bedbugs and active lice infections. Especially when you can see the lice crawling around on their scalps.
My co-worker was burping a baby on her shoulder. The baby vomited (not spit up but vomit) and it all ran down the front of her chest into her bra. We have spare loaner scrubs but she had to hand wash her bra in the sink and wear it wet all night.
My co-worker was burping a baby on her shoulder. The baby vomited (not spit up but vomit) and it all ran down the front of her chest into her bra. We have spare loaner scrubs but she had to hand wash her bra in the sink and wear it wet all night.
Been there, done that. I tell people I have worn more bodily fluids working with newborns than I ever did working with adults. At least adults (most a & o adults, anyway) will most likely aim for the barf basin and pee in the urinal/bedpan/toilet.
I was taking care of an almost 500lb woman on the vent a couple of weeks back. I'm sure you all can imagine how many people it took to roll and bathe her. There were usually at least four of us in the room and sometimes five. She came in septic and hypotensive, and many of you could guess what happened next after the hypotension was under control - she went into acute renal failure. Well. She had been a big lady, but she was suddenly an even bigger lady whom they couldn't dialyze very well because her pressure couldn't tolerate it, even with pressors, and we don't have CRRT machines in our hospital (yet, although they keep promising to buy us some and train us on them). She developed the worst edema I have ever seen. You could leave handprints two inches deep in her skin, and her skin was split open and weeping everywhere. The lady was one big giant wound, more or less, and her skin was so incredibly fragile from being stretched so thin that every time we turned her it would split open in a new place. There was pretty much nothing we could do about it since we don't have CRRT - she was on a Lasix drip for a long time, but even with the drip she was putting out about 10cc of urine per shift, if that. She would fully saturate the bed and all of the pads we put on it in a couple of hours flat with serous fluid. She really needed full linen changes at least four or five times a shift, but it was difficult to get enough staff in the room to help turn her even once every four hours, let alone once every two like we should have been doing, and full baths with linen changes more than once a shift were pretty much out of the question. I washed her front frequently because that was all I was capable of getting done some shifts. It sucked and made me feel like a bad nurse, but if I couldn't find people to help me turn her, it's not like I could turn her by myself.
I think the worst part was probably her eyes - she had the worst scleral edema I have ever seen. We were putting gel moisturizer on her eyes at least once every four hours because her eyes were so swollen that there was no way to close them, and they started getting filmy membranes all over them that had to be scrubbed off with a washcloth. At least I got no reaction out of her neuro-wise, so no one was home to experience being that overloaded. Small favors. They finally terminally extubated her after she'd been with us for weeks, and the whole unit breathed a collective sigh of relief that day - both for her and for our backs.
One more for now - we had a hot mess post cardiac arrest on a cooling blanket come up and last about 30 minutes on our unit before he finally died again. Family had made him a DNR right before ER wheeled him up, so I'm not really 100% sure why he even came to us in the first place. Anyway, after much to do, visits from the coroner, and postmortem care, one of the nurses volunteered to help roll the guy down to the morgue, and asked the nurses sitting at the nurses' station to watch his patients. I happened to be walking by his rooms when I smelled a poopy GI bleed smell, turned, and saw his patient standing beside the bed fully naked.
Just to make a point, I turned to the nurses at the station and said, "Guys, is he supposed to be standing naked beside the bed?" That finally got some life out of the group and we all went in to get the situation under control. There was black tarry GI bleed poop everywhere. This man had diarrhea, and then he scooted down the bed through his own feces, getting feces from his toes up his legs to his back and even managed to get it all over his fingers. All of his telemetry leads were covered. His pulse ox cord was covered. The side rails were covered, the curtains were covered, and there was poop all over the floor. Of course - it also was the most pungent GI bleed poop you could imagine, so the entire unit smelled like GI bleed for the rest of the night. I pulled a chair over, put a pillowcase in it, and had the patient sit down while we did some damage control and cleaned up the room.
The worst part of the whole story was that the guy ripped out his sole 24g IV in his left foot in his attempt to get out of the bed. The PICC team had tried to place a PICC line the day before but had failed, so this was his only access and he was on a much needed Protonix drip. It had taken seven nurses to get in that one IV because the patient's veins were so tiny and fragile, and the nurse who had put it in the night before honestly started doing the lower lip wobble when she saw that the IV was out. I thought she was going to burst into tears at the sight of the lonely IV catheter in the floor, still hooked up to the tubing, Protonix dripping out onto the floor...
Specializes in Ambulatory Surgery, Ophthalmology, Tele.
calivianya said:
One more for now - we had a hot mess post cardiac arrest on a cooling blanket come up and last about 30 minutes on our unit before he finally died again. Family had made him a DNR right before ER wheeled him up, so I'm not really 100% sure why he even came to us in the first place. Anyway, after much to do, visits from the coroner, and postmortem care, one of the nurses volunteered to help roll the guy down to the morgue, and asked the nurses sitting at the nurses' station to watch his patients. I happened to be walking by his rooms when I smelled a poopy GI bleed smell, turned, and saw his patient standing beside the bed fully naked.
Just to make a point, I turned to the nurses at the station and said, "Guys, is he supposed to be standing naked beside the bed?" That finally got some life out of the group and we all went in to get the situation under control. There was black tarry GI bleed poop everywhere. This man had diarrhea, and then he scooted down the bed through his own feces, getting feces from his toes up his legs to his back and even managed to get it all over his fingers. All of his telemetry leads were covered. His pulse ox cord was covered. The side rails were covered, the curtains were covered, and there was poop all over the floor. Of course - it also was the most pungent GI bleed poop you could imagine, so the entire unit smelled like GI bleed for the rest of the night. I pulled a chair over, put a pillowcase in it, and had the patient sit down while we did some damage control and cleaned up the room.
The worst part of the whole story was that the guy ripped out his sole 24g IV in his left foot in his attempt to get out of the bed. The PICC team had tried to place a PICC line the day before but had failed, so this was his only access and he was on a much needed Protonix drip. It had taken seven nurses to get in that one IV because the patient's veins were so tiny and fragile, and the nurse who had put it in the night before honestly started doing the lower lip wobble when she saw that the IV was out. I thought she was going to burst into tears at the sight of the lonely IV catheter in the floor, still hooked up to the tubing, Protonix dripping out onto the floor...
As I read this post I thought, naked....ok, poop everywhere/GI bleed smell....yuck but ok, 24 g in foot now on floor..NOOOOO!!!!
We have hard sticks daily in our surgery center and when you see the tegraderm hanging and the 24g catheter just blowing in the wind, ugh!
Of course - it also was the most pungent GI bleed poop you could imagine, so the entire unit smelled like GI bleed for the rest of the night.
Is this one of the worse smells when dealing with human patients? I once dealt with a dog that was dying and had severe intestinal bleeding with diarrhea, and I remember thinking that the mess was worse than the smell.
Specializes in LTC, CPR instructor, First aid instructor..
The worst I ever experienced was when we performed CPR on a dead person. He was full of tumors, and he emitted all kinds of gross, disgusting, smelly creamy stuff with chunks from his mouth every time a compression was performed. I was the one bagging the patient. I gagged , and gagged. After we returned the ambulance to the bay, I left. Thankfully, it was time for me to go back to work.
After we returned the ambulance to the bay, I left. Thankfully, it was time for me to go back to work.
Levitas, BSN, RN
185 Posts
Well, this one time in clinical, I was tasked with administering soap suds enemas until clear on a patient.
This compaction was so severe, that we could hardly even get the tubing beyond the feces in the rectum. So, the RN I was working with pulls the tube out, and the tip is clogged with fecal matter. She proceeds to squeeze the bag in order to try and dislodge the fecal matter, and it shoots out right across me face, and onto the wall
I ended up double gloving, and went digging. Got most of it cleared before clinical was over.