What Is Your Most Gross, Yucky, Disgusting Nursing Horror Story?

[yazisizit]

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!)

And of course, now so did I!

[Enabled]

I have come to believe that every work situation has it Yuckies. I found the hardest task was to disimpact someone. I was given the lovely task on an admission. I thought when I had about 5lbs out it would do it. They xrayed the little old lady and she was still f ull. She couldn't have gone in a month. I couldn't do any more so ome of my colleagues rescued me. I had a fellow RN to BSN nursing student say that she would help the tech with one patient as it was a 'sacrifice' for her to do it. What if there wasn't a tech. During my first nursing assignment back in the days of Fred Flinstone which I know some of you remember I had a patient next to the station that had been yelling that there was someone in her room. We explained it as the drapes and had them removed as it was such an issue. Well she continued yelling through the weekend and then around 4a Monday morning I realized it was quiet. Your right she yelled herself to death. I have found that some of the older amputees particularly the 90 year old bilateral ones are sure spry in getting over those handle bars.

[sunnygirl272]

Quote

Originally posted by KayleighRN

Your story had me rolling! sorry for your misfortune..

I thought a pt I had was huge at 5' and 412#. I was told she had a foley in report.. Well, when I went to wash her, I couldn't find where it had been put in! It was like the tube went into an abyss of fat. I had to go get two other nurses to hold the fat on her legs back to check out the situation!!

i also have the obese client with a catheter story...had a home care client..it took 2 of us to do her cath change..with her sitting in her recliner....she would hold up her own belly...the other nurse would hold apart her inner thigh wings...(oh yeah...you know those kind of thighs...) and me kneeling on the nasty floor, feeding it in blind...got it everytime...oh..yeah...she was a noncompliant diabetic with chronic yeast infection...cottage cheese crawling down those thighs...

[ERNurse752, RN]

"...cottage cheese crawling down those thighs..."

You don't know how glad I am that I'm not eating cottage cheese for breakfast right now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[VivaLasViejas, ASN, RN]

Here's from the LTC archives........One night a couple of hours after I'd done the shift assessment on a (supposedly) A & O SNF admit, the CNA brought me a napkin which held what appeared to be a few malted milk balls, but on closer inspection turned out to be four small, rock hard stools. "You're not gonna believe where I found these," she said. "They were lined up on Mr. Smith's bed table." Well, I'd certainly seen s**t before, but I just had to find out what had possessed this seemingly "with-it" gentleman to deal with it this way. When I asked him, however, he just shrugged, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, and said "There wasn't any other place to put it". Well, there was no way I could argue against that kind of logic......but eeewwwww!

[teeituptom, BSN, RN]

howdy yall

from deep in the heat of texas

Maybe he was getting ready to shoot marbles

[VivaLasViejas, ASN, RN]

You know, I kinda wondered about that myself....he certainly had 'em set up that way........Wow, s**t boulders, what a concept:-)

[coleen]

Mine aren't that gross but I do have a few. Had to irrigate a foley and it was clogged at the connector. It broke apart and a big green ball of pus went right into my eye!!! i got pinkeye the following week and Bell's Palsy a week later! Dr said not related "Sure "

Next-we had a bowel obsessed resident- every 5 minutes I need MOM I need an enema I need a supp - etc... His wife says he ate 3 large jars of metamucil right out of can without mixing in water a day at home! so my cna says one day - Oh by the way I gave Mr so and so the toothpicks he was asking for - NEED I SAY MORE! about 100 toothpicks had to be plucked from rectum, sheets, pockets and yes we are still finding them in the oddest places 3 months later

last but not least - how could one copd'er cover an entire picture window drapery, bed, floor and even the ceiling with the most god awful brown sticky smelly mucousy phlegm and i think pieces of lung too in 2 hrs since last bed check? we thought it was vomit it was so incredible and just as i'm ending over the bed doing lung sounds - a large piece of brown organ material/phlegm? comes off ceiling and lands right in my bra!

[Dakasha]

How gross!

Yuk

[VivaLasViejas, ASN, RN]

That one about the COPD'er just about made me ralph on my keyboard!!! I've got a strong stomach, can deal with the gnarliest infected stage IV decubs and describe 'em to my co-workers during lunch. But anything that comes out of a human being's mouth is just GROSS....when I was a CNA and had to clean dentures, I'd stand at the sink gagging and trying not to think about what I was doing. I'll never forget the night I had this very large, pleasantly confused patient who had lost her lower plates sometime after lunch; the day shift aide had looked all over the room for them, but to no avail. It wasn't until I had gotten her to roll over onto her side so I could straighten up her linens (no easy feat, mind you) that the missing dentures surfaced. Actually, they were buried in her left buttcheek!! With food still on them. And she didn't even feel it. But the worst of it was when I removed them and she snatched the plate right out of my hand and popped it into her mouth, thanking me profusely for finding them for her............EEEEEWWWW.

[ERNurse752, RN]

Had a very sweet pt this morning...she had an abdominal surgery about a year ago, and has had incisional problems ever since. She came in this morning, dehisced. (sp?) Huge pocket of pus, clots, and some kind of red-brown seedy-looking stuff draining out.

[cakarol]

OMG --- this was defanentaly not a good thread for a new nursing student to have read...I'm really starting to reconsider....~feeling a lil dizzy~

--CLaire

[VivaLasViejas, ASN, RN]

Cakarol----Don't let a little goop (yes, that's an acceptable medical term :-) ) get you down! Before I got into nursing, I couldn't even clean up after my own kids---I gagged just hearing them throw up. Now I can handle just about anything, except, of course, mouth goobers (see above). You'll probably have a couple of hangups even after you've gotten used to all the delightful sights, sounds, and odoriferous emanations; I know nurses who have been working for 40 years and still have to fight to keep their lunch down whenever they suction a trach. So don't worry---you'll do fine, even if you never learn to love the smell of a GI bleed in the morning!!