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!

[Artemis2]

Lets see... the one about my first day as an RN and the OD who threw his charcoal up all over me? No I can do better than that. Um the first case of HIV we saw when we didn't even know what it was and the projectile diarrhea was hitting the wall? Nope not that one. The maggots? Nope someone already told a maggot story. The piece of lint in your nice, clean, just bathed patient's hair that stands up and waves at you. Shudder, thats a good one but I think I can do better.

Ok, here goes...

There is a little known and rarely used treatment for a severe ileus that involves neostigmine injected sq into the abdominal wall. It is a little risky so you pull the crash cart up to the door (not a huge deal in the ICU). I hadn't done this before so my co-workers gave me the run down and explained that the results would be dramatic.

So this patient is so distended she looks like she is going to blow. I gather plenty of towels and washcloths and give my injection. Very quickly the results begin...large amounts of liquid stool. Unfortunately I didn't fully understand the meaning of the warning that the results would be "dramatic". The next thing I knew there was a river of stool filling the bed! I'm throwing all of my towels at it, spare sheets whatever I can find but to no avail. Now it is running off both sides of the bed and onto the floor! By the time it finally quit the floor was covered with layers of blankets soaked in stool and the bed was... well I'll leave that up to your imagination.

Fortunately in 25 years of nursing that is the only time I have had to do that!

[MQ Edna]

Lets see... the one about my first day as an RN and the OD who threw his charcoal up all over me? No I can do better than that. Um the first case of HIV we saw when we didn't even know what it was and the projectile diarrhea was hitting the wall? Nope not that one. The maggots? Nope someone already told a maggot story. The piece of lint in your nice, clean, just bathed patient's hair that stands up and waves at you. Shudder, thats a good one but I think I can do better.

Ok, here goes...

There is a little known and rarely used treatment for a severe ileus that involves neostigmine injected sq into the abdominal wall. It is a little risky so you pull the crash cart up to the door (not a huge deal in the ICU). I hadn't done this before so my co-workers gave me the run down and explained that the results would be dramatic.

So this patient is so distended she looks like she is going to blow. I gather plenty of towels and washcloths and give my injection. Very quickly the results begin...large amounts of liquid stool. Unfortunately I didn't fully understand the meaning of the warning that the results would be "dramatic". The next thing I knew there was a river of stool filling the bed! I'm throwing all of my towels at it, spare sheets whatever I can find but to no avail. Now it is running off both sides of the bed and onto the floor! By the time it finally quit the floor was covered with layers of blankets soaked in stool and the bed was... well I'll leave that up to your imagination.

Fortunately in 25 years of nursing that is the only time I have had to do that!

You know you've been in this line of business too long when that doesn't even gross you out... just makes you wish you could have been there to see it.

I have two words for everyone though: Pin Worms

I hope I never have the unfortunate experience of helping a nurse gather a specimen ever again.

[Artemis2]

You know you've been in this line of business too long when that doesn't even gross you out... just makes you wish you could have been there to see it.

Now that made me giggle! i know exactly what you mean!

[grace90, LPN, LVN]

So this patient is so distended she looks like she is going to blow. I gather plenty of towels and washcloths and give my injection. Very quickly the results begin...large amounts of liquid stool. Unfortunately I didn't fully understand the meaning of the warning that the results would be "dramatic". The next thing I knew there was a river of stool filling the bed! I'm throwing all of my towels at it, spare sheets whatever I can find but to no avail. Now it is running off both sides of the bed and onto the floor! By the time it finally quit the floor was covered with layers of blankets soaked in stool and the bed was... well I'll leave that up to your imagination.QUOTE]

So did she recover okay? What are the risks of doing that? In my short 3.5 years I've never heard of that and perhaps there's a reason for it.

[flashpoint]

People manage to "lose" all sorts of things, as we know...what really disturbs me is that people can have all kinds of funk happening and still be too alienated from their bodies to wash hands really well and see what's going on in there themselves!

I always wondered about that! When I worked in the ER, we used to get calls all the time for lost tampons. I encouraged people to sit in the bathtub and reach down there and try to find it on their own...I was dumbfounded by the number of women who seemed mortified that I told them to do that. "You want me to put my fingers where?" Are people really that uncomfortable or squeemish about their bodies or what? I would much rather sit in my own bathroom and find the thing than come to the ER and have the doctor and nurse who drew the short straws fishing after it.

[pie123]

Reaching my ungloved hand under a gentleman's gown to reapply his telemetry patches, got the goo that builds up around catheters (I call it smegma) on my finger. Not terribly disgusting to some, but disgusting enough for me.

Getting sprayed with dry, flaky skin when someone is rearranging bed covers also gets to me. It feels like it's in my mouth, and all over me!

[callmekipling]

One of my first pts was a neat veteran type who was old and ornery but not that bad as far as confusion goes. Except that every once in a while he'd get a UTI and just go nuts. One morning I came onto the floor to the sound of a bed alarm ringing.. well the other NA's were occupied down the other end of the unit so I took it upon myself to investigate. I found the guy's bed covered in poop, then a puddle by the side of the bed, then the foley bag still clipped to the bed, and a trail of poop, urine and blood leading to him, who was prostrate on the floor with his foley (cath and tube separated) most of the way out and still inflated.

I dunno about you gals, but as a guy there's a definite factor to foley yankers. ggghghhg.

Then one night on the inpt unit at the hospice, we had a lady with endstage cancer. Heartbreaking as well as gross. It'd eaten away her face from the soft palate out, and her prosthetic had fallen in- one big flaky socket between her lower jaw and her sinuses, and the smell just beat all.

Later on that night I helped the nurse suction her trach. Well something on the unit was making me sneeze, turned out to be the RN's perfume. I'm pretty good with breathing through my mouth, but this perfume was doing a number on me. So the nurse is holding on like a champ, suctioning thick green snot out of the trach, when I go (this is as accurate as I can make it)

ah, achoooRRRGHGLHGLHGLHG!:barf01:

Well that was enough to set her off too, and we had a good laugh about it after.. but not during, the remainder of the suction, or the cleanup. Lucky it was late.

[chocokitten]

These stories are great. Nothing is more entertaining than a room full of nurses talking about their most disgusting moments. Here are a few of my own, hope you enjoy...

First one was told to me by a friend who is a resp. therapist ( I'm very glad I didn't experience this first hand) He was caring for a long term trach patient. This patient was non- compliant with trach care and had come in for a smelly fungal infection at the trach site. The therapist set out trach care supplies and started to review proper trach care when the patient told him that took to long instead she took the inner cannula out of her trach and sucked it clean!! Yes I said sucked it clean. The RT couldn't tell the story without gagging.

The next two stories aren't that disgusting but humorous. I once cared for a parapalegic patient who used a texas cath. Well, I guess he had trouble keeping the cath in place so he decided to duct tape the cath to his member. Needless to say he had one nasty tape burn. The next story was from my nursing school days. I had clinicals with a very hyper , Type A nursing student. She had bathed her 80yr old patient and when I went in to she if she needed any help I noticed that her patient had a prolapsed uterus and the student had washed and powdered the entire thing!

UGH I read ALL the stories up to this with no problem, even laughed at most of them.... this one made me gag lol. I told my co-worker and now she won't let me tell her anymore stories XD poor gal, she's been a nurse longer than I've been alive and couldn't take that! kudos to your RT friend for not vomiting right there!

and for the uterus story... *JAW DROP* lawl what??????

[frenchfroggyAPRN, MSN, LPN, RN, APRN]

I had a pt like that once. Usually they are on their way to an eternal care unit transfer, or they are REALLY dehydrated, or both. This lady's urine looked, the closest thing I could compare it to, was chocolate milk. I thought surely she would not make it through my shift, but she got better with some IVF and went back to the nursing home alert & oriented!

I had a LOL like this about six months ago, came in to ER decreased LOC, not eating or drinking, "just not right" ( so tired of hearing that one from NH), skin turger took 2 minutes to even think about going back to normal, weeel placed FC and guess what "chocolate milk" came out in copious amount !@#$%%%^. Stunk to high heaven, put her to bed, lots of fluid, went back to NH next week much better. She came back last week, same symptoms and an awful smell when you rolled her over, only 10 cc out in FC bloody thick. Removed dressing from sacrum and about hurled. Wound was 7cm in circ, with gray/black all over wound bed. Just closed the dressing back and got my DON to come see this wound :angryfire the dressing had been changed that day or so it was marked on it. Lots of wound care, antibiotics and fluids later she gets to go home in the am:balloons:

[frenchfroggyAPRN, MSN, LPN, RN, APRN]

I was fresh out of LPN school, first job. Had a LOL with an ileus, we had to place an NG tube, I tried unable to get it to go down, had three other nurses attempt, they couldn't either. She was in isolation for MRSA, so I was fully gowned, gloved and masked (Thank God). I went in to check on how she was doing, she had a look on her face that should have told me she was getting ready to puke, but me being the fresh face new nurse walked up to the side of her bed bent over and was talking to her when she projectile vomited liquid stool all over me, the bed and the wall behind me :uhoh21::uhoh21::uhoh21:. Well I cleaned her up, we called the house supervisor, she couldn't get the NG down her, so she called the DR, who came to the floor talking about "those nurses can't do anything, if I want anything done I'll have to do it myself" :angryfire He was an a$$. He tried and guess what he couldn't get in in:lol2:. She went to surgery and they still could not place an NG. She had strictures all down her esophagus and later died.

[sandybart]

I work as a CNA at a hospital. Sometimes people never seem to amaze me. I work on the med/surg floor and this 50 year old pt had an infected bite to her labia. She was very proud of it.:monkeydance:She said it was from having rough sex. It took her two weeks to come to the hospital. I didn't look, didn't care to. But everyone said it was so infected, it had green puss coming from it. This pt's mother was in her late 70's, I notice her hanging around the nurse's station. I asked if I could help her. She said she was waiting on her daughter to come back from surgery. When I asked who her daughter was, she said the pt in 28. And yea I know she done something really stupid, she know's that now, but at the time she didn't.

It's really hard to keep a straight face sometimes, but I kept the straightest face. lol

[ERRN92]

I worked in the Er. Had an 80+ yr female cared for (or not) at home by her family. She was emaciated and hadnt been bathed in forever. It took several nurses each with tweezers over an hour to remove the embedded socks from her feet. Once we did, of course, there were maggots. She was placed in isolation. Before she left, we had them everywhere. For several weeks after that, we had flies in the Er. We called them M****y flies...because that was her last name.