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According to CSI: every criminalist has a fluid that especially grosses them out. From my admittedly non-scientific polling, it's the same with nurses. So what's yours? What's the one thing you'd take another nurse's entire assignment to avoid?
Going by my reaction to our lectures today, I think mine's necrotic tissue in a pressure ulcer. Thank god I'm going into an NNP program! Give me poop, blood, vomit, ANYTHING before a festering wound.
I didn't think anything could make me pass out until:A lady had a breast bx. She had bled under the stitches and made a little pouch of old blood. The doctor nipped a stitch and pressed on the breast to evacuate it. When the blood came out it looked like a mass of black worms wriggling out of a hole in her breast. I made what I hoped was some polite noise and promptly left the room.
But hands down, the worst smell is MELANA. There is NO worse smell. None. I defy you to think of any.
I can! Add to the melena smell chemical toilet smell plus body odor(no bath for months) plus incontinent of stool, multiple times or multiple days, much of it bloody and old urine. Had to hyperventilate down the hallway and run in to give instructions or meds then run out to breathe again. HUC was pregnant at the time had to leave the area entirely. Worst smell I ever had to deal with. Next worst was hyphema, doc put in a chest tube which filled up glass drainage bottle (2liter) and overflowed, we pnplugged and put into kick bucket, OMG!!! The smell was horrible. Could hear people in hall asking what that horrible smell was, they should have been in the room with us! :uhoh21:
I had a patient make a poop sandwich once . He actually took his bread from his lunch and ever so carefully placed poo poo on it , then he ate it...:barf01:
I get nauseated with patients that dig out their poo and put it in their mouths. I just cannot be in that room when it is obvious.Please kill me before I get that bad.
:barf01: :barf01:
I got quite a few chuckles out of this and can't wait to meet my match. :uhoh21:My buddy's dad is a corrections officer at a max. security prison here in Michigan and was once projectile vomited on by a prisoner that had been orally raped. Apparently by more than one prisoner, from the amount of semen that came out. :stone :barf01:
:barf01: c-diff poop:barf01:
Not a nurse yet, but a burn tech in a pediatric burn unit. However, before this, I worked as a nurse's aid for eight years in LTC and dear Jeebus did I ever see/smell some things that turned my belly upside down.In no particular order:
1. Crusty, fungus-y toenails.
2. C-diff poop
3. Sputum (I still run away from the patient who has the unfortunate luck of being suctioned while I'm in the room.
4. Necrotic tissue. (Had a patient whose pit bull bit a chunk out of the antecubital area of his right arm. Long story made short, a chunk of the tissue turned necrotic and was being dressed in 1/4 strength Dakin's and FMG as a wet-to-dry dressing. The smell of bleach and necrosis is NASTY!!)
5. Purulent drainage from a stage 4 decub. UGH!!
Those are things that will make me toss my cookies in a heartbeat!!
I agree with all the gross outs.....but the worst for me is the stinky / filthy crotch smell, especially when accompanied by lots of stringy/gooey lady partsl secretions, and to top it off for me one night the patient announced she just had sex and the stuff the doc was pullng out................. now I may faint
We called that "Twat rot". Really bad when they "forget" about that tampon they put in one or two weeks ago. UUUUrrrrkkkkk!
I can handle alot...and I mean alot but the one thing that buckles my knees is the pulling off fingernail or toenails. Holy crap that will put me to the floor!
Oh, I'm SOOOO with you there. I had to have a toenail removed a few years ago because I had whacked it and it got all black and blue underneath. It was the worst thing watching that happen to my own foot! Luckily it grew back pretty fast. :)
I'm also with the eyeball haters. I can stand seeing just about anything other than eyeball issues. I'm not a nurse yet, but I start school this fall and I'm getting lots of good info on squickiness here. :uhoh21:
Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN
12,126 Posts
Another gross thing to add.
One of our pts. apparently had seriously clogged sebaceous glands on various areas of their body. The doctor squeezed a couple, and from one of them, a 2 inch long, fat-spagetti-wide, tan-colored streak of dirt and gunk came out.
I did actually puke from that one. Never knew a zit could develop its own putty.