What squicks you out?

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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. :barf02: Thank god I'm going into an NNP program! Give me poop, blood, vomit, ANYTHING before a festering wound.

YAAAAAKKKKKK..........anything to do with bad teeth and/or dentures just makes me wanna blow my groceries :barf02:

Eye goobers and toe-jam are pretty icky too, but I think that odor that comes from morbidly obese patients' skin folds when they haven't bathed in a long time is the WORST!! It's sooooooo nasty.........even worse than a GI bleed, and Lord knows that's about the pukiest smell on earth.

'Scuse me while I go throw up now. :stone

I worked with a nurse who called pts like these, as well as indigent/no baths recently patients, "Orange Peel Patients"; she would peel an orange and stick part of the peel in her scrub shirt pocket, so she could turn her head and smell the peel and not the pt-or at least it would cut the smell-while she worked on them. Another nurse would put vicks vapo rub on a gauze, fold it and put that in her scrub pocket.....

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Specializes in Psych, M/S, Ortho, Float..

I was just having a midnight snack and a quick check of the happenings here when I started reading this where I had left off a couple of pages back.

I was just laughing and enjoying my yogurt when I got to the toe nails!!

Got to admit that gross toes are revolting. My hubby has been in the Army for 35 years. His poor feet have been in boots for most of it. He gets these horrible in-grown toenails on his big toes and overlapping toenails (2 toe nails on the same toe, top one dead and half falling off, bottom one OK) on the other ones. How does that happen any way???

I have trouble doing my own feet. But after what he did to his poor toes, trying to dig out the ingrown part, he is not allowed to do his feet. After a year of taking care of his feet (me gagging and spluttering), I can happily report that we are at the maintenance stage.

Man! Was that ever disgusting. As long as I'm around, he will not be doing his own foot care. I never want to see them like that again.

Gag me!!!:barf02:

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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 :o

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Attempting foley placement on a 420lb woman...I swear I lost a few brain cells from the fumes. My worst gag-o-rama was having to "milk" foley tubing...this person's urine was like glue. What made it worse was it was a 24 hour collection. After that stench, Gi bleeds, dead gut and "death dumps" were not so bad.

What are "death dumps?" OK, I am guessing it refers to post-mortem evacuation of colon--is that correct?

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nasty pressure sores that look like they hurt and ones that will NOT HEAL! I just took care of a chronically ill pt who was very overweight and had multiple sores from fat folds, bed sores, poop/pee sores, necrotic incisional sores, old punctured necrotic site, and ones that i have no clue where they came from. They made me sqiur :eek: :chair: mmy.

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Ok, for me the worst ever has got to be when I was in school and observed a surgery. It was a reverse-colostomy procedure for a guy who had broken a beer bottle up his butt!!! Between the smell from the colostomy and the cauterization I thought I would never make it through!!!

Others that really get me are GI bleeds, Chessy groin areas and the dirty body odor-just had a smoke smell combination. Ugh. :smokin:

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What are "death dumps?" OK, I am guessing it refers to post-mortem evacuation of colon--is that correct?

Almost...it's the evacuation before that final code.

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I can handle most things except colostomy's which I can't stand the smell of they make me gag all the time and SCS (smelly crotch syndrome) :barf02: . Give me anything else and I can take it>

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Specializes in Cath Lab, OR, CPHN/SN, ER.

For smells, it has to be about anything right now. Pregnancy makes your sense of smell so much more increased. Fiance calls it my spidey sense! One of the janitors cleans the staff bathroom, and I don't know if it's her or someone else, but someone sprays perfume in there- It's horrible!!! Resp secretions ick me out, esp if they smell. The sound of someone trying to cough up secrections makes me sick. I tend to empathize and think of when I have a cold or something, and that's the part that makes me get sick.

Also, burn patients. I can handle the smell. It's the thought of the amount of pain they are in- makes me sick, and makes me want to cry.

Child sexual abuse cases also make me sick- emotionally and almost physically. -andrea

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Specializes in 5 yrs OR, ASU Pre-Op 2 yr. ER.

Sputum used to bother me, but i see it all the time now, so i got over it lol.

Especially after:

fecal emesis

necrotic feet (the odor, OMG...)

The smell of a person's breath after getting into a drunken fight. Alcohol and bloody mouth. Peeeyew.

Toenails and fingernails getting operated on, gives me the willies

the "specimen" left over from an Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm repair (just make you want to run out and get a burger....)

When the barium kicks in, while a pt. is asleep on the OR table. I didn't know poop could shoot 8 ft across the room with such force. We had a nursing student that day, too, who narrowly missed getting hit by the code brown.

Death dump.

Nasty bellybuttons that haven't seen a Q-tip in years. The growth inside would probably eat the cotton off the end of the Q-tip.

Cancerous bowel and mesentery. Very slimey, very smelly.

People who, uh, do not clean themselves well before rectal, penile or lady partsl surgeries. Prep usually is betadine, but sometimes it includes soap, water and a washcloth, since betadine can only remove so much. It's been evident a few times that some of those areas hadn't seen a washcloth in days.

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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!!

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Specializes in Cath Lab, OR, CPHN/SN, ER.

I forgot to add- The smell of menses. Women- wash yourself frequently!!! Ugh! -andrea

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