Oh, ICK!.......not for the squeamish

I do home health nursing. I have a patient who had open heart surgery and has had healing problems ever since. A couple of weeks ago his chest incision split open (NOT normal, for anyone with chest surgery in their near future!!) and he went back in the hospital for a skin graft. He's home now and I was called because the dressing came undone.

One end of the skin graft did not take so there's a hole there. I inserted a q-tip to check the depth and it got stuck, took me a second to get it out. I inserted a gloved finger to try and figure out why. The man took a breath and the halves of his breastbone trapped my finger!

And I thought, having been an ER nurse, I'd seen it all........

 I take it that you were able to remove the finger eventually, Jo?

Oh My Ivey...I hate when that happens!  I guess as long as we are alive we will continually see things we could have never imagined.  I hope he is doing fine and you too!! 

Yes, Jenni, I came home with all digits intact!

Never heard of this. Pretty weird! Yes in the ER we think we see it all!!!

We could re-post this as "What's the grossest story you ever heard?"

I worked in a dental office and had a police officer as a patient. I asked him: What's the grossest cop-story you have?"

He responded to a call where someone suspected a neighor dead...she had,'t seen the guy (her neighbor) in days. The police responded. The stench inside the house was unbearable. The police put vaseline in their nostrils to avoid the smell.

They found the guy, dead on the bed. It was from intoxication. He had been there for several days.The cop said that flies were in the room, huge, bigger than he had ever seen, because of the decaying flesh. When they approached the dead body, it seemed as if the skin was moving, rippling, alive. They soon realized it was maggots.

!

lsbnurse:

Never heard of this. Pretty weird! Yes in the ER we think we see it all!!!

I've only been doing home health for two years. Boss Lady called me today to give me an update on people I need to see tomorrow, she's been doing this for years. I told her about it and she kept saying "Oh my God!"

IrisWi:

We could re-post this as "What's the grossest story you ever heard?"

I've thought and thought about this. I honestly can't tell you about the grossest I've ever seen/heard until Mr. Breastbone Halves. I worked ER for many years and it got to where nothing made me blink anymore. Until now!

This reminds me of one of my favorite gross out medical stories. A vascular tech was checking out an outpatient's foot for circulation. She noticed that his big toe was missing. She asked him what happened? He calmly reached into his pocket and pulled out his big toe saying, "It fell off yesterday."

EEEWWWWW!!!

I pulled an amputated finger out of a work glove once. Tendon still attached.

Hey Ivey- Once when I was working as a HOme health (RN) I had to go to the patient's home as he had extensive wound to his  foot. When I arrived I noticed he had  removed the dressing I had applied  the day before, and I asked him why it was off. He answered that since a dog's mouth is cleaner than a human s (and how many times have we heard that??) he was letting his  litter of puppies lick his foot (all they wanted- he said they loved it!) to keep it clean. I tried to educate him on why  he should not do this, and he tried to argue that he had no infection. I  (as calmly as possibly) exolained  that yes, this was why he had home health--YUK!!!, huh?

Oh, gross! That ranks up there with the pt I had with huge nostrils. Everytime his dog kissed him she was literally sticking her tongue in his nose.

I have no ICK stories but got a kick out of reading all of yours. Right now, I'm trying to get some of my required classes out of the way so I can apply for the nursing program at the communinity college here. Nothing bugs me not even the maggot story. When I first went to college my major was criminal justice. In one class, we use to have to watch actual crime scene footage. I ate my lunch while the tape moved on. Any time my MIL gets the flu, my DH sends me because he knows nothing is going to bug me.

Most nurses I know (not all, but most) have at least one thing that they have trouble handling. For me it's anything out of the mouth or nose. I can handle someone vomiting but I have a hard time with sputum or phlegm, etc. I can handle the bloodiest wounds and the pussiest abcesses, but show me one person with mucous out of the mouth or nose and I want to hurl myself.