Nurse Kate Heals
Another collection of nursing stories from nurses all over….
Be prewarned, this is going to be one of the gross ones.
Quite a few years ago, I was working in a trauma/general surgery ICU. At the time, I was doing permanent weekends and was working with a great group of people. Anyway, my friend Jan asked me to come in and help turn this poor elderly trauma patient who had hip surgery s/p a MVC. Well, the hip was quite swollen, inflamed and red and definitely looked infected. Jan must have had some kind of premonition because as I and a fellow coworker turned the patient towards us, Jan yelled “hit the deck!” (which was pretty funny considering Jan was an ex-Army nurse). The next thing I knew, Jan was on her knees, the hip wound burst open and signicant amounts of yellow pus and sh*t went flying and spattered on the wall and curtains. Totally gross and thank God for Jan that she “hit the deck” at the right time! I shudder to think what she would have looked like had she not dropped. Needless to say, the patient made a quick trip to the OR.
I think my 2 most gross stories were a few years ago I worked for a new M.D. (fresh out of school and this was his first practice) he and I were doing and I&D on an abdominal abcess on this elderly woman in the office, well he did the incision and the smell was making me gag, and she was just yacking and yacking (and I’m thinking how can she handle this smell) I look over to him (we had a way of talking without talking) and when he went to drain this abcess it literally squirted him in the eye. The whole time the smell is making me sick to my stomach and I’m blotting his eye with gauze and then made him let me rinse it out….. bodily fluids just attract to his eye I suppose. A few weeks later, we were doing a simple Pap and when the speculum clicked in the open position this girl’s vaginal fluids squirted in his eye again…. I finally bought him some goggles and told him he was to do nothing pertaining to anyone’s body fluids without them…
It was my first job as a new grad. I was working telemetry nights. Often I would sit next to the monitor tech and watch and learn. “What’s wrong with that one,” I said. “She’s dying!” the tech replied as he vaulted over the desk into the patient’s room. Naturally, I followed. Patient is asystolic by now. I began doing chest compressions. This was a sixty something female, s/p ventral hernia repair. It was my very first code!!! After about 30 seconds of compressions, her suture line split, and her entrails spilled all over her lap!! Now, that’s what I call a code!
I remember one time working in an ER and a young man came in. He had been drunk and had fallen from a high distance and landed on his head. Needless to say we were performing CPR on him and with every compression, blood came out of every orifice in his head. He didn’t make it……
This is one that happened in the resuscitation area of the Emergency department where I work. We had a code blue call come in with a patient who had arrested. in the department CPR was continued and he was shocked several times when the medical resident on call decides to shock the patient once again and try one more cycle before stopping. She was on call and had been in the clinic so she wasnt wearing scrubs or a Dr’s coat, but a very nice trouser suit and had just had her hair done that morning.
She placed tha paddles on the patient and shocked him as she did so the patient as a reflex response ejaculated straight into her hair and over the side of her jacket. The funniest part of this was that she didnt actually notice and carried on working on the patient and couldnt for the life of her understand why all the staff in there with her kept crying with laughter whilst still working. It wasnt until the end of the arrest that anybody told her what had happened, where upon she sprinted to the toilet to clean herself up and be sick.
March 25th, 2011 at 1:55 pm
Those arn`t melons. Those be burgers.And Mayor I see you in the back ground. Drunk before noon. Good on ya.
March 25th, 2011 at 3:14 pm
Dang. There are war stories and there are war stories! I’ll never be able to tell any of mine, ever again.
March 25th, 2011 at 3:23 pm
Nearest I`ve come to any of those tales is once when field dressing a white tail I slipped and fell on the gut pile. Broke open the stomach. I was made to ride in the box of the pick up with the deers on the ride home.
March 28th, 2011 at 8:44 am
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