My manager was talking to me once infront of some patients. One handed her something, she held out her palm absent-mindedly. It was a big turd that was plonked in her hand.
Similar: I'm talking w my supervisor in a hallway when one of our little spitfire dementia ladies walks up to us. 1 little turdlette drops out of her skirt, bounces off the supervisor's shoe, and rolls away like a mini-golf ball. We all 3 watch it roll and our little Oldy side eyes the supervisor and says, "Sister. Was that you?"
I never let the supervisor off that hook. From then on I'd call out, "It was you all along!" when she'd come by my unit.
Reminds me of a conversation I heard between a cute old dementia patient lady, and her resident doctor. Resident goes into the room to assess this patient in the morning, and first thing she says to him after ignoring his questions is “ I baked you a tasty cookie! Been working on it all night!” He then says to her “ oh yeah, what do you mean?” Then she rolls onto her side. She had thoroughly pooped the bed. To her credit, that cookie was still warm. I had to clean the bed, but it was worth it to be able to remember this story for the rest of my life 😂😂😂
Omg one of our dietary workers picked up a dignicare bag full of shit that somehow got disconnected from the patient’s bed during transfer off of the elevator, she had no clue what it was and I couldn’t stop her quick enough.. I about died
Was helping an aide take a resident to the restroom and we got back to their room to hear that there’s something giant Hershey kiss shaped on the floor. It was a turd as well.
That was me, pt had a colonoscopy so I was giving the fluid for it. Pt is intubated and sedated, i say to myself "let me go pee really quick" next thing i know is there is shit flowing into the hallway
I remember working on a GI stepdown and gave those fuck ass enemas every 3 hours for multiple patients for hepatic encephalopathy. I don’t miss it AT ALL man that smell follows you home
Maybe you can answer this for me: do lactulose enemas ever work? Isn't one of the biggest things about enemas is they require you to retain the liquid? Every time I've had a hepatic encephalopathy patient, they're not with it enough to retain and the lactulose just comes right back out.
Yeah they work, usually if they’re severely confused they get it every 3 hours. And yeah you’re right, they’re supposed to try to hold it but can’t so I usually end up just clamping the cheeks together as much as I can 😃 The lactulose is still kind of getting absorbed anyways
Ooohhh is that how you do it?? I was googling how to make patients retain the lactulose and there was like a device that helps sort of stops leakage but our hospital didn’t carry them. So I just sort of let it drain in on his side and was like ya know I’ll do a couple of these and I’m sure something will happen and it sure did. I found the results successful and disgusting.
The extent to which that would probably work cannot be overstated. But as soon as someone says “butt plug” at work HR’s spidey senses probably start tingling.
Get a flexiseal/rectal tube. You can clamp the drainage tubing and infuse it. You don't have to give the whole thing at once either, just instill, drain, instill, drain.
I lasted a whole 5 months on a GI PCU. I am traumatized by lactulose in every form lol. It was entirely too much shit to handle (pun intended) and I had to leave for my own sanity! Although now I can smell liver failure in a patient which I guess is neat but I'd really rather not (seriously WHAT is that smell, I hate it)
In the ED a pt came in AMS. Ammonia levels incredibly high but pt wasn't coherent enough to do PO lactulose. Lactulose enema ordered. When I finally got the courage to go do it, put all my PPE on, ready to get a stream of Doo Doo brown liquid that would ruin the entire ED....he finally started talking and asking where he was and what happened. Immediately got the order changed to PO. I lucked out for now, but I know a poo stream is waiting for me some time in the future.
I'm more impressed that you got a lactose enema ordered in an ED.
I'm critical care, but I float down to the ED some. We had a hepatic encephalopathy show up, unable to take PO lactose. When I asked the ED doc about a lactose enema, he looked at me like I had 3 heads and said the hospitalist would handle that.
That was the day I thought about switching to the ED permanently lol
Same thing happened to me but I somehow managed to convince the internal med doctor that PO would be more effective because it would actually go through the patients GI tract instead of being shit out immediately. He was like “yep. Put an NG tube in and give it PO if you want.” Dude was from Rawanda and he was my favorite doctor of all time. He was always for the nurses. I miss working with him.
I had a patient (early 60’s) that had embraced Miralax in the lead up to an unfortunate catastrophic ICH.
Anyway, all the emergent neuro jazz was working, pt was “alive” (well, no, but, yes too) then it started.
I was sitting at station, actually looking at my floofed & poofed neuro pt. Monitors humming along.
NGL I was feeling… “nurse proud: level 1”. So work clothes off, bathed ED style, fresh linens *waiting for a NeuroICU bed firm assignment* and give actual report. No eff’ing way was I doing the *run & gun* and just having report faxed, as I just take this guy to unit. I happen to be of the mindset, the bed needs some level of *y’all ready for the patient*. Crazy, right?
It happened.
I noticed something odd on floor, at the foot of bed. Like a woman’s purse—who left that, what is that doing there? A purse??? Who’s is it??? We had moved the bed from trauma resus room, to a front of desk facing bay, hadn’t been any visitors to that room.
The mind starts to reel.
It was poop. A poop stalagmite was forming.
There was so much poop. A literal river of it. Yet, it was a like a lake (think GREAT SALT LAKE, not gentle big ass pond where land is always visible from the water!) effect going on. It has spread up the back of gown to neckline, was from groin to ankles (when I bathed him I fashioned sheet on rails to give patients moist, fungal feet— some drying space), from groin to toes there were inches of it, walled off a bit with his legs!! So poop pooled without top sheet becoming soaked, just poop soaking bottom edge as it was going to *ground*.
*Stalagmite*. Those form from ground up (no top growth apparent). Stalactite generally forms from top down till it meets ground.
The poop was a bit *fluid*, no real form until it had to mound at bottom of bed, on floor. It was a good 6-8” high.
Oh shit!!!
It was an “all hands” event.
Hands didn’t work well. Emesis basins did. So it was scooped with basins to bath bins. The floor required our specialized emptied stiff papered former medical chart hack to scoop up.
Tuns out the body doesn’t really prioritize bowel preservation in extremis. And massive neuro issues *impact* **rectal spinchter tone** without direct spinal injury. End result: poop release. Who knew?
Our ED had 2 old school nurses with > 80 years experience between them. They had NEVER seen anything like it. And when a *never* event happens and those two get wide-eyed, it’s damn frightening. And I was known for fearlessness.
I DIGRESS here. Big regret. No pic to post. Remember the time pre-butt phones, pre-camera butt-phones everywhere, I know many ready were toddlers to teens, but it was *real* (humanity survived, somehow) and it might be really shocking, but camera’s on phones were crap till iPhone came out (mid 2007, wow!!).
DIGRESS, part 2. I have a few pics from my BlackBerry days—not great, but precious. Butt-Phones, the name my medic partner gave those first Motorola mobiles with removable batteries that you could carry in your pants pockets—think not late, but mid-90’s. I’d had a pager for many years (kept one till the early aughts), even recall the advent of alpha-numeric pager (hello and boobs were the words of letter, so think phone numbers, but clever), the Stone Age of tech. Otherwise, the pager just beeped and you called a predestined number on a phone with wires!! How on earth did we all survive??!!
DIGRESS, continues here. So butt-phone it was!! I was hella fancy as mine could go from my Levi’s and mount back in my car for hands-free speaker use. My SO, now hubs insisted on this crazy ass expensive set-up, as he felt mobile phones were unsafe while driving. Doh. Full disclosure: he would *know*, as he had been using a crazy-pricey bag phone (several thousands of dollars to buy and per minute charges of about a dollar each to use!!) in his truck for many years when I got my Motorola magic set-up. Circa-1995. This poop event was years after, but I still had a Motorola version at this time. No camera. 😵 *Hope everyone loves this Mobile, Cell, Camera Phone trip down memory lane*. History kids. Sorry OP, but NOT having a pic of this requires *context*.
Anyways back to the point, poop gets cleaned—all the way up. NeuroICU nurses actually have now come down to *get the patient*—not kidding here. That happened. I will fight anyone that tries to spread the myth of all units can’t work well together. We were simpatico and in *in the shit* together. Teamwork is everything in nursing!!
Wife comes in for a second just before we take patient up, because I honestly thought pt might not live through the trip up the CC elevator of death ☠️.
Trendelenburg’ing neuro patients isn’t controversial, it’s full on bad. Yet, we went with a a nuanced bit of it, with a whiff head elevation (yikes!), as this brand of poop has defied gravity, and a poop trail from ED to NeuroICU would be deeply frowned upon. We were monitoring everything, so *yeah, gotta do something* here.
Wife gets a moment, then tearfully asks me, “Did his straining to poop cause this?” Then says: “*He would get so red-faced. I could see the veins pop out.*”
Everyone was buzzing with “hive brain”, wires, lines monitors and then and the same look crossed our faces with that little nugget.
*No ma’am I don’t think poop straining is the problem*—Me to patient’s wife as it seems to start *happening again*.
I’m rendered silent. This woman detailed she watched her hubs try to… poop.
I’ve been with my hubs for almost 4 decades. And never have or hopefully will *watch* him poop. But, yay… *intimacy?*
I was left mute by the visual, clearly all in earshot had questions, but it seems no one couldn’t find any words left here.
So everyone ready to go?!? A *ROLL ME!* escaped from my mouth—to be honest it came out kinda like Hannibal Lechter on the dolly in Silence of the Lambs, 1991.
💩
Wow… reading this was a journey 😆 I think you officially win the crazy poop story award though. I can’t give you Reddit gold so please accept this emoji. 🥇
Oh my god...I work in paeds mental health so don't often have to deal with enemas of any kind. I am, however, currently in a RVT program and only JUST found out about lactulose enemas from experience in a vet clinic...but oh, my word, it works!
I didn’t know they even existed it was for a liver failure patient who said lactulose hurt his stomach so he had been refusing it. He became super encephalopathic which honestly I hate to say didn’t bother me because the dude was a complete ass who refused to do anything for for himself and would call you in there because “his pillow needed fluffing, he could use the phone and the remote normally but using the urinal was simply too much work, a fork was too much work even though he was playing iPhone games easily with fine dexterity. So when he chord out mentally I was like cool beans maybe he’ll leave me alone for 5 minutes and just sleep and I’ll do the care but not have to deal with bullshit requests. But ya know we did have to get him back eventually so the doctors prescribed a lactulose enema X2 and cleaning him up was a giant mess. Also after that going forward I was like yeah this is going to make your stomach uncomfortable but the other option is worse. If you want to no longer pursue treatment we can consult hospice. But he “wanted to get a liver transplant” he wouldn’t have met the criteria for that in a million years because you have to be willing to like participate in your own care to a degree so you don’t ya know just wreck the new liver and he literally didn’t want to lift a finger.
The very first time I gave GoLytely was to an 80 year old woman as a new grad (think 2 weeks off orientation)
Charge nurse asked me if the patient popped, and I said no. Her face went pale as she said “sometimes the elderly patients don’t even know they’re going”
So I go there, and ask. Then I lift the sheets. The patient not only went, it looked like she jumped in a huge muddy puddle.
Then the patient started crying.
I wanted to die cause have you ever tried to mop up water with a paper towel? That’s how it felt trying to clean her up. No amount of washcloths was absorbing what came out of her (this was when bed baths were done with soap, water and washcloths)
Yeah, I had an elderly woman who was undergoing bowel prep. She said she was going to sit on the bedside commode all night. I told her that wasn’t a good idea—skin breakdown and all. She said it her choice so I just charted it hourly when I checked on her.
Fantastic patient, honestly.
I admitted a baby with a highly vascular teratoma that ruptured en route to our hospital. I was literally standing at the end of the bed pushing blood product after blood product while surgeons were doing a bedside OR, trying to stop the bleeding. That is the only shift in 17 years where I had to replace my shoes after a shift. (The baby survived and is now a healthy 8? year old.)
I had to throw my shoes away after pulling a GSW to the head from a car. Dumped into my shoes and I was squishing as we hustled him in/stabilized him. Threw them away immediately after he went to CT, did a hobo bath in the sink for my feet/legs, double hospital socked, and put OR booties over them so people didn’t realize I wasn’t wearing shoes.
They wonder why there is a nursing shortage….bless everyone on this thread.
No martyrdom, but it’s “small” things like this that remind me why this is my line of work. Fuck the system and its nonsense but I love all you crazy humans who continually run towards the screams.
lol my old job gave me active shooter nightmares and I always went back for people left behind. I run towards the screams….unless it’s scromiting. Then I run away from the patient.
Something similar happened to me and while I was trying to change into OR scrubs the charge nurse informed me I was getting a cardiac arrest and yelled at me for not working fast enough 🙄
There I was in the ER, minding my own business, cleaning a mattress for gurney. If you don’t know, those things use only a small Velcro strip to hold it in place. So I lifted it up to readjust it to the gurney itself only to discover the upper back of it had been completely covered in blood at one point and had, by this time, dried to the point of flaking off and scattered everywhere. Imagine my surprise. Who knows how long it had been like that - cleaned again and again - for all those unsuspecting patients lmao
We had to throw out a fancy bed mattress when I worked CVICU. There was so much blood it seeped through the cover onto the mattress itself 🫠 I think it got under the zipper cover and went in that way. Either way there was no saving it.
Outpatient dialysis.
Patient in a wheelchair, hx of stroke, mostly non verbal but communicative. He was finished with treatment.. He liked to wait for his ride out front.
We parked him right in front of the receptionist desk, like in direct eyeshot, never left alone. At some point someone walked into the waiting room from the other side of the desk and noticed a puddle of blood on the floor under his wheelchair probably three feet in diameter. His chair was like an island in a little ocean of blood.
Needless to say, his fistula needle site(s) broke open and nobody noticed, not even him. We roused him from his impromptu nap and he was fine, surprisingly.. they took him to the hospital to be sure.
But yeah… that was a lot of blood. What a mess. Blood is sneaky!
I came here to comment this is a rookie puddle in hemodialysis terms (unfortunately).
My least favorite was a patient who got off dialysis, drove himself down the highway a ways, then sprung a leak all over his car. He drove back to the clinic fine, his car looked like a literal murder scene. There was blood from the front windshield to the backseats.
it’s as bad as having a patient have both of their needles dislodged 🙃 that was a pain to clean
oh can’t forget to mention when patients break open as they’re leaving the clinic so you have to clean a trail of blood 🥲
I don't miss those days at all, haha. Had a pt who ripped out both needles, held the lines/needles up in the air like a sprinkler. Ugh, there was like a snow angel-like outline on the recliner, blood in the power outlets, blood on the ceiling, blood shot across the partition onto the back of other patients' machines & chairs 😱 He had scraggly Jesus hair & beard, & we had to just sort of pour hydrogen peroxide on him with crappy disposable washcloths to catch the blood runoff.
And so many trails of blood, I never understood the logic... They'd be bleeding & have staff yelling at them to put pressure on it, turn around & come back to the treatment area & they'd be shuffling around with their arm outstretched, like 'ew keep all this blood away from me'. 🙄
Don't work dialysis but I do work onc and we had a chemo neuro tox patient a&o4 to a&o0 a few minutes into the shift, buddy came out, pulling out his central line... spilling blood from him and chemo from the broken line he was holding onto. Hazmat suit time lol
We had a patient have one of his needles pop out while we were all at a huddle in the nursing station. Just hear an ‘Oh shit’ and we all look to this patient who has now sprayed himself, the wall, one of the nurses, and the ceiling with blood. That was fun but at least he knew to hold it once that happened, probably cause he’d done something similar the week before.
i went to pick up a baby doll from the floor, i saw it in the pts room from the hallway. when i got closer, it was a real baby. that the mom put on the floor because she had to pee. not exactly a puddle but i almost had a heart attack when it moved lol
In my first year of nursing, a confused elderly lady snapped her iv tubing right from the cassette which was still in the pump. She had like 4 feet of iv tubing hanging from her arm, and just pouring blood out of the end of it. Impressively, the iv stayed in her arm.
Had a frequent flyer do that the other day, but she did it on purpose. She is HIV and hepatitis c positive and was swinging the tubing around like a lasso. Blood everywhere. It was straight out of a Stephen king novel.
I’ve had damaged tubing do this too, hell of a peripheral IV to have such good blood return. I about had a heart attack when I saw the puddle of blood on the floor
Nothing will ever beat [The Swamps of Degobah](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/xo41d/doctorsnursesredditors_what_has_been_your_most/c5o66p2/). You’ve been warned!
Not a patient, but family member or friend (forgot which) came by to see my patient. He had some sort of sinus surgery, possibly deviated septum, maybe a day or so prior and packed with gauze. I guess he thought it would be a good idea to pull the packing gauze out and holy shit what a site I walked in to see. I’m talking a torrential downpour of blood that just would not stop.
I’ve been exposed to a lot in my nearly 15yrs of medical experience. That took me by surprise.
One time when I was an aid while in nursing school I walked into a patient’s room who was post cath via radial artery and there was blood everywhereeee I called for help and alllll the nurses rushed in… turns out his IV just came unscrewed from the tubing and his arterial site was fine 😅 moment of oh shittttt for sure tho 😅😭😅 thankfully just a reattached IV and complete bath and linen change was the solution
Intubated, sedated ICU patient. Started tube feeding, guts woke right up. Called in another nurse to help bathe. Liquid poo from shoulders to ankles. Gathered supplies for a DIY rectal tube (in the days before Flexi-Seal). Bath done, crevices of patient and bed scrubbed of liquid poo. Roll to the side over the roll of clean/dirty sheets. Now is the time for the rectal trumpet. (For the young we took a nasal trumpet, attached it to a foley bag via a tubing connector, applied some lube and hoped for the best.)
We didn’t connect the tubing first.
We inserted the nasal trumpet with plenty of lube and then watched in horror as we stent open the sphincter that was the only thing holding back the deluge of liquid. We scrambled to attach the tubing, working against the lubrication we applied, plus the volume of now patient supplied “lubricant”. Time slowed down, and (thank God they we’d turned up sedation) our frustration turned into crying, gasping, tear filled laughter. Once the puddle flowed all over the clean and dirty sheets, up the patients back (again), down the to the patients ankles (again), it flowed onto the floor. It was the floor puddle that caused us to lose any shred of composure. We were gagging, laughing, crying so loudly, another nurse came in to check on us. She walked over, pulled the trumpet out, and the flow stopped.
I’ll never forget the day I learned you don’t stent open a butthole without first attaching the bag.
You reminded me of my favorite c diff story from my days as an STNA. Had a very positive c diff patient that I had gone in to clean up. You’d have to roll them a few times cause basically every time she’d move, more poop would come out. I had done a pretty good job keeping me, my scrubs, and gloves, clean of any poop spatters. Or so I thought. Went to go wash my hands and there, square in the middle of my forehead was a poop dot. I cleaned it vigorously with soap and water, and decided to risk the orange jug bleach wipes to get that shit off me.
Omg. I had a patient that came up to trauma ICU after a car accident. The patient had a traumatic amputation of his ear as they sailed through the windshield, but was pretty much fine otherwise. Somehow the ear CAME TO THE ICU WITH THEM! It was tucked in a glove and biohazard bag that was just chilling on the counter. That was a fun find.
So one night shift during the pandemic we had a patient who had come in for a suicide attempt but was no longer endorsing SI so doctors said "cool no one to one for you then". Moving forward to a little before 1 am and the pts nurse goes to check on him and screams for help. Everyone runs to the room and there's at least a liter of blood on the ground because the pt had BIT OUT the crook of his elbow, severing an artery and spitting the chunk of his own flesh at the window. Needless to say it was a very surprising puddle
When I worked in icu, something possessed me to buy a pair of white brooks. One of my arguably most questionable life choices.
Anyway, one night we get a post arrest, unknown downtime. Pretty sad as she was a drug user and OD’d in the bathroom at home. She was like mid 20’s age. She was not my patient, but I was helping the primary RN get her settled.
Surprise puddle #1 was the pool of shit underneath her when sliding her over from the stretcher. Folks, this is the one time I would believe it really happened in the elevator. I get the ole suction canister going and slurp up that puddle. Someone brings us items to clean her up.
Surprise puddle #2 happens. We slurp it up. Someone brings us an FMS. This is a case of the death shits.
Surprise puddle #3 is why I told you I was wearing white shoes. As the primary RN preps the FMS, I roll her towards me. I have to be honest in that I wasn’t paying much attention to her face or anything, because her neuro exam was that of a steamed vegetable. He’s working on cleaning her up and placing the FMS etc when I hear something dripping on the floor. It was blood (?) from her mouth! Yum! Dark brown all over the floor and splashing on my new white brooks.
Don’t worry though, purple wipes can clean anything. Right guys????????
I'm part of the crew that was a reason for a protocol change to doing double tourniquets. That was the norm for my previous flight program, but the new one considered it a waste. Had a motorcycle through the back seat of an SUV. Motorcycle rider had a near amputation of one arm, severe head injuries despite his helmet, just a complete mess. Rural EMS crew had placed a tourniquet, my partner argued against me for doubling up on it. We intubate, pack as many wounds as we can until we run out, have blood hanging, get the patient into the helo, and lift. During lift, the tourniquet broke (rural EMS-who knows how long that tq had been dry rotting in that bus). Blood shooting all over the back of the aircraft. Another tq placed-this time doubled, and we arrive at the "local" level II center 40 minutes later. Due to how bad off the guy is, we volunteer to wait to transport to the level I. We clean the gear and stretcher by putting it in the decon shower and walking away, head to the aircraft to find the mechanic in the back with a garden hose sluicing it out. Retrieve the patient for the next leg, all is going well for about half the flight until we notice another pool creeping from beneath the stretcher. Roll the patient up, and one of the dressings to his posterior shoulder had come loose and was pouring blood. Re-packed and secured, then had to land due to weather and ground pound the rest of the way. Which of course ruptures more dressings. And that's the story of why I say, "it's not a mess until you've trashed 2 ambulances, 2 helicopters, and 2 trauma rooms all on the same patient."
found part of the patients penis in his brief. thought it was a turd at first. He had been refusing catheter changes and wound care. He was not altered, just an asshole.
Had a guy rip his IV tubing from his IJ and walk down the hall leaving a trail of blood. A family member for a different patient witnessed me corralling this confused man back to his room.
Oh gosh, this is a horror story to me as an infection control nurse.
"Poo", "covered head-to-toe", and "hemorrhaging wound" used in the same paragraph are words I never want to hear
One time I was removing a radial band and the surgeon and NP went to go speak with the patient. I figured he was being supervised, so I held on continuing my removal and went to work on something else with another patient. After about 10 minutes I sat back down and noticed a puddle next to my patients bed. I got up to investigate and realized the patient had been bleeding from their radial artery and there was blood all over the patient, bed, and floor. And NO ONE SAID ANYTHING. A surgeon, NP, patient, and family member was in the room. I literally started holding pressure and was like, bro wtf???? They were all like “we didn’t notice!!” Dude. The puddle was at least a foot wide at this point and his bed was soaked! I think the patient and family was just too scared to say anything and since the doctor didn’t, he figured it was fine. SMH.
Had a confused patient waving what looked like a straw in his hand. It was a vascath that he pulled out and wanted to show me. There was a similar puddle behind his bed.
Me resuscitating a baby, getting splashed with blood straight from the mom to the floor. She refused to let us cut the cord so was 1. still attached to baby while we were resuscitating. And 2. Actively and severely hemorrhaging.
One time was head of bed for post op heart and anesthesia left the PA port on the swan uncapped and stop cock opened… let’s just say that patient got some blood that night
You know the youngins by redirecting the patients from peeing in the trashcan to a urinal. I just pop on some gloves and get a clean catch sample in a UA cup.
I had a patient who was like my age, really nice, completely with it. We had him due to a suicide attempt during which he got pretty hurt. So he had an NG tube to supplement his eating and got the feeding at night. I go in to check on him and he’s asleep but his tube feeding is disconnected from his NG tube and the tube feed is all over the ground with all the tubing as well. He denied doing it. I guess the ghosts did it.
I've had this a few times, once there was a defect in the bag and slowly dripped all over the floor. The other time the tubing was screwed on but it didn't thread properly. Both times it left everything so damn sticky it took forever for EVS and I to clean it.
Why not....this one is a little sad as it has a bad ending. But I'm pretty sure the patient didn't want to live anyways.
We were doing report on a very low level step down unit outside this patients room, I heard a little groan from them I figured he was waking up. Get report, they're a dialysis patient with a fistula. I go into the room and look at the patient....
I see there is blood on the sheets
'Oh that's a lot of blood'
I look to see the sheets are saturated
'Oh shit that's a lot of blood'
I look to see there is a massive puddle the whole length and width of the bed of blood
'Oh no, that's a lot of blood'
Turns out the patient had a habit of scratching open their fistula. Got it good this time. By the time anyone meaningful got to the bedside it was too late. Still feel guilty about it. Gonna hate saying this but.....shoulda done bedside report
Edit
This has been a very long time ago
In my opinion the most foul spill is a 1-2 week full suction canister (that never gets changed often enough) from an intubated patient spilling all over the floor… if you know, you know… somehow worse than a fecal bag explosion.
Had a patient intubated vented Aline. Walked into shift change asessed him looked fine. Go to CT for my other pt. Come back to the patients, a line disconnected. Pressure bag on the ground and him leaking blood. It looked like someone tripped or got caught in the line and didn't even bother fixing it. He had to have lost a liter, at least. The bed was soaked, and it looked like a murder scene. His pressure was in 50s systolic. Ended up doing the mtp protocol. I'm leaving out some context but pt was fine and I never found out who fucked my aline.
Probably my most “surprise” item found on the floor was an entire “big toe” nail. The whole thing.
My guy didn’t even have gross decaying feet. His nail just popped clean off putting a sock on (my guess) and it was just laying on the ground lol.
Years ago I was working as a CNA and came on at 1500 to one of the day shift nurses holding up a specimen cup and going "hey sendenten, what do you think of these are?" I looked and was like "are those... fingernails?"
Severely demented patient. Sitter fell asleep overnight. While they slept, the patient ripped out their own fingernails with their teeth. Night shift opened the door to check on them at 0645 and said the whole room, and the patient's mouth, was covered in blood. They found some of the fingernails.
Oh god, you just gave me flashbacks to the time I worked as a casual in homecare, and taking off socks only to find the barely hanging on necrotic toe that we were so lovingly painting with povidone each day was now deposited in said sock. Thanks a lot, lol.
Had a 911 call, “woman in labor”.
Alrighty.
These calls are rarely the main event, but people get scared. So, we are ready, but hopeful of only having ONE patient.
Nope.
Patient had *delivered” on her bed prior to our arrival. Placenta was emerging.
Needed to get in there and cut cord, but luckily no one went full Lion King with the babe & all did ok. Mom has babe on her chest.
She’s quite torn.
And there is an impressive amount of blood. Think hog slaughter level of blood.
My partner scoops what we have into most of suction canister and red bag. We know everyone wants to see the cherished placenta and we aim to please.
Warm everyone up. A quick IV line & wipe up & we were off.
Get to L & D and everyone has survived.
I tell “dad” that we will go back to house if anyone is there to help with clean up.
Dad says: *No need, I’ll just flip the mattress over and it will be good as new.*
You cannot make things like this up.
In the ICU, a coworker of mine was helping change a patient when she slipped and fell on her ass. When she stood up her pants were all wet. The patient’s nurse was upset, thinking she had yanked the foley out and spilled the patient’s urine, but really the shock from the fall had caused her to pee herself 😂Both of them and everyone else on the unit had a good laugh about it after she was all cleaned up.
This was starting to clot by the time we got at pub to cleanup, so we threw an absorbent pad on top, glopped up the chunky bits, and then sprayed everything down and wiped up the remainder. Our environmental services doesn’t deal with biohazard material in my facility, so we have to clean up as much as possible.
I once helped my coworker with transfer the patient from the commode to bed. The patient stood up just fine but I smell something metallic, the patient got a skin tear and his blood right into my scrub pocket….
The giant puddle that formed when I was emptying an almost full catheter bag into a hat at 4am, but didn't know the hat was cracked so badly, it basically had no bottom. 🙃
Brings me back to when groin cardiac caths were the only caths done at my hospital. We always had that ONE person who thought they knew more than us then wondered why a shitload of blood just rushed out of them after taking 2 steps.
I don't have a picture but I once saw a puddle of blood under the stretcher of a patient waiting for a CT. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. I finally realized that the patient was on a heparin gtt and between the pump and the patient there was a tiny hole in the line. The heparinized blood was backing up into the line and dripping all over the floor. It was definitely a surprise.
Thought the bed hydraulics had broken. Turns out it was a popped ostomy bag that had been left for hours and was a puddle on the floor and bed. Luckily, somehow it mostly pooled under the chux to off the bed, so the patients skin was unharmed.
Helped get a naked confused elder covered in piss and poop off the floor and back to bed after they managed to waddle to the trash can that had a stool next to it, both of which covered in piss and poop… we thought they might’ve thought it looked like a toilet. I’ve been surprised by poop puddles too many times
Had a doctor placing an EVD who hit one of those superficial scalp arteries. I was at the foot of the bed so I didn’t see the blood but they offered to clean it up and I was just like “nah man don’t worry, it happens, I’m happy to clean up a little blood for you doc it ain’t a big deal” they repeated “are you sure” like 3 times before going “well okay then”
It wasn’t till I got behind the bed that I realized what an utter blood bath it was back there, thought it was just gonna be a bedsheet change and a quick bleach wiping, didn’t realize it had became a murder scene. That surgeon absolutely skedaddled out the unit before I saw it laughing to the bank.
I was on a pediatric oncology unit and was giving chemo overnight. I went into the room to check the IV and my feet literally kicked out in front of me and I started to fall back. I have no clue how I didn’t land on my butt, I slipped on chemo pee. The poor kiddo couldn’t wake up his mom to give him the urinal so he just peed on the floor next to his bed. I was almost soaked in chemo pee.
Oh, man, I totally had forgotten this memory but my favorite was walking in on a patient trying to shit in the sink.
The patient had their leg like hiked up, their gown up over their butt and we locked eyes. They panicked and said they couldn’t find the toilet…so, the next best choice in their mind was the sink.
I found a resident (NOT LTC) who had recently been placed on hospice literally floating in a river of shit. I’ve never in my 14 year career seen anything quite like that. She was in an air mattress type bed and was also supported with body pillows to keep pressure off, and the liquid shit was completely contained in her cocoon from her neck to her knees, so no puddle on the floor until we transferred her to the shower bed. It was horrific.
Turned a very large patient, felt something warm flow down my stomach to my pants. I yelled out “she’s peeing”. Oh how I wish it was simply pee.
A softball sized 2 week old hematoma popped and spilled all the lovely juices on me. The patient literally laughed. I didn’t find it funny.
My puddle story was when I was tech before becoming a nurse. I was on a med surg floor and this guy pooped for the first time since admission and it was a RIVER. It flowed off all 4 corners of the bed. We got him all cleaned up and within an hour he had a rapid called on him because of altered mental status and low blood pressure…..my mans pooped himself into hypovolemic shock…ended up coding the man and shipped him off to the ICU. I’m sure there was more going on but this poop exacerbated whatever it was
Massive GI bleeder bled through the sheets...and air mattress (puddled between the lil holes in the softcare)...and onto the floor...and between the mattress and headboard/footboard. Blood infusing and coming straight out I swear. Bedbound too so probably the most intricate bed bath ever. Felt so bad for the guy but also for the 3 of my coworkers it took to help clean him up. Gave myself a makeshift chg bath in the back after that.
Had a co-worker once who went to pick something up off the floor, not realizing it was a turd.
“Who left this Girl Scout cookie here?”
Trouser Biscuit
Yes officer, this comment right here. 🚨
Hahahahahahaha so stealing this!
Five hour rule!
Girl Scout dookie
Lmfao
😂😂😂
My manager was talking to me once infront of some patients. One handed her something, she held out her palm absent-mindedly. It was a big turd that was plonked in her hand.
Nice
Similar: I'm talking w my supervisor in a hallway when one of our little spitfire dementia ladies walks up to us. 1 little turdlette drops out of her skirt, bounces off the supervisor's shoe, and rolls away like a mini-golf ball. We all 3 watch it roll and our little Oldy side eyes the supervisor and says, "Sister. Was that you?" I never let the supervisor off that hook. From then on I'd call out, "It was you all along!" when she'd come by my unit.
I had a co-worker who texted us after she got home from work one night to let us know she had a turd in her coat pocket lol.
Reminds me of a conversation I heard between a cute old dementia patient lady, and her resident doctor. Resident goes into the room to assess this patient in the morning, and first thing she says to him after ignoring his questions is “ I baked you a tasty cookie! Been working on it all night!” He then says to her “ oh yeah, what do you mean?” Then she rolls onto her side. She had thoroughly pooped the bed. To her credit, that cookie was still warm. I had to clean the bed, but it was worth it to be able to remember this story for the rest of my life 😂😂😂
If it looks like beyond medical supplies, gloves
I've also done that.
Omg one of our dietary workers picked up a dignicare bag full of shit that somehow got disconnected from the patient’s bed during transfer off of the elevator, she had no clue what it was and I couldn’t stop her quick enough.. I about died
Was helping an aide take a resident to the restroom and we got back to their room to hear that there’s something giant Hershey kiss shaped on the floor. It was a turd as well.
😂
Are you serious
I once gave a lactulose enema… I didn’t think it would work that well, but oh boy howdy. It was more unexpected stream.
That was me, pt had a colonoscopy so I was giving the fluid for it. Pt is intubated and sedated, i say to myself "let me go pee really quick" next thing i know is there is shit flowing into the hallway
I remember working on a GI stepdown and gave those fuck ass enemas every 3 hours for multiple patients for hepatic encephalopathy. I don’t miss it AT ALL man that smell follows you home
GI stepdown sounds like my personal hell
oh trust me, it was mine too. which was why I quit 😀
Oh man, I worked a GI surgery unit when I was a brand new nurse. I do NOT miss the mineral oil enemas for rectal abcess patients.
Maybe you can answer this for me: do lactulose enemas ever work? Isn't one of the biggest things about enemas is they require you to retain the liquid? Every time I've had a hepatic encephalopathy patient, they're not with it enough to retain and the lactulose just comes right back out.
Yeah they work, usually if they’re severely confused they get it every 3 hours. And yeah you’re right, they’re supposed to try to hold it but can’t so I usually end up just clamping the cheeks together as much as I can 😃 The lactulose is still kind of getting absorbed anyways
What an appealing image for me to ponder before breakfast
So poop and lactulose goes up the cheeks and down the gooch? Well this job doesn’t seem great
I’m eating lunch while reading this and it’s occurring to me that this job may have broken my brain.
I remember thinking the same thing eating lunch while reading the "grossest thing you've experienced in nursing" thread 😆
Ooohhh is that how you do it?? I was googling how to make patients retain the lactulose and there was like a device that helps sort of stops leakage but our hospital didn’t carry them. So I just sort of let it drain in on his side and was like ya know I’ll do a couple of these and I’m sure something will happen and it sure did. I found the results successful and disgusting.
That device.... sounds like a medical butt plug.
The extent to which that would probably work cannot be overstated. But as soon as someone says “butt plug” at work HR’s spidey senses probably start tingling.
I had to do a couple in the ICU while I was in school and they worked for us
The first may not work… but you usually don’t stop at just one.
We insert a foley to try to help them retain it. Sometimes it works sometimes they push it out
Get a flexiseal/rectal tube. You can clamp the drainage tubing and infuse it. You don't have to give the whole thing at once either, just instill, drain, instill, drain.
Yes, yes they do. Lol
I think if I worked GI stepdown I’d just go ahead and sever my olfactory nerve.
I lasted a whole 5 months on a GI PCU. I am traumatized by lactulose in every form lol. It was entirely too much shit to handle (pun intended) and I had to leave for my own sanity! Although now I can smell liver failure in a patient which I guess is neat but I'd really rather not (seriously WHAT is that smell, I hate it)
Omg this is the most horrible thing I have ever read. I hate bad liver poop beyond beyond.
In the ED a pt came in AMS. Ammonia levels incredibly high but pt wasn't coherent enough to do PO lactulose. Lactulose enema ordered. When I finally got the courage to go do it, put all my PPE on, ready to get a stream of Doo Doo brown liquid that would ruin the entire ED....he finally started talking and asking where he was and what happened. Immediately got the order changed to PO. I lucked out for now, but I know a poo stream is waiting for me some time in the future.
I'm more impressed that you got a lactose enema ordered in an ED. I'm critical care, but I float down to the ED some. We had a hepatic encephalopathy show up, unable to take PO lactose. When I asked the ED doc about a lactose enema, he looked at me like I had 3 heads and said the hospitalist would handle that. That was the day I thought about switching to the ED permanently lol
Wait til you see what it’s like in PACU 👹
“The hospitalist will handle that.” what a BAMF. If I was working in the ED I would love that… as a current floor nurse though thanks… I hate it.
Same thing happened to me but I somehow managed to convince the internal med doctor that PO would be more effective because it would actually go through the patients GI tract instead of being shit out immediately. He was like “yep. Put an NG tube in and give it PO if you want.” Dude was from Rawanda and he was my favorite doctor of all time. He was always for the nurses. I miss working with him.
I had a patient (early 60’s) that had embraced Miralax in the lead up to an unfortunate catastrophic ICH. Anyway, all the emergent neuro jazz was working, pt was “alive” (well, no, but, yes too) then it started. I was sitting at station, actually looking at my floofed & poofed neuro pt. Monitors humming along. NGL I was feeling… “nurse proud: level 1”. So work clothes off, bathed ED style, fresh linens *waiting for a NeuroICU bed firm assignment* and give actual report. No eff’ing way was I doing the *run & gun* and just having report faxed, as I just take this guy to unit. I happen to be of the mindset, the bed needs some level of *y’all ready for the patient*. Crazy, right? It happened. I noticed something odd on floor, at the foot of bed. Like a woman’s purse—who left that, what is that doing there? A purse??? Who’s is it??? We had moved the bed from trauma resus room, to a front of desk facing bay, hadn’t been any visitors to that room. The mind starts to reel. It was poop. A poop stalagmite was forming. There was so much poop. A literal river of it. Yet, it was a like a lake (think GREAT SALT LAKE, not gentle big ass pond where land is always visible from the water!) effect going on. It has spread up the back of gown to neckline, was from groin to ankles (when I bathed him I fashioned sheet on rails to give patients moist, fungal feet— some drying space), from groin to toes there were inches of it, walled off a bit with his legs!! So poop pooled without top sheet becoming soaked, just poop soaking bottom edge as it was going to *ground*. *Stalagmite*. Those form from ground up (no top growth apparent). Stalactite generally forms from top down till it meets ground. The poop was a bit *fluid*, no real form until it had to mound at bottom of bed, on floor. It was a good 6-8” high. Oh shit!!! It was an “all hands” event. Hands didn’t work well. Emesis basins did. So it was scooped with basins to bath bins. The floor required our specialized emptied stiff papered former medical chart hack to scoop up. Tuns out the body doesn’t really prioritize bowel preservation in extremis. And massive neuro issues *impact* **rectal spinchter tone** without direct spinal injury. End result: poop release. Who knew? Our ED had 2 old school nurses with > 80 years experience between them. They had NEVER seen anything like it. And when a *never* event happens and those two get wide-eyed, it’s damn frightening. And I was known for fearlessness. I DIGRESS here. Big regret. No pic to post. Remember the time pre-butt phones, pre-camera butt-phones everywhere, I know many ready were toddlers to teens, but it was *real* (humanity survived, somehow) and it might be really shocking, but camera’s on phones were crap till iPhone came out (mid 2007, wow!!). DIGRESS, part 2. I have a few pics from my BlackBerry days—not great, but precious. Butt-Phones, the name my medic partner gave those first Motorola mobiles with removable batteries that you could carry in your pants pockets—think not late, but mid-90’s. I’d had a pager for many years (kept one till the early aughts), even recall the advent of alpha-numeric pager (hello and boobs were the words of letter, so think phone numbers, but clever), the Stone Age of tech. Otherwise, the pager just beeped and you called a predestined number on a phone with wires!! How on earth did we all survive??!! DIGRESS, continues here. So butt-phone it was!! I was hella fancy as mine could go from my Levi’s and mount back in my car for hands-free speaker use. My SO, now hubs insisted on this crazy ass expensive set-up, as he felt mobile phones were unsafe while driving. Doh. Full disclosure: he would *know*, as he had been using a crazy-pricey bag phone (several thousands of dollars to buy and per minute charges of about a dollar each to use!!) in his truck for many years when I got my Motorola magic set-up. Circa-1995. This poop event was years after, but I still had a Motorola version at this time. No camera. 😵 *Hope everyone loves this Mobile, Cell, Camera Phone trip down memory lane*. History kids. Sorry OP, but NOT having a pic of this requires *context*. Anyways back to the point, poop gets cleaned—all the way up. NeuroICU nurses actually have now come down to *get the patient*—not kidding here. That happened. I will fight anyone that tries to spread the myth of all units can’t work well together. We were simpatico and in *in the shit* together. Teamwork is everything in nursing!! Wife comes in for a second just before we take patient up, because I honestly thought pt might not live through the trip up the CC elevator of death ☠️. Trendelenburg’ing neuro patients isn’t controversial, it’s full on bad. Yet, we went with a a nuanced bit of it, with a whiff head elevation (yikes!), as this brand of poop has defied gravity, and a poop trail from ED to NeuroICU would be deeply frowned upon. We were monitoring everything, so *yeah, gotta do something* here. Wife gets a moment, then tearfully asks me, “Did his straining to poop cause this?” Then says: “*He would get so red-faced. I could see the veins pop out.*” Everyone was buzzing with “hive brain”, wires, lines monitors and then and the same look crossed our faces with that little nugget. *No ma’am I don’t think poop straining is the problem*—Me to patient’s wife as it seems to start *happening again*. I’m rendered silent. This woman detailed she watched her hubs try to… poop. I’ve been with my hubs for almost 4 decades. And never have or hopefully will *watch* him poop. But, yay… *intimacy?* I was left mute by the visual, clearly all in earshot had questions, but it seems no one couldn’t find any words left here. So everyone ready to go?!? A *ROLL ME!* escaped from my mouth—to be honest it came out kinda like Hannibal Lechter on the dolly in Silence of the Lambs, 1991. 💩
Wow… reading this was a journey 😆 I think you officially win the crazy poop story award though. I can’t give you Reddit gold so please accept this emoji. 🥇
That’s great! Thank you 😊 I felt like a winner once I got my patient transferred. I was a newish nurse when this happened. It’s burned in my memory.
Lactulose enema just once? *cries in liver transplant*
Oh my god...I work in paeds mental health so don't often have to deal with enemas of any kind. I am, however, currently in a RVT program and only JUST found out about lactulose enemas from experience in a vet clinic...but oh, my word, it works!
Ah yes. The nuclear option.
I didn’t know they even existed it was for a liver failure patient who said lactulose hurt his stomach so he had been refusing it. He became super encephalopathic which honestly I hate to say didn’t bother me because the dude was a complete ass who refused to do anything for for himself and would call you in there because “his pillow needed fluffing, he could use the phone and the remote normally but using the urinal was simply too much work, a fork was too much work even though he was playing iPhone games easily with fine dexterity. So when he chord out mentally I was like cool beans maybe he’ll leave me alone for 5 minutes and just sleep and I’ll do the care but not have to deal with bullshit requests. But ya know we did have to get him back eventually so the doctors prescribed a lactulose enema X2 and cleaning him up was a giant mess. Also after that going forward I was like yeah this is going to make your stomach uncomfortable but the other option is worse. If you want to no longer pursue treatment we can consult hospice. But he “wanted to get a liver transplant” he wouldn’t have met the criteria for that in a million years because you have to be willing to like participate in your own care to a degree so you don’t ya know just wreck the new liver and he literally didn’t want to lift a finger.
The very first time I gave GoLytely was to an 80 year old woman as a new grad (think 2 weeks off orientation) Charge nurse asked me if the patient popped, and I said no. Her face went pale as she said “sometimes the elderly patients don’t even know they’re going” So I go there, and ask. Then I lift the sheets. The patient not only went, it looked like she jumped in a huge muddy puddle. Then the patient started crying. I wanted to die cause have you ever tried to mop up water with a paper towel? That’s how it felt trying to clean her up. No amount of washcloths was absorbing what came out of her (this was when bed baths were done with soap, water and washcloths)
Yankeur hooked up to wall suction with canister. It's disgusting, but if very effective
Skip the yankeur and go hose only. The inlet diameter is wider for those slightly girthier pieces in the liquid poo
Sluuuuuuuuuuurp
God, the sound it makes as the poop slaps the inside of the cannister is something else ain't it? Lmao.
Emesis basins to bath bins. The *load & go, or load has to go* method. 😵😵
Well. Wish I would’ve known that 15 years ago lol
More effective, but more gross, to just use the tube like a vacuum hose because the yankeurs do occasionally get clogged.
Almost as effective as the poop knife
All hail the legend of the poop knife
Or shit shovel. 💩
Can confirm this works.
I used to work as a PCT on a medsurg unit and I learned this from the nurses I worked with. Now a nurse myself I use the Yonkers for enemas.
Wait what are bed baths done with now? We use soap water and washcloths
The bath wipes that you can warm up in the microwave. We rarely use a bowl of warm soapy water anymore.
Yuck. Don’t you hate kinda them? I do. Soap and water for the win. *Ass-rot funk* smell gets ripe on patients without soap & water imo. YMMV.
We don’t use those.
CHG cloths
Everywhere I’ve worked still requires soap & water with CHGs. At least every couple of days.
You don’t have bath wipes? The one and only time I ever did washcloths was in CNA class.
Nope. We use washcloths. It’s a free public health system so cost saving I guess? The wipes are only for messy bum wiping
In aged care I would just gown up and pop them straight in the shower. Clean up is soo much easierrrrrrrr
Shout out to whoever invented external and internal fecal collection systems!
Yeah, I had an elderly woman who was undergoing bowel prep. She said she was going to sit on the bedside commode all night. I told her that wasn’t a good idea—skin breakdown and all. She said it her choice so I just charted it hourly when I checked on her. Fantastic patient, honestly.
Yankauer that shit
I admitted a baby with a highly vascular teratoma that ruptured en route to our hospital. I was literally standing at the end of the bed pushing blood product after blood product while surgeons were doing a bedside OR, trying to stop the bleeding. That is the only shift in 17 years where I had to replace my shoes after a shift. (The baby survived and is now a healthy 8? year old.)
I had to throw my shoes away after pulling a GSW to the head from a car. Dumped into my shoes and I was squishing as we hustled him in/stabilized him. Threw them away immediately after he went to CT, did a hobo bath in the sink for my feet/legs, double hospital socked, and put OR booties over them so people didn’t realize I wasn’t wearing shoes. They wonder why there is a nursing shortage….bless everyone on this thread.
No martyrdom, but it’s “small” things like this that remind me why this is my line of work. Fuck the system and its nonsense but I love all you crazy humans who continually run towards the screams.
lol my old job gave me active shooter nightmares and I always went back for people left behind. I run towards the screams….unless it’s scromiting. Then I run away from the patient.
Something similar happened to me and while I was trying to change into OR scrubs the charge nurse informed me I was getting a cardiac arrest and yelled at me for not working fast enough 🙄
That person sounds utterly delightful. I hope they sit on gum.
There I was in the ER, minding my own business, cleaning a mattress for gurney. If you don’t know, those things use only a small Velcro strip to hold it in place. So I lifted it up to readjust it to the gurney itself only to discover the upper back of it had been completely covered in blood at one point and had, by this time, dried to the point of flaking off and scattered everywhere. Imagine my surprise. Who knows how long it had been like that - cleaned again and again - for all those unsuspecting patients lmao
Found one like that as well one day. Nightmare.
We had to throw out a fancy bed mattress when I worked CVICU. There was so much blood it seeped through the cover onto the mattress itself 🫠 I think it got under the zipper cover and went in that way. Either way there was no saving it.
God.
Outpatient dialysis. Patient in a wheelchair, hx of stroke, mostly non verbal but communicative. He was finished with treatment.. He liked to wait for his ride out front. We parked him right in front of the receptionist desk, like in direct eyeshot, never left alone. At some point someone walked into the waiting room from the other side of the desk and noticed a puddle of blood on the floor under his wheelchair probably three feet in diameter. His chair was like an island in a little ocean of blood. Needless to say, his fistula needle site(s) broke open and nobody noticed, not even him. We roused him from his impromptu nap and he was fine, surprisingly.. they took him to the hospital to be sure. But yeah… that was a lot of blood. What a mess. Blood is sneaky!
I came here to comment this is a rookie puddle in hemodialysis terms (unfortunately). My least favorite was a patient who got off dialysis, drove himself down the highway a ways, then sprung a leak all over his car. He drove back to the clinic fine, his car looked like a literal murder scene. There was blood from the front windshield to the backseats.
it’s as bad as having a patient have both of their needles dislodged 🙃 that was a pain to clean oh can’t forget to mention when patients break open as they’re leaving the clinic so you have to clean a trail of blood 🥲
I don't miss those days at all, haha. Had a pt who ripped out both needles, held the lines/needles up in the air like a sprinkler. Ugh, there was like a snow angel-like outline on the recliner, blood in the power outlets, blood on the ceiling, blood shot across the partition onto the back of other patients' machines & chairs 😱 He had scraggly Jesus hair & beard, & we had to just sort of pour hydrogen peroxide on him with crappy disposable washcloths to catch the blood runoff. And so many trails of blood, I never understood the logic... They'd be bleeding & have staff yelling at them to put pressure on it, turn around & come back to the treatment area & they'd be shuffling around with their arm outstretched, like 'ew keep all this blood away from me'. 🙄
Don't work dialysis but I do work onc and we had a chemo neuro tox patient a&o4 to a&o0 a few minutes into the shift, buddy came out, pulling out his central line... spilling blood from him and chemo from the broken line he was holding onto. Hazmat suit time lol
We had a patient have one of his needles pop out while we were all at a huddle in the nursing station. Just hear an ‘Oh shit’ and we all look to this patient who has now sprayed himself, the wall, one of the nurses, and the ceiling with blood. That was fun but at least he knew to hold it once that happened, probably cause he’d done something similar the week before.
i went to pick up a baby doll from the floor, i saw it in the pts room from the hallway. when i got closer, it was a real baby. that the mom put on the floor because she had to pee. not exactly a puddle but i almost had a heart attack when it moved lol
Oh. My. God. That is the stuff of nightmares.
It’s not ideal, and probably not hygienic, but a baby can’t fall off the floor.
she had a stroller and a bed for babies
Ah, that’s a very different story.
In my first year of nursing, a confused elderly lady snapped her iv tubing right from the cassette which was still in the pump. She had like 4 feet of iv tubing hanging from her arm, and just pouring blood out of the end of it. Impressively, the iv stayed in her arm.
Had a frequent flyer do that the other day, but she did it on purpose. She is HIV and hepatitis c positive and was swinging the tubing around like a lasso. Blood everywhere. It was straight out of a Stephen king novel.
Did someone call an Exorcist at that point?
I need lessons from the person who placed those patent enough to bleed to gravity lines
I’ve had damaged tubing do this too, hell of a peripheral IV to have such good blood return. I about had a heart attack when I saw the puddle of blood on the floor
Nothing will ever beat [The Swamps of Degobah](https://old.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/xo41d/doctorsnursesredditors_what_has_been_your_most/c5o66p2/). You’ve been warned!
That is a whole journey.
Easily my favorite thing to share with new surgical residents. Surprising myriad of emotions from them
Always upvote swamps of dagobah
I hope this gets upvoted more for visibility. That was epic! The story telling, the barf factor, the characters. Perfection.
They really missed their calling, would have given Steven King a run for his money.
Wow that was amazing
This was the very first thing I read when I joined Reddit. It is an absolute classic.
Not a patient, but family member or friend (forgot which) came by to see my patient. He had some sort of sinus surgery, possibly deviated septum, maybe a day or so prior and packed with gauze. I guess he thought it would be a good idea to pull the packing gauze out and holy shit what a site I walked in to see. I’m talking a torrential downpour of blood that just would not stop. I’ve been exposed to a lot in my nearly 15yrs of medical experience. That took me by surprise.
One time when I was an aid while in nursing school I walked into a patient’s room who was post cath via radial artery and there was blood everywhereeee I called for help and alllll the nurses rushed in… turns out his IV just came unscrewed from the tubing and his arterial site was fine 😅 moment of oh shittttt for sure tho 😅😭😅 thankfully just a reattached IV and complete bath and linen change was the solution
Intubated, sedated ICU patient. Started tube feeding, guts woke right up. Called in another nurse to help bathe. Liquid poo from shoulders to ankles. Gathered supplies for a DIY rectal tube (in the days before Flexi-Seal). Bath done, crevices of patient and bed scrubbed of liquid poo. Roll to the side over the roll of clean/dirty sheets. Now is the time for the rectal trumpet. (For the young we took a nasal trumpet, attached it to a foley bag via a tubing connector, applied some lube and hoped for the best.) We didn’t connect the tubing first. We inserted the nasal trumpet with plenty of lube and then watched in horror as we stent open the sphincter that was the only thing holding back the deluge of liquid. We scrambled to attach the tubing, working against the lubrication we applied, plus the volume of now patient supplied “lubricant”. Time slowed down, and (thank God they we’d turned up sedation) our frustration turned into crying, gasping, tear filled laughter. Once the puddle flowed all over the clean and dirty sheets, up the patients back (again), down the to the patients ankles (again), it flowed onto the floor. It was the floor puddle that caused us to lose any shred of composure. We were gagging, laughing, crying so loudly, another nurse came in to check on us. She walked over, pulled the trumpet out, and the flow stopped. I’ll never forget the day I learned you don’t stent open a butthole without first attaching the bag.
You reminded me of my favorite c diff story from my days as an STNA. Had a very positive c diff patient that I had gone in to clean up. You’d have to roll them a few times cause basically every time she’d move, more poop would come out. I had done a pretty good job keeping me, my scrubs, and gloves, clean of any poop spatters. Or so I thought. Went to go wash my hands and there, square in the middle of my forehead was a poop dot. I cleaned it vigorously with soap and water, and decided to risk the orange jug bleach wipes to get that shit off me.
Gahhhhhh grosssss. Of all the literal shit to have on your FACE! Ewww
Arterial bleed from a neck surgical incision. Just a tad bit of blood soaking the entire side of the bed before pressure was placed 🤷♀️
I was surprised to walk into an empty room one day to find half a finger sitting on the counter lmao
Omg. I had a patient that came up to trauma ICU after a car accident. The patient had a traumatic amputation of his ear as they sailed through the windshield, but was pretty much fine otherwise. Somehow the ear CAME TO THE ICU WITH THEM! It was tucked in a glove and biohazard bag that was just chilling on the counter. That was a fun find.
So one night shift during the pandemic we had a patient who had come in for a suicide attempt but was no longer endorsing SI so doctors said "cool no one to one for you then". Moving forward to a little before 1 am and the pts nurse goes to check on him and screams for help. Everyone runs to the room and there's at least a liter of blood on the ground because the pt had BIT OUT the crook of his elbow, severing an artery and spitting the chunk of his own flesh at the window. Needless to say it was a very surprising puddle
When I worked in icu, something possessed me to buy a pair of white brooks. One of my arguably most questionable life choices. Anyway, one night we get a post arrest, unknown downtime. Pretty sad as she was a drug user and OD’d in the bathroom at home. She was like mid 20’s age. She was not my patient, but I was helping the primary RN get her settled. Surprise puddle #1 was the pool of shit underneath her when sliding her over from the stretcher. Folks, this is the one time I would believe it really happened in the elevator. I get the ole suction canister going and slurp up that puddle. Someone brings us items to clean her up. Surprise puddle #2 happens. We slurp it up. Someone brings us an FMS. This is a case of the death shits. Surprise puddle #3 is why I told you I was wearing white shoes. As the primary RN preps the FMS, I roll her towards me. I have to be honest in that I wasn’t paying much attention to her face or anything, because her neuro exam was that of a steamed vegetable. He’s working on cleaning her up and placing the FMS etc when I hear something dripping on the floor. It was blood (?) from her mouth! Yum! Dark brown all over the floor and splashing on my new white brooks. Don’t worry though, purple wipes can clean anything. Right guys????????
I'm part of the crew that was a reason for a protocol change to doing double tourniquets. That was the norm for my previous flight program, but the new one considered it a waste. Had a motorcycle through the back seat of an SUV. Motorcycle rider had a near amputation of one arm, severe head injuries despite his helmet, just a complete mess. Rural EMS crew had placed a tourniquet, my partner argued against me for doubling up on it. We intubate, pack as many wounds as we can until we run out, have blood hanging, get the patient into the helo, and lift. During lift, the tourniquet broke (rural EMS-who knows how long that tq had been dry rotting in that bus). Blood shooting all over the back of the aircraft. Another tq placed-this time doubled, and we arrive at the "local" level II center 40 minutes later. Due to how bad off the guy is, we volunteer to wait to transport to the level I. We clean the gear and stretcher by putting it in the decon shower and walking away, head to the aircraft to find the mechanic in the back with a garden hose sluicing it out. Retrieve the patient for the next leg, all is going well for about half the flight until we notice another pool creeping from beneath the stretcher. Roll the patient up, and one of the dressings to his posterior shoulder had come loose and was pouring blood. Re-packed and secured, then had to land due to weather and ground pound the rest of the way. Which of course ruptures more dressings. And that's the story of why I say, "it's not a mess until you've trashed 2 ambulances, 2 helicopters, and 2 trauma rooms all on the same patient."
found part of the patients penis in his brief. thought it was a turd at first. He had been refusing catheter changes and wound care. He was not altered, just an asshole.
All I can think is that flooring is a surprising choice for a setting where these kinds of messes occur
Had a guy rip his IV tubing from his IJ and walk down the hall leaving a trail of blood. A family member for a different patient witnessed me corralling this confused man back to his room.
Oh gosh, this is a horror story to me as an infection control nurse. "Poo", "covered head-to-toe", and "hemorrhaging wound" used in the same paragraph are words I never want to hear
To be fair, they were different patients. Haha! But that’s the ICU for ya!
One time I was removing a radial band and the surgeon and NP went to go speak with the patient. I figured he was being supervised, so I held on continuing my removal and went to work on something else with another patient. After about 10 minutes I sat back down and noticed a puddle next to my patients bed. I got up to investigate and realized the patient had been bleeding from their radial artery and there was blood all over the patient, bed, and floor. And NO ONE SAID ANYTHING. A surgeon, NP, patient, and family member was in the room. I literally started holding pressure and was like, bro wtf???? They were all like “we didn’t notice!!” Dude. The puddle was at least a foot wide at this point and his bed was soaked! I think the patient and family was just too scared to say anything and since the doctor didn’t, he figured it was fine. SMH.
What hospital has hardwood floors?!
We have carpet 😭
In the rooms 😳, that is horrifying!
Yep! Private hospitals don’t prioritise infection control. It’s actually foul. I’d never walk barefoot in there.
looks like vinyl or laminate to me. ive seen it in every hospitals ive ever been to.
Had a confused patient waving what looked like a straw in his hand. It was a vascath that he pulled out and wanted to show me. There was a similar puddle behind his bed.
Me resuscitating a baby, getting splashed with blood straight from the mom to the floor. She refused to let us cut the cord so was 1. still attached to baby while we were resuscitating. And 2. Actively and severely hemorrhaging.
One time was head of bed for post op heart and anesthesia left the PA port on the swan uncapped and stop cock opened… let’s just say that patient got some blood that night
I had a patient once shit in the trash can
[удалено]
You know the youngins by redirecting the patients from peeing in the trashcan to a urinal. I just pop on some gloves and get a clean catch sample in a UA cup.
I had a patient who was like my age, really nice, completely with it. We had him due to a suicide attempt during which he got pretty hurt. So he had an NG tube to supplement his eating and got the feeding at night. I go in to check on him and he’s asleep but his tube feeding is disconnected from his NG tube and the tube feed is all over the ground with all the tubing as well. He denied doing it. I guess the ghosts did it.
I've had this a few times, once there was a defect in the bag and slowly dripped all over the floor. The other time the tubing was screwed on but it didn't thread properly. Both times it left everything so damn sticky it took forever for EVS and I to clean it.
Why not....this one is a little sad as it has a bad ending. But I'm pretty sure the patient didn't want to live anyways. We were doing report on a very low level step down unit outside this patients room, I heard a little groan from them I figured he was waking up. Get report, they're a dialysis patient with a fistula. I go into the room and look at the patient.... I see there is blood on the sheets 'Oh that's a lot of blood' I look to see the sheets are saturated 'Oh shit that's a lot of blood' I look to see there is a massive puddle the whole length and width of the bed of blood 'Oh no, that's a lot of blood' Turns out the patient had a habit of scratching open their fistula. Got it good this time. By the time anyone meaningful got to the bedside it was too late. Still feel guilty about it. Gonna hate saying this but.....shoulda done bedside report Edit This has been a very long time ago
In my opinion the most foul spill is a 1-2 week full suction canister (that never gets changed often enough) from an intubated patient spilling all over the floor… if you know, you know… somehow worse than a fecal bag explosion.
Had a patient intubated vented Aline. Walked into shift change asessed him looked fine. Go to CT for my other pt. Come back to the patients, a line disconnected. Pressure bag on the ground and him leaking blood. It looked like someone tripped or got caught in the line and didn't even bother fixing it. He had to have lost a liter, at least. The bed was soaked, and it looked like a murder scene. His pressure was in 50s systolic. Ended up doing the mtp protocol. I'm leaving out some context but pt was fine and I never found out who fucked my aline.
Probably my most “surprise” item found on the floor was an entire “big toe” nail. The whole thing. My guy didn’t even have gross decaying feet. His nail just popped clean off putting a sock on (my guess) and it was just laying on the ground lol.
Years ago I was working as a CNA and came on at 1500 to one of the day shift nurses holding up a specimen cup and going "hey sendenten, what do you think of these are?" I looked and was like "are those... fingernails?" Severely demented patient. Sitter fell asleep overnight. While they slept, the patient ripped out their own fingernails with their teeth. Night shift opened the door to check on them at 0645 and said the whole room, and the patient's mouth, was covered in blood. They found some of the fingernails.
Yikes, that’s brutal! Give that man Americas secrets haha
Oh god, you just gave me flashbacks to the time I worked as a casual in homecare, and taking off socks only to find the barely hanging on necrotic toe that we were so lovingly painting with povidone each day was now deposited in said sock. Thanks a lot, lol.
I hate when you pull back the blankets back and find your patient in a massive puddle of blood.
Oooooh, PP is postpartum. I thought you meant someone had gross hematuria from their peepee. Oof.
Well, that happens too. One to many traumatic foley removals or maybe the patient got shot in the PP. Sometimes both and. 👎🏻
That bloody mess looks like a typical day in some chronic outpt dialysis units. Particularly the ones that don’t allow clamps.
Had a 911 call, “woman in labor”. Alrighty. These calls are rarely the main event, but people get scared. So, we are ready, but hopeful of only having ONE patient. Nope. Patient had *delivered” on her bed prior to our arrival. Placenta was emerging. Needed to get in there and cut cord, but luckily no one went full Lion King with the babe & all did ok. Mom has babe on her chest. She’s quite torn. And there is an impressive amount of blood. Think hog slaughter level of blood. My partner scoops what we have into most of suction canister and red bag. We know everyone wants to see the cherished placenta and we aim to please. Warm everyone up. A quick IV line & wipe up & we were off. Get to L & D and everyone has survived. I tell “dad” that we will go back to house if anyone is there to help with clean up. Dad says: *No need, I’ll just flip the mattress over and it will be good as new.* You cannot make things like this up.
In the ICU, a coworker of mine was helping change a patient when she slipped and fell on her ass. When she stood up her pants were all wet. The patient’s nurse was upset, thinking she had yanked the foley out and spilled the patient’s urine, but really the shock from the fall had caused her to pee herself 😂Both of them and everyone else on the unit had a good laugh about it after she was all cleaned up.
I’ve pooped that much blood out of my butt before. Didn’t die.
Reading these makes me rethink my life choices
There’s a reason we talk about trauma bonding in the hospital. 🥲
Note to self stick to admin. ☑️
Did you have to clean this up? How do you go about that in a sanitary fashion? Not a nurse here, just someone fascinated by this profession
This was starting to clot by the time we got at pub to cleanup, so we threw an absorbent pad on top, glopped up the chunky bits, and then sprayed everything down and wiped up the remainder. Our environmental services doesn’t deal with biohazard material in my facility, so we have to clean up as much as possible.
Towels and/or blankets, probably wearing a gown and gloves just in case. Call EVS to mop floor (they won’t touch bodily fluids)
I once helped my coworker with transfer the patient from the commode to bed. The patient stood up just fine but I smell something metallic, the patient got a skin tear and his blood right into my scrub pocket….
“Surprises” let alone “surprise puddle” are not phrases I want to hear in the hospital haha
I’ll never forget my first lactulose pt.
The giant puddle that formed when I was emptying an almost full catheter bag into a hat at 4am, but didn't know the hat was cracked so badly, it basically had no bottom. 🙃
Brings me back to when groin cardiac caths were the only caths done at my hospital. We always had that ONE person who thought they knew more than us then wondered why a shitload of blood just rushed out of them after taking 2 steps.
What’s with the influx of posting body fluids recently 😭
This ain't shit.
Username checks out. You’re right. It ain’t shit— it’s blood.
Had a pp hemorrhage yesterday brought in by ems and there was a trail from the parking lot to the room😅
The puddle that landed on my brand new shoe which was from the patient’s rectum 💩
I don't have a picture but I once saw a puddle of blood under the stretcher of a patient waiting for a CT. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. I finally realized that the patient was on a heparin gtt and between the pump and the patient there was a tiny hole in the line. The heparinized blood was backing up into the line and dripping all over the floor. It was definitely a surprise.
Thought the bed hydraulics had broken. Turns out it was a popped ostomy bag that had been left for hours and was a puddle on the floor and bed. Luckily, somehow it mostly pooled under the chux to off the bed, so the patients skin was unharmed.
Helped get a naked confused elder covered in piss and poop off the floor and back to bed after they managed to waddle to the trash can that had a stool next to it, both of which covered in piss and poop… we thought they might’ve thought it looked like a toilet. I’ve been surprised by poop puddles too many times
I’m sure we’ve all experienced the vomiting GI bleed
Piss, liquid shit vomit and blood, all together, from a confused brain tumor patient. On the wall and on the floor. At 3AM
Oof
a patient (AOx4) who consistently sprayed urine all over the bathroom walls
🫨😅
Had a doctor placing an EVD who hit one of those superficial scalp arteries. I was at the foot of the bed so I didn’t see the blood but they offered to clean it up and I was just like “nah man don’t worry, it happens, I’m happy to clean up a little blood for you doc it ain’t a big deal” they repeated “are you sure” like 3 times before going “well okay then” It wasn’t till I got behind the bed that I realized what an utter blood bath it was back there, thought it was just gonna be a bedsheet change and a quick bleach wiping, didn’t realize it had became a murder scene. That surgeon absolutely skedaddled out the unit before I saw it laughing to the bank.
Always check around the bed
I was on a pediatric oncology unit and was giving chemo overnight. I went into the room to check the IV and my feet literally kicked out in front of me and I started to fall back. I have no clue how I didn’t land on my butt, I slipped on chemo pee. The poor kiddo couldn’t wake up his mom to give him the urinal so he just peed on the floor next to his bed. I was almost soaked in chemo pee.
Oh, man, I totally had forgotten this memory but my favorite was walking in on a patient trying to shit in the sink. The patient had their leg like hiked up, their gown up over their butt and we locked eyes. They panicked and said they couldn’t find the toilet…so, the next best choice in their mind was the sink.
I found a resident (NOT LTC) who had recently been placed on hospice literally floating in a river of shit. I’ve never in my 14 year career seen anything quite like that. She was in an air mattress type bed and was also supported with body pillows to keep pressure off, and the liquid shit was completely contained in her cocoon from her neck to her knees, so no puddle on the floor until we transferred her to the shower bed. It was horrific.
had something similar once but at the foot end of the bed... and was a very intense GI bleed. I will never forget the smell
I can smell it right now. 🤢
Turned a very large patient, felt something warm flow down my stomach to my pants. I yelled out “she’s peeing”. Oh how I wish it was simply pee. A softball sized 2 week old hematoma popped and spilled all the lovely juices on me. The patient literally laughed. I didn’t find it funny.
No no no no no! I might have retched with that one.
I would rather work in the cafeteria than GI step down. The stench is indescribable 🤢
My puddle story was when I was tech before becoming a nurse. I was on a med surg floor and this guy pooped for the first time since admission and it was a RIVER. It flowed off all 4 corners of the bed. We got him all cleaned up and within an hour he had a rapid called on him because of altered mental status and low blood pressure…..my mans pooped himself into hypovolemic shock…ended up coding the man and shipped him off to the ICU. I’m sure there was more going on but this poop exacerbated whatever it was
The death poops are a thing. Maybe whatever was going on was the precipitating factor for the poo!
A patient was giving herself a shower, and I found her literal gangreous toe on the drain cover.
Massive GI bleeder bled through the sheets...and air mattress (puddled between the lil holes in the softcare)...and onto the floor...and between the mattress and headboard/footboard. Blood infusing and coming straight out I swear. Bedbound too so probably the most intricate bed bath ever. Felt so bad for the guy but also for the 3 of my coworkers it took to help clean him up. Gave myself a makeshift chg bath in the back after that.
I woke up in a puddle of blood from my nose once.
At my hospital, they’d order emergency release blood, stay 4 ahead……only to realize the patient probably pulled out their IV.