Doctors and nurses work day in and day out saving peoples lives, the job seems fast-paced, exciting, and full of adoring patients and their families thank you for all your wonderful work, right? Maybe in a parallel universe. The truth is, hospital staff work super long hours, back to back shifts, and see some of the most disgusting stuff on the entire planet. They deal with horrid smells, rude patients, and the infections that literally make them want to throw up, but through all that, they grin and bear it, and can still have you to have a nice day.
Now some hospital staff members have chosen to come clean about some of the worst parts of the job. They're talking about the sticky, the smelly, and the downright disgusting parts of being a lifesaver, so read these stories and make sure you buy your next doctor a thank you card! (and maybe some wine.).
"A person thought that pouring Lysol on their diabetic foot-ulcer would keep it from getting infected."
"An obese women came back to the hospital after an abdominal operation, because her staples had ripped off, and she didn’t notice (!?!).
She now had a huge v-shape gash at least 2 inches deep from her pubis to the diaphragm. We had to clean that gash a couple of times a day.
The first student that went into the room fainted at the site of it, so our teacher asked me to do it (I had the reputation of being tough).
Imagine a small yellow and green river coming out of her each time she moved. The smell was so horrible that we had to open the window and close the door.
Sadly, that poor woman died of the infection a couple of days later."
"A patient’s extended family physically stopped us from resuscitating a completely limp and unresponsive newborn because helping it breathe, ‘isn’t natural. Labor is natural and requires no intervention.’
Baby eventually and slowly perked up about 15 minutes later.
Needless to say, I don’t expect this baby to go to Harvard."
"I had a homeless patient come into the dermatology clinic. He had a filthy bed sheet wrapped around his head, with only part of the left side of his face and left eye exposed.
You could see the rancid stink coming off of his head.
We got him in the exam room and unwrapped his noggin. Turns out he had a basal cell carcinoma (skin cancer) for which he had refused treatment, for like 15 years.
The cancer had eaten away all of the skin on most of his head. There were very large areas of muscle and bone exposed.
The tumor had eaten into his skull and you could see into his skull as well as his sinuses. His right ear was long gone.
I could watch his muscles move and contract while he spoke. It was literally like watching something from The Walking Dead, except there was no sign of infection or maggots or anything else horrible.
As it was literally a living, dissected skull talking to us like it was totally normal.
It was simultaneously horrifying and amazing to see."
"Walked into the back room with two patients with CP (cerebral palsy). Another client was in the back with FEMA and mentally disabled.
FEMA client was eating one of the CP clients’ face off.
Blood everywhere and the screaming is enough to stick in my mind forever.
1/4 of her face was missing after that."
"Bok choy in an adult male’s ass.
Insisted it just, ‘slipped in.’
Removed it, and it had a condom on it."
"A story about a quadriplegic guy who just had an operation. My teacher, another student, and I were taking care of it.
The teacher took a washcloth and decided to clean his face, and that’s when it happened.
The guy started to eat the washcloth. Yes, eat it.
The more he would eat it, the more he would start to choke on it.
The other student panicked. My teacher was pulling on the washcloth with her 2 hands and her knee on the bed to get some grip.
Nothing…
The guy was still eating it and choking. So I had, probably the best idea in my life, and I block his nostrils with my hand.
He couldn’t breathe, so he let go of the washcloth.
The 3 of us were shaking, sweating and swearing to never put a washcloth near the mouth of someone who just came back from surgery.
The funny thing is that I talked to the guy a couple of days later, and he didn’t remember a thing."
"Probably the most disgusting time of your medical school career will be your obstetrics and gynecology rotation.
You can expect on a daily basis to be splattered with blood/amniotic fluid mixtures, and on a slightly less frequent basis to be covered in vomit, urine, and poop.
For me, the worst was assisting with C-sections. Mostly as the med student, it would be your job to hold the retractor, which means standing there and pulling on a big metal thing and staying perfectly still.
Once they cut into the uterus, the amniotic fluid and blood all spills out all over your hands and arms and drips onto your gown and down to your feet.
It’s warm and there’s a lot of it and you can feel it through your gloves, but you can’t move.
That’s not really a special occurrence. It’s literally every day for the whole month (or more if you decide you like it of course).
"Walked in on a woman blowing her husband.
She had just delivered a baby 2 hours prior, who was in the NICU.
If my hubby had asked me to do that even a week after having our baby, I would have punched him in his dick-hole."
"The worst day on the job was being the nurse for a pregnant woman who was due the same week as me…
I was in the room when the doctor told her that there wasn’t a heartbeat anymore. I sat with her while she cried.
Her boyfriend didn’t answer her calls.
She was hospitalized for an infection and I visited her after my shift. I felt so awful that she had to go through that alone.
And I later found out that my baby had trisomy 13 and had an abortion.
I felt guilty for watching a woman cry over what she couldn’t control and then opting out of a wanted, albeit flawed, pregnancy."
"My dad is an ER doctor. Early in his career, he had a big, burly truck driver come into the emergency room and flat out say, ‘Doc I’ve got a dildo in my ass you’ve gotta get it out.’
So, my dad takes him into a room with a nurse accompanying him, has the guy bend over and grab the exam table, and my dad tells the nurse to duck when he says so.
He grabs hold of the end of the dildo with those gator clamp things, and straight yanks it out as hard as he can.
The nurse behind him never ducked, and a splurge of blood and shit hits her, full-frontal.
My dad said the nurse ran out screaming, leaving behind a perfect silhouette against the wall while the dildo flopped around the floor, still vibrating."
"A lady pooped while pushing but didn’t know it.
She boldly yelled out ‘Okay, who farted?!’
That’s awkward."
"One day a lady came in complaining that she was having a lot of pain inside her vagina.
So my friend’s aunt went to check what the pain was and ended up pulling out underwear out of her vagina.
Like how the fuck does someone get underwear stuck in their vagina and not know about it?"
"Had a nursing student accidentally stand in the line of fire during a colonoscopy."
"There was a guy at 4 a.m. who crashed his car through the gate at the parking lot across the street from the hospital.
Shot his way through a door with a shotgun, made his way up to the cardiac floor, and threatened to shoot a nurse in front of a patient if she did not perform oral.
He then proceeded to shoot himself in the head in the room."
"Here is a list of things I’ve removed from people’s rectums:
-A 750 mL wine bottle, empty.
-Jar of Pace Picante Sauce, half full.
-Grenade
-Nerf football
-Quick drying concrete
-Hot wheels
-Dildos, dildos, dildos
-A smorgasbord of various vegetables and fruit.
-Tennis ball
-Hamster
-Barbie doll
-Cell phone
-Several pistols
-Pounds of cocaine and heroin
-And my personal favorite: a Nike Pegasus running shoe"
"My grandmother was a nurse:
Before Roe v Wade, women used to come in all the time butchered up and bleeding. From coat hangers, too.
A guy with diabetic gangrene on his legs started seizing. She held a leg, and it came off in her hands.
She helped deliver a 15-month-old fetus – in pieces.
A homeless woman with maggots coming out of her vagina."
"Guy comes into the ER and demands to be seen but refuses to tell anyone why.
No one would take him in the back until he did.
So, he douses himself with lighter fluid and lights himself on fire."
"My grandmother was a nurse:
Before Roe v Wade, women used to come in all the time butchered up and bleeding. From coat hangers, too.
A guy with diabetic gangrene on his legs started seizing. She held a leg, and it came off in her hands.
She helped deliver a 15-month-old fetus – in pieces.
A homeless woman with maggots coming out of her vagina."
"Guy comes into the ER and demands to be seen but refuses to tell anyone why.
No one would take him in the back until he did.
So, he douses himself with lighter fluid and lights himself on fire."
