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While dealing with infections, gross fluids e.t.c is disgusting enough. The following stories told by doctors and nurses themselves prove that they deserve a lot more appreciation than they get.
A quick warning though as I do not recommend reading any of these while you are eating or are going to eat soon. Trust me, I made that mistake, and it is not recommended. Now, let’s jump into it shall we?
A person thought 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 opened 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 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 choi 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.
