CPE III - Poo Stories

Every nurse that has worked in the hospital for a while has poo stories.  I didn't have a poo story of my own... until now.  Should I be celebrating?  Heck no!  I should have stayed far away from the realm of the poo story.  Far, far away.

You have been warned.  Never try to gain a poo story of your own.  It is very unpleasant  :P

So I arrive on the ward and I haven't even sat down yet to take report when someone approaches me about a patient needing to use the toilet.

No problem, I get another nurse to help me and we use a lift to put the patient onto a commode chair.  The goal was to move the commode chair over the toilet so that we can conveniently flush the contents away.

No such luck.

I bend down to shift the lift out from under the person's feet and I notice teensy poo-like drips on the floor.  I start to get up to tell the other nurse when  SCHLOOMPH!

Yep, it looked like someone had emptied their entire bowels on the floor.  And it kept coming.

I looked at the other nurse and she had a look of complete horror on her face.  She looked at me and I bet I had eyeballs the size of saucers.  We stood there in shock for a moment and then exited quickly.  I followed her lead and put on a mask.

Luckily, we already had yellow gowns on and gloves.  Then she ran and got a garbage bag and some blue pads and passed them to me.  I groaned inwardly.

We moved the patient out of the way and I had the most unpleasant task of cleaning the mess up.  I put a blue pad on top and shaped that mess into a maneuverable pile.  Blue pad by blue pad, the pile got smaller.  Then I used Cavi-wipes to disinfect the floor.

It was the most horrible experience of my life.

Other Unfortunate Nurses
I wasn't the only person that week that gained a new poo story.  One nurse was cleaning a patient when the patient had sudden, explosive diarrhea.  Her whole arm up to her elbow got covered.

Another nurse witnessed the horror of a (confused?) patient slowly collecting and eating boogers off their fingertips.

Another nurse came into a patient's room after giving them a bed pan and found that they had painted their whole bed with poo.  Not surprisingly, the other patients in the room who had just been delivered their food trays suddenly lost their appetite from the overwhelming new odors.

Long Live Odor Gon
I was like the Odor Gon fairy those days.  I flitted about from room to room to hallway to hallway spritzing Odor Gon to dispel the odors.  I am so thankful that these air fresheners work so quickly to get rid of smells.

The Joys(?) of Nursing
Well, now that I have ruined your appetite too.  Are you sure you still want to be a nurse?  I know I have asked myself that many times now.

For me, the poo stories are horrible, but they bring to light just how much crap (literally) nurses go through to help you get better and heal.  The person who had asked me to toilet the patient came up to me afterwards and thanked me for helping the patient.  "No one should ever have to go through what you just did, " she said.  "God bless you."

It didn't erase the horror of the what I just experienced, but it did bring me back down to reality and give me a sense of gratitude towards that person for what she had said.  It was nice.

In hindsight, if I ever use a commode to move a patient, I'm going to put a tray under the chair JUST IN CASE!  Yeah...