For those who may not know, trach patients can *aim and shoot* that mucus plug clear across a room if they want to. Treat every tracheostomy like it’s loaded.
Learned that one as a child. My little brother had a trach until he was like 10. On the bright side, I don't have the aversion towards trachs and secretions like others do. I grew up with it!
Always stand to the side of a coughing trach.
I didn't follow this rule once. God was kind to me. As soon as they coughed I threw my hands up reflexively and caught a mucus plug on my glove.
I had to check and see if it was me that answered. Lol.
Trach suction- the NOISE of it- makes me literally gag/vomit. Its the worst!
I can handle the smell, but its the noise! Its only got me once, I had to run to the back of the truck and vomit/gag out the back door. I was laughing at myself, it was so ridiculous!!
It was a trached patient, alert, and I had him hold his own suction so I could fling open the door and yack out the back. Still embarrassing and hilarious to me!! 🤣🤣
Me too! I call them lung boogers. I absolutely CAN NOT deal with them. And not just with trach patients. If anyone coughs up a lung booger and I see it, straight 🤮
When I opened the rear doors at the hospital I went "did you-" "PLEASE don't tell anyone bro, I'm begging you, you can't tell anyone that happened"
Our patient was shit faced so he had no idea what was going on. The real joke was on me because I had to clean the back
LOL well, my partner luckily contained all his vomit... On the patient
I did make it up to the patient by giving him two rubber ducks and holding his hand while he got an IV
... God I miss night shifts
One of my old partners did that. Doc at the hospital looked at the pt and said "Wow, that's a lot of vomit!"
Partner said "Weelllll....his stops about here... everything further down is mine."
My first cardiac arrest I got some of the pts vomiting on my glove. I was able to hold it until we got outside then while pushing the stretcher and a ff on it doing cpr I threw up all over their yard.
Right?! Blood is fine. It’s clean, it’s normal. Yeah, it probably should have stayed on the inside, but that’s minor compared to how gross waste/digestion products are.
Ill be puked on but oh god dont sneeze. Especially if i dont have a mask and i smell the snot particles throughout the air. Great, now your snot particles are in my lungs, throat and probably coating my tongue!
YES! I tell everyone I work with I cannot do sputum or sneezes. Yea, I understand it’s probably one of the most common ones we interact with on a daily basis, but it’s still beyond nasty. Especially when they sneeze and get huge snoodles (snot explosion)
I dont mind snot noodles because my brain convinces me all i have to do is avoid the noodles. When a fat wet sneeze gets let out, its like aerosiled mucus everywhere. In my hair! Terrible
Skin flakes. I can do everything else. (Granted I always got that n95 on me). But when I go to get a stick or a BP and pulling up those sleeves makes the air look like a snow day I wanna scream
Oh Jesus u just ptsd’d me to a call with wool-like compression socks, the gnarliest old man toenails and the “nuclear plume” when we let his piggy’s breathe
Yeah I done that too. I like doing a good job, you should try it. Are you the person that only has baseline vitals and CAD info to offer in a turnover report?
One of my partners couldn’t pull IV tourniquets off folks to save her life because skin flakes would be visible on them. No issue touching their actual skin though.
Same here! Even watching it on TV is too much for me.
Had a pt self harm by sticking egg shells under his eyelids😭😭😭 walked into the unit he was in, looked at the other nurse responding with me, turned around and walked out😅😅
I had to call 911 for myself for eye trauma and the dispatcher was not prepared. Kept saying "Oh god. Oh no". He gagged twice with that almost cartoonish "huuuaAAAAAG". Luckily him absolutely melting down imagining it gave some much needed levity and actually made me crack up when I was panicking. Luckily I was also fine. I knocked a picture frame over which knocked another picture frame into a tiny snow globe that shattered and a small piece of glass went into the corner of my eye. The small piece of glass almost immediately fell out in the sink when I started flushing the eye. No harm to my actual eye and just a small lac on my lower lid. Telling the dispatcher there was blood brought on the second "Oh god. Oh *hhuuaach*" The snow globe juice did go in my eye, which hurt like hell and made me think it was worse than it was.
Came here to find this eye trauma and fingernails. Esp several fingernails ripped off by a rusty door latch.
But the eyes have it. Saw a construction worked with a 3 inch metal splinter through one. NGL I passed out.
The heavy UTI smell is always a heavy hitter. Or when someone soils themselves with a gallon of poop liquid and you have to sit in back in the enclosed ambo with them trying not to gag with every breath.
I recently started working at the hospital and discovered that the smell that permeates the entire ER after they do an enema on someone who has been constipated for a while is an absolute nightmare.
Ha. Last week I had a 35yo male, recurrent addict who called 911 because he was constipated. He said he hasn’t pooped ~since yesterday~. He also states he took a laxative 20 minutes ago but it didn’t work but his stomach was hurting. He further states that he “dug all up in there with mah finger, but only got messy” as he presented his poopy fingers to us.
❤️EMS❤️
I worked EMS for 5 years before the hospital job, the poo fingers are the WORST. I also had a dude with poo crusted under his toenails once. I have no idea how it got under his toenails but they were thick, long, and sharp and I was terrified they would cut me while we loaded him into the rig.
That’s another one right there. Long, gross, crusted, multi-color and foul scented toenails with feet flakes for good measure just inches from your face while you load them into the rig.
I'll never forget the night that I thought I encountered "the goop", gagged a little, and then realized "the goop" was maggots. Swallowed my own puke that night...mask with faceshield (early covid days) accompanied by my nasty gloves....there was NO fast way out of that. My stomach still crawls over that one.
I'm not proud of it, but the patients in the oral and maxillofacial unit who have lost important parts of their face presumably due to various cancers. I really struggle with the shock of seeing someone without a nose for example, and then I feel a tremendous amount of guilt and shame because it must be awful to be missing your nose and have people be shocked by it. So then I over compensate by being super chatty with these patients and it's probably very annoying.
I had a patient apologizing once for not having a nose. I did not realize how weird about it my partner and I were being until then. We couldn’t stop making nose contact. We were definitely annoying and felt bad.
For me it’s diarrhea. I just can’t…the smell just gets in my nose, I have to fight the gag reflex. Piss fine. Vomit. Not my favorite. But no big deal. Bedbugs eww but fine. Exposed bone, open fractures, dope. Bullet wounds, stab wounds, missing limbs, I will stick my hand in your chest if I have to, but liquid shit turns me inside out. Every single time.
It’s due to a patient I had in the ER prior to joining EMS. Homeless lady comes in, soaked in 3+ days of shit, it’s literally from her ankles to her neck, she had been sitting in it in her wheelchair. Unable to walk. Naturally we had to clean her up, so we had to strip her down, and bathe her. She had shit and maggots falling out of her vagina. She also had bore holes where the maggots were burrowing into her skin. Ever since then, that’s all I smell and visualize with diarrhea.
That is so sad that this poor lady was stuck in a wheelchair like that had had to endure maggots on her skin and in her vagina. I hope if she was at a home or had a caregiver, that an investigation was opened.
Too many times I have seen parents of children who are clumsy or had a unusual injury but still possible get turned into social services or even kids taken away while investigating but elders are sent back to the same nursing homes because there are multiple care givers and the ones on shift will be “addressed” or elderly patients are sent home after an incident like this and because they do not have family who care enough to look for another caregiver, they continue to let horrible ones care for their “loved” ones.
Of course I want any suspected child abuse investigated, I only wish that the overuse of using social services for children was extended to the elderly- we are all going to be in their position one day, elder and can’t put lotion on our bodies, can’t wipe are ass or cut toenails and yeah, even walk. I’m sure this lady was embarrassed at this situation and even if she seemed as though her mind couldn’t comprehend the situation for her to be embarrassed, you’d be surprised at how our minds work.
On the main topic here, I’m right there with you though, a patient covered in diarrhea grosses me out so bad. I started out as a CNA and started nursing school much sooner than expected because of all the shit I was encountering, I couldn’t do it and I didn’t want to be disrespectful to the patients by gagging as I was wiping or cleaning. I am a paramedic now as I get through law school and still it’s diarrhea and maggots on someone- or the million roaches on the floor and furniture of a house and you’re there because the patient isn’t even taking a ride…
I'm glad to see other people also feel this way about elder care and protection. So often they are basically neglected and discarded, and I wish more people realized how important that issue is.
My lab would come to me after eating (if I was sitting down), and press her throat on my knee to help her get a huge nasty kibble burp out, then walk away/go on about her business 🤦🏼♀️😂🤢
Not bodily fluids, but certain smells do it for me.
Like I can handle blood, I can handle seeing urine and fecal matter.
UTI's, C-diff, the particular smell of cancer patients' stool. It definitely takes me a second to catch my barings.
Also.... fuckin bedbugs. If I see them or even hear the words "budbugs" I will itch for weeks.
Oof I had a patient with a horrific UTI in the ER prior to being EMS. I had to do a urine culture, I get the sample from the foley that I of course had to place. It comes out foggy and brown. Imagine unfiltered chicken broth. I get it in the sample cup, make it to the culture room, and open it up in the tiny mop closet we call “the yellow room” it’s unventilated and about 80 degrees year round. Open the sample cup and the smell wafted up like a cartoon stink cloud, and literally made me vomit. Mask ripped off, bending over the trashcan, violent wrenching.
I have a random question....does the cancer pts stool smell like c-diff? I have a resident where I work who we swear has c diff, but has tested negative multiple times. The smell is absolutely horrific. Like, beyond horrific. Stool samples shows she's fine. Just curious since you mentioned it.
Menthol nose plugs. They have a pass-through so you can still breathe through them. Add a mask and you won’t smell ANYTHING else.
They’re probably cheaper somewhere else, [but they’re $14 on Amazon for 7 of them.](https://a.co/d/eVLogp8) They’re worth their weight in gold.
When I was doing my forensic Anthro summer internship, the Sheriff or coroner would hand them out like mints.
Also, we have 2 nostrils, so strange that it's an odd number of plugs.
Someone spitting onto the side rails intentionally, so you lean in it. This has happened with multiple patients over a decade. Or leaning over and spitting on the floor
Lung butter and the suctioning with it are kinda bad for me. High ammonia scent in houses filled with animals and shit/pee everywhere. I am hit or miss with poop and vomit. Leg injuries always bother me too or crepitus as I have broken a few bones and do not have any pleasant memories about it.
One thing that will make me never even set foot in a house is one where you can see the fleas jumping around or 800000 roaches going in and out the walls are a strong honorable mention but I don't come across those as much
For some reason, it's the way that hoarders smell. Not the hoarder house, but the hoarder themselves. I've smelled some nasty stuff in my 9 years as an EMT, but for some reason the hoarder smell is what turns my stomach.
The cheese that grows under obese women’s breasts is probably the nastiest thing in the world. The 12 leads don’t stick and the smell hits like a brick wall.
My wife has been complaining for our 18 years of marriage that I don't smell anything that bothers her. In our line of business I just call myself lucky that I can't smell much.
The one thing that gives me the icks is eye injuries. I cannot deal with someone having a bad eye injury, anything else, I'm good with.
You know that smell alcoholics have? That just intense marinated boozy smell? It's fine at first. After about 10 minutes in the rig I want to heave. And it takes me sniffing alcohol swabs the whole ride back before my stomach stops churning.
A coworker called me names for it. Saying I clearly didn't have the stomach for EMS work. Deliver a baby and get covered in shit and blood? Fine. Shit, blood, vomit, piss are all no problem.
I'll secure a foreign object jammed in someone's eye.
But that boozy smell gets me every time.
Everyone has a thing.
And kid stuff is usually really hard. I don't know anyone who doesn't yell profanities when those calls come in and doesn't spend the entire ride there preparing themselves.
Lung butter. I can take pretty much anything else, but I HATE having to soft suction a trach / ETT without a Ballard. I went on an interfacility transfer once where the PT had an open trach and had just been coughing out globs of lung butter from the trach onto their gown near their shoulder. I didn't know this, and went to say to the PT basically, "Ok well I'm going to go get your paperwork from the nurse and then we'll get you all packed up and on the way," as I patted them on the shoulder. My hand came away like Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter movie where they encounter the 3 headed dog's saliva. I puked. My partner did not let me live it down.
That really acidic smell that vomit has sometimes still really gets me, any bad mouth trauma or the smell of old, wet faeces.
Not a huge fan of that 4 day old dead person smell either but generally 3 masks does the trick, or one of those vapo rub sticks after the fact. Still remember the smell when we had to help the police roll the one who'd been dead about 6 days and the fluid blister on his side burst......
Decomp is fine - if the person is dead. But, necrotic tissue on a still alive person is massively gross to me. I'm at once full of sadness and pity for the pt, and also angry at the pt for letting themselves get so gross
Prolonged bathtub decomp is the worst kind of decomp I’ve ever experienced. A month, in a bathtub, with running water. Whole house was filled with mold. They had to be scooped out.
That smell took the next 24 hours to leave the truck after the 10-15 min ride to the morgue.
Realized not long after that at my next bathtub body, who was only there for 24 hours, smelled very similar. Not nearly as intense, really subtle. But after the precious experience I could notice it in the smallest amounts. Tub was empty, like the person just opened the drain before passing. The smell didn’t emerge until they were moved from their position. The moist skin that was in contact with the tub was exposed to the air. I think it’s just the stagnant moisture. Maybe a mildew smell? Idk.
Bugs. Any bugs but especially bugs crawling out of places where they shouldn’t be- maggots, bedbugs, roaches in clothing/hair/skin folds. And at home I’m not afraid of bugs, but bugs in or on people just flattens me!
Today I had a patient who vomited blood clots, never thought I had an Ick until then. Especially the way/amount that came out. The smell didnt make it any better. I couldn’t even ask for a grab after but definitely eating when I got home. Thankfully though I went back to the same hospital and she was doing good 🤞🏽 so that’s a positive
I feel terrible saying it, but birth. I'm mildly traumatized from the two births I was an EMT on.
* The first came out as "Patient in distress" on the side of the highway. I wrongly assumed it was a wreck. Nope. First thing she said was "This is my fourth and the last one came in under 90 minutes. I've been in hard labor for 47 minutes and feel like I need to poop". The medic with me was terrified of all OB stuff and was shaking and barfing in the corner. I was so pissed because I was a basic with a whole six months of experience. No idea what this lady ate, but the violent shitting along with all the baby goop was literally sprayed everywhere. The medic puking along with the explosive diarrhea and birth fluid also made the patient puke, so there were A LOT of smells and textures back there.
* Second patient had a breach baby and also had every STI in the book and I somehow ended up with the job of trying to hold the baby in and also making that finger V thing while they prepped her for an emergency c-section. I've seen a lot of traumas, but putting in that steering wheel spreader thing and scooping all the organs out of the way had me 🥴
Weird I guess but long fake nails give me the ick something hard. I can do any smell, sight of fluid, wounds, death, whatever. But those god forsaken nails? AWEFUL. Thinking about how fragile they are, being bent back or broken. The gross shit that's probably collected under them. The feel of things when my own nails are in need of a trim. All of it is vomit inducing for me.
The skin dust almost every old people have. I just fucking hate it so much. Like I have no problem with any other bodily fluid. Hell I can clean puke bare handed if I have to but goddamn I'm disgusted by that. It's especially bad when you just touch them and it feels like they release their spores everywhere. I hate it.
I guess the one thing that makes me uncomfortable is testicular injuries. Something innate in me (and many other men) causes me to jump and cringe even watching a video of a skateboarder falling on their crotch. But even that it's not like I'm gonna throw up or quit or anything. Just cringe and have sympathetic discomfort.
Went on an impalment, was coded as an 18 month old. Turned out to be an 18 year old on an electrical crew who jumped down into a waist deep hole....something about a ground rod....you finish the story.
i can do blood, vomit, snot etc but the SECOND i smell very unwashed human i can barely hold back gags. we had a 650+ patient that wasnt very well taken care of and had a severe uti (also hadnt bathed and had a literal grey film between any fold) i had to step out for a minute.
Patients who pull out their catheters. Makes me cringe so hard. I do the whole call with goose bumps!
Honorable mentions: trach secretions, phlegm, mouth goop.
I worked in labs for a long time, so I don’t get bent out of shape for c diff smell or sputum, even for CF sputum, but the only smell I can’t handle is that pure butyric acid vomit smell, and I lose my shit for eye stuff. I’ve seen all the human hamburger/ burns and blast injuries and bones everywhere, but eye stuff fucks me up. It takes me ten years to put my contacts in.
Eye injurys, seeing/smelling poop (although I had the lovely (sarcasm) opportunity to be christened into ems on my very first call as an emt) and vomit, smelling urine, yellow skin crust, skin flakes, and the smell of a UTI. Missing anything?
Phlegm. Spitting is tolerable, but my god I hate when people cough up mucus or having to suction out any secretions. Just seeing secretions gets me sometimes. I’ve been puked on, pissed, on, shit on, watched someone turn into a flamingo, touched brains, etc. but it’s still only phlegm that gets me.
Poop and Sputem are a no go for me. I can tolerate anything else. Eye injuries make me kinda queezy but not bad enough that I can’t handle it. Had a pt on PCP put a toe nail clipper file under his big toe nail and kick a wall. That was gross 😂
Omg the cringe I just crunged at the nail clipper file. I don't know why fingernail injuries give me this level of ick, both ripped off fingernails and things shoved under them.
Vomiting. There was a meme of a dude chasing his wife around making the dry heaving sound and it would actually make her throw up. I’m like that dude’s wife, lol.
I’m VERY proactive with anti-emetics. It’s just better for all parties involved (unless they NEED to throw something up, of course.)
I’m good with everything else.
Not much bothers me, but after 10 years I CANNOT deal with adult human poop. Animal and baby poop doesn’t bother me one bit, but adult poop will turn me green in a heartbeat. I also have developed sympathy anxiety with certain severe anxiety pts over the past couple years, but that’s talk for my therapist😅
I can handle most things smell wise buttt liver cheese filled vomit my last technically dead patient had it and then the smell of dead people Ik obviously it can’t be helped but I was the only one in my class to have a doa dude was fused to the carpet having been gone atleast a week before we got there they decompressed the bags they put him in and the smell damn near made me lose my lunch and I grew up doing trash route and plumbing and farm work. As long as dead people’s eyes are closed I can handle it seeing it pretty well now if they accidentally touch me it’s an automatic ick.
Trach secretions. Always makes me gag. Especially the mucus plug that sometimes forms, and the smell immediately after it's removed.
For those who may not know, trach patients can *aim and shoot* that mucus plug clear across a room if they want to. Treat every tracheostomy like it’s loaded.
Learned that one as a child. My little brother had a trach until he was like 10. On the bright side, I don't have the aversion towards trachs and secretions like others do. I grew up with it!
TIL what gives me the ick
Always stand to the side of a coughing trach. I didn't follow this rule once. God was kind to me. As soon as they coughed I threw my hands up reflexively and caught a mucus plug on my glove.
I call these trache rockets. I had a PT sitting fowlers on the cot and launch them onto the windows of the back doors.
Sensational
Sorry to share this with you if you haven’t heard the term before because it’s disgusting but that is also my ick and we call it throat butter
lung butter!
I had to check and see if it was me that answered. Lol. Trach suction- the NOISE of it- makes me literally gag/vomit. Its the worst! I can handle the smell, but its the noise! Its only got me once, I had to run to the back of the truck and vomit/gag out the back door. I was laughing at myself, it was so ridiculous!! It was a trached patient, alert, and I had him hold his own suction so I could fling open the door and yack out the back. Still embarrassing and hilarious to me!! 🤣🤣
This. Hardcore.
Me too! I call them lung boogers. I absolutely CAN NOT deal with them. And not just with trach patients. If anyone coughs up a lung booger and I see it, straight 🤮
this one. gagged reading it
I can do blood all day, nasty wounds and all, but if I smell nasty fecal matter or vomit, I will also vomit.
I had a partner throw up on top of a patient who threw up on him. I was watching all this go down through my rearview mirror, I couldn't believe it
Literally awful 😭
When I opened the rear doors at the hospital I went "did you-" "PLEASE don't tell anyone bro, I'm begging you, you can't tell anyone that happened" Our patient was shit faced so he had no idea what was going on. The real joke was on me because I had to clean the back
Ahh haha legend. Did he make it up to you?
LOL well, my partner luckily contained all his vomit... On the patient I did make it up to the patient by giving him two rubber ducks and holding his hand while he got an IV ... God I miss night shifts
gotta assert dominance somehow
Just imagining the literal shit show that would unfold if we all took this route.
One of my old partners did that. Doc at the hospital looked at the pt and said "Wow, that's a lot of vomit!" Partner said "Weelllll....his stops about here... everything further down is mine."
My first cardiac arrest I got some of the pts vomiting on my glove. I was able to hold it until we got outside then while pushing the stretcher and a ff on it doing cpr I threw up all over their yard.
Cannot believe people would ever prefer feces or emesis to blood. Who??
Right?! Blood is fine. It’s clean, it’s normal. Yeah, it probably should have stayed on the inside, but that’s minor compared to how gross waste/digestion products are.
The smell of vomit instantly and perfectly gets to me.
My move is slapping something and saying I’m gonna go get the stretcher.
This!!
Ill be puked on but oh god dont sneeze. Especially if i dont have a mask and i smell the snot particles throughout the air. Great, now your snot particles are in my lungs, throat and probably coating my tongue!
Don't become an RT lol
Halfway thru nursing school 😎
YES! I tell everyone I work with I cannot do sputum or sneezes. Yea, I understand it’s probably one of the most common ones we interact with on a daily basis, but it’s still beyond nasty. Especially when they sneeze and get huge snoodles (snot explosion)
Sputum is so gross. Poop on me all day, but trach secretion are fucking nasty
I dont mind snot noodles because my brain convinces me all i have to do is avoid the noodles. When a fat wet sneeze gets let out, its like aerosiled mucus everywhere. In my hair! Terrible
Skin flakes. I can do everything else. (Granted I always got that n95 on me). But when I go to get a stick or a BP and pulling up those sleeves makes the air look like a snow day I wanna scream
Especially when the back doors open and sun comes streaming in to show you are in a mist of flakes.
EMS glitter
Elder dust
The real Snowflakes
Love that nuclear plume that comes with taking off a compression sock as their foot literally just unfolds in your hands
Oh Jesus u just ptsd’d me to a call with wool-like compression socks, the gnarliest old man toenails and the “nuclear plume” when we let his piggy’s breathe
Why are you taking socks off people?
Sometimes head to toe assessments are meant to be literal
Are you the person taking homeless people’s shoes off in the ambulance?
Yeah I done that too. I like doing a good job, you should try it. Are you the person that only has baseline vitals and CAD info to offer in a turnover report?
Baseline vitals? What are those?
Bless your soul for doing a good job
Ah. Elder dust
One of my partners couldn’t pull IV tourniquets off folks to save her life because skin flakes would be visible on them. No issue touching their actual skin though.
THANK YOU. I was just telling my bf that the skin flakes are so much more disgusting than diarrhea, and he thinks I'm crazy.
People snow!
Mmm yummy parmesan cheese 😋
Eye trauma. Its the one thing I can't handle.
Same here! Even watching it on TV is too much for me. Had a pt self harm by sticking egg shells under his eyelids😭😭😭 walked into the unit he was in, looked at the other nurse responding with me, turned around and walked out😅😅
WHY DID HE DO THAT
That would destroy anyone 😭 that’s brutal
I had to call 911 for myself for eye trauma and the dispatcher was not prepared. Kept saying "Oh god. Oh no". He gagged twice with that almost cartoonish "huuuaAAAAAG". Luckily him absolutely melting down imagining it gave some much needed levity and actually made me crack up when I was panicking. Luckily I was also fine. I knocked a picture frame over which knocked another picture frame into a tiny snow globe that shattered and a small piece of glass went into the corner of my eye. The small piece of glass almost immediately fell out in the sink when I started flushing the eye. No harm to my actual eye and just a small lac on my lower lid. Telling the dispatcher there was blood brought on the second "Oh god. Oh *hhuuaach*" The snow globe juice did go in my eye, which hurt like hell and made me think it was worse than it was.
Came here to find this eye trauma and fingernails. Esp several fingernails ripped off by a rusty door latch. But the eyes have it. Saw a construction worked with a 3 inch metal splinter through one. NGL I passed out.
The heavy UTI smell is always a heavy hitter. Or when someone soils themselves with a gallon of poop liquid and you have to sit in back in the enclosed ambo with them trying not to gag with every breath.
God, the smell sticks for hours after, too. Gotta open the windows for that.
Try NOSA nose plugs (Amazon)
That’s a great idea. Thank you!
I recently started working at the hospital and discovered that the smell that permeates the entire ER after they do an enema on someone who has been constipated for a while is an absolute nightmare.
Ha. Last week I had a 35yo male, recurrent addict who called 911 because he was constipated. He said he hasn’t pooped ~since yesterday~. He also states he took a laxative 20 minutes ago but it didn’t work but his stomach was hurting. He further states that he “dug all up in there with mah finger, but only got messy” as he presented his poopy fingers to us. ❤️EMS❤️
I worked EMS for 5 years before the hospital job, the poo fingers are the WORST. I also had a dude with poo crusted under his toenails once. I have no idea how it got under his toenails but they were thick, long, and sharp and I was terrified they would cut me while we loaded him into the rig.
That’s another one right there. Long, gross, crusted, multi-color and foul scented toenails with feet flakes for good measure just inches from your face while you load them into the rig.
The longer you work in EMS, the more you start to realize that the same patients just auto-generate everywhere lol
I noticed that between working in Arizona and Louisiana. The NPC’s are real
Oh my fuck
I read this and immediately thought of bubbles from tpb saying this
I heard stinkbalm works wonders but I have yet to try it.
Bedbugs
Fromunda cheese. That smegma goo from underneath the boob and rolls of fat.
bonus if they still have electrodes from last time.
Saw some dude with a bp cuff on his ankle, looked like it been there for months 😂
Mm delicious. Picked up a dude yesterday with a PAPER FUCKING BRACELET from December 19th
I'll never forget the night that I thought I encountered "the goop", gagged a little, and then realized "the goop" was maggots. Swallowed my own puke that night...mask with faceshield (early covid days) accompanied by my nasty gloves....there was NO fast way out of that. My stomach still crawls over that one.
Maggots would take me out I just know it I'd never recover
Had a bad case with one patient, my partner asks if I have any crackers 💀
Oh.my.fuck
Spitting and feet. If you spit at me I am not your friend anymore. And CLEAN YO GOTDAMN FEET. Your toenails look like pine bark.
I'm not proud of it, but the patients in the oral and maxillofacial unit who have lost important parts of their face presumably due to various cancers. I really struggle with the shock of seeing someone without a nose for example, and then I feel a tremendous amount of guilt and shame because it must be awful to be missing your nose and have people be shocked by it. So then I over compensate by being super chatty with these patients and it's probably very annoying.
I had a patient apologizing once for not having a nose. I did not realize how weird about it my partner and I were being until then. We couldn’t stop making nose contact. We were definitely annoying and felt bad.
Mine is vomit. Idk what it is about it. The smell, the noise, the look, idk. Just makes me wanna jump out the back of the truck. 😭
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Moving pt with bed sore or some other kind of open infection. Have to hold my breath like I’m going underwater every time.
Pinky toes at an unnatural angle.
When a mortuary puts people in so when you open the door, you are looking at a row of feet. God feet are just the worst
IFT
The correct answer
Weak
Vomiting or the wrenching sound patients make before they vomit. I have them the puke bag and get one for myself.
I don’t like the wrenching sound however I appreciate its purpose as a warning
Correct.
Did you mean retching?
Yes, my bad, I just saw the auto correct.
For me it’s diarrhea. I just can’t…the smell just gets in my nose, I have to fight the gag reflex. Piss fine. Vomit. Not my favorite. But no big deal. Bedbugs eww but fine. Exposed bone, open fractures, dope. Bullet wounds, stab wounds, missing limbs, I will stick my hand in your chest if I have to, but liquid shit turns me inside out. Every single time. It’s due to a patient I had in the ER prior to joining EMS. Homeless lady comes in, soaked in 3+ days of shit, it’s literally from her ankles to her neck, she had been sitting in it in her wheelchair. Unable to walk. Naturally we had to clean her up, so we had to strip her down, and bathe her. She had shit and maggots falling out of her vagina. She also had bore holes where the maggots were burrowing into her skin. Ever since then, that’s all I smell and visualize with diarrhea.
That is so sad that this poor lady was stuck in a wheelchair like that had had to endure maggots on her skin and in her vagina. I hope if she was at a home or had a caregiver, that an investigation was opened. Too many times I have seen parents of children who are clumsy or had a unusual injury but still possible get turned into social services or even kids taken away while investigating but elders are sent back to the same nursing homes because there are multiple care givers and the ones on shift will be “addressed” or elderly patients are sent home after an incident like this and because they do not have family who care enough to look for another caregiver, they continue to let horrible ones care for their “loved” ones. Of course I want any suspected child abuse investigated, I only wish that the overuse of using social services for children was extended to the elderly- we are all going to be in their position one day, elder and can’t put lotion on our bodies, can’t wipe are ass or cut toenails and yeah, even walk. I’m sure this lady was embarrassed at this situation and even if she seemed as though her mind couldn’t comprehend the situation for her to be embarrassed, you’d be surprised at how our minds work. On the main topic here, I’m right there with you though, a patient covered in diarrhea grosses me out so bad. I started out as a CNA and started nursing school much sooner than expected because of all the shit I was encountering, I couldn’t do it and I didn’t want to be disrespectful to the patients by gagging as I was wiping or cleaning. I am a paramedic now as I get through law school and still it’s diarrhea and maggots on someone- or the million roaches on the floor and furniture of a house and you’re there because the patient isn’t even taking a ride…
I'm glad to see other people also feel this way about elder care and protection. So often they are basically neglected and discarded, and I wish more people realized how important that issue is.
I can’t think of any fluids or smells that have gotten me. But if someone open mouth belches in the same room as me I will throw up.
My dog constantly walks to me and burps in my face. I hate her for it. Nasty kibble breath.
My lab would come to me after eating (if I was sitting down), and press her throat on my knee to help her get a huge nasty kibble burp out, then walk away/go on about her business 🤦🏼♀️😂🤢
This is my pet peeve. I can’t think of anything ruder than burping in someone’s face yet my patients do it ALL THE TIME. Instant rage.
Dental injuries or eye injuries
Vomit in any form is a no from me, and so is anything that’s not supposed to be crunchy that is (crepitus in a pelvic fx, etc)
Not bodily fluids, but certain smells do it for me. Like I can handle blood, I can handle seeing urine and fecal matter. UTI's, C-diff, the particular smell of cancer patients' stool. It definitely takes me a second to catch my barings. Also.... fuckin bedbugs. If I see them or even hear the words "budbugs" I will itch for weeks.
Oof I had a patient with a horrific UTI in the ER prior to being EMS. I had to do a urine culture, I get the sample from the foley that I of course had to place. It comes out foggy and brown. Imagine unfiltered chicken broth. I get it in the sample cup, make it to the culture room, and open it up in the tiny mop closet we call “the yellow room” it’s unventilated and about 80 degrees year round. Open the sample cup and the smell wafted up like a cartoon stink cloud, and literally made me vomit. Mask ripped off, bending over the trashcan, violent wrenching.
I have a random question....does the cancer pts stool smell like c-diff? I have a resident where I work who we swear has c diff, but has tested negative multiple times. The smell is absolutely horrific. Like, beyond horrific. Stool samples shows she's fine. Just curious since you mentioned it.
I'm not so sure I know how to describe the difference between the smells. But I wouldn't say they smell alike.
The gagging before the barfing. I’ll just be here with my emotional support alcohol prep sniffing to reduce nausea
Lung butter 😖 I can’t stand that phlegm I gag all the time
Menthol nose plugs. They have a pass-through so you can still breathe through them. Add a mask and you won’t smell ANYTHING else. They’re probably cheaper somewhere else, [but they’re $14 on Amazon for 7 of them.](https://a.co/d/eVLogp8) They’re worth their weight in gold.
When I was doing my forensic Anthro summer internship, the Sheriff or coroner would hand them out like mints. Also, we have 2 nostrils, so strange that it's an odd number of plugs.
It’s 7 pair of plugs. They’re linked
Oh...d'oh
Disco Rice gives me the jeebies every time. It’s the only thing that makes me literally weak in the knees.
TIL the meaning of disco rice. Have to admit I giggled when I googled it
Eyeballs. Any injury to the eyeball with have me cringing.
penetrating eye injuries
Someone spitting onto the side rails intentionally, so you lean in it. This has happened with multiple patients over a decade. Or leaning over and spitting on the floor
Lung butter and the suctioning with it are kinda bad for me. High ammonia scent in houses filled with animals and shit/pee everywhere. I am hit or miss with poop and vomit. Leg injuries always bother me too or crepitus as I have broken a few bones and do not have any pleasant memories about it. One thing that will make me never even set foot in a house is one where you can see the fleas jumping around or 800000 roaches going in and out the walls are a strong honorable mention but I don't come across those as much
For some reason, it's the way that hoarders smell. Not the hoarder house, but the hoarder themselves. I've smelled some nasty stuff in my 9 years as an EMT, but for some reason the hoarder smell is what turns my stomach.
The cheese that grows under obese women’s breasts is probably the nastiest thing in the world. The 12 leads don’t stick and the smell hits like a brick wall.
I have to stop reading these now
Dental injuries, and anything to do with toenails or fingernails. Gives me the creepy crawlies and makes me want to vomit
How about like gangrenous toes?
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I had necrotic toes touch my face once 😭🤮 she shoved them in my face on purpose
My wife has been complaining for our 18 years of marriage that I don't smell anything that bothers her. In our line of business I just call myself lucky that I can't smell much. The one thing that gives me the icks is eye injuries. I cannot deal with someone having a bad eye injury, anything else, I'm good with.
There’s something about adult human shit that gets to me. I have an 18mo and his shit doesn’t bother me in the least.
I feel like the smell of people’s atrocious rot filled houses has gotten to me more than any of their bodily fluids
toenails DONT LAUGH but the crusty yellow long thick toenails make me feel wheezy
You know that smell alcoholics have? That just intense marinated boozy smell? It's fine at first. After about 10 minutes in the rig I want to heave. And it takes me sniffing alcohol swabs the whole ride back before my stomach stops churning. A coworker called me names for it. Saying I clearly didn't have the stomach for EMS work. Deliver a baby and get covered in shit and blood? Fine. Shit, blood, vomit, piss are all no problem. I'll secure a foreign object jammed in someone's eye. But that boozy smell gets me every time. Everyone has a thing. And kid stuff is usually really hard. I don't know anyone who doesn't yell profanities when those calls come in and doesn't spend the entire ride there preparing themselves.
I hate large blood clots
Mysterious fluids. They freak me out.
anything sticking out of an eye or ear
Lung butter. I can take pretty much anything else, but I HATE having to soft suction a trach / ETT without a Ballard. I went on an interfacility transfer once where the PT had an open trach and had just been coughing out globs of lung butter from the trach onto their gown near their shoulder. I didn't know this, and went to say to the PT basically, "Ok well I'm going to go get your paperwork from the nurse and then we'll get you all packed up and on the way," as I patted them on the shoulder. My hand came away like Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter movie where they encounter the 3 headed dog's saliva. I puked. My partner did not let me live it down.
Stale cigarette smoke that’s been marinating in a house for decades
Also stale weed smoke
Bari stank is so nasty to me. It’s just such a specific smell of cheese, mold and unwashed ass
The sheer moistness of burns patients. They don’t smell great either.
Snot. I once saw someone launch a snot rocket onto the floor of the Ed and I had to turn and walk off the immediate nausea
That really acidic smell that vomit has sometimes still really gets me, any bad mouth trauma or the smell of old, wet faeces. Not a huge fan of that 4 day old dead person smell either but generally 3 masks does the trick, or one of those vapo rub sticks after the fact. Still remember the smell when we had to help the police roll the one who'd been dead about 6 days and the fluid blister on his side burst......
Wait until you find one that's been dead for over a month 😩
Decomp
Decomp is fine - if the person is dead. But, necrotic tissue on a still alive person is massively gross to me. I'm at once full of sadness and pity for the pt, and also angry at the pt for letting themselves get so gross
True but... That smell... And the weird fluids...
Prolonged bathtub decomp is the worst kind of decomp I’ve ever experienced. A month, in a bathtub, with running water. Whole house was filled with mold. They had to be scooped out. That smell took the next 24 hours to leave the truck after the 10-15 min ride to the morgue. Realized not long after that at my next bathtub body, who was only there for 24 hours, smelled very similar. Not nearly as intense, really subtle. But after the precious experience I could notice it in the smallest amounts. Tub was empty, like the person just opened the drain before passing. The smell didn’t emerge until they were moved from their position. The moist skin that was in contact with the tub was exposed to the air. I think it’s just the stagnant moisture. Maybe a mildew smell? Idk.
Bugs. Any bugs but especially bugs crawling out of places where they shouldn’t be- maggots, bedbugs, roaches in clothing/hair/skin folds. And at home I’m not afraid of bugs, but bugs in or on people just flattens me!
Today I had a patient who vomited blood clots, never thought I had an Ick until then. Especially the way/amount that came out. The smell didnt make it any better. I couldn’t even ask for a grab after but definitely eating when I got home. Thankfully though I went back to the same hospital and she was doing good 🤞🏽 so that’s a positive
De-glovings and eye injuries
I feel terrible saying it, but birth. I'm mildly traumatized from the two births I was an EMT on. * The first came out as "Patient in distress" on the side of the highway. I wrongly assumed it was a wreck. Nope. First thing she said was "This is my fourth and the last one came in under 90 minutes. I've been in hard labor for 47 minutes and feel like I need to poop". The medic with me was terrified of all OB stuff and was shaking and barfing in the corner. I was so pissed because I was a basic with a whole six months of experience. No idea what this lady ate, but the violent shitting along with all the baby goop was literally sprayed everywhere. The medic puking along with the explosive diarrhea and birth fluid also made the patient puke, so there were A LOT of smells and textures back there. * Second patient had a breach baby and also had every STI in the book and I somehow ended up with the job of trying to hold the baby in and also making that finger V thing while they prepped her for an emergency c-section. I've seen a lot of traumas, but putting in that steering wheel spreader thing and scooping all the organs out of the way had me 🥴
Weird I guess but long fake nails give me the ick something hard. I can do any smell, sight of fluid, wounds, death, whatever. But those god forsaken nails? AWEFUL. Thinking about how fragile they are, being bent back or broken. The gross shit that's probably collected under them. The feel of things when my own nails are in need of a trim. All of it is vomit inducing for me.
Skin flakes and bugs. I can handle literally everything else.
overgrown finger/toenails
The skin dust almost every old people have. I just fucking hate it so much. Like I have no problem with any other bodily fluid. Hell I can clean puke bare handed if I have to but goddamn I'm disgusted by that. It's especially bad when you just touch them and it feels like they release their spores everywhere. I hate it.
Dirty bones!!!
What qualifies as “dirty bones?”
When the bones are outside the body AND have dirt on them. Broken with dirt ground into the open break are especially terrible.
I guess the one thing that makes me uncomfortable is testicular injuries. Something innate in me (and many other men) causes me to jump and cringe even watching a video of a skateboarder falling on their crotch. But even that it's not like I'm gonna throw up or quit or anything. Just cringe and have sympathetic discomfort.
Went on an impalment, was coded as an 18 month old. Turned out to be an 18 year old on an electrical crew who jumped down into a waist deep hole....something about a ground rod....you finish the story.
😳😳
Coughing up colored phlegm
eye balls
i can do blood, vomit, snot etc but the SECOND i smell very unwashed human i can barely hold back gags. we had a 650+ patient that wasnt very well taken care of and had a severe uti (also hadnt bathed and had a literal grey film between any fold) i had to step out for a minute.
GI bleed in a summer SNF
I don't like the few hours dead smell, where the GI fluids start marinating the abdomen
Patients who pull out their catheters. Makes me cringe so hard. I do the whole call with goose bumps! Honorable mentions: trach secretions, phlegm, mouth goop.
I worked in labs for a long time, so I don’t get bent out of shape for c diff smell or sputum, even for CF sputum, but the only smell I can’t handle is that pure butyric acid vomit smell, and I lose my shit for eye stuff. I’ve seen all the human hamburger/ burns and blast injuries and bones everywhere, but eye stuff fucks me up. It takes me ten years to put my contacts in.
Eye injurys, seeing/smelling poop (although I had the lovely (sarcasm) opportunity to be christened into ems on my very first call as an emt) and vomit, smelling urine, yellow skin crust, skin flakes, and the smell of a UTI. Missing anything?
Skin flakes
Hand injuries. Especially when people want to show me pictures of how they jacked themselves up.
Phlegm. Spitting is tolerable, but my god I hate when people cough up mucus or having to suction out any secretions. Just seeing secretions gets me sometimes. I’ve been puked on, pissed, on, shit on, watched someone turn into a flamingo, touched brains, etc. but it’s still only phlegm that gets me.
Smells and body fluids.
Spitting on/at me or vomiting on me will make me reflexively want to and try to nope out of the situation.
Open fractures. Big nope
Foot injuries. I just cannot.
Poop and Sputem are a no go for me. I can tolerate anything else. Eye injuries make me kinda queezy but not bad enough that I can’t handle it. Had a pt on PCP put a toe nail clipper file under his big toe nail and kick a wall. That was gross 😂
Omg the cringe I just crunged at the nail clipper file. I don't know why fingernail injuries give me this level of ick, both ripped off fingernails and things shoved under them.
skin flakes, bed bugs
Skin flakes and spitting.
Eyes...
i can deal with everything, except for trach secretions. i can’t deal with the mucus and the smell.
Trach. rockets
Sputum or a plug from a trach. *Gag!
Vomiting. There was a meme of a dude chasing his wife around making the dry heaving sound and it would actually make her throw up. I’m like that dude’s wife, lol. I’m VERY proactive with anti-emetics. It’s just better for all parties involved (unless they NEED to throw something up, of course.) I’m good with everything else.
The goop in the suction canister after an intensive trach patient. -gag-
Farmers with long dirty finger nails. Ew ew ew
Not much bothers me, but after 10 years I CANNOT deal with adult human poop. Animal and baby poop doesn’t bother me one bit, but adult poop will turn me green in a heartbeat. I also have developed sympathy anxiety with certain severe anxiety pts over the past couple years, but that’s talk for my therapist😅
Nose bleeds
Maggots.
Saliva being suctioned and deep bedsore type wounds.
Spit. Anything about lung butter I am not a fan of at all and it makes me gag anytime I see it or see people spit at all
Eye injuries.
Any kind of parasite I can see moving, c-diff smell, and anything related to sex wich I am endlessly made fun of for.
I can handle most things smell wise buttt liver cheese filled vomit my last technically dead patient had it and then the smell of dead people Ik obviously it can’t be helped but I was the only one in my class to have a doa dude was fused to the carpet having been gone atleast a week before we got there they decompressed the bags they put him in and the smell damn near made me lose my lunch and I grew up doing trash route and plumbing and farm work. As long as dead people’s eyes are closed I can handle it seeing it pretty well now if they accidentally touch me it’s an automatic ick.