I laugh at that thought now and it’s only been a couple of weeks. I have already seen oh, about 347 things I thought I would never have to see/smell/deal with.
Recently, I had my first experience with gangrene. It is gross. And the smell is grosser. (I don’t even know if that’s a word, but I’m going with it.) And it was oozing. I was even impressed with the strength of my stomach. The sad part about it is that the only way to treat it is by amputation.
About the same time, I had a patient who had overdosed on a potent street drug, one who was withdrawing from narcotic use, and a couple of patient’s withdrawing from alcohol use.
There have also been more “total care” (patients who need turning every 2 hours, who can’t feed themselves and who are incontinent) patients then I count. (Like toothless man who loved chocolate pudding.)
They also talked about patients who would be “hard sticks” in nursing school (i.e. many renal patients have collapsed veins and it’s impossible to draw labs on them), well that’s true also. In fact, I saw a nurse try to draw blood from a vein in the finger…the FINGER, people! It was impressive. I will have to try that myself sometime.
Oh, and cellulitis might just need its own post. It's a skin infection that is super serious because if it goes into the blood stream a person goes septic (septic=infection in the bloodstream and you're headed to the ICU and I sure hope you make it). Anyway, I've seen more cases of that then I can count and it ranks up there with gangrene in the smell department.
You know what else smells REEEEEEEALLY bad? C-diff. It's a digestive problem. I will leave the rest to your imagination or Google.
But that’s one of the whole reasons I picked the hospital I’m working at—sicker patient’s with more advanced disease processes who need more health education.
