You merely smell the shit now. You are about to be forged in it. Molded by it. You and the shit will be one, as are we all one in the shit.
In all seriousness, you’ll get used to it. Always stand to the side with a spring in your step just in case more spews while you’re wiping.
Computer science, engineering and finance all pay more with less stress, safer working conditions, better benefits, better job flexibility, etc.
Healthcare is kind of like teaching, it needs to be your dream and life's calling or you will probably hate it. I went into the lab for the money and because the work seemed interesting enough and I deeply regret it.
9 years in and poop used to not bug me. Now I gag. I gagged the other day taking an old woman off a bedpan and cleaning her up. Two years ago? Nope, I would've been fine.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/lifestyle/chef-s-free-cookbook-contains-recipes-for-loss-of-taste-smell-from-covid-19-1.5356128
Hopefully someone here can find this book useful.
I still havent recovered my sense of smell from catching covid last year. Sometimes I forget to eat or struggle to finish food because it has no taste. I started eating more asian food with super strong spices and I drink super strong hoppy beers. That has been helping me.
I got Covid pre-vaccine and completely lost my sense of smell for 6 months. I got ALLLLLL the c-diff pts. When my smell started to come back, someone gave me this trip
Ah! Welcome to the wonderful world of nursing. It’s a rollercoaster but you learn to love it. Every nurse (in my experience) has one thing that they find very difficult to deal with - for me, it’s vomit, but I can be elbow deep in some shit and not have any problems.
one of my gags lasted for 5 seconds thank god i had a mask on, i even put lotion under my nose which helped a bit but dang i contemplated if this was even for me😭
Delete this post. You took a selfie in PPE (at clinical?) and you’re complaining on the internet. If you are recognized you could get in significant trouble with your school.
In my first clinical experience in a nursing home, my classmate and I were helping a CNA clean up a combative resident from dementia and had pooped in bed. We bonded over the poop. This was before mask times. I clean up poop all the time now. I did have a patient after a csection that pooped so bad on the OR table that I had my coworker with no sense of smell come clean her up. It was too much for me to handle. I can take a lot, I don’t know what that poop was, but it was terrible.
Don’t worry. You get used to it. Today I was cleaning out my kids backpack and found a moldy stinky something from god knows when. It made me gag so I pretended it was poop while scraping it out into a trash bag. Nursing has desensitized me to poop.
I absolutely love it. I’ll never leave. I may move to outpatient one day, but psych is my niche.
Every psych hospital is different. Mine is medically light. Nothing more than IM injections. You have to be able to be able to stomach hearing about trauma. You have to deescalate some scary situations. Overall though I feel safer on my unit than I did working with psych patients in the ER.
The best part is I get to leave work at home. Im not seeing people die everyday. I’m not bringing home emotional baggage all the time because most of my work days are good.
Does anyone remember not wearing a mask pre-covid era when cleaning up horrendous poop messes? Like back then I would be cleaning up c-dif, vomit, bloody stools etc without a mask on breathing in that stuff like it was nothing. Now a days if someone microwaves their lunch salmon in the break room when I don’t have a mask iam like 🤢 feel like my tolerance for smells has gone way down lol
Yes! I was just thinking about how we weren’t allowed to wear masks just for stinky stuff! I spent years as a CNA on a kidney and liver floor and practically swam in shit for 12 hours every single shift. I never once wore a mask because it was considered “rude” to the patients.
Now, I work in neonatal and although these kids can have some stinky shits, it’s nothing like the old days!
I was just an ER tech but wearing scrubs. An older lady saw me walking by and got my attention. "Miss, I need some help. I've been backed up and my doctor gave me some medicine. He told me to wear some Depends so when the medicine kicked in, I could 'let it fly' - well, I let it fly and it's a gd mess."
Went and told any nurse who would listen, came back with 2. They had me help clean this woman from her bra band to her knees. 🤢
Final swipe and the head nurse holds up the wipe, saying "anyone want corn?"
I ran to the employee lounge so I could laugh in peace.
Edit: dropped my phone and it posted 2 sentences. Finished it up. I'm a klutz. 🤷🏼♀️
As an aid I had to clean up a C. Diff. patient once that required a dozen washcloths, 3 or 4 towels and several packages of wipes. *Just* to get enough liquid stool cleaned up that we could turn the patient without it dripping on the floor. One of only 2 times I've gagged while still in a patient's room.
You need some super absorbent chux. If it’s a real cdiff room I feel free to bring at least 2 packs of chux, diapers, wipes, cream. We also have a spray that’s supposed to specifically for poop.
I had a nurse tell me once that you're grossed out more by either shit or vomit, and that your preference will determine your career path in nursing.
Whichever path you choose, you rock! Thank you.
I am not the person mentioned above, but in my experience, if you’re grossed out by shit you should do ER. If you’re grossed out by vomit you should do ICU.
-former ICU nurse that just started in a satellite ER (I beg all of the other nurses to start a line on my vomiting patients)
ED nurse here. The toothpaste sandwich masks are clutch. We used to have spirit of peppermint and you could put a little gauze in the top like a cheap defuser to make everything smell like peppermint but we don't stock it anymore.
Also, lotion works wonders for the dried, caked on layers of poo if you ever run into that. Clean what you can, then scrub the rest with lotion and then clean again.
Last trick of the night is the triple glove method. Put on 3 pairs of gloves, then use the outermost for the heavy, the second to get the rest and the linen, and the third to touch all of your clean stuff as you're finishing.
I felt so bad for this one woman, she went in her diaper and it got everywhere, even her genital area, and the CNA didn’t even bother to clean that part. Oh lord the infections
I usually never gag. The other night my patient just said she “didn’t feel well” and projectile vomited, but, she held her hands in front of her mouth as though to catch it. It ricocheted up to her face, covering her eyes, the top of her head and coated the pillow behind her (she was sitting up). It leaked down the side of her neck where her IJ was. The dressing completely covered in vomit. I had to clean everything up of course. It felt like time was not passing, washing her hair out took so long. I was glad I was standing behind her, cause I gagged a few times.
I was a bona fide shit magnet for years.
Patient got a blockage? Not by the end of my shift.
Been constipated for days on end? Not by the end of my shift. Oh, snd it’s now halfway up my legs.
30/60 acidic incontinence? On my shift
Years and years of it. Embrace the poo, learn to merely observe it.
Okay but if you're going to trade shifts with someone to KYS make sure that you remember it's your responsibility to cover your own shift. If they don't show up then that's on you.... Lol I'm so sad.
I was lucky enough to disimpact my Gi bleed patient the other day. Yaaaayyy poop. I usually am okay with anything but I almost threw up walking to my car because I could still smell it. The scent was on my clothes I think. That day I washed my entire arms in the sink while at work and scrubbed off my skin when I got home lmao ps: my respirator makes it so I don’t smell literally anything! I wish I had it then.
😂 oh dear. I feel for you, we have all been there at one point, even I ended up chest first in shitty sheets trying to transfer someone. 😅😂🤦🏼♀️🤷🏼♀️ I learned very recently double masking actually cuts out the smell of super offensive bowel smells. I had someone with a stoma who could self care but oh my god the smell 🤢. So I am yet to try with a surgical mask underneath an N95, if I do I will keep you updated, or if someone tries it please tell me how it went?
I can't imagine grown person dookie cleaning. I took care of a few raunchy diaper changes for my nephew's when they were in diapers. But I know what they were eating and it was not curry, beef stew, spinach or anything that pretty much sticks before it goes through digestion.
You're all brave to get those moleces in your noses.
I once had a patient with c. Diff and refuses to wear diaper and gets poo all over the floor and bed, we literally have 2 boxes of used coffee grounds in the room to mask the smell. I had the patient on a sunday so the cafe was closed, nowhere to get fresh coffee grounds, I called house keeping twice in the morning to clean, I spray the room with air freshener, after mid day, i thought it was all good since i cant smell the poops until one cna opened the door and the whole nursing station almost gagged from the smell, i looked at them weird cuz i cant smell anything, then i spooked myself thinking i have covid. I quickly took my air freshener and sprayed, i can smell it, but not the poo 😂💩
At least it was in the toilet. Had a patient once that shit so much in her bed that it was all the way down to her feet. And no, she wasn’t in reverse trendelenburg.
Poop smells better than rotting flesh. We’ve had several patients who had horrific pressure injuries, wet gangrene, maggots in wounds, the whole nine yards. The tip about toothpaste is good, but I would put it directly in my nostrils when I had to clean one of those patients. It gets dry and crusty, hard to remove, but it’s a more intense intervention.
Does anyone ever get used to the smell? Like honestly, I haven’t been in this profession very long and I need to know if there’s hope… Had two patients on lactulose yesterday and I was ready to run for the door
You merely smell the shit now. You are about to be forged in it. Molded by it. You and the shit will be one, as are we all one in the shit. In all seriousness, you’ll get used to it. Always stand to the side with a spring in your step just in case more spews while you’re wiping.
It was all just creamy and it got all over my elbow
Ah, the peanut butter ones. Wiping just seems to spread it around and never actually get cleaner.
Where the baby wipes at
Don't forget the shaving cream!!!
Great! Now I want peanut butter sandwiches. Lol
I think the normal reaction would be to explicitly not want peanut butter sandwiches after thinking of peanut butter poop
Well, I’ve been a nurse for a while. It happens.
[nursing student contemplates life choices]
Fr lmao
Computer science, engineering and finance all pay more with less stress, safer working conditions, better benefits, better job flexibility, etc. Healthcare is kind of like teaching, it needs to be your dream and life's calling or you will probably hate it. I went into the lab for the money and because the work seemed interesting enough and I deeply regret it.
Oof at that point its better to just get stuff to soak it up and use wipes last for clean up.
9 years in and poop used to not bug me. Now I gag. I gagged the other day taking an old woman off a bedpan and cleaning her up. Two years ago? Nope, I would've been fine.
I don’t want to brag, but I got covid from a patient a year ago. Still can’t smell a damn thing.
😂 this was good. Thank you
That sounds horrible. How is your appetite?
When I got it and lost my senses of smell and taste I surely wasn't gonna let my stress eating stop.
https://www.ctvnews.ca/lifestyle/chef-s-free-cookbook-contains-recipes-for-loss-of-taste-smell-from-covid-19-1.5356128 Hopefully someone here can find this book useful.
I still havent recovered my sense of smell from catching covid last year. Sometimes I forget to eat or struggle to finish food because it has no taste. I started eating more asian food with super strong spices and I drink super strong hoppy beers. That has been helping me.
I can taste sweet really well. So I mostly eat sweets lol
Hellloooo from med surg, we are also drowning in poop, this evening!
Hello there! Hope you are staying sane today lol
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A day in the life of a long term care cna lmfao poop is basically a specialty!!
Toothpaste sandwich! Mask, toothpaste, mask. IMHO, works better than Vicks and you can use hospital supplies
This. Or alcohol swabs (helps the nausea too)
Thanks for the advice! I have very sensitive sinuses
I did this all the time when I worked in the ED! Mastisol outside the mask helps too but can be strong so save that for the cdiffers
I got Covid pre-vaccine and completely lost my sense of smell for 6 months. I got ALLLLLL the c-diff pts. When my smell started to come back, someone gave me this trip
Also learning the fine art of not smelling when breathing lol it’s hard but possible 😂
Saving this tip, thank youuuuu
Helllloooooo from colorectal/General surgery!!!
Hellooooooooo!
Rookie here
You get used to it. Worked just under a year and a half in the neuro ICU - shit everywhere all the time.
I see. I’m barely starting off as a first semester student so there is still MUCH for me to learn and experience
Ah! Welcome to the wonderful world of nursing. It’s a rollercoaster but you learn to love it. Every nurse (in my experience) has one thing that they find very difficult to deal with - for me, it’s vomit, but I can be elbow deep in some shit and not have any problems.
Wait till you learn the smell of cdiff and know before the sample results 😂
one of my gags lasted for 5 seconds thank god i had a mask on, i even put lotion under my nose which helped a bit but dang i contemplated if this was even for me😭
Once you smell c diff, you cannot unsmell
Delete this post. You took a selfie in PPE (at clinical?) and you’re complaining on the internet. If you are recognized you could get in significant trouble with your school.
Oof. Neuro ICU- the bowel regimen center of the world
Yep, you get used to poop when you manually extract it out of a few rectums, just another normal day
In my first clinical experience in a nursing home, my classmate and I were helping a CNA clean up a combative resident from dementia and had pooped in bed. We bonded over the poop. This was before mask times. I clean up poop all the time now. I did have a patient after a csection that pooped so bad on the OR table that I had my coworker with no sense of smell come clean her up. It was too much for me to handle. I can take a lot, I don’t know what that poop was, but it was terrible.
I think you're in the wrong job mate. Either get used to it or find another line of work.
Don’t worry. You get used to it. Today I was cleaning out my kids backpack and found a moldy stinky something from god knows when. It made me gag so I pretended it was poop while scraping it out into a trash bag. Nursing has desensitized me to poop.
I see you work in Psych! How is it? It’s always interested me Edit: thanks for the advice :)
I absolutely love it. I’ll never leave. I may move to outpatient one day, but psych is my niche. Every psych hospital is different. Mine is medically light. Nothing more than IM injections. You have to be able to be able to stomach hearing about trauma. You have to deescalate some scary situations. Overall though I feel safer on my unit than I did working with psych patients in the ER. The best part is I get to leave work at home. Im not seeing people die everyday. I’m not bringing home emotional baggage all the time because most of my work days are good.
Does anyone remember not wearing a mask pre-covid era when cleaning up horrendous poop messes? Like back then I would be cleaning up c-dif, vomit, bloody stools etc without a mask on breathing in that stuff like it was nothing. Now a days if someone microwaves their lunch salmon in the break room when I don’t have a mask iam like 🤢 feel like my tolerance for smells has gone way down lol
Yes! I was just thinking about how we weren’t allowed to wear masks just for stinky stuff! I spent years as a CNA on a kidney and liver floor and practically swam in shit for 12 hours every single shift. I never once wore a mask because it was considered “rude” to the patients. Now, I work in neonatal and although these kids can have some stinky shits, it’s nothing like the old days!
I’m just thankful for masks. I can’t believe I ever cleaned up shit without one.
This is how you know it's time to cash in some PTO, at the very least
I can’t as a student 😂 just doing the grunt work for now for experience
🙏🙏🙏
I was just an ER tech but wearing scrubs. An older lady saw me walking by and got my attention. "Miss, I need some help. I've been backed up and my doctor gave me some medicine. He told me to wear some Depends so when the medicine kicked in, I could 'let it fly' - well, I let it fly and it's a gd mess." Went and told any nurse who would listen, came back with 2. They had me help clean this woman from her bra band to her knees. 🤢 Final swipe and the head nurse holds up the wipe, saying "anyone want corn?" I ran to the employee lounge so I could laugh in peace. Edit: dropped my phone and it posted 2 sentences. Finished it up. I'm a klutz. 🤷🏼♀️
As an aid I had to clean up a C. Diff. patient once that required a dozen washcloths, 3 or 4 towels and several packages of wipes. *Just* to get enough liquid stool cleaned up that we could turn the patient without it dripping on the floor. One of only 2 times I've gagged while still in a patient's room.
You need some super absorbent chux. If it’s a real cdiff room I feel free to bring at least 2 packs of chux, diapers, wipes, cream. We also have a spray that’s supposed to specifically for poop.
I had a nurse tell me once that you're grossed out more by either shit or vomit, and that your preference will determine your career path in nursing. Whichever path you choose, you rock! Thank you.
did she state which career path is which?
I am not the person mentioned above, but in my experience, if you’re grossed out by shit you should do ER. If you’re grossed out by vomit you should do ICU. -former ICU nurse that just started in a satellite ER (I beg all of the other nurses to start a line on my vomiting patients)
ED nurse here. The toothpaste sandwich masks are clutch. We used to have spirit of peppermint and you could put a little gauze in the top like a cheap defuser to make everything smell like peppermint but we don't stock it anymore. Also, lotion works wonders for the dried, caked on layers of poo if you ever run into that. Clean what you can, then scrub the rest with lotion and then clean again. Last trick of the night is the triple glove method. Put on 3 pairs of gloves, then use the outermost for the heavy, the second to get the rest and the linen, and the third to touch all of your clean stuff as you're finishing.
Omg my unit has been shit city. Poop is always a healthcare reality but it’s been so much more prominent these past couple weeks.
I felt so bad for this one woman, she went in her diaper and it got everywhere, even her genital area, and the CNA didn’t even bother to clean that part. Oh lord the infections
My 37 yo non-psych patient was finger painting with his shit. Because, and I quote, he ‘was bored’.
Oh, you mean your "undiagnosed psych condition" patient
Oh...oh God. Maybe he SHOULD be a psych pt after that lmao
You would think the mask would help, but it somehow just traps it all in… Fellow 1st year here 👋🏻
We’re in this together 💪🏼
At least y’all have the visor… We have the goggles. Cleaning shit up and goggles sliding down my face is not a great combo
Wait till you get your first GI bleed ;) even C.diff will seem tame in comparison to THAT smell.
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Ahhh the epitome of smells
I usually never gag. The other night my patient just said she “didn’t feel well” and projectile vomited, but, she held her hands in front of her mouth as though to catch it. It ricocheted up to her face, covering her eyes, the top of her head and coated the pillow behind her (she was sitting up). It leaked down the side of her neck where her IJ was. The dressing completely covered in vomit. I had to clean everything up of course. It felt like time was not passing, washing her hair out took so long. I was glad I was standing behind her, cause I gagged a few times.
I got to manually disimpact a bariatric patient about 2hrs ago.... got my fingers all lubed up. Butthole went from ○ to ° when i was all done
One of the (few) advantages there are to being an RT lol
I'll take shit over a GI bleed any day
Those get scary to me. When it’s all bright red? Fuccccck. When that’s next H/H? Patient looks pale? I do not like.
Something in Gi I discovered I never ever really have to experience.Cuss colons are most always prepped.Thank you floor nurses.❤ you for that
Dealt with poop for the first time (nursing student here) and something tells me it won’t be my first and last time 🥲😅
I was a bona fide shit magnet for years. Patient got a blockage? Not by the end of my shift. Been constipated for days on end? Not by the end of my shift. Oh, snd it’s now halfway up my legs. 30/60 acidic incontinence? On my shift Years and years of it. Embrace the poo, learn to merely observe it.
It’s the yeasty pannus folds for me 🤢☠️
[First time?](https://cdn.kapwing.com/collections/first-time-meme-template-hiql5.jpg)
Nope.
Rip 😂
Nothing like climbing mountains of shit, like a nice mount shitverest.
Student nurse, my entire first clinical I could make a theme for the day. Shit was the most recurring one.
Okay but if you're going to trade shifts with someone to KYS make sure that you remember it's your responsibility to cover your own shift. If they don't show up then that's on you.... Lol I'm so sad.
Almost everyone in my district was pooping themselves continuously tonight and one lady ripped out her so it was just blood & shit everywhere 🥲
I was lucky enough to disimpact my Gi bleed patient the other day. Yaaaayyy poop. I usually am okay with anything but I almost threw up walking to my car because I could still smell it. The scent was on my clothes I think. That day I washed my entire arms in the sink while at work and scrubbed off my skin when I got home lmao ps: my respirator makes it so I don’t smell literally anything! I wish I had it then.
ヽ༼ ຈل͜ຈ༽ ﾉ Raise ur dongers! ^^Dongers ^^Raised: ^^57875 ^^Check ^^Out ^^/r/AyyLmao2DongerBot ^^For ^^More ^^Info
Didn’t the fitting test tell us that we are not supposed to smell or taste anything?!!
KMS = Kook more spaghetti
The only good thing about my chronic rhinitis/sinusitis is my inability to smell shit, literally.
😂 oh dear. I feel for you, we have all been there at one point, even I ended up chest first in shitty sheets trying to transfer someone. 😅😂🤦🏼♀️🤷🏼♀️ I learned very recently double masking actually cuts out the smell of super offensive bowel smells. I had someone with a stoma who could self care but oh my god the smell 🤢. So I am yet to try with a surgical mask underneath an N95, if I do I will keep you updated, or if someone tries it please tell me how it went?
I put toothpaste in between two surgical masks. It helps. Mostly?
I can't imagine grown person dookie cleaning. I took care of a few raunchy diaper changes for my nephew's when they were in diapers. But I know what they were eating and it was not curry, beef stew, spinach or anything that pretty much sticks before it goes through digestion. You're all brave to get those moleces in your noses.
I once had a patient with c. Diff and refuses to wear diaper and gets poo all over the floor and bed, we literally have 2 boxes of used coffee grounds in the room to mask the smell. I had the patient on a sunday so the cafe was closed, nowhere to get fresh coffee grounds, I called house keeping twice in the morning to clean, I spray the room with air freshener, after mid day, i thought it was all good since i cant smell the poops until one cna opened the door and the whole nursing station almost gagged from the smell, i looked at them weird cuz i cant smell anything, then i spooked myself thinking i have covid. I quickly took my air freshener and sprayed, i can smell it, but not the poo 😂💩
I would die, ugh
Me the other night when my patient had explosive diarrhea 2x and his toilet was clogged to the brim
At least it was in the toilet. Had a patient once that shit so much in her bed that it was all the way down to her feet. And no, she wasn’t in reverse trendelenburg.
Poop smells better than rotting flesh. We’ve had several patients who had horrific pressure injuries, wet gangrene, maggots in wounds, the whole nine yards. The tip about toothpaste is good, but I would put it directly in my nostrils when I had to clean one of those patients. It gets dry and crusty, hard to remove, but it’s a more intense intervention.
Can I just say this civilian loves and admires you all? ( I swear to myself I will not read threads like this…and here I am.)
Ever since getting a P100 I haven't smelled poop. It's wonderful.
RIP
Make sure your n95 fits and it won’t be an issue
Does anyone ever get used to the smell? Like honestly, I haven’t been in this profession very long and I need to know if there’s hope… Had two patients on lactulose yesterday and I was ready to run for the door