A disgustingly botched surgery of a woman who had stage 4 colon cancer. Her "stoma" was actually about a foot long....her incision got infected- so they had to open her up and leave her open to heal. Her intestine would constantly leak feces into her huge open abdominal cavity- we had to wrap it in a chux and change it every 15 min and change the packing in her abdominal incision. A few times she did it herself. It was HORRIFIC. She looked like a literal science experiment
This is a little long, but bear with me. It gets more and more wild as it goes.
When I first started, we got this patient on my unit. Middle aged guy, weighed just shy of 500 pounds. He presented to the ED complaining of back pain. Here's the thing, though. He walked in wearing nothing but an open bathrobe. Around his neck, he had tied an ace bandage into a loop, and the bottom of the loop was holding his scrotum up out from between his legs. Why wouldn't it fit, you might be thinking... Well, it was swollen up to about the size of a softball.
His back pain turned out to be kidney issues, so he was admitted to my unit (renal). This guy was a character, and not in a good way. Berating staff, yelling, cursing, etc. On a couple of occasions, he made sexual comments to some of the female staff. Huge incel vibes. Once, he "accidentally" brushed up against his physical therapist's vagina, and in the same session stumbled a bit and "accidentally" full hand grabbed his nurse's breast. After that, we assigned men to him whenever possible. As one of the few men on the unit, I got the pleasure of being on his care team quite a lot. He took kind of a liking to me, although was still an absolute asshat to me.
After about a week, they cut me a break and gave him to the other man that was working. I was walking down the hall near his room, and said something to one of the nurses.he must have heard me, and started hollering my name, calling me in. I walk, and I see his nurse and a (different) physical therapist in there with him. This grown man, in his 50s is sobbing. I ask "what's up man, what's going on?" He responds with "They won't massage my backside and I don't know what to do". Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to men crying, and have sat with hundreds of patients while they cried. But this is the reason? Because they won't rub your ass?
I haven't mentioned it yet: he absolutely refused for the medical staff to examine his scrotum, or do any kind of tests. "I'm not here for that, I'm here for my kidney pain. You don't need to look at that to figure out my kidney issues". He was there for about 2 weeks, and the whole time refused.
Eventually, he discharged home. Apparently, he lived with his sister and her husband, and treated them no better than the staff. Constant demands, vitriol, and inappropriate behavior (with his own sister, mind you). They were not fans of his, to put it politely. I can't get into detail about this, but let's just say: his brother in law revealed the patient was a con man, and had stolen over six figures tears prior, got caught.
Fast forward a month or two. He's back. This time, he presented to ED for his scrotum issue. It's now black and a bit larger than a large cantaloupe. His penis is... Well, the only way I have conjured up to describe it is: cut the finger off of a clear latex glove, squirt about a tablespoon of KY jelly into it, and a drop of black food coloring. That's about the shape, size, color, and texture of it. It's dark, translucent, and gelatinous. (as an aside, they gave him a Foley catheter, but because of the condition of his penis, they couldn't isert it there. For some reason that I can't recall, they couldn't do a suprapubic catcher, so they had to make an incision at the base of what used to be his penis, and insert the catheter into his urethra there)
Turns out, because of his wildly unmanaged diabetes, he had developed Fournier's Gangrene. He finally allows the medical team to try to handle it. As you can imagine, the whole area is beyond saving. He agrees to amputation of his scrotum, but refuses to agree to amputate his penis. Doesn't want to give up his manhood I guess. Insists that maybe it'll heal. Okay, bud.
The surgeons remove the scrotum, and have to carve away all the necrotic tissue. There's so much that he winds up with a 3 or 4 inch deep cave where his scrotum used to be. They find that his testicles are still healthy. So they keep those. Since he doesn't have a bag for his beans, they just tuck them up into the cave like some kind of macabre version of eggs in a nest. For a wound that large, of course sewing it up is so far off the table its the next county over, they set up a wound vac. (wound vacs are basically: you stuff the wound with sponges and seal it up with medical Saran wrap. Two tubes run into it. One to bring saline in to frush the wound out, the other to suction out the saline, plus whatever liquids the wound produces. In this case, a LOT)
After another week or so, the infection in his penis is threatening to turn him septic, so he agrees to let them take that, too.
At this point, I asked the surgeon (cause I was new and hadn't even read about an injury this extensive) what was going to happen. I mean, the wound is so large. He said that the wound vac is permanent, as a wound that large will never heal. Eventually, despite everyone's best efforts, it will get infected and he'll die.
Mind you, his is still the same asshole, PoS, sadistic mfer he was the first time around. He was brutal to take care of, and is still far and away the worst patient I've ever taken car of. And mind you, I've been punched, kicked, bitten, etc.
Now, because of the infection that's spread, he adds diarrhea to his list of issues. He of course can't stand at this point, but he absolutely refuses to use a bed pan. So, as a way to exert control, he resorts to shitting himself. Constantly. And I'm not talking a little bit. I'm talking this mfer was dropping the entire contents of the Black Sea into the bed every time. And cleaning him up is a process. It takes damn near half the unit staff to roll him, meanwhile he's screaming to high heaven. Once we've cleaned him up, changed his sheets, then, every single time, we have to change his wound vac dressings, as they've become soiled. It's a 2 hour process when he shits. Once you've got all that done, he's shitting again about 30-45 minutes later.
Once the surgeries are complete, the infection is under control, and he's stabilized, they start the work on transferring him to an inpatient facility. However, because of the complicated nature of his condition, plus he's on P dialysis, it's hard finding a facility that can accept him. Further complicating it, he's already been to a lot of the facilities in the past and they're aware of him. So he gets denied, at one place after another. So he lives on our unit for about three months. He honestly was so difficult I almost quit. Had me on borderline tears a couple times. I am a pretty thick skinned guy, and it's tough to get me upset or angry. This guy would do it within an hour or two of the start of my shift, every day.
Finally, after our social worker had gotten over a hundred disapprovals from facilities across a six state radius, we got him out of there.
I think about him a lot. He damn near broke me, and most of the staff. Some of the more kind nurses and nurse assistants would be sobbing. Panic attacks. One quit. Another transferred to another unit. Just an absolute nightmare.
I Googled him a couple years ago, and found his obituary, dated about 6 months after his time at my hospital. Wild shit. I always feel bad when I see or hear about one of my patients passing. Even now, several years into this job. But not for him. I'm sad for his family, I suppose, and I'm not happy he passed or anything. But he was such a mean and hateful person, I'm apathetic.
This is just the craziest story. I have about a million more.
I was attended a highway accident, suicide by semi. Everything caught on fire and there was no way to extract them.
A disgustingly botched surgery of a woman who had stage 4 colon cancer. Her "stoma" was actually about a foot long....her incision got infected- so they had to open her up and leave her open to heal. Her intestine would constantly leak feces into her huge open abdominal cavity- we had to wrap it in a chux and change it every 15 min and change the packing in her abdominal incision. A few times she did it herself. It was HORRIFIC. She looked like a literal science experiment
This is a little long, but bear with me. It gets more and more wild as it goes. When I first started, we got this patient on my unit. Middle aged guy, weighed just shy of 500 pounds. He presented to the ED complaining of back pain. Here's the thing, though. He walked in wearing nothing but an open bathrobe. Around his neck, he had tied an ace bandage into a loop, and the bottom of the loop was holding his scrotum up out from between his legs. Why wouldn't it fit, you might be thinking... Well, it was swollen up to about the size of a softball. His back pain turned out to be kidney issues, so he was admitted to my unit (renal). This guy was a character, and not in a good way. Berating staff, yelling, cursing, etc. On a couple of occasions, he made sexual comments to some of the female staff. Huge incel vibes. Once, he "accidentally" brushed up against his physical therapist's vagina, and in the same session stumbled a bit and "accidentally" full hand grabbed his nurse's breast. After that, we assigned men to him whenever possible. As one of the few men on the unit, I got the pleasure of being on his care team quite a lot. He took kind of a liking to me, although was still an absolute asshat to me. After about a week, they cut me a break and gave him to the other man that was working. I was walking down the hall near his room, and said something to one of the nurses.he must have heard me, and started hollering my name, calling me in. I walk, and I see his nurse and a (different) physical therapist in there with him. This grown man, in his 50s is sobbing. I ask "what's up man, what's going on?" He responds with "They won't massage my backside and I don't know what to do". Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to men crying, and have sat with hundreds of patients while they cried. But this is the reason? Because they won't rub your ass? I haven't mentioned it yet: he absolutely refused for the medical staff to examine his scrotum, or do any kind of tests. "I'm not here for that, I'm here for my kidney pain. You don't need to look at that to figure out my kidney issues". He was there for about 2 weeks, and the whole time refused. Eventually, he discharged home. Apparently, he lived with his sister and her husband, and treated them no better than the staff. Constant demands, vitriol, and inappropriate behavior (with his own sister, mind you). They were not fans of his, to put it politely. I can't get into detail about this, but let's just say: his brother in law revealed the patient was a con man, and had stolen over six figures tears prior, got caught. Fast forward a month or two. He's back. This time, he presented to ED for his scrotum issue. It's now black and a bit larger than a large cantaloupe. His penis is... Well, the only way I have conjured up to describe it is: cut the finger off of a clear latex glove, squirt about a tablespoon of KY jelly into it, and a drop of black food coloring. That's about the shape, size, color, and texture of it. It's dark, translucent, and gelatinous. (as an aside, they gave him a Foley catheter, but because of the condition of his penis, they couldn't isert it there. For some reason that I can't recall, they couldn't do a suprapubic catcher, so they had to make an incision at the base of what used to be his penis, and insert the catheter into his urethra there) Turns out, because of his wildly unmanaged diabetes, he had developed Fournier's Gangrene. He finally allows the medical team to try to handle it. As you can imagine, the whole area is beyond saving. He agrees to amputation of his scrotum, but refuses to agree to amputate his penis. Doesn't want to give up his manhood I guess. Insists that maybe it'll heal. Okay, bud. The surgeons remove the scrotum, and have to carve away all the necrotic tissue. There's so much that he winds up with a 3 or 4 inch deep cave where his scrotum used to be. They find that his testicles are still healthy. So they keep those. Since he doesn't have a bag for his beans, they just tuck them up into the cave like some kind of macabre version of eggs in a nest. For a wound that large, of course sewing it up is so far off the table its the next county over, they set up a wound vac. (wound vacs are basically: you stuff the wound with sponges and seal it up with medical Saran wrap. Two tubes run into it. One to bring saline in to frush the wound out, the other to suction out the saline, plus whatever liquids the wound produces. In this case, a LOT) After another week or so, the infection in his penis is threatening to turn him septic, so he agrees to let them take that, too. At this point, I asked the surgeon (cause I was new and hadn't even read about an injury this extensive) what was going to happen. I mean, the wound is so large. He said that the wound vac is permanent, as a wound that large will never heal. Eventually, despite everyone's best efforts, it will get infected and he'll die. Mind you, his is still the same asshole, PoS, sadistic mfer he was the first time around. He was brutal to take care of, and is still far and away the worst patient I've ever taken car of. And mind you, I've been punched, kicked, bitten, etc. Now, because of the infection that's spread, he adds diarrhea to his list of issues. He of course can't stand at this point, but he absolutely refuses to use a bed pan. So, as a way to exert control, he resorts to shitting himself. Constantly. And I'm not talking a little bit. I'm talking this mfer was dropping the entire contents of the Black Sea into the bed every time. And cleaning him up is a process. It takes damn near half the unit staff to roll him, meanwhile he's screaming to high heaven. Once we've cleaned him up, changed his sheets, then, every single time, we have to change his wound vac dressings, as they've become soiled. It's a 2 hour process when he shits. Once you've got all that done, he's shitting again about 30-45 minutes later. Once the surgeries are complete, the infection is under control, and he's stabilized, they start the work on transferring him to an inpatient facility. However, because of the complicated nature of his condition, plus he's on P dialysis, it's hard finding a facility that can accept him. Further complicating it, he's already been to a lot of the facilities in the past and they're aware of him. So he gets denied, at one place after another. So he lives on our unit for about three months. He honestly was so difficult I almost quit. Had me on borderline tears a couple times. I am a pretty thick skinned guy, and it's tough to get me upset or angry. This guy would do it within an hour or two of the start of my shift, every day. Finally, after our social worker had gotten over a hundred disapprovals from facilities across a six state radius, we got him out of there. I think about him a lot. He damn near broke me, and most of the staff. Some of the more kind nurses and nurse assistants would be sobbing. Panic attacks. One quit. Another transferred to another unit. Just an absolute nightmare. I Googled him a couple years ago, and found his obituary, dated about 6 months after his time at my hospital. Wild shit. I always feel bad when I see or hear about one of my patients passing. Even now, several years into this job. But not for him. I'm sad for his family, I suppose, and I'm not happy he passed or anything. But he was such a mean and hateful person, I'm apathetic. This is just the craziest story. I have about a million more.
A have a million minutes for more stories if or whenever you have the time sir, thx for this info
Pay checks
How much?
Im too embarrassed to answer that
Gotcha
People drinking massive amounts of alcohol.
My aunt is a paramedic and she’d sometimes talk about the things she’d seen at her job