# Ick factors



## Sasha (Jul 24, 2011)

What are your ick factors? I was talking to my partner. His is pee, he cant even empty out a foley. Mine is suctioning, especially trachs it just makes me gag.

What are yours?

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## Shishkabob (Jul 24, 2011)

Colostomy bags.


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## jjesusfreak01 (Jul 24, 2011)

Linuss said:


> Colostomy bags.



Ditto, trachs are second.


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## firetender (Jul 24, 2011)

Maggots below the waist

...and then, there was that cat.

I twitch to this day remembering when I realized those gouge marks on the face of its dead owner were from Kitty having a feast! Kitty was quite content, and full!


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## Anjel (Jul 24, 2011)

Thick Mucus in trach pts

and 

Colostomy bags the ones that are temporary looking and has like  super thin condom looking tube that leads to the bag.


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## exodus (Jul 24, 2011)

Anjel1030 said:


> Thick Mucus in trach pts
> 
> and
> 
> Colostomy bags the ones that are temporary looking and has like  super thin condom looking tube that leads to the bag.



Condom cath


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## Anjel (Jul 24, 2011)

exodus said:


> Condom cath



those dont bother me lol I could deal with those and foleys all day long.


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## exodus (Jul 24, 2011)

Anjel1030 said:


> those dont bother me lol I could deal with those and foleys all day long.



OH! I thought that's what you were talking about!! What bugs me is erhhhmm, not much really. Bloody sputum is the worst probably.


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## Anjel (Jul 24, 2011)

exodus said:


> OH! I thought that's what you were talking about!! What bugs me is erhhhmm, not much really. Bloody sputum is the worst probably.



Haha no just the tubing of the.colostomy bad looks like a condom


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## DesertMedic66 (Jul 24, 2011)

Linuss said:


> Colostomy bags.



This is my ick factor.


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## usalsfyre (Jul 24, 2011)

Puke. I can do mucous, feces, urine, blood and various other secretions, I just can't do that nasty, post Tex-Mex and beer puke. It's everything I can do not to fire back. 

Second is....ummmm......_purulent_ discharge. Yeah that's it...purulent...
(insert a synonym for purulent and think of it's homonym).


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## NomadicMedic (Jul 24, 2011)

Colostomy bags that "vent". 

gag.


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## Sasha (Jul 24, 2011)

n7lxi said:


> Colostomy bags that "vent".
> 
> gag.



If you dont burp them, go to change them and they explode all over. Poor new CNA got poo in her eye that way. 

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## dstevens58 (Jul 24, 2011)

usalsfyre said:


> Puke. I can do mucous, feces, urine, blood and various other secretions, I just can't do that nasty, post Tex-Mex and beer puke. It's everything I can do not to fire back.



I'll have to put a second vote out for vomit.  Makes me want to add to it.


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## foxfire (Jul 24, 2011)

I can generaly handle urine, vomit,  and most other icky stuff. But I can't stand lung butter, colostomy bags, and maggots. *gag*
Just about lost it replacing a trach during a respiratory shift.
Now my stomach is doing little flip flops thinking about the icky stuff.:wacko:


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## MrBrown (Jul 25, 2011)

Mrs Brown? 

Nah just kidding ... Brown's ick factor is poo, hmm Brown just thinks Brown volunteered to do all Brownlet changings :unsure:

.. hmm, *looks for delete button before Mrs Brown sees this


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## bigbaldguy (Jul 25, 2011)

Smell of melena. After a recent experience with a doa who had a massive upper GI bleed I just get sick thinking about it. Luckily I haven't had to deal with a colostomy bag yet but I'm thinking that will be well up the list as well.


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## pa132399 (Jul 25, 2011)

havent had anything thats phazed me too much but the guy with the colostomy bag that emptied it before we transported him and pick a turd out of it with his bare hand and made the remark that it looked like a milk dud. ruined milk duds for the rest of my life


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## pa132399 (Jul 25, 2011)

wait ill have to change mine to the smell of a nursing home at 6am ruins the whole day


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## Handsome Robb (Jul 25, 2011)

Puke for sure.


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## HotelCo (Jul 25, 2011)

Colostomy and trachs. 


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## CaydenElizalde (Jul 25, 2011)

Definitely Vomit. A little sputum I can handle, but the aforementioned tex-mex/beer vomit is a definite day killer.


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## CAOX3 (Jul 25, 2011)

Burnt flesh

Fatal fires, car fires,  Its awful.

Once you smell that, you smell it everywhere for weeks.  

Coffee beans do help.


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## abckidsmom (Jul 25, 2011)

fingernail and toenail injuries, eyeball injuries, and nasty feet in general.

And the sound of vomiting.

I can handle nasty stuff and nasty smells, it's nasty sights that get me.

And I hate when I'm cleaning up stinking filth and can taste it.  That makes me gag.


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## Epi-do (Jul 25, 2011)

Anything related to poop.  Suctioning, although I have gotten better.  It used to be just hearing the unit turned on would trigger my gag reflex.  I also have a pretty sympathetic  gag reflex.


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## dixie_flatline (Jul 25, 2011)

I'd like to think that I have a fairly strong constitution.  I might go "ewww" when someone starts yakking, but if I'm working then barf (so far) hasn't bothered me at all.  

Some things that have made me cringe....

Man who (for reasons I will never know) put his junk _into_ a bottle of lotion, where it promptly go stuck. He didn't call EMS for several days.  By the time our people got there, they said it looked like someone dropped a grenade down his pants.  Just all swollen, purple, starting to rot/die.  I understand he had to have some serious surgery and it still wasn't fixed back to normal.  I used to have a problem just thinking about catheters going into my johnson until I heard about this guy.
Older lady who got dehydrated due to the runs and ended up trapped in the bathroom too weak to stand.  I think she was there 2 days before we got called.  Everything was covered in poo - the walls, floors, and her head-to-toe.
Pt who had a malfunctioning colostomy and ended up vomiting feces.  Probably the absolute worst.  Like I said, I can do vomit, and I can (usually) even handle a code brown.  But when you're vomiting a code brown, even I have to take a step back.


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## adamjh3 (Jul 25, 2011)

abckidsmom said:


> fingernail and toenail injuries, eyeball injuries, *and nasty feet in general.*
> 
> And the sound of vomiting.
> 
> ...




Pretty much spot on for me, especially the aforementioned nasty feet.

Oh, and not so much "ick factor" as the heebie jeebies factor; Catatonic pts who do nothing but stare at you. I know they can't help it, I know it's beyond everyone's control, but for some reason it just creeps me out.


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## katgrl2003 (Jul 25, 2011)

Puke and anything respiratory. I'm a sympathetic puker and my old partner knew if we had a puker to hand them a barf bag and me the trash can. I can handle suctioning someone, but the sound makes me queasy. And whoever mentioned lung butter earlier.... agreed!


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## samiam (Jul 25, 2011)

The sound of snapping or grinding bones (especially blown out skull) and exploded Colostomy bags


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## Epi-do (Jul 26, 2011)

katgrl2003 said:


> Puke and anything respiratory. I'm a sympathetic puker and my old partner knew if we had a puker to hand them a barf bag and me the trash can. I can handle suctioning someone, but the sound makes me queasy. And whoever mentioned lung butter earlier.... agreed!




At least I had him well trained for you, when you got him!


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## katgrl2003 (Jul 26, 2011)

Epi-do said:


> At least I had him well trained for you, when you got him!



I felt kinda bad for him... the two of us in a row. God help him.


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## johnrsemt (Jul 26, 2011)

I remember that from both Katgrrl and Epi-do.    All I had to do was turn the suction on in the back and the truck would start weaving.    did it even when I didn't need it


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## johnrsemt (Jul 26, 2011)

Mine is vomit with alcohol.


   I would give up just about anything to work with Epi or Kat again


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## EMT2B (Jul 26, 2011)

I haven't yet started classes nor been in the field, but my ick factors *outside* EMS are: vomiting, poop (though I do _okay_ with baby diapers), meat baby food, and canned pet food. Blech!


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## Epi-do (Jul 26, 2011)

EMT2B said:


> poop (though I do _okay_ with baby diapers)



Hopefully this won't be true for you, but for me, baby poop doesn't really bother me.  However, baby poop and anybody that either currently is or is old enough to have ever been out of diapers poop are two completely different things.


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## katgrl2003 (Jul 26, 2011)

johnrsemt said:


> I remember that from both Katgrrl and Epi-do.    All I had to do was turn the suction on in the back and the truck would start weaving.    did it even when I didn't need it



Yeah, and you got a clipboard upside the head when we were done with the run because of that.


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## EMT2B (Jul 26, 2011)

Epi-do said:


> Hopefully this won't be true for you, but for me, baby poop doesn't really bother me.  However, baby poop and anybody that either currently is or is old enough to have ever been out of diapers poop are two completely different things.



Yeah, grown-up diaper content is an Ick for me.  I never did like the ... _aroma_ I got when visiting my grandfather in the nursing home.  Yuck!


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## Addicted2Narcan (Jul 26, 2011)

I once had a girl who called 911 because she got her man's spunk in her eye and "it burned". Soooo other dudes' spunk is at the top of my list.


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## Sasha (Jul 26, 2011)

EMT2B said:


> Yeah, grown-up diaper content is an Ick for me.  I never did like the ... _aroma_ I got when visiting my grandfather in the nursing home.  Yuck!



That aroma is cdiff.

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## emscrazy1 (Jul 26, 2011)

Addicted2Narcan said:


> I once had a girl who called 911 because she got her man's spunk in her eye and "it burned". Soooo other dudes' spunk is at the top of my list.



She couldn't just rinse her eye out? That would be embarrassing for ems to come after I came in her eye. So funny though.


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## Epi-do (Jul 26, 2011)

disregard...posted to wrong thread.


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## slb862 (Jul 27, 2011)

I would have to say there isn't enough vicks in the world to mask the smell of decomposing flesh.  

And you know it is going to be a bad day, when you respond to a 60 unit apartment building, during the winter, for a man down, and when you get there, the other people that live in the building, are outside vomiting.  Then finding out that, "mandown" meant dead for 12 days.

One more...
The sound of flies, lots of flies, on a dead, for a long time, body.

Ok, just one more, did I mention the smell of decaying bodies make me gag.
Know of a crew that responded to an apartment building because the people in the apartment below them had a "really" dead body seeping into/onto their dinner table, while they were eating.  ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

Hope I didn't gross anyone out.


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## Tux (Jul 27, 2011)

As far as alcohol vomit, 
woken up at 3am to "help" a budy of mine deal with another one of our buddies who was outside face down in a nice little lake of his own. Managed to wake him up, but he came up swinging. So Ten minutes later Im locked out of my room, in my underwear, with a black eye and covered in what was unmistakingly super nachos and a lot of alcohol of choice. And hes fast asleep again only this time on his side in his room.
I still cant eat super nachos, and my buddy still hasnt made that night up to me.


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## Nimrod_BasketCase (Jul 27, 2011)

Vomit and maggots. I hate seeing that commercial for Untold Stories of the ER and the person is just letting those maggots crawl all over them :unsure: .


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## CombatCasualtyCare21 (Jul 27, 2011)

slb862 said:


> I would have to say there isn't enough vicks in the world to mask the smell of decomposing flesh.
> 
> And you know it is going to be a bad day, when you respond to a 60 unit apartment building, during the winter, for a man down, and when you get there, the other people that live in the building, are outside vomiting.  Then finding out that, "mandown" meant dead for 12 days.
> 
> ...



This reply in particular, and pretty much every other one on this thread, make the smell of blood seem rather refreshing....


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## firetender (Jul 27, 2011)

*Almost forgot...*

Suctioning out the mouth of a head injury and finding Gray Matter in the muck.


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## Foxbat (Jul 27, 2011)

firetender said:


> Suctioning out the mouth of a head injury and finding Gray Matter in the muck.



I assume that patient did not survive?


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## firetender (Jul 27, 2011)

Foxbat said:


> I assume that patient did not survive?


 
Neither of us!


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## bigbaldguy (Jul 27, 2011)

firetender said:


> Suctioning out the mouth of a head injury and finding Gray Matter in the muck.



Wow, you win.


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## fast65 (Jul 27, 2011)

Dental injuries do it for me, mostly because it's like I can imagine what it feels like that creeps me out. Other than that, I might gag at some smells, but then I just kind of get used to them.


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## TroyOck (Jul 28, 2011)

Havent done either, but im dreading Trach work and and catheterization work.


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## Bullets (Jul 28, 2011)

eyeball injuries

and usually im good with DB's but on got me, hung in the shed for 4 days in august. guy baked in 100 degree heat. i puked


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## EMT2B (Aug 18, 2011)

Had my first hands-on/lab class today.  We had to dip our gloved hands into bowls of "mystery goo" and then de-glove.  I gagged a couple times. But I kept my dinner safely where it belonged!  Gum will be my new best friend.  One of my classmates mentioned that swallowing can help suppress the gag reflex.  Gum and peppermint candies.  My newest BFFs.


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## Anjel (Aug 18, 2011)

EMT2B said:


> Had my first hands-on/lab class today.  We had to dip our gloved hands into bowls of "mystery goo" and then de-glove.  I gagged a couple times. But I kept my dinner safely where it belonged!  Gum will be my new best friend.  One of my classmates mentioned that swallowing can help suppress the gag reflex.  Gum and peppermint candies.  My newest BFFs.



..... Just putting your hands in something made you gag? lol 

Oh...you are going to have an interesting time.


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## WoodyPN (Aug 18, 2011)

Anjel1030 said:


> ..... Just putting your hands in something made you gag? lol
> 
> Oh...you are going to have an interesting time.



Agreed.

Mine is suctioning. When I first started, just the _sound_ could make me gag. Not so bad now but still gets to me.


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## EMT2B (Aug 18, 2011)

Actually, I gagged _before_ I put my hands in.  Mostly because almost everyone else was making faces.  Once I got to the bowl, I had stopped gagging.


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## usafmedic45 (Aug 18, 2011)

-Vomit (the sound, not the actual vomit)
-Colostomy bags
-Mucus (10 years as an RT and it still makes me uneasy)
-Eye injuries
-Child birth.  That's my big one.  3 out of 4 deliveries so far, I've thrown up afterwards.
-Severe burns

Gray matter, decomp, etc do not phase me.


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## Lady_EMT (Aug 18, 2011)

> *Anjel1030 : *..... Just putting your hands in something made you gag? lol
> 
> Oh...you are going to have an interesting time.



Agreed haha



usafmedic45 said:


> -Vomit (the sound, not the actual vomit)



+1


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## WoodyPN (Aug 18, 2011)

TroyOck said:


> Havent done either, but im dreading Trach work and and catheterization work.



cath insertion, in my opinion of course, is really not that bad. Granted, every situation is different, but I really feel its _relatively_ easy. I've only dropped five or so, 3 female, 2 male. Taken out well over 20, and that can be nasty. One time the balloon wouldn't deflate(back in school) so myself and instructor actually had to put some lubricant instead the woman and pull it out...


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## Sasha (Aug 18, 2011)

How did lubrication help it get past the fact that it's physically sitting inside the bladder with a balloon to keep it in place?


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## usalsfyre (Aug 18, 2011)

Proper thing to do is cut the pilot balloon tubing.


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## Hunter (Aug 18, 2011)

blwoods0 said:


> cath insertion, in my opinion of course, is really not that bad. Granted, every situation is different, but I really feel its _relatively_ easy. I've only dropped five or so, 3 female, 2 male. Taken out well over 20, and that can be nasty. One time the balloon wouldn't deflate(back in school) so myself and instructor actually had to put some lubricant instead the woman and pull it out...


 
That sounds severely painful...


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## Sasha (Aug 18, 2011)

Yeah I shudder thinking of what you did to that poor patient.


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## WoodyPN (Aug 18, 2011)

Sasha said:


> How did lubrication help it get past the fact that it's physically sitting inside the bladder with a balloon to keep it in place?



It still wasn't easy. But it was either that, or pull it out with no lubricant. One way or another, it had to come out. There was a meeting of the charge nurses/DON etc, and thats the solution that was came up with. I can imagine that it indeed was very painful, and I make no excuses for that, however, pt was heavily medicated.

As for cutting the tubing, we did. Did not work. Whether the right thing to do was pull it out, or send to ER, sure thats debatable. 

Couple other examples: http://www.patientsville.com/medical-device/foley-catheter-bard-quality.htm


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## firetender (Aug 18, 2011)

Sasha said:


> Yeah I shudder thinking of what you did to that poor patient.


 
Back in the stone age at the beginning of my medical run when I'm sure the materials were different and probably more deadly, on two different occasions  while tending to floor nursing aid work I snagged foley lines (both female) with my foot and here's what happened.

"POP!!!" 

These are "pops" never to be forgotten, always dreaded since and, thankfully, never to have been repeated.

That was it; no harm, no foul; the patients apparently didn't feel a thing it happened so fast.  No lube either! I doubt this will make it into your procedure manuals, but there it is.

your friendly firetender -- always seeking to increase medical knowledge through horrid experience!


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## EMS Patient Care Advocate (Aug 18, 2011)

[*]Pt who had a malfunctioning colostomy and ended up vomiting feces.  Probably the absolute worst.  Like I said, I can do vomit, and I can (usually) even handle a code brown.  But when you're vomiting a code brown, even I have to take a step back.
[/LIST][/QUOTE]

I understand this is career changing.


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## usafmedic45 (Aug 18, 2011)

EMS Patient Care Advocate said:


> [*]Pt who had a malfunctioning colostomy and ended up vomiting feces.  Probably the absolute worst.  Like I said, I can do vomit, and I can (usually) even handle a code brown.  But when you're vomiting a code brown, even I have to take a step back.
> [/LIST]



I understand this is career changing.[/QUOTE]

Unless you have the seniority to make someone else deal with it.  *looks over at the captain's bars off of his old uniform*


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## EMS Patient Care Advocate (Aug 18, 2011)

sorry i messed up on the origional quote


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## Tigger (Aug 18, 2011)

I don't like poop, plain and simple. 

I think being in college helps me deal with vomiting, I've been puked on enough that it doesn't really bother me too much anymore. The "coffee grounds" vomit is pretty nasty when you see it for the first time though.


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## WaNewbie (Aug 19, 2011)

Addicted2Narcan said:


> I once had a girl who called 911 because she got her man's spunk in her eye and "it burned". Soooo other dudes' spunk is at the top of my list.




Wow!


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## mediKate (Aug 20, 2011)

The *warm sensation* of someone ELSE'S trickle running down into my boot...:wacko: 

(poorly placed foot during a stand assist)

YUCK!!!


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