4 Things Emergency Room Nurses See That Would Gag A Maggot

Whereas we would've stripped naked and walked straight to the psych ward and/or liquor store, Ben calmly walked back into the hospital and disposed of the brain shrapnel in a biohazard container. And if you think we're trying to shock you by starting with the worst anecdote, oh boy are you in for a treat. Here's something Paul saw: "A guy walked into the ER after a car wreck, saying, 'My neck kind of hurts.' When the scan came back, the attending runs into the room and starts barking orders. 'Don't let this guy move another fucking inch!' The base of the skull rests on top of the first cervical vertebra, called 'the atlas,' and this patient had essentially dislocated his skull off the atlas. If he had turned his head quickly to look at something, his skull would've slipped off the shattered atlas and sheared through the spinal cord, killing him instantly. This is known as internal decapitation."

Oh, but those are the more existentially troubling stories. We have not yet ventured into the straight-up disgusting. "One of the most challenging conditions to care for," Ben said, "is an infection called Clostridium difficile. Its main effect is to cause severe diarrhea. The stool is so watery that it becomes a nearly-constant leakage, yet it's so mucousy that it's quite sticky and difficult to clean. Plus, it has a distinctive, extremely foul odor that tends to linger in the nostrils for hours or days afterward."

"On top of that, it's incredibly infectious. Sometimes we have to place a tube into the patient's rectum to drain the stool away into a collection bag. It's uncomfortable, embarrassing, and doesn't make a perfect seal, but it at least gives us some chance to keep the patients from getting covered in their own stool. If you are ever a visitor in a hospital and your family member has one of those tubes in place, please make sure not to trip over it. The resulting mess will ruin a nurse's whole day." And the janitor might actually end up killing himself.

Then again, it might end up washing away some of that sticky, troublesome brain.

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According to a 2007 study, 24 percent of intensive care nurses show signs of PTSD, as compared to 14 percent of general nurses. General nurses deal with far more death and disease than anybody should have to, but at least those are usually from natural causes. It was seeing what people do to each other that got to Paul: "When a 17-year-old kid rolls into the trauma bay with multiple gunshot wounds or stab wounds and dies, it's easy to forget that you watched someone get murdered because it happened in a hospital. The disconnect between the shooting and the death didn't really register for me until I got home and realized that I couldn't save a kid from getting murdered. Eventually it all piled up, and the emotional toll began to exact a physical response."

Witnessing the death of a child is the leading cause of PTSD in ER nurses, but in most cases, they're told to suck it up, wash off all that pesky child blood, and get back to work. It's a job where you're expected to be immune to human tragedy, where adverse reactions are seen as a weakness and not an inevitability.

"There are virtually no safety nets in place for us," Paul said.

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"They started out with very small toys, and gradually moved to bigger and bigger ones, and after some years, they finally stretched her urethra enough for the guy's penis to fit. They were both overjoyed that they could have sex in a new and different way. But they couldn't have sex that way very often, because every time they did, she wound up with a bladder infection and had to go to the ED."

You'd think that multiple trips to the ER would encourage this couple to simply try some butt stuff, like normal people do when they tire of the more utilitarian orifices, but they wouldn't stop. So they were referred to "a very understanding urologist, who would treat the infections when necessary without requiring more trips to the emergency room. The couple went away happy, and as far as I know, they haven't had to return to the ER since." Finally, they could live out their lives in piss.

But not all of Ben's patients get uh ... happy endings. "In my area, there's a fad for injecting erectile dysfunction drugs directly into the flesh of the penis. This is quite a bad idea. If the erection doesn't go down after a few hours, a physician will take two 18-gauge needles and stick them lengthwise into the penis, through the glans, to let the blood out. Sometimes it sprays pretty far."

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When that happens, the entire ER enacts protocols straight out The Thing. "With two other nurses, I had to gown up in isolation gear, give the patient a sedative, strip him completely, shave off some of his matted body hair, perform a full bed bath from scalp to toes, and cover absolutely every centimeter of his skin in medicated cream."

The exam room then had to be quarantined and decontaminated, as did two police officers and squad cars.

"Everybody in the department was involuntarily scratching all night, even though none of us contracted an infestation. Even remembering it now, long after the fact, gives me the phantom itches."

Ben is a registered nurse at one of the largest trauma centers in the US. You can meet him by getting shot, falling off a high place, or by saying "Hey, hold my beer and watch this." Cezary Jan Strusiewicz is a Cracked columnist, interviewer, and editor. Contact him at c.j.strusiewicz@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter.

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