I generally find dealing with human waste unpleasant – despite that, it is part of our job here. I am usually pretty good at breathing through my nose and ignoring it but sometimes it is just too much. Imagine, a 60ish year old man – ex biker complete with all the tattoos, morbidly obese, comes in for constipation for about a week. He wants “three enemas” and to have someone “shove their finger in his ass” to help him be dis-impacted. My PA did not oblige with the second request but did order 240cc of magnesium citrate and several fleets enemas. For the next two hours he proceeded to defaecate all over the room – missing the bedside commode, covering the floor and stretcher with one week’s worth of faeces. Then he goes into the patient bathroom and endevours to do the same – preventing anyone else from using it until we had the housekeepers scrub the place down and blast it with disinfectant. Then, proclaiming himself better, he gets dressed and leaves. No embarrassment, no “I’m sorry for the mess”, no nothing except that now we could not use that room for two hours. Talk about a “Sh** storm”.
Vini, feces, vici?
Why do people wait until they need medical intervention for such problems? I’ll bet OTC remedies would work in the earlier stages for a lot of people. Yuck!
While I would be the first freak out upon seeing a hospital bill I hope you have a charge for decontamination services his room needed. Been lucky so far been to the hospital for birth, tonsilectomy, and a broken patella.
Just another reason working in EMS is only slightly better than working in the ER. I once saw an ER RN sifting through a guy’s fecal material looking for crack rocks as evidence. Nasty.
I give them the mag citrate and hand them a fleet or two and send them home. I tell them “this way you get privacy at home when you get unstuck.” I have enough potty/poop issues with my 3 year old and I’m not dealing with someone’s crap at work.
OMG!Disgusting!
At my hospital the reimbursement for a digital faecal dis impaction is more than for an endotracheal intubation…go figure.
try breathing through your mouth next time!
@Tex:
More like vini, vidi, vomit
I imagine he is on chronic narcotics. He has been to my ER as well.
I recently had an older lady who came in with abdominal pain that was in the ER the day before, had a CT of the abd that was full of stool. I ordered a 2 view abdomen which showed the oral contrast in the rectum, so I knew that she was not obstructed, but still with tons of stool in the colon that was causing severe pain. We gave her a large soap suds enema and magnesium citrate. We admitted her for her pain. She sat in the ER and kept exploding with large amounts of stool all over the bed and floor. They kept her behind a curtain near the nurses station where we all chart from. You could not hear her having the BMs, but she could stink up the whole ER for several hours every 15 minutes.
As far as your PA doing the dirty work for you, do it yourself. That is why you get the big bucks DOCTOR.
Don’t you guys have bathrooms for the patients? Why are they going in the bed all the time?
Good question m(2). I prefer using the toilet to the bed myself. Some people obviously feel differently.
Mr. Hanky rides again?
Hanky’s Angels?
Vini, feces, vici?
No, it’s vini, vini, feces!
But in all seriousness, I’m a caregiver for severely developmentally disabled individuals and I spend a great amount of the day wiping butts and cleaning urine and feces off the floor (when we don’t get them to the bathroom in time, maybe that’s what happened here?)
I would think breathing your mouth might be a better option. Generally, when I breathe through my nose, I tend to smell things, which I assume you are trying to avoid in this case…..?
As an ER nurse, I can tell you we all roll our eyes when someone comes in with “emergent” constipation. Seriously, it took you days to get that way. Don’t come in to the ER on day 7 because you were too lazy to go to Wal-Mart and buy some over the counter remedies to take care of this yourself. Oh, and don’t be mad when you have to sit and wait to be seen because we have bumped the chest pain ahead of you.
Will this be considered code brown?