Maybe it’s the training. Maybe it’s just the professional attitude. Maybe it’s even because we’re used to it. Or maybe it’s because we were born for this. Whatever the reason, nurses are a special breed, and the stuff that makes most people turn green gets us excited. And even the things that we find less than appealing do little more than make us raise an eyebrow. I mean, even if it’s nasty, we just deal with it. Without batting an eye. It’s part of the job, and while most people may wanna puke, nurses are like, “what?! Pass the chips, bro. It’s lunch time.”
Here’s 65 things that gross you out (unless you’re a nurse).
- The sight of blood.
- Profuse bleeding.
- Cleaning up blood.
- Blood clots.
- Menstrual blood.
- Blood on your clothes or shoes.
- The way it sounds when someone tries in vain to expectorate their own mucous.
- The smell of a human bowel movement.
- Cleaning up a human bowel movement.
- Someone’s bowel movement on your clothing.
- Making someone produce a bowel movement.
- Making someone produce a bowel movement with your finger.
- Using a Popsicle stick to dig around and transfer bowel movement.
- Blood/bowel movement mixture. AKA GIB.
- Needles.
- Poking someone with a needle.
- Nakedness.
- Poor hygiene.
- Body odor.
- Genital odor.
- That skin that falls of people’s feet when you take their socks off.
- Yeast infections.
- Someone’s genitals in your face.
- Holding genitals in your hand.
- Accidentally brushing your bare skin against moist genitals.
- Gnarly toenails.
- Toe cheese.
- Missing toenails.
- Missing toes.
- Halitosis.
- Cleaning someone else’s dentures.
- Cleaning someone else’s dentures that have three months’ worth of food on them.
- The smell of urine.
- Urine that looks like sludge.
- Urine on your person.
- Vaginal discharge.
- Penile discharge.
- Anal discharge.
- Bile.
- Vomit.
- Projectile vomit.
- Vomiting blood.
- Vomiting bowel movement.
- The kind of vomit where you can see exactly what lunch was.
- Ear wax.
- An abscess.
- Open wounds.
- Open wounds you can stick your fist in.
- Open wounds where you can see tendon and bone.
- A dangling limb.
- When a man’s scrotum is the size of a cantaloupe.
- When the meatus of the glans penis fillets open like a flower.
- Gangrene.
- Rotting flesh.
- Brain matter.
- Pus.
- Maggots in flesh.
- Intestines outside of the body.
- Amniotic fluid.
- Make that any fluid.
- Tubes sticking out of people.
- Sticking tubes in people.
- Sucking things out of people with tubes you have stuck into people.
- Dead bodies.
- Talking about any of the above over dinner.
Not much bothers a nurse, it’s true. It’s simply part of it. So even if there’s a thing or two that really makes your gorge rise, for the most part you’re a trooper in the face of anything foul or otherwise disgusting. You may even describe it as “cool.”
So here’s to all the defenders of death, wipers of bum, and super hero healthcare workers out there who look lung butter in the face and say, “is that all ya got?”