facial cancer
after working as a nurse for a while, it's inevitable that you see unpleasant stuff, it's one of the frontlines of the rich tapestry that is human life.
I work in psych these days, so I don't tend to see the surgical stuff, although every once in a while you see someone who has self-harmed to the extreme; the nastiest ones I've seen were fire-related.
However, the most horrific thing for me was encountered whilst training on a general ward - mostly respiratory related, but with a few beds for people waiting for a hospice.
This gent in particular had a very advanced, aggressive facial cancer. Now when I say aggressive, it wasn't waving around a stanley knife and threatening GBH, but it had eaten substantial chunks of this poor chaps face; cheek, jawline, eye socket...
A lot of the nurses refused to go in there, and you could smell the room halfway down the (large) ward. Necrotic, cancerous tissue does not smell good. A delicate blend of rotten eggs, faeces, stinky cheese and stale BO would not even get close to it.
Had to help change the dressings a few times, was cool with that, I figured despite my nauseous feelings, the chap deserved respect big time and should be well looked after.
They kept him whacked off his tits on morphine, I like to think he was so out of it he forgot where he was.
(bollox, not again, Sat 23 Jun 2007, 22:20, Reply)