What do you find gross?

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Perfbird

Perfbird

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Alright, so I have to ask this question because I find a few things disgusting that as a vet I'll have to be doing/working with daily, and I'm hoping I'll be able to get used to those nasties! If you have any tips for getting over myself in these situations, please suggest them, also please share some things that you find utterly disgusting.

EARS. Having to do ear cleanings makes me want to vomit. There's something about the smell and the sight of the earwax/blood/disgusting stuff that makes me gag every time, I can't help it. I can't hold my breath because the sight still makes me want to hurl. I also hate the eye goopies, but I can handle those with a towel or with gloves on.

Cat poop - this isn't too bad, but it's bad enough that I try and avoid going by cat kennels if at all possible. It's one of the worst smells on Earth to me, and I've done fecals for many, many species at the zoo so my nose has been around the block a few times as far as poo goes.

Anyone else?
 
my vet only does laser surgery and i hate that burnt flesh smell... i think of Fritos (the chips) to get my mind off of it and amazingly it works. I guess since fritos have a similar smell, i dunno... maybe just in my mind haha its so weird. But i love the chips so it keeps me at ease. its almost like i actually tricked myself into believing im just in a room with someone eating fritos. now the gagging feeling has stopped when i assist!!!
 
the smell of the afterbirth when infusing cattle!!! and it lingers.
 
Maggots are gross.
And some smells (ie week-old abcess) still manage to bypass my brain and activate the gag reflex. It's weird that you can intellectually be totally fine with the sight of something (I actually love clipping abcessed bite wounds and the like -- you know they've got to feel so much better without layers of hair matted over them) but smells can make your stomach start dancing totally involuntarily. Peppermint under the mask = best thing ever.
 
That's funny. Using the electric bone saw reminds me of Chex mix. Seriously, 100% Chex to me. Frist time I smelled it I thought "Why are people making Chex in here?"

My tip is to think of the substance as cells or molecues. Pus= neutrophils, and neutrophils themselves aren't gross at all. Blood=mostly RBCs, and those are really quite cute. And who doesn't like little yeastie beasties under the scope?

I've also heard chewing strong flavored gum or eating hard candies helps distract from smells.

My gross story (you ask, I tell) 😱
Once we had a kitten with an extreme eye infection, the eyeball itself had ruptured and was oozing a thick, foul pus. There were only flaps of the sclera visible. The other eye was very bad and bulging, but not yet ruptured. The owner elected to euth.

The kitten buried its head into my elbow and got pus all over my sleeve, but I didn't have the heart to move it since it was in so much pain. The kitten was so small we had to give the injection intraperitoneal and I held it while it passed on. Long story short, pus-for-eyes cats don't make my day. After that not much grossed me out.

No, I take that back. Severe rectal prolapses get a thumbs down from me too. 👎
 
Finding maggots in wounds grosses me out.
I have a flea thing too. I am paranoid that they are going to jump on me and infest my hair. My complex probably started when I saw fleas crawling around in the hair of a friend of mine during class over 15 years ago. Yuck!
Luckily I worked in Lake Tahoe for a few years, where there aren't fleas. There was a dog with lice once, after treating it they all died and if he brushed up against your legs hundreds of dead lice would stick to your pants. I don't like lice either.
Grossest thing I've ever smelled: a great dane that had been dead for 7 months. His owners kept him in the snow in the backyard until they could afford to cremate him. They they carried him into the lobby in a plastic bag...I had to leave. I guess the kids in the family were enthusiastically telling the receptionists about what came out of the dog's mouth when it bloated, then it deflated...etc. (that part makes me laugh, poor receptionists)

Crazy stories: a dog came in on emergency who's tongue got sucked into a paper shredder. Another one chased a bird over the edge of a four story parking garage, and lived....his radius and ulna were snapped in half, you could bend his legs backwards right in the middle. Poor guy, but he did live and his parents took him to Davis to get fixed ($$$).
 
Probably the grossest thing I have ever considered (thankgod I didnt actually have to deal with it!) was a woman who's cat had gone missing, and was then found dead by the neighbours a few weeks later. She decides she wants it cremated, along with her other dead cat. This second cat is currently buried in their backyard... since JANUARY 2007!!! (This was like, a month ago!) :scared:. THANK GOD when she tried to dig up the body she couldn't find it, but then she was all like, "oh, what am I going to tell my daughter about what happened to the cats remains?" Her daughter is 19... I'm thinking the truth???
 
Hmm, a rectal prolapse sounds like it might be on my 'that's-truly-disgusting' list.
Really foul smelling pus is not a favorite, but there's something about making the pus come out of things that's oddly fascinating and I can hold my breath.

Bot fly larvae in the skin, and large-sized maggots in the wound are my two biggest downfalls by far. I get goosebumps even thinking about it. I dislike deep, bottomless type holes in bodies, but I've learned to handle that on animals (on people, however, I will scream and run away). Now if there's a larvae or maggot popping its head out, I am thoroughly grossed/creeped out. It often makes me feel on the verge of passing out, but so far, I've prevailed.
Ucky.
 
I once saw a poor dog that had obviously been badly neglected, it had cushings, was a bag of bones with hardly any hair, had horrid teeth and a massive heart murmur... and was COVERED in about 300-400 ticks!!! They were EVERYWHERE!!! I felt so sorry for the dog, but I didnt want to touch it because i was so grossed out by these ticks. Usually I don't mind ticks at all, I happily pull them off animals (i find it really satisfying to pull them out of lizards ears!!!) but I just found this so gross, and then I was itchy for the rest of the day, and paranoid about touching myself!
 
Crepitus and proptosed eyes. Yuck. The moment when I first find maggots sucks, but I can deal once I know they're there. Fortunately, I can smell maggots from about 100 paces so I'm not usually surprised.
 
Wow, you guys either have really unlucky patients or live in areas where people don't take care of their animals well. The worst thing I've seen is a dog with parvo - cleaning up that cage about made me puke. I don't remember seeing very much beyond the normal stuff - spay, neuter, dog hit by car, etc. There was the c-section once that was really juicy. I didn't think you could fit that much liquid in a 18" long dog.
 
Placentas!

And squibby, I saw a picture of dog who had gotten its tongue stuck in a paper shredder in one of the vet magazines at work. I wonder if that was your case, or some other equally unfortunate dog!
 
This is an entertaining thread - a nice break from euthanasia and salary differences 😉. Don't worry Saint, a rectal prolapse isn't gross at all - at least the one I helped with. I'm kind of weird - I've seen a good amount of procedures and animals in bad shape but blood, guts, and pus don't bother me much (unless the smell is really bad). Also, I've been around a lot of parvo dogs and that doesn't bother me, but the smell of expressing anal glands does (not the act of expressing itself). Also, the act of popping a pustule or pimple/comodone/whatever bothers me (not the contents though). I work with my wife and she always tells me I'm backwards.
 
You know what's a lot more gross than any of these things??? Dealing with these same types of things on a human - why is it the same exact bodily fluids/functions are really gross on other people? I guess that's why I want to do Vet med.
 
Anal sacs! Blech. That smell will linger on you for the rest of the day.
Microorganisms also make me squirm.
 
You know what's a lot more gross than any of these things??? Dealing with these same types of things on a human - why is it the same exact bodily fluids/functions are really gross on other people? I guess that's why I want to do Vet med.
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Oh definitely. I can watch an animal bleed and be fine nausea wise but watching blood come out of a human makes me queasy. I guess I've desensitized myself to the animal bleeding bit from so many surgeries/emergencies? I don't know. Used to get queasy at animal blood but...humans are animals too. Doesn't make sense to me.



Other than that: maggots. We had a cat one time that had a hole in it (literally, a hole) on the top side. We didn't know why (owner couldn't tell us), and the cat was happy (as if nothing was out of the ordinary), and the vet wanted blood, so we laid it on its side and the other tech held off the vein.

Then maggots started rolling out of the hole. Lots of them. One rolled into her pocket and her reaction was priceless. But she did better than I by continuing to hold off the vein while I laughed at her reaction. 😳
 
Working in a pathology lab, the gossest things I've ever come across are rotten aborted horse fetuses that were found 24 hrs later, and a runover, green, bloated bobcat whose fur and skin would slough off with the slightest touch. Those are the only two things that have made me ever gag while working with animals. However, I'll gag anytime I see another human throw-up (except on TV).
 
The smell of rotting flesh. There was a horse with an abcesed tooth that broke but didn't get treated, so the whole sinus got infected, but the gum started to heal over the infection. When the vet broke through the granulation tissue it was probably the worst smell ever.
 
I can handle regular c-sections, no problem. I can practically catch and rescucitate puppies in my sleep.

The one time I almost puked on the sterile field was more of a pyometra than a c-section. Owners came in, said their dog wasnt feeling well, had a fever, lethargic, etc. And then, "OH BY THE WAY, she was due to have puppies about two weeks ago."

So, we did an xray, and there were three pups still in there. Dead of course, and rotting.

Opening that bitch up was the most disgusting thing I have seen or smelled. Black and green guck was everywhere and the bodies were just falling apart they were so rotted. Nasty nasty.
 
Pus, blood, pee, poo.....I'm ok with those. What makes me want to hurl is eye snots. Bleeeeeeeeeeeech. It's all snotty and snappy like a rubber band and swirls around on the eye surface and it's gross =[
 
This one is really pathetic, but dog poo sickens me. It looks far too much like human poo and I just can't deal haha. I can't stand ticks either. I'm totally fine with all other parasites, but ticks creep me out. I guess I don't really find them gross, just really creepy.
 
Human stuff.
Cuterebra (bot/fly larvae/warble).
Maggots.
Big gastrointestinal tracts opened during necropsy.
Mold (the more fuzzy = the more gross it is), or fuzzy bacteria on a petri dish.

I can deal with maggots or bots as long as I'm encased in latex or plastic, and I don't think about them too much and just work on getting them OUT and GONE.

Years ago, a gigantic snake necropsy grossed me out when it came time to the gut section - so ever since then, it's on The List. I'm sure there's more to come, what with necropsy rotation next year!
 
Maggots and Bone crunching. When I was working int he clinic in the country maggot pockets were pretty common but when we got a cat in whose tail was completely NECROTIC. The hair had fallen off, the skin was black till the base and when you touched the tail they squirmed right out of the dead skin! Ugh! It makes me itch just thinking about it. And with bones well, lets just say I will never be a Orthopedic surgeon. Something about the sound makes my stomach churn and if exposed to it for longer than an hour. I defiantly will vomit. :barf:
 
It's not exactly gross, but the sound of dental work makes my skin crawl. That horrible squealing, scraping noise.
Ticks bother me too, though I don't have a big problem removing them. I had Lyme disease when I was a kid so when one surprises me I freak out a little on the inside. :scared:
 
PicklePie said:
It's not exactly gross, but the sound of dental work makes my skin crawl. That horrible squealing, scraping noise.
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That noise gives me the heebie jeebies too. I used to dread learning how to do dentals, but funnily enough, when theres a "feeling" to go with the noise, and I'm the one doing the dental, it doesn't bother me so much.

I can't stand being in the room when another tech is doing dentals though. =shivers=
 
Cracking through bone is the worst for me. I was scrubbed in on a surgery where the surgeon had to use a chisel to break a jaw. It was the first time I thought I might have to leave to go puke.
 
cowgirla - Your gross story officially takes the cake in my book. It sounds more like something out of a horror movie. Decaying puppies and yucky stuff... I think I'd rather deal with 10 maggot/ bot fly larvae cases instead.

(Goes to show that there's always something out there that will gross you out even more....)
 
Intact male cat urine. That stuff's nearly permanent.
 
Forgot the one thing that actually made me puke. It was a beagle with an open pyometra. She had the nastiest mucopurulent stuff coming out of her vagina, and the end of the string of nastiness stuck to her foot. So every step made the nasty stuff stretch and spring...I got her back in her cage and promptly vomited in the trash can. Grossness.
 
cowgirl- yeah that would top my list too if I witnessed that.

In all honesty sights/sounds/smells don't really bother me, but the thing that is pretty damn nasty is the smell dogs get when their teeth are basically rotting out of their head. Not only painful, but it friggin reeks!
 
Oh man, reading all this stuff is telling me that I have yet to see/smell something truly disgusting! :laugh: Cowgirla, your story reminded me of a cat that had uterine torsion, and after she started going septic we had no choice but to euthanize. I got to help with necropsy, and man, it was disgusting! The poor kittens were stained completley red and they were dissolving, not to the extent as yours, but pretty nasty.

Also had a nice pyo cat, I had the honors of opening up the uterus to expose the inside to formaldehyde...I swear the pus shot up about a foot when I punctured it!

But man, some of these stories make me queasy just imagining them...and totally agree with the fact that this stuff in humans is so much grosser! I can't even stand the smell of people farts, can't stand seeing/hearing/smelling people vomit. It's a huge reason why I would never be cut out for human medicine.
 
Perfbird said:
can't stand seeing/hearing/smelling people vomit. It's a huge reason why I would never be cut out for human medicine.
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I'm the same way when it comes to vomit. I absolutely cannot stand human vomit, but I can clean up dog sick all day long without a problem.
 
PicklePie said:
I'm the same way when it comes to vomit. I absolutely cannot stand human vomit, but I can clean up dog sick all day long without a problem.
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Same here. I can deal with just about anything when it comes to animals (I admit I haven't met maggots or necrotic tissue yet though)... But when it comes to people, I can't even look at a needle in someone's arm. Even on tv. (I'm very needle shy myself, I once had to get a CAT scan with contrast that came with a three inch IV needle and it was the scariest thing I ever experienced, no joke). I'm also incredibly squeamish if someone decides to tell me about their bathroom issues. Meanwhile I can talk about appearance of dog poop all day without a second thought.
 
I've been checking out new places to volunteer and have been around some horribly smells (farm animal excrement, refrigerator full of fish, dead animals...) but nothing gets to me like cat urine.

Anyone else think cat urine is the most vile substance known to man???
 
Whenever animals are covered in fleas and ticks it leaves me feeling itchy all day. I hate those squirmy little buggers! And this is going to sound stupid, but the one thing that can activate my gag reflex is watching a dog eat another dog's fresh...um...leavings. Ew.
 
Oh man, I can't believe I almost forgot about one dog that was brought into the clinic. The poor thing had gotten hit by a car a week or so before, one of its legs had been broken and the bone pushed through the skin. The owners apparently didn't have the money to bring it in at the time, so they made a makeshift cast out of ducttape. The dog was in absolutely horrible shape when they brought it in to be put down. Its leg was just falling apart and when doc went to remove the ducttape, maggots were everywhere. It was pretty gross and really sad. It can be tough being in a poor rural area.
 
The vomit of a coprophagic dog is pretty disgusting. I'm a popper so I don't mind abscesses or pus. Green gewy eye buggers are also kind of icky. I also agree that all types of human excrement are far more gross than anything that could possibly come out of an animal.
 
I abhor broken bones. We had a dog that was hit by a car a few years ago; she had a shattered pelvis & femur and the other was dislocated. Taking those X Rays was the most horrible thing I ever did there. Her legs were so floppy :scared:. I have been sprayed in the face by a parvo dog, have cleaned maggots out of wounds and sores, and done or seen many other disgusting things, but that was the only time I vomited on the job. Ew...just thinking about that poor dog...
 
*eats peanut butter and crackers*

Any more?

Lol. Reading about stuff doesn't get to me.

You guys know what I hate? Baby boogers. Yellow, slimy globs just below a baby (or young child's) nose. That sheen of mucus... and they're running around with it just hanging there and OH GOD NO DON'T COME HUG ME NO GET AWAY

My sister has 5 kids. :d
 
Intact male rabbit urine is pretty strong too...

I wasn't about to go checking for myself, but, awhile back, a vet I know who's been out 15+ years - quite stoic in the face of any uber grossness-- I've only seen one thing, yet, that did gross him out... and it wasn't even an animal itself:

Compounded Metronidazole, fish-flavored, expired a few months in the fridge.

He apparently made the mistake of opening it and catching a whiff..

Eiw...
 
CookieBear said:
Intact male rabbit urine is pretty strong too...
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I definitely have to agree. I brought home a new bunny to my intact male and as I was introducing them, my adult decided he needed to mark me several times....yeah that was pretty nasty
 
I love taking ticks off of animals..it's too fun! Or maybe I'm weird? Haha.. but cat poop really grosses me out, and vomit. Maggots are never good either..BLEH it smells so bad 🙁
 
CookieBear said:
Intact male rabbit urine is pretty strong too...

I wasn't about to go checking for myself, but, awhile back, a vet I know who's been out 15+ years - quite stoic in the face of any uber grossness-- I've only seen one thing, yet, that did gross him out... and it wasn't even an animal itself:

Compounded Metronidazole, fish-flavored, expired a few months in the fridge.

He apparently made the mistake of opening it and catching a whiff..

Eiw...
Click to expand...

We would yell at each other if someone decided to bust out the fish flavoring for Metronidazole. I completely forgot about how nasty that stuff smells until you mentioned it..tops my list!
 
I've spent the last several years in various diagnostic labs, so I have seen some pretty nasty things - very little phases me anymore, but if something IS going to get to me, it's going to be a smell thing rather than a sight thing. Worst thing I have ever smelled...someone sent us parts of a Giraffe that had been dead for 3+ days before they even found it - in August, in Texas. They then mailed it to us regular mail (5ish days) with no ice. :scared: The real kicker was that they requested a bacterial culture on this mess. :laugh:

That thing not only cleared the room, it cleared an entire hallway.

Another less-disgusting but more-recent one: someone mailed us some cat feces for culture, but before they closed up the box they decided it needed a little something to mask the poop smell...so they sprayed prefume into the box. The horrible combination of smells when I opened that thing about knocked me over.

Anything having to do with eyes really bothers me for some reason, especially if it involves needles, or any kind of parasite/larva. Gives me the heebie-jeebies. Optho rotation is going to be fun...
 
Pomegranate said:
Working in a pathology lab, the gossest things I've ever come across are rotten aborted horse fetuses that were found 24 hrs later, and a runover, green, bloated bobcat whose fur and skin would slough off with the slightest touch. Those are the only two things that have made me ever gag while working with animals. However, I'll gag anytime I see another human throw-up (except on TV).
Click to expand...


Me too! I handle animal poop fine, animal vomit even fine, but seeing, hearing, or cleaning up human throw-up makes me hurl myself!!
 
so far the most disgusting thing I've seen/smelled has been the thoracic cavity of a cat with FIP. The doctor performing the necropsy made sure I saw how "mushy" and necrotic the lungs were. And the smell... gag. I quadruple bagged that thing when i cleaned it up.

eye proptosis simply freaks me out. even thinking about it makes me a little queasy.
 
I helped with a harbor seal necropsy...it had been sucked through a herring pump and was basically a bag of liquid surrounded by fur. Poor thing!! The only discernible organ was the heart, and we found two pieces of broken rib in it.
 
Manual disimpaction of a Manx. Constipation definitely ups the ick factor on the smell of cat poo. Fortunately I didn’t so much want to throw up as I wanted to just let go of the cat and flee the room. The result is one of those “holy guacamole get that garbage bag out of this building now!” scenarios.

Another one, more for the thought than the sight or smell of it, is blocked male cats. Just imagining what it would be like to stop being able to pee, or to have the stuff coming out of your bladder be more blood than urine, is disturbing.
 
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