{DSG}DarkRaven
06-13-2007, 01:37 PM
I've been reading a thread over on the Something Awful forums for the past few days about the worst things people have ever seen. Car wrecks, plane crashes, dog attacks, war stories, domestic abuse, things like that. Perhaps I'm just a morbid person, but I've been hooked. And after a while, I began to wonder what sort of terrible, traumatic events people on AGN have witnessed.
Obviously, this is a heavy subject, and some of what you may read might turn your stomach a little. You've been forewarned.
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I'll be the first to admit that I've never seen or experienced anything truly terrible. No brutal violence, no pedestrian vs. auto's, etc. But for a little over a year, I worked at a senior care facility. Everybody there was varying levels of crazy (especially the staff), and most of the residents didn't get around very much. Some were wheelchair bound, and this lead to one of the worst non-life threatening things I can imagine: bedsores.
If you don't know, a bedsore is basically an infection that occurs when your skin begins to break down. This happens for a variety of reasons, but mostly because when you get older, your skin is more fragile and doesn't regenerate as fast. They're also called pressure sores, and it's why hospital patients and the elderly need to be turned in their beds. As you might expect, they're common on your rear end, thighs, and shoulders.
When I first started, we had a woman named Bernice (who I can legally talk about now because she's been dead over a year; no disrespect intended). Bernice was chairbound and very stiff. We had to stick a pillow between her legs at night, because she'd clamp them together like alligator jaws. Staff rumored that she had been abused in the past, if you follow.
Anyway, towards the end of her life, Bernice developed a bedsore on her thigh that was so large, I probably could have fit my fist in it. We had her on a device called a VAC, which stands for Vacuum Assisted Closure. It basically seals off the wound and slowly sucks out all the pus and seeping goo. This means that the staff didn't have to be constantly changing gauze and risking further contamination. Studies have shown that it's way better than the gauze packing method anyway.
The pus and goo, though, it all went into this lovely clear cartidge that needed to be replaced every so often. After a while, it sort of took on a life of it's own inside there, and began to look like a bleeding orange crystal deposit. Once the wound began to heal up significantly, though, we could no longer use the VAC, which meant it was back to gauze stuffing and whatnot.
The smell was almost unbearable. It was a foul odor so pungeant that it almost stunk up the entire wing of the house. If I could remember it better, I might reconsider going into the medical career field.
One story is enough for now.
Obviously, this is a heavy subject, and some of what you may read might turn your stomach a little. You've been forewarned.
---------------
I'll be the first to admit that I've never seen or experienced anything truly terrible. No brutal violence, no pedestrian vs. auto's, etc. But for a little over a year, I worked at a senior care facility. Everybody there was varying levels of crazy (especially the staff), and most of the residents didn't get around very much. Some were wheelchair bound, and this lead to one of the worst non-life threatening things I can imagine: bedsores.
If you don't know, a bedsore is basically an infection that occurs when your skin begins to break down. This happens for a variety of reasons, but mostly because when you get older, your skin is more fragile and doesn't regenerate as fast. They're also called pressure sores, and it's why hospital patients and the elderly need to be turned in their beds. As you might expect, they're common on your rear end, thighs, and shoulders.
When I first started, we had a woman named Bernice (who I can legally talk about now because she's been dead over a year; no disrespect intended). Bernice was chairbound and very stiff. We had to stick a pillow between her legs at night, because she'd clamp them together like alligator jaws. Staff rumored that she had been abused in the past, if you follow.
Anyway, towards the end of her life, Bernice developed a bedsore on her thigh that was so large, I probably could have fit my fist in it. We had her on a device called a VAC, which stands for Vacuum Assisted Closure. It basically seals off the wound and slowly sucks out all the pus and seeping goo. This means that the staff didn't have to be constantly changing gauze and risking further contamination. Studies have shown that it's way better than the gauze packing method anyway.
The pus and goo, though, it all went into this lovely clear cartidge that needed to be replaced every so often. After a while, it sort of took on a life of it's own inside there, and began to look like a bleeding orange crystal deposit. Once the wound began to heal up significantly, though, we could no longer use the VAC, which meant it was back to gauze stuffing and whatnot.
The smell was almost unbearable. It was a foul odor so pungeant that it almost stunk up the entire wing of the house. If I could remember it better, I might reconsider going into the medical career field.
One story is enough for now.