If you’ve had the unfortunate experience of spending time at a hospital, whether visiting a loved one or checking in for surgery (or maybe the happier occasion of having a baby), you know that nurses make the whole place run smoothly. But some wild things take place over the course of a nursing career… and one TikTok user shared all.
@rawr_its_paige told a shocking story about putting a catheter into a man during nursing school… and not being able to locate, um, that one area…
Paige said “I looked… quite in depth” but she just couldn’t locate it. To make things even more awkward, the man’s wife was sitting in the hospital room reading a book. (We have some questions, like how she was able to focus when this was going on.) She even asked Nicole, her friend and fellow nursing student, but she didn’t have any luck, either. Paige ended up talking to her teacher, which we can imagine was totally embarrassing.
The teacher saved the day by putting her hands in the area, and Paige had to create a sling for the man’s scrotum. Yes, really. Don’t you wish you were in nursing school?! Are we sure this isn’t from an episode of Grey’s Anatomy or one of its spinoffs?
Of course, as we could guess, people were amazed and surprised by this story. One TikTok user said “promise if you asked the wife… she wouldve said… ive been looking for it for 20 years” (ouch!) and @geekinpink19 won the comment section by saying “idk a nurse’s salary but it’s not enough.” Yes, this story really should be on a medical TV series.
According to Heathline, there are a few kinds of catheters, including short term/intermittent or external/condom catheters (it just keeps getting worse!) along with indwelling/suprapubic/urethral catheters. As we might expect, as Michiganmedicine.com reported, a JAMA Internal Medicine study shared that over 50 percent of people who use a catheter in the hospital have “complications.” When it’s taken out, some people have issues being intimate or going to the bathroom. Catheters are used more often than we might think, including when you choose an epidural during labor since you can’t move your legs and walk to the bathroom.
While it sounds like everything worked out in the end, it seems like Paige never forgot the experience, and we totally get it.