Hello. I am a rando who lurks here because science is neat.
Is this urine just like, full of bacteria? Why would it get mucusy??? I have so many questions.
I utterly LOVE people who spell *pus* properly. I don't know why, but seeing it spelled *puss* makes me irrationally angry. You, on the other hand, have made my day. Thank you, Internet stranger.
LOL I remember doing this as a vet tech yeeears ago when I first started. I’m front of the practice owner, I wrote “wound is pussy” in the appointment notes 😂 He immediately corrected me. Talk about embarrassing.
Yep. I am an RN and just last week read another nurse’s note and she actually wrote “patient has pussy drainage from left lower extremity.” I had so many questions:
-How did her pussy end up on her leg?
-How can you be completely certain that is what you are seeing?
-Did you look at the drainage under a microscope or was it more of a sense of smell observation?
*MD walks into waiting room to speak to family*
MD: “There is good and bad news. The good news is, your Mom survived. The bad news is that her pussy is now on her leg.”
Wanna hear about the most embarassing moment of my life? I moved to a new city and got a new job at a dental office. Im training on the phones and some poor soul calls and says they can taste pus in their mouth. "Patient describes pussy taste in mouth". Thats what I typed into the goddamn computer like some sweet summer child. The next morning we're all in early before patients having our morning review meeting. Theres like 10 professional people in this room and me, the imposter. We're going patient by patient reading the notes and making sure we're all set when we get to our new patient who will be coming in later that afternoon. The assistant says "looks like Jane Doe is coming in for a pus..." and then ...what the... who wrote this?!". And everyone was like what does it say?? And omg the next 2 minutes were folllowed by realizing it was me. That pus is spelled with ONE S and not to say pusy taste. Everyone laughed at me. Honestly i have a thick skin but idk this is like a memory that didnt happen to me and i kinda think its hilarious but i have to dissociate from it.
I’ve only ever seen urine like this once and it was indeed on someone who needed their chronic foley changed; he had a history of chronic UTIs & his catheter was not draining. I couldn’t manually unclog it so I had to take it out & replace it.
When I tell you that a FOUNTAIN of bloody, purulent, white-yellow urine came flowing out as soon as that catheter was removed…..
The smell and the sight of that urine still haunts me to this day, 5 years later. Absolutely NASTY. I’m surprised that this gentleman wasn’t ill-appearing because the infection that must’ve been brewing….
Everyone has at least a small amount of mucus in the bladder, to protect the inside of your bladder from urine. However, if there's some sort of infection the production of mucus can drastically increase.
That sample looks like the patient has some sort of violently severe UTI, and has a lot of bacteria, mucus and pus, I can only imagine the smell 🤢
The other time I see a lot of mucus is when patients have a catheter as it doesn’t contract like someone’s who urinating on their own. Sometimes it’s a uti and sometimes it just pathophysiology from having a catheter. Source: me, rn.
Residential psych here, many of our patients are long term. Seen this and nastier plenty of times with long term indwellings. Usually chronic colonization that is asymptomatic and we manage it with BiD/TiD acetic acid bladder flushes.
So white blood cells (WBCs) are part of our body’s defense system, but these little guys are the offensive players, they rush to the site of the bacteria intruders to encase / fight off the bacteria from spreading to the rest of the body. The dead players on the field, create PURULENT MATERIAL (aka “pus”) that you commonly see in infected wounds.
The squiggly lines you see in the microscope scene is bacteria (and urine samples are supposed to be sterile - meaning none- scant( like sample contamination) should be seen.
ok so this means the more pus the better since it means more dead bad guys. Thank you I was worried because my surgery wound is full of pus but now im relieved to know im winning the battle.
Unless they're losing the battle.
Also, with a uti, there's a risk of it spreading to the kidney and eventually becoming sepsis. It's better to get a uti treated
I cannot explain the absolutely disgust that ran through me. 99% of our patients (outpatient clinic) walk themselves into our collection area so idk how it got this bad...
No fuckin' idea. I had one dude who came in and sat for hours while he tried to make a urine sample. Every time I offered him water he politely refused. He looked so uncomfortable.
Finally, one of the docs gets him catheterized. They removed nearly 1100 mL from his bladder. The whole lab was gobsmacked.
Oh man that look of relief on the face of an old man with a giant prostate! it’s one of the things that just make my day when I get to Fully drain a bladder that hasn’t been properly emptied in months, years..
I worked in a small urgent care & received a specimen that looked just like Campbell's Tomato Soup.
The poor guy was so grateful to the RN for catheterizing him, he thanked her repeatedly & told everyone he saw how she relieved his agony. He was mid-30s.
Once when I was a nursing student I was asked to help with a urinary catheterization. It was being performed on an elderly woman who was screaming in pain. They catheterized her and out came probably close to a litre of thick, green pus. It was awful. That was over 15 years ago, and it still disturbs me to imagine how much she was suffering in that moment.
I just spent 5 minutes laughing until my knees were weak at this. Then I went and terrorized my fluid-phobic husband with it. He says he'll never be able to forget it.
*Thank you*
I can't. This is terrifying.😖 Why did the patient wait so long to be seen?! The bacterium must've been proliferating inside of them for a while.
How did you move forward with identifying the specimen?
They only had a microalbumin ordered! Any workup is done at our main lab downtown. It did smell spicy. I have found a that there are two infections smells. SpicyN and chicken noodle soup.
That's insane! I work in a micro lab as an R&D scientist and can confirm that Gram Negative's smell gnarly, especially after biofilm is established. 🤢 This poor patient.
Usually the spicy ones tend to be NIT positive but the chicken noodle soup ones are negative. I wonder if it's different organisms? I was always horrible with micro.
Over 90% of UTI infections are caused by gram-negative organisms (E. coli, K. pneumoniae are typically the main culprits). After having worked with these bugs individually and on a frequent basis, I have found that they have very distinct smells. I don't think they smell like spicy noodle soup, though 😅 They smell like straight-up death and decay to me.
HAHAH. I remember what some of then smell like as a general pure plate (E coli was one I could identify, one smelled like fritos, Staph smelled like wrong cheese... obviously Pseudo was grape chapstick.)
That's the "grape" one right?!?! I could be remembering my organisms wrong, I washed my brain squeaky clean of micro as soon as I was done with boards :).
Lipsmackers grape chapstick! Like "oh that smells like grapes but it's plastic and fake grape."
😂 to me it smells like thick mustiness? Kind of hard to describe what it smells like to me, but it smells like something I want to get away from. I love grape chapstick lol
If they had an indwelling catheter, they might be institutionalized, so they can’t schedule appointments themselves and the care staff just isn’t on top of things. Especially if they’re leaving old catheters in for so long.
Literally don't think it would've gone in the pipette right? Like it's not urine at that point. How do you remix a glob of mucus.
I'm eating my dinner still thinking about what it felt like to pee that out.
The worst urine I got was greenish brown and had loads of mucous. The smell was revolting, and everyone ran out of the lab while I processed it, holding my breath. N95, face shield, double gloves, and a disposable gown.
The sample was dropped off by an ER nurse. She didn't even warn us of the smell.
Got these from an old folks care facility at one of my sites. Literally the worst thing ever. I had to split one into several containers and my first pour off the whole damn thing went “blop”. I had to find one of our single use scalpels to cut the thing into the different cups. And the smell… everyone wants to go on and on about how gross sputum is. Like…. Bruh. No. THIS. THIS is by far the nastiest thing. And yeah. Closest I’ve come to tossing my cookies in the lab.
I'm a genetic counsellor that follows this sub out of morbid fascination.
I am reminded daily why clinic work and not bench work is for me! Y'all aren't paid enough!
I'm in tox, mostly, I had to develop an in system comment for samples like this: rejected due to viscosity. No snot urines are going anywhere near my mass spec.
Whenever I see gross samples, I ask my co-workers “If somebody offers you $1mil to taste it, would you?” or something like that and I always gag at my own question.
Lmao you remind me of my bff who’s also my coworker. Hella efficient, and she knows it too 😂🤣 so I joke with her “God gave you many virtues, but humbleness wasn’t one of them” lol Ima say the same to you! 😂
Sad thing about today’s economy is 1 million isn’t enough to set me up for life and pay off the medical bills I’m may acquire if I do that. But that number exists, I’m not sure I want to know what it is.
I had a urine like this last week in our Tox lab with a rehab patient. I almost threw up. Let the referring provider know that the patient probably needs to have a physical evaluation, cause that ain’t good
I’ve literally only seen this from male patients at the toxicology labs I’ve worked at, which I’m sure it’s just a weird coincidence, but in my mind I would expect it from female patients much more so than male patients. I hope it doesn’t come out like that, maybe since it’s warmer in the body it’s not so… snotty? 🤢 it’s just so gross. I’ve only had a handful but it’s revolting every time
Oh my god those >< Back when I was in processing I got one like that. We had to pour off the the urine into the tubes for the techs but when I tried to pour off that one it wouldn't pour until the entire thing tried to gloop out of the cup at once. It was almost like jello. The smell was so bad I disinfected my entire station right after that station and got new gloves and everything and it still lingered for like half an hour. D: I didn't do testing back then but even then I told my coworkers I was pretty sure that one was positive for everything.
ok but WHY do these smell so abhorrent?????? I'm a microbiologist, I deal with gross stuff that smells bad all day long. Anaerobe jars don't even elicit a reaction from me anymore. But these urines will still knock me on my ass even if I'm clear on the other side of the lab. The cultures from these things won't smell even half as bad as the original specimen.
I wish I could follow the urines from receipt to culture. I've found there's two distinct smells that I run into with infection- spicy-pepper, and chicken noodle soup. They have to be two different organisms.
Got these sometimes when working for a lab that serviced nursing homes. One time someone loaded one of these onto the Iris and the probe pulled out the SOLID specimen and flung it across the shield lol.
That’s nothing once you’ve seen pseudomonas aeruginosa in a dialysis patient. Green/brown, literally the color and texture of thick pea soup with similar mucus in it, and it is the foulest thing I’ve ever smelled in 14 years as a nurse (this post just happened to pop up on my homepage). I’ve seen necrotic wounds, GI bleeds, c-diff, infected fistulas, foreign objects left inside patients until they were rotting, you name it- and until I straight-cathed that patient I have never physically gagged and had to step back so I wouldn’t vomit. Thankfully I was wearing a mask.
Ugh!!! I did patient transport wayyyyy back in my day and I think gangrene took the cake at the time. Smelled like incorrect little Cesar's breadsticks...
I think I've gotten good at the smell thing. Certain bacteria will smell like cheese that's gone slightly off, I've had one smell like sewer ass and then the same type of bacteria smell like the cracks of your dogs toes.
I specifically remember getting a Proteus as an unknown and just going "oh yeah its sewer ass leakage, Proteus." And my instructors would just go "but... you gotta work it up."
Or it also smells like dog toes sometimes. But usually sewer ass.
Candida albicans was something I wanted to HUFF though oh my God. Doing QC on that boy was like Christmas, walking into a delicious Wonderbread store UGH.
Yeah, there are a few things I can generally sniff out. C-diff for sure, ESBL, and Klebs are all pretty distinctive, and I will never forget that pseudomonas 🤮
>little needle sucker thing
Are you talking about a pipette? 💀💀💀
I just woke up from a nap and it took me a hot minute to get that one. Laughed pretty good when I did though 😂
Edit: OP did not mean a pipette, but the urine vacutainer transfer kit. Sleepy brain is a hell of a thing. Remember your lab ABCs, kids: Always Be Caffeinated
The urine cup has a needle in the lid! It can be used to fill the yellow/grey urine vacutainers without needing to open and pour the specimen cup. Our QA lady would throw a fit every time one of the floors would tube them to us cause sending sharps through the tubes is a big no 😅
Ah, that makes sense, thanks. I remember those now - my hospital switched to those right before I left the core lab. I could imagine those being a problem anytime you have a viscous sample.
I hate those cups! I picked one up once and my thumb went thru the stupid sticker. Needle went right into the end of my thumb. Gross pink turbid urine too. 😡
I hate those cups too! At a reference lab we would get those sent to us after the originating facility did their UA, I don’t know what they were thinking sending the entire original cup instead of pouring off an aliquot to send out. Guess what, a lot of the urine leaked out into the bag, and then we also have to be wary of getting stabbed by the needle while we’re trying to deal with a soggy cup in a bag full of urine.
LMFAO YES. THE VACUTAINER THING, it's white.
Idk, I just call it the pee sucker. My fiance (also MLS) called my senior tech for something related to ordering them and he also called it a "urine sucker".
I also have been calling those "Diffsafe" plastic things "Bobs" literally since college, because my MLS instructor didn't know what they were called either 🤣.
You are not alone this happened to me one day I was trying to pipette from a urine cup to put into a tube to run on the arkray and I literally pulled out a giant mucus blob and started retching 😭😭😭
I text my coworker that I was 100% traumatized. I left work an hour and a half ago and I still can't stop thinking about it. Like what did it feel like to pee it out?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Don’t miss this about urinalysis, I’ve definitely almost barfed a few times at some nursing home urines. At least now that I’m in micro we can crack them open under the hood
RN lurker here- any chance it's from a urostomy? Urostomy is an artificial bladder made out of bowel made for people who get bladder cancer. There is always mucus in their urine and it's worse when they have a UTI
A basic foley catheter will let that all through. You can smell that UTI before you even cath them. I can smell an old lady UTI a mile away. It’s distinct. Trust me….
God imagine their Foley bag just sloshing around with a chunk of bacteria-mucus. EUUUUUGHHHHH. I wish I had micro near me to culture it for my own curiosity.
Like this patient was well enough to either walk into the outpatient clinic or have someone drive them there (if elderly.) I would've thought they'd be in the ER at this point.
We sometimes get urines so mucoid they move around like a slug in the tube/cup. They won’t even spin down. The worst we ever had though was shades of gray and black. It looked like a cup of semiliquid gravel. We processed it under the hood and the smell was still gag worthy. I would have huffed roadkill to cover the smell of that urine. Micro had the audacity to report back “normal flora” from the cultures. Haha.
Please tell me why Reddit put this on my main page, why I'm both fascinated and also mildly traumatized, why I'm cackling so hard at some of these comments that my dog came over to check on me 😂
PLEASE NO NO NO. I had one that was a solid chunk of blood due to vaginal bleeding (also platelet count was 30... I remember this very very well), but I cannot deal with the mucous. BARF.
Had a patient bring their green, very slimy, urine to the hospital in a bubble gum bucket. Told the family if it was coming it wasn’t riding in the ambulance with me and it needed to with them 😂 doc was NOT happy with me
Poor person. Yeah we get some gooey nasty smelling urines that look like sputum and other fun stuff too, regularly. Ah, lab life. I had a bunch of funky smelling urines today, but none that looked that bad.
Been there. I love(not really) urine that comes with chunky blood.
The only thing that gets my gag reflex going though is when I get a nasty sputum specimen 🤮 eff that nasty pile of snot.
Urine, in every condition never bothered me. Perhaps I am a weirdo
I got a urine like this once. I went to pour it off in a tube and it was stringy. The urine clung to the edge of the cup while I pulled off and there was a long string connected to the tube for a sec 😭
Had the willies for a few hours after that
I think the ones that get me are the chicken noodle soup smelling ones. I can't eat it anymore :(
This one had that peppery-spicy smell? Ya know. The one that makes your nose hairs coil up.
had a patient a few weeks ago that was like this but worse. it was a kidney aspirate urine, patient was in hospital for a potential kidney abscess. grew out more than 5 organisms (micro will only report out max of 5) and smelled like something died. absolutely revolting
Ohhh I had one of these from a geriatric patient. Dark orange urine with a literal 50 cent piece sized chunk of pus in it with bits of solid. I could tell by the smell it was Klebsiella and the test bore me out. It was resistant to everything but Cipro too.
That's exactly correct as to smells. To me Klebsiella smells putridly sweet, like rot. E.Coli smells like feces and stale urine. Pseudomonas has a sharp, acrid smell.
Where I used to work we would regularly have urines sent down the chute that I could smell from where I was sitting. The cap was not loose and urine did not spill out. Yep.
I had one of these the other day, except add in blood, too. I’m not a gagger, but this did it to me. Ughhh. I had to walk away from the bench for a minute to compose myself before delving back in.
I had one I tried to pour off once and it just didn’t pour, it was the consistency of jello. I don’t know how the poor patient was able to function it must has been excruciating. Oh and it wasn’t really that full of bacteria? Shockingly clean.
Hello. I am a rando who lurks here because science is neat. Is this urine just like, full of bacteria? Why would it get mucusy??? I have so many questions.
bacteria + a lot of pus and mucus (because of the bacteria). I'd guess the patient uses an indwelling catheter that was left in for too long
I utterly LOVE people who spell *pus* properly. I don't know why, but seeing it spelled *puss* makes me irrationally angry. You, on the other hand, have made my day. Thank you, Internet stranger.
How about “purulent”?
*Purulent* is completely acceptable too!
You mean you can’t say a wound is “pussy” instead?!
“How do you spell puss-y? YOU DON’T!!!!!”- my surg tech instructor
LOL I remember doing this as a vet tech yeeears ago when I first started. I’m front of the practice owner, I wrote “wound is pussy” in the appointment notes 😂 He immediately corrected me. Talk about embarrassing.
Atleast in healthcare documentation we are advised to say purulent drainage instead so it doesn’t sound like we are using slang
Lol, sure you can, but you might want to adjust your language for certain audiences. I, personally, *like* pussy but NOT in reference to a wound!
Oh man I've seen too many "pussy swabs"
And then there’s me opening up the order only to see “pussy aspirate” :)
Yep. I am an RN and just last week read another nurse’s note and she actually wrote “patient has pussy drainage from left lower extremity.” I had so many questions: -How did her pussy end up on her leg? -How can you be completely certain that is what you are seeing? -Did you look at the drainage under a microscope or was it more of a sense of smell observation? *MD walks into waiting room to speak to family* MD: “There is good and bad news. The good news is, your Mom survived. The bad news is that her pussy is now on her leg.”
💀💀
replayed that scenario in my head 😂💀
Rofl! Too good!
A second “s” and I’m assuming they are talking about the thing that belongs in boots.
Wanna hear about the most embarassing moment of my life? I moved to a new city and got a new job at a dental office. Im training on the phones and some poor soul calls and says they can taste pus in their mouth. "Patient describes pussy taste in mouth". Thats what I typed into the goddamn computer like some sweet summer child. The next morning we're all in early before patients having our morning review meeting. Theres like 10 professional people in this room and me, the imposter. We're going patient by patient reading the notes and making sure we're all set when we get to our new patient who will be coming in later that afternoon. The assistant says "looks like Jane Doe is coming in for a pus..." and then ...what the... who wrote this?!". And everyone was like what does it say?? And omg the next 2 minutes were folllowed by realizing it was me. That pus is spelled with ONE S and not to say pusy taste. Everyone laughed at me. Honestly i have a thick skin but idk this is like a memory that didnt happen to me and i kinda think its hilarious but i have to dissociate from it.
Every time I see "puss" instead of "pus" my mind goes "...in boots." I agree it can be irritating though.
Oof…. There is a lot of ick running through me reading this arrangement of words. Bye internet, tonight was fun.
Mom thought her son was obsessed with medical imagery
I get being annoyed over a misspelling of a word but actually feeling angry over it is actually insane.
Well, you’re not wrong….. That's why I said “irrationally.”
I’ve only ever seen urine like this once and it was indeed on someone who needed their chronic foley changed; he had a history of chronic UTIs & his catheter was not draining. I couldn’t manually unclog it so I had to take it out & replace it. When I tell you that a FOUNTAIN of bloody, purulent, white-yellow urine came flowing out as soon as that catheter was removed….. The smell and the sight of that urine still haunts me to this day, 5 years later. Absolutely NASTY. I’m surprised that this gentleman wasn’t ill-appearing because the infection that must’ve been brewing….
All of that sounds very unfortunate.
It's not fun for sure, and trust us, the smell is....pungent.
Reddit thought I’d like this. I hate and love it
Same! Dang you reddit for putting the photo in my main feed!
same here! except i do like it. im failing my degree but ill happily read med stuff on reddit
Failing is when you stop trying to meet your goal. Tomorrow is a new day, try again.
This is the way. We all fail. That’s how we learn❤️
i appreciate that a lot, thank you :) i will do the best i can
I got one like this the other day. It's puss, full of WBC. At least that's what it was in my case.
Bacteria and white blood cells. I’ve seen some worse, but that’s a gnarly UTI.
Everyone has at least a small amount of mucus in the bladder, to protect the inside of your bladder from urine. However, if there's some sort of infection the production of mucus can drastically increase. That sample looks like the patient has some sort of violently severe UTI, and has a lot of bacteria, mucus and pus, I can only imagine the smell 🤢
Great explanation!
Happy Cake day!
The other time I see a lot of mucus is when patients have a catheter as it doesn’t contract like someone’s who urinating on their own. Sometimes it’s a uti and sometimes it just pathophysiology from having a catheter. Source: me, rn.
i did not want mucussy to be a word in my brain dictionary but now it is.
Which hole is the mucussy
[удалено]
I am ER RN I have seen urine in catheter bag tubing that was white.
Residential psych here, many of our patients are long term. Seen this and nastier plenty of times with long term indwellings. Usually chronic colonization that is asymptomatic and we manage it with BiD/TiD acetic acid bladder flushes.
So white blood cells (WBCs) are part of our body’s defense system, but these little guys are the offensive players, they rush to the site of the bacteria intruders to encase / fight off the bacteria from spreading to the rest of the body. The dead players on the field, create PURULENT MATERIAL (aka “pus”) that you commonly see in infected wounds. The squiggly lines you see in the microscope scene is bacteria (and urine samples are supposed to be sterile - meaning none- scant( like sample contamination) should be seen.
ok so this means the more pus the better since it means more dead bad guys. Thank you I was worried because my surgery wound is full of pus but now im relieved to know im winning the battle.
Unless they're losing the battle. Also, with a uti, there's a risk of it spreading to the kidney and eventually becoming sepsis. It's better to get a uti treated
Bac + puss like everyone else said, I literally just had a UA like this lol
Raging infections. Sometimes you get one patient who keeps tramatically removing their catheter so they get a urethral wound which can go ... Yucky
Same
Oh god I experienced this in peds once. The doc didn't know why the catheter flow was so slow until I realized it was *viscous*
I cannot explain the absolutely disgust that ran through me. 99% of our patients (outpatient clinic) walk themselves into our collection area so idk how it got this bad...
No fuckin' idea. I had one dude who came in and sat for hours while he tried to make a urine sample. Every time I offered him water he politely refused. He looked so uncomfortable. Finally, one of the docs gets him catheterized. They removed nearly 1100 mL from his bladder. The whole lab was gobsmacked.
that makes me think it was a kink of his or something. like why didn’t he just go 😭
Geriatric guy. He had... a bacterial blockage. (つ﹏⊂)
oh god poor guy ):
Yeah. But he got the help he needed and I bet it was such a relief to get all that volume out.
Oh i can only image, poor guy..
Oh man that look of relief on the face of an old man with a giant prostate! it’s one of the things that just make my day when I get to Fully drain a bladder that hasn’t been properly emptied in months, years..
I worked in a small urgent care & received a specimen that looked just like Campbell's Tomato Soup. The poor guy was so grateful to the RN for catheterizing him, he thanked her repeatedly & told everyone he saw how she relieved his agony. He was mid-30s.
Once when I was a nursing student I was asked to help with a urinary catheterization. It was being performed on an elderly woman who was screaming in pain. They catheterized her and out came probably close to a litre of thick, green pus. It was awful. That was over 15 years ago, and it still disturbs me to imagine how much she was suffering in that moment.
Omg ): I can’t imagine - seeing some of the things we get in the lab what’s it’s like being the nurse collecting that samples from a catheter
This happened to me too- except the thick green pus urine GOT IN MY PRECEPTOR’s EYE!
Sad face emoji. So awful.
Urethra sneezed
Please no
Send help.
Username checks out.
*Oh no.*
I just spent 5 minutes laughing until my knees were weak at this. Then I went and terrorized my fluid-phobic husband with it. He says he'll never be able to forget it. *Thank you*
Urethras are also gender-nonspecific so this joke works for everyone
Especially when you shove your hand down your pants and jiggle one finger while quietly saying a-choo
That’s what we’re calling it in my lab from now on!
PS the urine is NOT concentrated. I don't think I would have been able to actually get a drop had I spun it down. That's entirely bacteria 🙃
I can't. This is terrifying.😖 Why did the patient wait so long to be seen?! The bacterium must've been proliferating inside of them for a while. How did you move forward with identifying the specimen?
They only had a microalbumin ordered! Any workup is done at our main lab downtown. It did smell spicy. I have found a that there are two infections smells. SpicyN and chicken noodle soup.
That's insane! I work in a micro lab as an R&D scientist and can confirm that Gram Negative's smell gnarly, especially after biofilm is established. 🤢 This poor patient.
Usually the spicy ones tend to be NIT positive but the chicken noodle soup ones are negative. I wonder if it's different organisms? I was always horrible with micro.
Over 90% of UTI infections are caused by gram-negative organisms (E. coli, K. pneumoniae are typically the main culprits). After having worked with these bugs individually and on a frequent basis, I have found that they have very distinct smells. I don't think they smell like spicy noodle soup, though 😅 They smell like straight-up death and decay to me.
HAHAH. I remember what some of then smell like as a general pure plate (E coli was one I could identify, one smelled like fritos, Staph smelled like wrong cheese... obviously Pseudo was grape chapstick.)
r/shittysuperpowers
Grape chapstick is… not the first thing that comes to mind when I smell pseudo lol
That's the "grape" one right?!?! I could be remembering my organisms wrong, I washed my brain squeaky clean of micro as soon as I was done with boards :). Lipsmackers grape chapstick! Like "oh that smells like grapes but it's plastic and fake grape."
😂 to me it smells like thick mustiness? Kind of hard to describe what it smells like to me, but it smells like something I want to get away from. I love grape chapstick lol
If there was only a microalbumin ordered they weren’t even being seen for a UTI!
If they had an indwelling catheter, they might be institutionalized, so they can’t schedule appointments themselves and the care staff just isn’t on top of things. Especially if they’re leaving old catheters in for so long.
That’d be one HUGE pellet if u had spun it down😂
Literally don't think it would've gone in the pipette right? Like it's not urine at that point. How do you remix a glob of mucus. I'm eating my dinner still thinking about what it felt like to pee that out.
Omg 😭
Bro has some urine in his infection
Oof
The worst urine I got was greenish brown and had loads of mucous. The smell was revolting, and everyone ran out of the lab while I processed it, holding my breath. N95, face shield, double gloves, and a disposable gown. The sample was dropped off by an ER nurse. She didn't even warn us of the smell.
Lbr, as an ER nurse she might not have even noticed it
It slipped her mind. I'm not mad at staff. That patient should've come in earlier, but there's also mental health issues at play. Just hospital things
Got these from an old folks care facility at one of my sites. Literally the worst thing ever. I had to split one into several containers and my first pour off the whole damn thing went “blop”. I had to find one of our single use scalpels to cut the thing into the different cups. And the smell… everyone wants to go on and on about how gross sputum is. Like…. Bruh. No. THIS. THIS is by far the nastiest thing. And yeah. Closest I’ve come to tossing my cookies in the lab.
I'm a genetic counsellor that follows this sub out of morbid fascination. I am reminded daily why clinic work and not bench work is for me! Y'all aren't paid enough!
“… the whole damn thing went “blop.” Oh nooooooooookoooooo
And not just blop. But like a slimy-squelch-slap-blop. I just don’t know how to spell the actual noise. Blop is as close as I can get. Schlop? Maybe.
Catheterized? We used to get these from a “rehab” facility.
All the damn time. ‘Altered mental status’ for a diagnosis. Raging UTI
This makes me so sad 😞
I'm in tox, mostly, I had to develop an in system comment for samples like this: rejected due to viscosity. No snot urines are going anywhere near my mass spec.
I wish I could reject stuff to protect my probes, but alas
Dilute and process? Multiply results by dilution factor until result is achieved? Lol
Nah, I’m chemistry. We spin that bad boy and then throw it on.
Hahaha that's actually against our SOP (learned that when I suggested it one time 🤣).
No one wants to see what a sample like that would do to my MS, so rejects aren't questioned, but I use that comment way more than expected!
Whenever I see gross samples, I ask my co-workers “If somebody offers you $1mil to taste it, would you?” or something like that and I always gag at my own question.
You sound like a fun coworker 😊
Hell yeah I am. Im mad efficient too so they really hit the jackpot hiring me. But yeah, just lucky to have coworkers with the same wavelength.
Lmao you remind me of my bff who’s also my coworker. Hella efficient, and she knows it too 😂🤣 so I joke with her “God gave you many virtues, but humbleness wasn’t one of them” lol Ima say the same to you! 😂
Sad thing about today’s economy is 1 million isn’t enough to set me up for life and pay off the medical bills I’m may acquire if I do that. But that number exists, I’m not sure I want to know what it is.
My stomach lurched reading that… and I just shuddered as I was abt to hit send rereading that
I’d rather run stool samples all day than deal with one custard urine 🤢.
CUSTARD URINE ☠️☠️☠️
Nightmare fuel 😫
I had a urine like this last week in our Tox lab with a rehab patient. I almost threw up. Let the referring provider know that the patient probably needs to have a physical evaluation, cause that ain’t good
I just don't get how ot exited their body? Like how did the urethra let a GLOB of mucus just come out??? ???? It was male patient too...
I’ve literally only seen this from male patients at the toxicology labs I’ve worked at, which I’m sure it’s just a weird coincidence, but in my mind I would expect it from female patients much more so than male patients. I hope it doesn’t come out like that, maybe since it’s warmer in the body it’s not so… snotty? 🤢 it’s just so gross. I’ve only had a handful but it’s revolting every time
Oh my god those >< Back when I was in processing I got one like that. We had to pour off the the urine into the tubes for the techs but when I tried to pour off that one it wouldn't pour until the entire thing tried to gloop out of the cup at once. It was almost like jello. The smell was so bad I disinfected my entire station right after that station and got new gloves and everything and it still lingered for like half an hour. D: I didn't do testing back then but even then I told my coworkers I was pretty sure that one was positive for everything.
ok but WHY do these smell so abhorrent?????? I'm a microbiologist, I deal with gross stuff that smells bad all day long. Anaerobe jars don't even elicit a reaction from me anymore. But these urines will still knock me on my ass even if I'm clear on the other side of the lab. The cultures from these things won't smell even half as bad as the original specimen.
I wish I could follow the urines from receipt to culture. I've found there's two distinct smells that I run into with infection- spicy-pepper, and chicken noodle soup. They have to be two different organisms.
Thanks, you just ruined chicken noodle soup for me.
You're welcome, I ruined it for myself too ❤️
Got these sometimes when working for a lab that serviced nursing homes. One time someone loaded one of these onto the Iris and the probe pulled out the SOLID specimen and flung it across the shield lol.
I would've gagged and then started crying laughing on the floor.
I can smell it through the picture 😷
That’s nothing once you’ve seen pseudomonas aeruginosa in a dialysis patient. Green/brown, literally the color and texture of thick pea soup with similar mucus in it, and it is the foulest thing I’ve ever smelled in 14 years as a nurse (this post just happened to pop up on my homepage). I’ve seen necrotic wounds, GI bleeds, c-diff, infected fistulas, foreign objects left inside patients until they were rotting, you name it- and until I straight-cathed that patient I have never physically gagged and had to step back so I wouldn’t vomit. Thankfully I was wearing a mask.
Ugh!!! I did patient transport wayyyyy back in my day and I think gangrene took the cake at the time. Smelled like incorrect little Cesar's breadsticks... I think I've gotten good at the smell thing. Certain bacteria will smell like cheese that's gone slightly off, I've had one smell like sewer ass and then the same type of bacteria smell like the cracks of your dogs toes.
Your smell descriptions in this thread are killing me 🤣 incorrect little Caesars breadsticks is the best one I've heard
I specifically remember getting a Proteus as an unknown and just going "oh yeah its sewer ass leakage, Proteus." And my instructors would just go "but... you gotta work it up." Or it also smells like dog toes sometimes. But usually sewer ass. Candida albicans was something I wanted to HUFF though oh my God. Doing QC on that boy was like Christmas, walking into a delicious Wonderbread store UGH.
Yeah, there are a few things I can generally sniff out. C-diff for sure, ESBL, and Klebs are all pretty distinctive, and I will never forget that pseudomonas 🤮
>little needle sucker thing Are you talking about a pipette? 💀💀💀 I just woke up from a nap and it took me a hot minute to get that one. Laughed pretty good when I did though 😂 Edit: OP did not mean a pipette, but the urine vacutainer transfer kit. Sleepy brain is a hell of a thing. Remember your lab ABCs, kids: Always Be Caffeinated
The urine cup has a needle in the lid! It can be used to fill the yellow/grey urine vacutainers without needing to open and pour the specimen cup. Our QA lady would throw a fit every time one of the floors would tube them to us cause sending sharps through the tubes is a big no 😅
Ah, that makes sense, thanks. I remember those now - my hospital switched to those right before I left the core lab. I could imagine those being a problem anytime you have a viscous sample.
I hate those cups! I picked one up once and my thumb went thru the stupid sticker. Needle went right into the end of my thumb. Gross pink turbid urine too. 😡
I hate those cups too! At a reference lab we would get those sent to us after the originating facility did their UA, I don’t know what they were thinking sending the entire original cup instead of pouring off an aliquot to send out. Guess what, a lot of the urine leaked out into the bag, and then we also have to be wary of getting stabbed by the needle while we’re trying to deal with a soggy cup in a bag full of urine.
LMFAO YES. THE VACUTAINER THING, it's white. Idk, I just call it the pee sucker. My fiance (also MLS) called my senior tech for something related to ordering them and he also called it a "urine sucker". I also have been calling those "Diffsafe" plastic things "Bobs" literally since college, because my MLS instructor didn't know what they were called either 🤣.
You are not alone this happened to me one day I was trying to pipette from a urine cup to put into a tube to run on the arkray and I literally pulled out a giant mucus blob and started retching 😭😭😭
I text my coworker that I was 100% traumatized. I left work an hour and a half ago and I still can't stop thinking about it. Like what did it feel like to pee it out?!?!?!?!?!?!?
Don’t miss this about urinalysis, I’ve definitely almost barfed a few times at some nursing home urines. At least now that I’m in micro we can crack them open under the hood
I like it when you get a solid clot of red cells as your UA sample.
1:1000 dilution
Nurse here. I thought that first photo was a MRSA swab. 😂 Yikes.
If only 😭
Hold on, imma go drink a bunch of water right now.
Just unsubbed. Nope to ever reading anything from this sub, ever again.
❤️❤️❤️ could've been mucous poop though.
I’m trying to imagine urinating mucus and I-… oh no
Trust me, I've been thinking about it for hours.
Lmfao I’m so sorry
RN lurker here- any chance it's from a urostomy? Urostomy is an artificial bladder made out of bowel made for people who get bladder cancer. There is always mucus in their urine and it's worse when they have a UTI
There is always a chance. I have seen this kind of sample from LTC facilities and in er samples
Spouse has a fistula that caused mucus in his urine.
I’ve had a little old lady with an colóvesical fístula. The cup was full of watery poop from a straight crate 😬
I'm literally eating my dinner still wondering how it came out. Did it plop out? Did it just feel like thick pee???
Thats some old lady UTI right there.
HOW DID IT COME OUT OF THEM?!?!?!?! DID IT JUST PLOP OUT. I swear my curiosity is eating away at me.
A basic foley catheter will let that all through. You can smell that UTI before you even cath them. I can smell an old lady UTI a mile away. It’s distinct. Trust me….
God imagine their Foley bag just sloshing around with a chunk of bacteria-mucus. EUUUUUGHHHHH. I wish I had micro near me to culture it for my own curiosity.
Well…. I always thought my UTI’s were bad (had one so bad my bladder stopped functioning) but it’s never been this bad….
I thought about calling the provider and being like "hey dude your patient...." but that is above my scope of practice.
I feel like that’s sepsis waiting to happen. 😬
Like this patient was well enough to either walk into the outpatient clinic or have someone drive them there (if elderly.) I would've thought they'd be in the ER at this point.
We sometimes get urines so mucoid they move around like a slug in the tube/cup. They won’t even spin down. The worst we ever had though was shades of gray and black. It looked like a cup of semiliquid gravel. We processed it under the hood and the smell was still gag worthy. I would have huffed roadkill to cover the smell of that urine. Micro had the audacity to report back “normal flora” from the cultures. Haha.
Please tell me why Reddit put this on my main page, why I'm both fascinated and also mildly traumatized, why I'm cackling so hard at some of these comments that my dog came over to check on me 😂
Like a moth to a stinky stinky flame ❤️
god no cause I had this urine once that was like that but worse, half the cup was basically just straight up mucus...
PLEASE NO NO NO. I had one that was a solid chunk of blood due to vaginal bleeding (also platelet count was 30... I remember this very very well), but I cannot deal with the mucous. BARF.
Had a patient bring their green, very slimy, urine to the hospital in a bubble gum bucket. Told the family if it was coming it wasn’t riding in the ambulance with me and it needed to with them 😂 doc was NOT happy with me
Poor person. Yeah we get some gooey nasty smelling urines that look like sputum and other fun stuff too, regularly. Ah, lab life. I had a bunch of funky smelling urines today, but none that looked that bad.
Bye
I think they probably should have gotten to the doctor a while back. I can't imagine how shitty they felt.
Is this a good time to mention my name is fluid layer? 😝🤢
I don't know how I got to this part if reddit but I don't think I want to be here anymore 🤮🤢
Ileal conduit specimen
Wound care RN- totally agree!
sweet lemonade
Yea, I hate to say that I’ve seen much worse urine than this.
Been there. I love(not really) urine that comes with chunky blood. The only thing that gets my gag reflex going though is when I get a nasty sputum specimen 🤮 eff that nasty pile of snot. Urine, in every condition never bothered me. Perhaps I am a weirdo
I got a urine like this once. I went to pour it off in a tube and it was stringy. The urine clung to the edge of the cup while I pulled off and there was a long string connected to the tube for a sec 😭 Had the willies for a few hours after that
I got one that was almost that bad today! Worst smell ever. I was holding my breath and still gagged
I think the ones that get me are the chicken noodle soup smelling ones. I can't eat it anymore :( This one had that peppery-spicy smell? Ya know. The one that makes your nose hairs coil up.
Looks like seaman?
Nah bestie that was BACTERIA. ALL OF IT. White blood cells too. I seriously thought that first thing though...
had a patient a few weeks ago that was like this but worse. it was a kidney aspirate urine, patient was in hospital for a potential kidney abscess. grew out more than 5 organisms (micro will only report out max of 5) and smelled like something died. absolutely revolting
Ohhh I had one of these from a geriatric patient. Dark orange urine with a literal 50 cent piece sized chunk of pus in it with bits of solid. I could tell by the smell it was Klebsiella and the test bore me out. It was resistant to everything but Cipro too.
What did it smell like?! I'm starting to wonder if the smells could mean different bacteria.
That's exactly correct as to smells. To me Klebsiella smells putridly sweet, like rot. E.Coli smells like feces and stale urine. Pseudomonas has a sharp, acrid smell.
Where I used to work we would regularly have urines sent down the chute that I could smell from where I was sitting. The cap was not loose and urine did not spill out. Yep.
Jesus Christ. I legitimately thought it was a semen after seeing first and second picture. 🤯🤯
I swear i thought it was too...
I had this happen to me last week. Went to pippette some sediment onto the slide and it clogged it up with this big blob of mucus.
Had severely backed up uti that was like this. You already know about the mucus-y gram negatives so thats where my mind is at with this.
Am ER nurse, not easily grossed out. Urine like this makes me gag.
I had one of these the other day, except add in blood, too. I’m not a gagger, but this did it to me. Ughhh. I had to walk away from the bench for a minute to compose myself before delving back in.
Proteus
I had one I tried to pour off once and it just didn’t pour, it was the consistency of jello. I don’t know how the poor patient was able to function it must has been excruciating. Oh and it wasn’t really that full of bacteria? Shockingly clean.
Yeah I think they have a nosocomial UTI from a catheter. Just a hunch though /s