Stories from an ER nurse- Volume 1, Butt Cheek Hemorrhage
Chief complaint- “patient brought in by EMS after having sex “too hard” and hitting a nightstand with her butt cheek. Butt cheek now will not stop bleeding.”
“What in the,” was my main thought. Upon entering the room, she is very obviously intoxicated and is flailing about talking all kinds of nonsense. She is undressed from the waist down except for a thong and her butt cheek is bleeding heavily. There is blood smeared on the bed, wall (from where she had leaned up against it) and floor.
It appeared that the nightstand she had fallen into had ripped the top layer of skin off her butt cheek causing it to bleed like crazy. The alcohol she consumed was exacerbating the amount of bleeding that was coming from the wound.
Imagine the rounded part of your butt. Now imagine the entire top layer of skin missing from that portion of the cheek roughly 4in tall by 3in wide. That is what was actively bleeding throughout the room.
A bandage was placed over the wound, but then she was seen walking the ER hallway in her thong with the bandage barely hanging on. After multiple failed attempts to get the bandage to stay in place, I finally put chuck pads (basically a giant dog pee pad that is very absorbent) on the floor, and bed, to catch the dripping blood.
Interestingly, blood is difficult to get off of a laminate floor once it has dried. It is a pain in the butt (no pun intended) to clean and, majority of the time, the nurse or CNA/tech is the one who has to clean it. Saying that, it behooved me on that busy day to decrease the amount of time that I would need to spend scrubbing blood off the floor (eye roll.)
Due to the amount of intoxication she had endured, she ended up with fluids through an IV and a gourmet ER turkey sandwich which, after a few hours, sobered her up enough to allow to me to help her.
I was able to place gauze over the area and secure it to her cheek. She was able to finally put her shorts back on which assisted in the keeping the bandage in place. She apologized multiple times for her behavior and thanked all of us many times before leaving. That is one butt I will never forget.
“All bleeding stops, eventually.”
