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I submit this question simply with honesty. After caring for both MIL and FIL for two years..........the thing that gags me is "teeth." Yes, worse than poop for me. My FIL (now deceased) had false teeth. He would pry them from his mouth dripping with saliva and hand them to me. Sure, I put gloves on, etc...but for some reason those teeth really triggered my gag reflex.
Now my MIL is unable to brush her teeth and I have to do it.. or things get really stinky. It is the hardest thing I do. Anyone else comment on one particular thing that she/he finds "stomach upsetting"?

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Toenails,..... Yuck!
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The stench of mothballs and urine. MIL scatters mothballs around like a vampire hunter scatters holy water. Her 90-year-old alcoholic live-in boyfriend provides the urine stench.
I have a very keen sense of smell, and it's enough to gag a maggot. If MIL ever decides to marker her own personal line of perfume, it should be called Eau du Nuit du Mothballs and Urine.
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Toenails - don't get me started! I have a serious foot phobia, and "doing" mom's feet and toes, with their decades' worth of dead skin buildup and fungus is enough to make me want to toss my cookies every time I touch them. I don't want anyone touching MY feet, and I don't want to touch theirs, either.

I have a horribly keen sense of smell too, Sodonewithsal1 - and I think sometimes it's a curse. Mom can't smell her own odors anymore, and will go days without showering (we're on day 5 now, and it's been an all-day thing so far - "Mom, how about getting in the shower?" "Mom, when are you going to shower?" "Ready for that shower now?" - to which she replies, "Later, I want to lay down", "not now", "in a bit, I know I need to".) If I'm *lucky* she might shower by tomorrow. Mom is not a small woman by any means, and she develops bacteria growth in her skin folds if they are not attended to properly, which is a health hazard - the skin breaks down and actually opens up, which is a huge infection risk, and she can't afford that kind of hard-to-heal infection at her age.

She has her good days - even good weeks - where she showers every other day without being asked, cleans up after herself (taking her plate to the kitchen, throwing her own trash away instead of leaving it sit for me to pick up, etc), but the bad days/weeks are starting to run closer and closer together. Since we came back from vacation 3 weeks ago, I've had a hard time getting her to do anything at all - she won't walk up and down the wheelchair ramp for exercise, showering is a struggle, and she pays no attention to the fact that she's not changing her incontinence pad or cleaning up after herself in the bathroom, etc. I think she got a little irritated with me today for telling her (many times) she needed to shower, and finally gave me "the look", which means "back the heck off and leave me alone", and said, "I'll shower - I'll do it - but I'm going to lay down now" - so I guess we'll see....I'm just trying to roll with the punches.
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I'm beginning to think that the only way to clean up some people is to go into the bathroom with them and just spray them down with a hand held flexible shower hose. Hopefully they would then be willing to remove wet clothes (which can then be washed), and you wipe up the bathroom afterwards. Next time they either cooperate or get sprayed again. I know how terrible this sounds, but don't you wish you could just put them thru something like a carwash and they would come out clean, dry, and shiny?
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BAD BREATH!

We went to visit our pastor from way back one day in his facility in our hometown. OMG, his breath permeated the room. I was looking at my dh, my eyes were watering and I was trying not to breathe. OMG. It was just horrible. We just couldn't stay long.

My granny did the teeth thing, so that wouldn't bother me. ;)

Sharon
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After I wrote toenails I went and clipped my Mom's.. I though I was going to puke.. I just hate touching or being touched by feet...

OMG if my husbands feet touch me while in bed!!! I can't stand it.. He knows not to put them near me..
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Mucus !!!! I can clean toenails, clean up puke and pooh... change urine soaked diapers, but mucus, great big globs of mucus send me running.....
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Vomit - all that glutinous wobbly liquid just makes my stomach heave. Thank goodness mom only did that twice while bedridden. It soaked all over her, clothes, skin, bedding, etc...
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Drool and snot. Go figure. I can handle the poo, the puke, the teeth, know how to breath through my mouth and avoid the stinky stuff ... I can even handle wounds (as long as they're not bleeding). But drool just makes my stomach retch.
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The worst, would have to be the puking and " bathroom number 2". Those are the worst for me.
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Cleaning BM up and washing body after and on bed all over. Before I realize to put depends on and its too late..My stomach anymore rolls over !!
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Omg me too. I can handle cleaning poop , putting suppostitories and enemas, being drooled on, but dentures makes me cringe. I put gloves to handle them
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Glory be, the whole package gags me. I am fine with babies and their messes. Barf on me all day long if you're a baby (I had one child who did for 12 months straight. Apparently he'd have been diagnosed with reflux if he was a baby now. We didn't know back then.)

But when it comes to ANYTHING from my mom - here comes the hairball! It's psychological. I never could stand for her to touch me ever. Her hands are hot. Now, I can't handle it. Hair brushing, butt wiping, the whole thing.

Of course, when we visit, all she wants me to do is get her clothes off and look at every little spot on her body that has itched since the last visit, and to clean out her ears, and stand in the bathroom while she spends half an hour farting and pooping and stinking up the entire wing of the place. I'm not there to steady her or anything functional. She just demands I go in there with her, which I will absolutely not do.

Her feet gag me. Her hairbrush gags me. Being asked to scratch her back gags me. It has to be with my bare fingers, not a back scratcher, of course. "Come look at how long the hair on my legs is!" gags me.

In the past few years she has lost any and all sense of personal hygiene and decorum. She used to be neat as a pin, super private with anything body related, and could hardly bring herself to talk about the birds & bees when it was time. She wouldn't recognize herself now.
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Diapers and her colostomy bags are everywhere! BUT i dont have to wipe her so thats a plus! I have to say "teeth" i have to leave the room when she takes them out and picks them! ugh feel sick now!

I have found them in the most bizarre places and lets just say i have my OWN MUG yep dont trust picking up a cup here her teeth are bound to have been left in there a few days!
oh really feel sick now! has put me off my tea and chocolate biscuit!
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Also the worst thing is her eating her food with no "teeth" i mean how do you eat a steak with no teeth????????? oh so gross! i remember getting a whack on the hand if i had my knife in the wrong hand when i was younger??
She must suck the life out of the steak? she says her teeth hurt so fair enough i just dont know how you can eat a steak with no teeth! I told my brother to shoot me if i ever eat like this!
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i would have a hard time with adult crap but id do it if necessary . i do not get the foot fetish with you gals . feet are the driest and farthest from any orifice thing on a human body . i actually get satisfaction from exising an ingrown toenail for someone i care about cause i know what an instant relief it is .
id have a hard time doing anything remotely intimate for a man . not interested in seeing a male body .
this is out there but one of the worst gag moments i ever had was while having china buffet dinner with a woman she reached over with glazed eyes and droolling and forked the last remaining mussle on the halfshell so hard the saucer rattled -- without asking if anyone else wanted it or if wed like to get more of them .. really ? this sob was a prescribing phsyc doc . if shes stalking me and reads this , tough s*it . thats some messed up personal manners ..
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For me its guck in corners of eyes. I can't look in someones eyes if they have that eye guck. My love for my Mom surpasses that though. I just think of all the times when I was a child and she had to clean poo, urine, vomit etc. That makes it easier.
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lol . baby diapers -- never been a problem for me . we have hormones that make us love the little crap factories ..
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The feet-related gross out is because mom has some stupendous foot fungus going on due to her unregulated blood sugars. She has ignored it for decades and it is worthy of a podiatrist text book. The odor will knock you down.

You would need a belt sander to start fixing it. She is in complete denial about it. She likes to pick at her feet with her bare hands and any kind of clipper/pointy thing she can get her hands on. She won't let them air out.

When her blood sugars are better controlled, it starts to recede a little bit, but most of the time it's just revolting.
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For me it is the food on the face while she is eating. Not sure why that bothers me so much but I cannot finish my food if I notice it.
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sandwich42 id be gone! nothing more gross than fungal feet gosh get her to bathe in teatree oil every night it kills all fungus UGH no sorry id be gone with this maybe "teeth" are not so bad now!
No my mum has lovely feet small and petite but she sees a chiropodist regularly as she knows a chiropodist isnt going to put her in a home so she dosnt mind going to her?? yeh they are clever!
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Amazon sells a tea-tree & epsom salt mixture that I've been using on Mom's feet, because she has the same fungus thing going on with her feet. Her general practitioner tried to tell me it was just "age-related". Uh - no. Age doesn't cause you to grow crusty clusters of what looks like about 80 layers of skin in some places that actually has to be scrubbed off. And if it was age-related, it wouldn't keep growing back!
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Like everybody mentioned here toenails and false teeth are the grossest things the bathroom thing comes second.
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All the above...
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my father needs help putting on his support hose. His legs aren't so bad, an occasional sore or two but his feet are godawful. Not smelly (I also have a good sense of smell) but flaky, dry, toenail fungus etc. Cream doesn't help altho he uses it from time to time. I hate going down into his study and there are visible flakes of skin on the carpet. Bless his heart though, he doesn't get offended when I ask if he minds if I use gloves.
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Finding my Mom cleaning out the litter box with my cooking utensils. I know you can wash them but still.....yuck.
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Something else I thought of.

When my mom eats, she makes these grunting noises. Is it due to physical problems: reflux, or is it a bad habit? Who knows? But it's gross.

Sorry to tell on ya, Mom!

Sharon
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Cleaning the raised toilet seat underneath. P - U !
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Desert192 - I hear you!
I keep a pack of the disinfecting wipes by the toilet. Every time somebody goes, just get a wipe and rub it under the set all the way around. It really cuts down on some of the yuck factor. I have 2 teenagers & wonder how on earth "that" gets up under there. When mom lived with us....it just defied physics.

I also wipe the inside of the toilet lid, since it gets misted when the toilet flushes....if you shut the lid first.
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I'm gonna add the word "phlem"
I can't even type any more about it - ugh.....................................
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