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What’s the worst thing you’ve ever had to clean

Nothing from work. There's been some gag-worthy stuff don't get me wrong, but it's a person with dignity. It's a privilege to help, unphased, with something they usually feel a huge amount of shame about.

Split peas I was soaking and forgot about for weeks was more horrendous than you might think. Also the bucket of baby clothes after a bout of post-viral foamy green diarrhoea. That made me cry.
 
One holiday in Pembrokeshire when my daughter still drank loads of milk but was too young for travel sickness medication. She vommed mini Exorcist style regurgitated milk all over the car, including the ceiling. We cleaned it up best we could but then had to leave the car in Tenby multi storey car park in the July heat for our week away. We had to drive slowly back to Cardiff with all the windows open, dry heaving all the way. It smelt like we were encased in slurry.

After numerous cleans we had to get in the professionals. I managed a later chocolate cake and icecream on the A470/ dirty protest reenactment all by myself.
 
I went into the galley on a boat I was on and wondered why the chef was hosing down the drain with a weird looking hosepipe attached to the tap

Turns out it was the arrse tube of some unfortunate animal and he was giving it a final rinse before popping it in a pot for cooking
 
I remember when I was a teenager, some sort of animal, probably a rat, managed to die in an inaccessible part of the roof next to my bedroom and OMG it reeked and there was nothing I could do except let it rot away.

The worst part is I had to sleep with this stench for a good fortnight and it infused into my clothes and my school uniform. I'll never forget that smell of dead rodent seeping into everything. Absolutely gross. 🤢
 
Melaena diarrhoea

I’m surprised none of the Urban medical professionals have mentioned it yet

Once you’ve fended off the super power claw grip of a dementia patient with shit in their talon like nails
While wondering how they manage to get it up their back in their hair and up the walls you don’t forget it

Very particular odour that can defeat the strongest of stomachs
 
bellaozzydog said:
Melaena diarrhoea

I’m surprised none of the Urban medical professionals have mentioned it yet

Once you’ve fended off the super power claw grip of a dementia patient with shit in their talon like nails
While wondering how they manage to get it up their back in their hair and up the walls you don’t forget it

Very particular odour that can defeat the strongest of stomachs
Click to expand...
Been there, done that and got shit all over my T-Shirt.
 
In terms of difficulty the worst was cleaning grease filters above deep fat fryers that hadn’t been cleaned in years. No amount of steeping would do so had to carry them down to the garage down the road to use the soapy jet washer which took the best part of an afternoon for minimal gain.

In terms of smell, it was two boxes of chickens in a freezer that had its fan blocked by a misplaced pack of tea towels. The contents slowly defrosted from the bottom up and by the time we spotted it and opened the lid, the stench of rotten chicken was overwhelming. I had to dispose of them all, retching and puking all the while. Nothing since has come close and my gorge rises just thinking about it now 🤢
 
Aftershock vomit, night after night in a nightclub, a forgotten pumpkin at the back of the under stairs cupboard, both bad but I think the worst was when I was doing a cleaning job for a mate and found a forgotten presumably once half full tin of cat food which was a mass of wriggling maggots. It took some deep breathing to pick that one up even if all I had to do was dump it in the bin.
 
An M2 Browning .50 cal machine gun took days are LT "helpfully" reduced it too a pile of tiny parts covered in carbon which took days too clean then I had to spent all morning doing a J.R hartley trying to find someone on the falklands garrison who knew how to put the wretched thing back together.:D.
As are glorious leader decided he had better things to do and no NCO wanted their name to the fact the infantry couldn't put a machine gun back together:facepalm:.
Fact it was not on general issue and a ww1 design so full of tiny pointless washers and springs etc wouldn't matter.
I didnt have to pay the Bribe to get some REME type to come out and alternatively patronise us while cursing are officer whod taken apart parts not meant to be taken aprat think a toddler with a watch
 
I had to fix my toilet cassette once, a literal plastic box of slurry. The mechanism for the sliding door (that fits under the toilet bowl) had broken. I was still drinking back then, so I took it outside, put a bikini and rubber gloves on (it was a hot day) got my screwdriver ready and swigged gin.
I’ve got a compost toilet now, far less unpleasant. No need to drink to cope anymore.
 
pinkmonkey said:
I had to fix my toilet cassette once, a literal plastic box of slurry. The mechanism for the sliding door (that fits under the toilet bowl) had broken. I was still drinking back then, so I took it outside, put a bikini and rubber gloves on (it was a hot day) got my screwdriver ready and swigged gin.
I’ve got a compost toilet now, far less unpleasant. No need to drink to cope anymore.
Click to expand...

God this brings back memories of kneeling in the boat toilet with shit all around, sticking my hand down the toilet and scooping dried up crap with it. Before that incident, defecating on top of the closed sliding door, then opening it to let the shit fall into the cassette, made sense (as it avoided the 'splashback' of chemical slurry). Then I learned that shit would dry within the sliding door mechanism and I wouldn't be able to open it one day. The hard way.

Now that I live in a house, messy disasters cannot rival that one experience, although it was really special when my sick cat had the runs all over my music cassette box and the shit leaked in between the cassettes. For a moment, I considered throwing them out. But then I pulled myself together and cleaned/disinfected them one by one.
 
Can’t rival the poo cleaning posts but it still makes me shudder to think about cleaning the extractor fan in the maternity ward smoking room at Margate hospital.

Yes. The smoking room in the maternity ward.

It was so sticky, orange and fucking minging. Gagging, thinking of the smell
Stopped me smoking, briefly.

This was 1990/1991.
 
furluxor said:
God this brings back memories of kneeling in the boat toilet with shit all around, sticking my hand down the toilet and scooping dried up crap with it. Before that incident, defecating on top of the closed sliding door, then opening it to let the shit fall into the cassette, made sense (as it avoided the 'splashback' of chemical slurry). Then I learned that shit would dry within the sliding door mechanism and I wouldn't be able to open it one day. The hard way.

Now that I live in a house, messy disasters cannot rival that one experience, although it was really special when my sick cat had the runs all over my music cassette box and the shit leaked in between the cassettes. For a moment, I considered throwing them out. But then I pulled myself together and cleaned/disinfected them one by one.
Click to expand...
Doesn’t matter how fancy your boat toilet is, how much you paid, there will be a point when you’ll be up to your elbows in your own excrement. Still haven’t had it as bad as others. Friends of ours, their pump out tank burst, in their boat. I also remember seeing a couple who had cycled three full toilet cassettes to the elsan point in bin bags, on a bike trolley, only to discover that one of them had split in the bin bag. There was no water pressure on the taps there and they had nothing to clear up the mess with. At least with a compost toilet, the stuff in the shitbox is solids that doesn’t smell much and can’t be spilled and the urine bottle is the same, screw top lid, no risk of spills.
 
pinkmonkey said:
Doesn’t matter how fancy your boat toilet is, how much you paid, there will be a point when you’ll be up to your elbows in your own excrement.
Click to expand...

Someone told me exactly this once. I laughed nervously but then one day the moment came and I think I handled it alright, if gagging along the way :D
Elsan point tales are undoubtedly the darkest. Somehow digging through own shit feels less awful than stepping into an Elsan point and finding it in a state of, er, disorder. Poor cleaners who service those points.
 
mojo pixy said:
Care work :thumbs:

Regularly involves cleaning up faeces, urine, vomit, phlegm, blood and pus. Lymphodemic legs have a very special bouquet .. and there's nothing quite like cleaning explosive diarrhoea off floors, mattresses, and of course saggy bottoms, vulvas and scrotums.

Smear a bit of vicks or tiger balm on a face mask, grit yer teeth, and keep smiling through.
Click to expand...
We used to use Hibitane concentrate on the mask.
 
My kid's arse when he was first on chemo and had chemo related nappy rash and an anal fissure. When I came into hospital to take over from his mum they had been using a spray on dressing that had got all mixed up with the blood and pus and looked like it was getting dangerously out of control. I took it off bit by bit, with my son screaming the whole time and with repeated showers cleaned it up over the course of about six hours. I spent the next few weeks making sure I was in the same room as him at night so that if he had a poo it was cleaned up before it had a chance to infect him (he basically had no immune system at the time). I'm pretty sure that my fixation on his arse saved him a whole lot of infections and possibly his life.

Then there was the time his sister threw up all over him (and covered the whole dining room). He was ten months old at the time and his first instinct was to taste a bit.
 
bellaozzydog said:
Melaena diarrhoea

I’m surprised none of the Urban medical professionals have mentioned it yet

Once you’ve fended off the super power claw grip of a dementia patient with shit in their talon like nails
While wondering how they manage to get it up their back in their hair and up the walls you don’t forget it

Very particular odour that can defeat the strongest of stomachs
Click to expand...
Yep - I have worked on a liver ward, where many were detoxing from alcohol and were yellow with jaundice and hallucinating. I remember the malaena diarrhoea......but I don't think it was the worst. I really enjoyed working on the liver ward.
 
Years ago I was giving a drunk friend a lift home. I got the window open before he threw up so it was down the outside of the door where it froze solid. My Xmas day was trying to thaw vomit and wash it off my car
 
Other people's blood (makes a bit fainty) a few times, other people's vomit , once and other people's poo and piss, quite often.

Cleaning up the remains of lizard had accidentally squashed wasn't fun, either.
 
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