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Doctors are trained to handle trauma, blood, and life-or-death situations but nothing quite prepares them for the eerie or downright disturbing encounters that sometimes come with the job. Beyond the charts and check-ups, it’s the unexplainable moments, strange confessions, or chilling stares that stick with them the longest.

So when someone online posed the question, “What’s the creepiest thing a patient has ever said or done to you?” , the responses poured in fast. From unsettling whispers in the ER to moments that left them frozen in disbelief, these real stories show just how terrifying a hospital shift can get.

#1

Not a Doctor or a Nurse.

One of my Uncles had stage 4 Pancreatic cancer. He was a tough guy and didn’t trust hospitals so he didn’t see a Doctor until it was way too late, despite being in debilitating pain. When he did, the prognosis was grim, he had maybe six weeks left and Pancreatic cancer is a painful way to die. He decided to get MAiD instead. Medical Assistance in Dying, which is legal in Canada.

On the day we were all gathered around his bed, all the paperwork and permissions were sorted out and the syringe of d***s was connected to his IV. He was heavily sedated, but he has to be the one to push the plunger, which he did with the help of his wife. He closed his eyes and his breathing got very shallow and slowed down. After a few minutes we thought he had passed.

We were all standing around him, some saying goodbye, a lot of people were crying. About 10 minutes passed and people started to leave when suddenly, in a strong clear voice he said, *”Russell, wait for me”*, then he was gone. Nobody knew who Russell was, and it was kind of a mystery we talked about from time to time.

Years later his wife passed and when his kids were going through her things they found a very old photograph of him when he was maybe 5 years old. He was in a sandbox with a small dog, on the back of the picture in faded ink it read ‘Russell, 1944’.

The thought that our pets that have gone before us meet us to help us cross over fills me with comfort. I hope it isn’t just a mind trying to make sense of a crazy time.

#2

A patient once looked at me with a completely calm face and said, ‘I know you’re trying to help me, but I’m going to die today. I’ve made peace with it, and you can’t stop it.’

#3

One of the most gut wrenching moments in my career was when I was treating a 9-year old boy who was the victim of significant blunt force trauma. He was unstable but awake and talking. With terror in his eyes he started thrashing around in his bed and screaming, “Don’t let me die! I don’t want to die!”. It made us all nervous and tense. He went to the OR and survived but that was 5 years ago and I can still see his face.

These days, it feels like we turn to Google for even the slightest health concern. Whether it’s a pinky finger that aches after typing too long or a sudden headache after skipping breakfast, most of us have quickly typed our symptoms into a search bar. And while the internet can sometimes provide useful background information, it can just as easily lead you down a rabbit hole of scary possibilities. That’s why, if something is truly bothering you, the best course of action is always to consult a doctor rather than relying solely on online advice.

#4

During my med school trauma surgery rotation, our 16-year-old patient said “my stomach hurts” right before he was intubated for an exploratory laparotomy. He had gotten shot in his abdomen. Intra-op, we noted that the bullet tore a hole in his aorta. He didn’t make it.

Such innocent last words to hear a kid say. He fully didn’t grasp his fate at the time. And understandably so. I will never forget it.

#5

As a resident working off-service, looked a woman dead in the eye before we were about to intubate her. She had the saddest look in her eyes and said “don’t let me die”. She had awful esophageal and rectal varices that were never successfully treated and passed away that night in the OR. Still see it in my thoughts from time to time.

#6

Not a doctor, but before my grandfather passed of pancreatitis, I’ll never forget when he looked up at me and told me that “don’t worry, they’re already here, all of them” before dying… not really sure what that means… but it creeped me tf out for a few years

On a lighter note, my other grandpa died a little bit after I walked into the room with a new moustache I was trying to sport. He laughed at it, and I like to think about that sometimes. The very last thing he did after a full life of ups and downs, was laugh at my stupid moustache.

To better understand this, Bored Panda spoke with Dr. Alka Pradhan, a general physician with over 30 years of experience running her clinic in Mumbai. She explained that patients should never feel silly or hesitant about voicing their concerns. “There are no stupid questions when it comes to speaking with your doctor,” she said. “Every bit of information is important, no matter how small it may seem.”

#7

Doctor here. First one that sticks to mind isn’t so much what the patient said, but more her body language that clued into what was going wrong.

Story: I was a medical student at the time and the city my school was in is a hub for human trafficking. I noticed a patient in the ER who had a pretty bad injury to her face was with a sketchy looking guy who was not related to her. She wasn’t my patient, but I brought my gut feeling up to her doctor who then made up some excuse to talk to the patient alone and got her to help. Turns out she was a victim of human trafficking.

I never talked to her myself, but I couldn’t shake the vibe I got from looking at her and the man she was with.

#8

The scariest thing I ever heard working in healthcare was not from a patient, but a nurse who called me to report an outbreak of rabies at one of the nursing homes I worked in senior management for.

I managed to stop myself freaking out for long enough to ask her the necessary questions. Thank goodness, English wasn’t her first language and she’d got two words confused.

Scabies. She meant *scabies.*.

#9

“Doc, I can’t wait to have this baby! We’ll finally have our baby girl! Now we can stop trying.”

When I was doing my final year of hospital rotations, I got called in to one of the OB ultrasound rooms by the attending. I was just about to leave since my shift had just ended, but decided to see the one last patient since we had such a good shift and I didn’t mind making another patient’s day.

The attending points to the ultrasound and asks if I can see the heartbeat. I thought she was just quizzing me since I was a med student and I was internally panicking since I couldn’t see it. I apologized for what I assumed was my lack of knowledge.

Turns out, I was called in to confirm lack of heartbeat on this 8 month old baby in utero. They needed two doctors to confirm. I never wanted to be more wrong my whole life.

When I was left alone with the patient, she kept trying to convince herself that she was ok and that she had 3 other children to come home to. But you could tell how devastated she was. Then she said

“I guess I was right. This was gonna be my last baby.”

And then just walked out.

I was on call the next day and ended up seeing her through pre-op, the delivery, and post-op. She’s one of the patients I will never forget.

Dr. Pradhan emphasized that bringing up worries, no matter how minor, can be incredibly valuable. “If something worries you, it’s important to ask,” she explained. “Sometimes it turns out to be nothing, but when patients talk to us, they gain peace of mind. And in other cases, those questions can point to underlying issues we might not have noticed otherwise.”

#10

First month as an intern. At this point I know everything to crush med tests, but nothing to handle a patient. Only doctor covering the night shift at a VA. ‘Code green,’ which at this location means a patient is hostile.

Jog around a corner. Find Mr. S who I admitted a few hours earlier, now sundowning and holding a piece of broken glass in front of him like a knife.

Sundowning is when an elderly, maybe demented, patient has increased confusion +/- agitation early in the night, especially in an unfamiliar setting, which every hospital is.
He’s holding the broken glass towards the charge nurses and screaming nonsense – mainly F bombs and wanting to go home. (Me too man). Two police officers are standing a couple yards in front. One touching his sidearm. Nurses and techs are lining the hallway. Lights are on, TVs are on. Mr. S is not enjoying his stay.

Everyone looks at me.. the youngest, least experienced. Why not? So.. what do you do?

First thing, greet Mr. S. I admitted him so I knew he was a good guy in a confused state. I never mentioned the situation, just started random polite conversation. Next, motioned for the cops to leave, the extra nurses and techs to leave, turn off the TVs, turn off the overhead music, turn off some lights. De-escalate everything. And then with just the charge nurses and I in the hallway, minimal stimulation , we waited him out. Eventually he forgot about what he was holding as we talked about his wife, and fishing outside the city.

We did end up giving him a sedative once the danger passed. Not sure if I should have. And the next day we got him home.

#11

Had a patient who had just had a major surgery throw himself out of bed because Freddy Krueger told him to do so. He was on a ketamine drip for pain management at the time.

#12

Not a doctor, but a nurse. Once a psychotic schizophrenic patient got me. And it was because of how “normal” she said it.
Screaming_threatening to k**l me and then sitting on the commode……and then calmly looking at me and says in the most normal and monotone voice “I’m sorry, I know I’m not well and being mean to you. I’m in hell, and I don’t know how to get out”
I will never forget that or how it made me feel. It’s like she had a 10 second lapse of her manic episode to apologize and tell me how she felt. Made me super empathetic to my psych patients.

She also stressed the importance of not feeling embarrassed about discussing personal or “awkward” topics. “Asking about frequent urination, unusual stool color, excessive or even hair loss, is important,” Dr. Pradhan said. “These can be signs of underlying health issues like infections, stress, or metabolic problems.” By speaking up, patients give doctors a chance to look deeper and potentially prevent bigger complications.

#13

I’ve got one. I’m a psychiatrist with a distinct and relatively rare appearance. Because of this, I’ve spent my whole life hearing that I look like anyone with a vaguely similar skin tone or hair color, even when I didn’t see the resemblance.

Fast forward to my intern year. A patient comes into the emergency department after being found severely hypothermic; so much so that he was initially pronounced dead. Miraculously, he was resuscitated, but his identity was unknown, and as he began recovering, he started displaying signs of psychosis. That’s when the primary team called in a psych consult, and I went to assess him.

The moment I stepped into his room, I was taken aback. The man lying in the bed was a spitting image of me, except he looked like an alternate version of myself, one who had gone down a much darker path. His face was weathered, likely from d**g use and homelessness, but the resemblance was unsettling.

As I tried to gather details about his identity and psychiatric history, he locked eyes with me, his stare intense and unshakable, and said, “I am you.” That became his only response whenever he spoke to me. For three days, every time I interacted with him, all he would say was, “I am you.”

Being a sleep-deprived intern, this messed with my head more than I’d like to admit. Seeing someone who looked eerily like me, who had literally been pronounced dead days earlier, repeating that phrase over and over. It freaked me out to say the least.

After a few more days (and as he started coming down from m**h-induced psychosis), I finally got through to him. I explained that he couldn’t be released as a John Doe and that we needed his identification. Eventually, he gave me his Social Security number. When we ran it, we discovered he had multiple out-of-state warrants.

The whole experience shook me, and I definitely lost some sleep over it. Even now, it still sticks with me.

#14

As a resident, a patient was super angry and signing his papers to leave Against Medical Advice. He looked at me and said, “I know what time you sign out, and I know where you all leave the hospital”

Looked over my shoulder the entire walk home.

#15

When I was a CNA working hospice, I got called to go assist a nurse who was assisting a rather volatile patient (the woman was an alcoholic and chronic smoker who got lung cancer while fighting renal and liver failure). She had had a close call recently while in the hospital and coded very briefly. After that, she was very adamant that no man be let into her room.

When I got there, the nurse gave me a heads up that it wasn’t just any man she didn’t want in her room. It was a particular one, and nobody could figure out who it was. Her son hadn’t spoken to her in a decade or more (with the exception of one visit before her close call in the hospital) bc of her sexual, mental, and physical a***e, her father was long gone, she had no brothers or uncles, and her husband had died tragically a couple decades earlier. And yet she kept insisting we not “let him in.”

She developed the tale-tell death rattle, and so we waited. The room went still, and the nurse and I looked to each other, knowing that she had just taken her last breath when suddenly she sat up and started screaming. “He’s here! You’ve let him in! He’s here!” Her eyes were wide, her skin pale, and she trembled all over, staring intently at the corner of the ceiling.

We tried to assure her no one was there, but she just whispered, “He knows. He’s smiling cuz he knows.” as we got her to lie back down. She closed her eyes and within minutes gave one last rattling breath and was gone.

I worked with that nurse again a few months later and she told me that when she called the son to inform him his mother had passed he told her that he’d told his mother the last time they spoke that he’d prayed the devil would come and take her since she’d spent her last exchange with him trying to use God to shame him into caring for her in her old age. So whether the woman was hallucinating her fear or was actually seeing something sinister coming for her, idk but the nurse seemed to think it was really the devil. She swore she was gonna go back to work in a hospital. Said she’d seen enough end of life care.

Sensitive subjects like sexual health should also be brought into the conversation. “Pain during sex, for instance, can be due to a variety of conditions, including vaginal dryness, pelvic floor disorders, or sexual dysfunction,” she explained. “A doctor can help identify the cause and suggest effective solutions.” Normalizing these discussions ensures patients get the care and answers they need.

#16

Nurse here. Had a patient going through o****d withdrawal. Asked if I could give him an injection of a certain blood thinner— he said yes.

He didn’t like that the injection hurt.

He leapt out of bed, backed me into a corner, and threatened to “smash in [my] skull.” He reiterated he once k****d a police officer by beating him to death, and he wanted to do the same to me.

He was 6’2”. I am 5’0”.

I managed to deescalate the best I could (gave him his opioids, encouraged him to go for a walk off unit to let off some steam). It worked. But before he walked off unit he told our charge nurse he was going to k**l me.

Management, security, and the doctor did f**k all. Had to spent the next few shifts worried I was about to get my a*s beat.

#17

“I can see death standing behind you”

still haunts me and he passed away 2 days after.

#18

One of the scariest things I’ve heard as a doctor came from a patient who calmly said, “I see the man in the corner again.” There was no one there. The patient was fully alert and oriented, but their vitals were crashing fast. Moments later, they coded.

Another eerie moment was a patient who came in after a traumatic accident. Right before surgery, they grabbed my wrist and said, “Don’t let me die, doc.” Their vitals were stable, but despite our best efforts, they didn’t make it through the operation.

The things patients say, especially in their final moments, can stick with you forever.

Practical questions matter just as much. Dr. Pradhan encourages patients to ask about the total medical bill, available treatment options, and any alternatives that may fit their budget better. “It’s important to know your options,” she said. “Being clear on costs helps patients make informed decisions without unnecessary stress.”

#19

Not really a patient who said it:

I was on a trauma shift (trauma surgeon), and got called in for a bad car accident. When I got there, they were doing CPR, and eventually we got her back, stable enough for a CT.

Another trauma comes in during all this, turns out to be the husband of the trauma patient. My PA went to go survey the new patient. She came back white as a ghost.

(Names changed) “John just came in next door as the new trauma. I…I think that’s Emily.” I looked at our patient who we just did CPR on, and almost fainted. I don’t recognize her until I smelled her perfume (she was so banged up she didn’t look like herself). I almost threw up. Emily was another PA on our trauma team. She ended up passing a few days later from severe brain injury.

“I think that’s Emily” will be forever burned on my brain, and among the top 3 reasons I don’t do trauma surgery anymore….

#20

Probably not what you are asking, but the thing that I’ve been most scared to respond to was a 7 year old-ish girl stopping me talking to her mom, and first asking me if I was a doctor, which I responded yes to. And then asking me very frankly if her dad was going to die. Given that he was intubated on two pressors with a multi-d**g resistant infection on top of a hematological malignancy, the real answer was “most likely”.

Striking a balance between remaining honest and not adding extra trauma to her experience knowing it could possibly be something she carries with her for her entire life, without preparation (I was on a consulting team, not the primary team – so wasn’t on the team ‘designated’ to discuss goals of care and overall expectations) was terrifying.

So I told her that I didn’t know, and her dad was very very sick and it might take us a long time to know what would happen, but a whole team of doctors and nurses were going to keep trying their best to help him get better.

He died several days later.

#21

I’m not a doctor but a nurse. This happened when I was still a CNA.

Young women brought into the ER for behavioral issues. Family says she hasn’t slept in weeks. She’s weirdly quiet for a while, then starts biting herself on the wrist.

We get violent restraints, and she goes ballistic. Like possession screaming, no words just growling and agony. Well, this goes on for a while, and she calms back down again. Even weirder negative for everything except CT.

All of a sudden, the sitter screams, “She got out!” This lady ripped off violent restraints, pulling at her skin until it bleed. She immediately starts slamming her head into the ground. RN pulls her up and gets a sparta kick to the chest, and he falls backward through the door (tall dude). I get scratched, the Dr gets punched, and the security gets it bit. Dr. knocks her out with a shot of the good stuff.

We assume she’s out for a while, so we breathe while we start the paperwork for injuries, but not even 5 minutes later, she wakes back up and starts screaming again. She does this all night, and she’s too messed up to go to behavioral, so until she’s stable, she’s inpatient. Longest night of my life.

Come in tomorrow she’s still there. She’s too violent to go up to a unit even if there was room (covid times), and they still have no idea whats actually wrong with her beyond not sleeping, psychosis, and generally wasting away. After a few days of screaming and violence, she just goes glass eyed. We get a feeding tube, but she just keeps wasting and after 9 days dies.

I took 8 months for our pathologist to figure out what she had. It was a rare prion disorder that can happen in an astronomically small percentage of synthetic o****d users can sometimes get. This is the closest thing I’ve ever seen to possession.

Another useful tip is to jot down doubts before your appointment. “Patients often forget half their questions once they sit in front of the doctor,” she noted. “Keeping a small list ensures that all concerns are addressed during the consultation.” This not only saves time but also allows the doctor to see the full picture.

#22

I was a very new intern, working in the ED. I got asked to see a young woman patient and the diagnosis put beside her name by triage staff said “S*******M”.

So I took her into a consult room and tried my best to ask her about what was happening. She said to me “I think someone was in my room last night”, and I was like, hmm that’s a weird way to start to talk about s*******m, but I answered “oh…ok…why do you say that?” And she lifted up her shirt to show me the words “HELP ME” carved into her abdomen. The cuts individually were very thin, made by a razor blade, but each letter had been gone over many times so they were deep and quite fresh, still bleeding. I looked up at her horrified, and she said “I don’t know who but someone must have done this to me while I was asleep because I don’t remember doing it to myself.” The psychiatrist she saw after me thought the patient might’ve had dissociative amnesia but I’m not sure what happened after that.

That was like, 20 years ago, and I can still feel the unease of that encounter.

#23

Again, nurse here.

Plenty of times I have had patients with psychosis tell me they see a person in their room. This is never scary to me— I don’t attend to where their vision is (because it makes the hallucination more real to them), I just do a full assessment (figure out if they hear voices, if the voices are telling them to harm themselves or others), encourage them to engage in distractions, talk to them if that’s what they need at the moment, and give them whatever meds necessary. Freaks out other nurses tho.

Have had many dying patients say they see family members or “angels” in the room. The patients in those instances never seen scared— more like comforted. I actually encourage them to focus on those family members that they see if it brings them comfort. They usually pass shortly afterwards.

#24

Nurse here, one time an old lady said to me at about 3am, “there’s something in my cooter!”

Concerned, I checked. It was the pure wick device we use for urine absorption. Sundownings a hell of a d**g.

Finally, Dr. Pradhan reminded us that medical professionals are there to guide, not to judge. “Doctors are here to offer advice, not pass judgment on your habits or lifestyle choices,” she explained. Approaching consultations with openness and honesty can help patients receive the best possible care while building trust in the doctor-patient relationship.

#25

Before I (NP, worked in the ER as a tech>RN>NP) begin, I’ll preface with what I tell everyone outside of healthcare who asks something like this: You realize that you’re asking me to flip through a filing cabinet of nightmares and select the ones that stand out the *most*, right?

Bloody woman brought in my EMS, wrapped in a blanket. Found lying on the side of the road. They left her wrapped because she wailed every time they tried to unwrap her and figured it would be faster to just get her to us rather than wrestle her out there. She was clearly bludgeoned. Hard to tell the difference between her bloody clothes and the blanket. After getting vitals and trying to build rapport, she was still partially covered and just says, “him,” while glancing to her side. I slowly pull the blanket back to find a bloody child. I don’t remember what happened next. I think I suppressed that memory.

There’s the eerie, smiling glare of a large psych patient who was incredibly calm while I got him settled. After a few moments he made a threat I barely heard, started to move, then was restrained by a few cops while I sedated him. Found out after that he was with me because they found him laying with his mother, but her head was in the other room with his machete.

Last one that comes to mind was an o******e patient who was supposedly very sick and hooked up to everything. I was doing my assessment on the sleeping patient while alone in my trauma room. Another nurse was on the other side of the curtain. I was doing my assessment in peace when the patient opened their eyes, said sorry, and started to strangle me with the wires. The other nurse heard the quiet fuss and ran over to save me. She was an old nurse, but the way she could hog tie a violent patient with the sheets convinced me she was ex-CIA.

Those are the three I can’t really pick between for this question.

Edit to include this response since I think I’ll be hitting copy+paste a lot if not:

It’s a helluva job, but horrors will happen. Someone has to be there to help. I don’t do it any more. I am in primary care which has its own set of horrors, but they tend to read more like Hemingway than the ER stories.

Be nice to your EMS/First responder folks. PTSD is prevalent but under reported because the culture is to accept it and move on. I’m certain that after any of these cases I simply sipped my room temperature coffee that I poured hours ago and moved on to the next patient. That’s what we do.

#26

I’m a psychiatrist. The scariest patient encounter of my career was during training. I was rotating at the county hospital with the sickest, most acute psychiatry patients. One morning during rounds, a very psychotic patient got extremely agitated and I watched in horror as he punched open the plexiglass window of the nurses station. He was going after one of my colleagues. I quickly directed the med students to safety and joined my colleagues and the nurses to contain the situation. This patient brutally beat the s**t out of one of the cops that rushed to our aid and then he proceeded to break open the doors to the psych unit. It became an all-hands-on-deck situation and eventually we were able to restrain him. I had never seen so much fear in the eyes of the nurses before (and these are seasoned nurses that have dealt with plenty of psychotic patients who would get aggressive from time to time.)

2nd most scary encounter: I was on call one night at the same unit. A tall bulky male patient was requesting to leave AMA after midnight. He was psychotic and unsafe to leave. He said some things that didn’t make sense but I saw that twinkle in his eyes that he was hallucinating while talking to me. I swiftly backed away and escaped into the nurses station. A second later I realized that I had narrowly escaped being assaulted. He was banging aggressively on the nurses station plexiglass yelling “YOU B***H!!!!”.

#27

Not a doctor but had a nurse nearly beaten to death in a hospital I used to work in. The patient was known to be violent but they didn’t take any preventative measures. A nurse went into the room to give the patient meds and the patient jumped on her and was repeatedly smashing her head into the floor. One of the other staff members heard a scream and thought he had k****d her with the amount of blood everywhere. She ran in and kicked him in the head as hard as she could and dragged the unconscious nurse out of the room. I can’t remember what happened after but she survived with permanent damage.

Well, these posts reveal some of the strangest and creepiest things doctors have actually heard from patients. Which one of these surprised or shocked you the most? Share your thoughts in the comments.

#28

Not a dr, but at age 18 I went to Haiti to help with the hurricane crisis that happened, about 6 months after the relief efforts started. We ran a pop up clinic for people in need of medical care for about three weeks.
A patient came in, he was the same age as me. He was on crutches and appeared to have a large shard of dry wood stuck in his shin, which looked green and infected. The doctors set to work removing the wood, only to find out that it was exposed bone from a brutal fracture that had occurred 6-8 MONTHS prior. How he survived I had no idea. I could only speak limited creole, but he told me how much pain he had been in and how he just wanted to run and play kickball with his friends again.
I hope you’re well, Dante. I still think of you.

#29

During the first year of my psych residency I came across this patient 19/M, he struggled with depression and was admitted in my ward a couple of times. Post that he started coming for regular follow ups and was doing well. One fine day he came to the ward to meet us and gave us sweets and thanked us for everything, it was a very proud moment for me as he was one of my first patients in the field of Psychiatry. The same night, I was on call and at about 3am I went up to the main entrance to collect my food parcel. I saw a car going towards ER and legs were sticking out of it.I felt like I recognised those pants so I walked up to the ER to see who it could be. He had hung himself that night, nobody suspected it, not his family, not us. Still haunts me at times.

#30

I had a patient in my icu, who wasn’t unknown to us, she first came to us, then went to a skilled nursing facility, where she’d get sick, come back to my icu, get better enough to go back to her SNF, a few months later get sick and come back to us, rinse and repeat.

(I want to be very clear, it was not at any fault of the SNF (skilled nursing facility/ long term acute care facility), it was her disease process and was expected and unavoidable)

And one day she’s my patient and the doctor has already arranged her discharge back to the SNF again, she’s decently with it, a lil pleasantly confused but still can tell me where she is, why she’s here, what year it is, all the things, but still gets a lil confused.

I’m chatting with her and she says “I’m going home today.” And I clarify that she isn’t going to her house, she’s going back to the SNF, and she waves me off and says “no, I’m going HOME. Not back there, I’m going HOME.”

Her family comes in and it’s the same convo, they’re trying to make her understand that she isn’t going back to her house, and she’s like “yeah I’m not going to my house, I’m going HOME.”

Strangers walking past her room, she’d wave them down and joyfully tell them she was going HOME today, come say goodbye and give me a hug, I’m going home.

And in the middle of me trying to explain AGAIN that I’m not sending her to her house, but to her SNF, transport is on the way to come take her back to the SNF, and that’s why I’m packing up her things, her eyes just roll back into her head and she goes asystole. She straight up died on me.

I should have known, she was devoutly Christian and growing up in the church, dying was often referred to as being called home. I should have caught that nuance.

She was serious, she went HOME. She knew and was trying to tell us. But she wasn’t scared, she was happy telling everyone and saying her goodbyes, even to strangers, she was done, and made her exit.

#31

Nurse, not a doctor. Work on a pediatric cardiac ICU where s**t tends to hit the fan with little to no warning—kids can compensate beautifully until they decide to simply die.

Had a 3 y/o patient come in with a heart rate in the 210s and nothing we did brought her heart rate back into an acceptable range. We’d deliver meds, her HR would normalize, then she’d flip back into SVT/tachycardia. She kept drifting off to slip, then jerking awake suddenly and screaming, clearly terrified, then would fight to stay awake until she nearly passed out from fatigue. This cycle repeated itself over and over. I had a terrible feeling about this patient and elevated my concerns to the team, so we weren’t completely unprepared for what happened. Close to change of shift, she sat up from a dead sleep, screamed, then collapsed. No pulse. Not breathing. Crashed to ECMO.

Another 3- or 4-month-old patient was fussy as soon as I started my shift one morning. Intractably crying, in and out of atrial tachycardia (which had previously been managed with meds), but otherwise doing well clinically. He’d had an IV leak a small amount of irritating fluid into the skin of his arm overnight, so I asked for a dose of pain medicine to make sure he wasn’t experiencing untreated pain. No change. Still screaming. I had two patients that day and remember going into the other patients room and giving meds/doing my checks and assessment as early as I could and warning the parent at the bedside that I might be getting busy next door. Just a gut feeling. Sure enough, as I’m finishing giving my happy, stable patient his meds, I look over and my other patient’s oxygen sats have dropped to the 60%s. Go over, throw oxygen on him, call a provider, and when I listen with a stethoscope, I realize that he’s lost the blood flow to his lungs. Nearly crashed to ECMO, managed to emergently intubate him and get him to the cath lab to stent/prop open structures to get blood to his lungs, and he discharged from the hospital a week later with no residual effects.

Panicky babies make me feel panicky.

#32

Disclaimer that I am not a medical professional of any sort. But I was a patient in an ER one night after I gave myself a concussion at summer camp. Sitting there with some counselors and a fellow camper who came with me; it’s around midnight at this point in a rural small town, and the ER is quiet. Then we hear an eerie voice from the other side of the curtain say “I’m still hereeeeeee.”

We didn’t realize there was another patient there and we all kind of looked at each other and gasped in surprise. Then the guy says “I can *heaaar* you.” Nothing else after that.

Definitely not as scary as some of these other stories, but somehow to my teenage mind, it was very jolting.

#33

Not a medical professional, but I remember a conversation I had with my grandmother when one of her sisters had passed. Grandma said she was on the phone with her, and my great aunt starting talking like their late father was there in the room with her. That’s when Grandma knew it wouldn’t be long. My great aunt passed a few days later.

Then grandma looked me directly in the eye and told me, “That’s how you’ll know when it’s my time. If I ever start talking to your grandfather or your late Aunt Margaret, you’ll know I’m about to pass.”

Twenty years later, I had moved out of town and was talking to my mother. Grandma had gotten to the point where she needed to stay with someone, and was living with one of my mother’s sisters. Mom called me to tell me that Grandma had been admitted to a nursing home that night, as she was starting to hallucinate. She was having a full on conversation with not only her late husband, but several other relatives who had passed.

I felt a chill and said “Mom, it’s her time. She won’t make it through the night.”

Time of death: The exact moment I felt that chill.

#34

Back when I was a med student, one case of severe acute heart failure that wanted to go back to work, didn’t listen no matter what I said. Had to go back to work because no one would support their family, even though it was highly likely they would have gone back and died. (Scary to me because, they just wouldn’t listen)

Second case was the cry/scream of a mother when their child died, because the day before their condition seemed to improve. Terminal lucidity I guess.

#35

I’m not a doctor but a clinician in mental health. I have two patient statements that still give me chills:
1. a patient shared that they can travel using astral projection and that they “could visit me while i’m asleep if they really wanted to.”

and

2. a patient who was also dying of cancer shared that a demon lives in their house and watches them at night. they didn’t feel scared, but instead felt that “it protects me.”

sometimes i sleep with the lamp on.

#36

On my psych rotation as a 3rd year student, I was sent to interview this guy who showed up in the ER. He was a young, very muscular male, pretty physically imposing. I couldn’t get him to communicate, but suddenly he walked over to me in the small room we were in and took the pens out of my coat pocket. As images of being stabbed in the neck like Joe Pesci did to that guy in the bar in “Casino” flashed through my mind, he just went and sat back down. I calmly but rather quickly left and went on to other things, but maybe an hour later, I watched four police officers pinning him to the ground and putting restraints on him. I saw him on the ward a few days later, and he apologized. I wish I could remember what his diagnosis was.

#37

Not a doctor, but had a hospital stay a couple of years back when my Crohn’s disease was flaring up.

I offhandedly mentioned to the first year doctor while he was checking me that I’d had this weird feeling that I couldn’t shake, like something was going to go wrong, this heavy feeling deep in my chest.

I’ve never seen someone’s head snap up that quick.

Turns out that an ‘impending sense of doom’ is an actual symptom, and can be a sign that you’re about to have a heart attack or go into anaphylaxis.

I was fine, and that ‘feeling of doom’ went away as soon as I was put on biologic medication. Wild.

#38

My mother is a nurse working in the ICU. One day, she’s treating a schizophrenic and the old woman is talking to herself the whole time. Then, she goes silent. All of the sudden, the woman goes, “No, I’m not gonna k**l her 🙄”.

#39

I’m a speech language pathologist so not a doctor, but figured this could be contributed. It is astounding the number of children I’ve worked with that have been diagnosed with severe PTSD due to sexual a*****t and trauma from a parent or family member. Which is a separate story from the infants and toddlers that were d**g addicted from the birth mothers. Most of these kids had told me, in detail without prompting, what had happened to them and their siblings like it was chatting about the weather on a normal Tuesday afternoon.

The oldest patient was 10, the youngest was 2yo but most had been repeatedly assaulted and a****d since birth or most of their lives by one or more people, all family members. I can’t ever forget all of those kids and what they told me during sessions.

#40

EM doc here. “If you don’t bring me an iPad to watch YouTube on right now I’m going to come back with a rifle and go to the roof and pick you off one at a time” said approximately 3 min after arriving to triage.

#41

Honestly it was probably a patient just casually telling me a story about how once a motorcyclist cut him off on a country road so he ran the motorcyclist off the road and left him for dead.

#42

When I was a first year nursing student I was working in the hospital as a nursing extern (nurses aid pretty much), we had a patient who had some sort of mental disorder. Very odd guy but he was sweet.

I remember a couple mornings going into his room to do his vitals for his nurse and him telling me “you’re the only one who’s nice to me… everyone doesn’t like me here”. I knew this was happening as I would hear the nurses talking s**t about this man, sometimes for good reason but nonetheless not nice.

Anyways, this patient had an ostomy (Google if u don’t know) and I as a first year nursing student I knew absolutely NOTHING about them. We were literally learning how to wash our hands in school at this point. I did however notice that his ostomy pouch was always empty and never collected waste. I thought this was odd. I would feel his stomach and look and he was extremely distended. I told his nurse multiple times throughout the week and was always made to feel stupid because they were “already checking it”.

Long story short. I come in my next shift, he had a blockage, the waste built up so much that he was puking it out of his mouth and ultimately chocked and suffocated on his own waste. He was a DNR and was very sick to begin with but it was not supposed to be this way.

I think about him often and feel deep sadness when I think about how he felt abandoned at the hospital and this was the outcome.

#43

Physician here. Not necessarily the “scariest” but have had a few patients with a*******n start injecting d***s into their hips due to lack of other access. Creates incredibly nasty infections. Worst part is it never seems to affect them.

Other situation that comes to mind is a 21 year old male with AIDS who came to me with some sort of widely metastatic fungal process in his lungs. He’d been having s*x with multiple females despite knowing he had HIV but he didn’t care. He didn’t even mind what condition he had, just wanted to go home and do more of the same 🙁 Feels bad for the people he’s with.

#44

Not scary, but definitely still haunts me and I think of her often.

16yo kid with metastatic relapsed Ewing’s Sarcoma. After telling her parents that we had no cure for her and that we recommend comfort care only, I usually let parents decide if they want to tell their kid or if they’d like me to. This family asked that I break the news since we had a good relationship. After explaining everything, she looked at me with so much terror in her eyes and asked “Am I going to die?”

Hardest day of my career so far. I think of her often. She had a comfortable and peaceful death and I am proud I could at least give her that.

#45

Had a Jehovas witness family, the 10 yo son
Had an aggressive cancer. They said they would accept chemo but no transfusions so the chemo was reduced (the Team didn’t want him ostracized from his support network if things went bad- which was more likely than not even with full treatment )
Later that year it relapsed and came to me for palliative radiotherapy,
The dad looked at me and said “I would do anything to save my son….”.

#46

Nurse here. The amount of a***e we put up with is astonishing but I’ll list a couple.

Patient who was with us already a few days, was fully alert and oriented, groped the a*s of one of our nurses. Not like oops my bad, like clearly intentional grabbing and getting a good feel. Nurse obviously was not happy about this escalated to charge nurse and house supervisor. Police were called (they didn’t bother coming in, probably because they didn’t feel like making an arrest and having to keep a deputy watching him until discharge.) When confronted about the incident by charge and supervisor patient stated “If I see that nurse again I will f*****g k**l her, I don’t care I’m already on parole”.

Another patient, under my care. Admitted to us from ER, overdosed suspected to be intentional on his part. Patient was restrained when I got him. Story was he would wax and wane. When he was in ER he was practically comatose…. He woke up, immediately stood up and proceeded to pin the nurse to the wall and strangle her… it took 2 nurses and a tech to rip him off of her and then 5 security guards to get him in the bed restrained. Had to renew the order for restraints that night and doc asked if I want to trial off restraints. Normally I would (because patient rights and all) but he had a sitter who was a 20 year old tiny 5 foot girl (because psych hold), politely said “not really wanting to try, he strangled a nurse for which he has a warrant for, don’t feel like walking into a dead sitter.” He broke the restraints at least once that night.

Another. Patient in ICU, family obviously stressed. One in particular was upset with the whole care team (not sure the details as to why). Got heated with the nurse. The nurse left the room to get something and when they came back there was a loaded pistol on the table next to that family member. Police called, family banned from visiting. Now every visitor gets their bags searched and goes through a metal detector.

#47

A suspected HIV positive Patient who was also suffering from an acute episode of psychosis somehow got hold of his IV cath,pulled it out and stabbed atleast 4 people with it. Created so much panic, we all had to undergo multiple tests and be on preventive meds for a month. The psychological impact was really difficult to deal with. I have never been so scared in my entire life.

#48

NAD, but an ER volunteer here. I’ve seen a lot of s**t (literally and figuratively), but the thing that always comes to mind first isn’t the early 20s patient EMS brought in DOA and unrecognizable from a motorcycle accident… it’s his mother. She arrived maybe 10 minutes after they brought him in. To this day—20 years later—I can still hear her screams, her wailing, the pleas to god that became literal gibberish as her entire world collapsed. I don’t think I really knew what “devastated” meant until that moment.

#49

This is the very first question in this sub I’ve spent more than 20 minutes in.

#50

I had a schizophrenic patient look me dead in the eyes and tell me “ you were really sick as a kid, weren’t you? How many surgeries was it?”

Born with autoimmune liver disease. At that point it was probably 5. I was dumbfounded.

#51

Some people don’t have to say anything.

I am a nurse now, but this is back when I was a phlepotomist. I went into a patient’s emergency room and bent over the bed to introduce myself, and the look in his eyes scared me.

I backed away and walked out of the room and someone noticed I was in there and came rushing over to assist. She quietly told me that he had just bit someone pretty badly.

#52

I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure I gave an MD the fright of his life.

When I was around 10 a buddy threw a snowball at me and caught me right in the eye. I say snowball, but really it was more a jagged ice rock gently glazed with snow. I won’t go into specifics but I did need to go the hospital as the injury was pretty gruesome. Fortunately it looked worse than it was and I ended up no worse for the wear.

But there was a lot of blood and the doctors were concerned about damage to the retina. It was also the height of flu season, so as I’m being wheeled through the hospital corridors all I can see when I raised my head were people sitting on the floor with their backs against the walls.

It was like a pre-apocalypse scene from a Stephen King novel.

The nurse who was walking me through the hospital told me to keep my eyes closed and every time I raised my head to look around he promptly put his hand on my forehead and pushed it down. I can not stress how ingrained it was that I had to keep my eyes closed.

As the hospital was packed, they had no place to put me. So the nurse put me in a storage room. You know, the place they keep routine medical supplies like bandages and tape? Barely bigger than a broom closet.

He then tells my brother, who was the one who took me to the hospital, that now would be a good time to get coffee. So they both leave this 10-year-old kid who is at this point convinced he will go blind if he opens his eyes alone in what is essentially a closet. Alone. Oh, and nurse dude turns off the light when he leaves.

After a few tense moments of my body seemingly trying to decide if it wanted to pee on the hospital gurney, puke on it or p**p on it, or an unholy combination of all three, I hear the door open.

The light switches on and there is a brief moment of silence which I presume was the person quickly noticing a 6 foot gurney in a 6 foot and one inch room, and then I hear this person rummaging through the various supply bins around me.

Again, I can’t stress how ingrained it was in me that I was not allowed to open my eyes at the risk of total blindness. I literally willed every muscle to be as tight as possible.

And then the person in the room dropped something on me and I flinched. Which is a reasonable reaction I thought. The person in the room with me disagreed, as he screamed at the top of his lungs and ran out. At no point did I open my eyes.

My brother came in a few moments later laughing hysterically. Turns out the room I was in was also a place they “stored” the dead bodies of people who didn’t survive past ER while waiting for someone from the dead people storing department to retrieve them.

The dude who popped in was a doctor just getting medical supplies and presumed I was a cadaver, so when I moved it gave him the shock of his life.

Oh how I laughed and laughed. Well, I mean years later I was able to laugh about it. That specific moment when I realized I was in dead dude storage my body decided what it wanted to do on the gurney. I’ll spare you the details, as it was almost as traumatic as the eye injury itself.

#53

Nurse here. I had a patient going through alcohol withdrawal and ssri o******e become acutely…everything. hallucinating, delusional, terrified. I thought I had him convinced to take some meds but then he took off down the hallway into the stairwell. His cardiac monitor fell off and make a loud noise. I though for sure he had thrown himself over.
Thankfully he did not and we were able to get him fixed up.

I think about that guy a lot and hope he’s better these days.

#54

Upon DC with refusal of narcotic medication in in the hall being escorted out by security she looked the doctor in the face and said, “I’ve been working on finding out where you live, Dr *****, so I can k**l you and your family”. It was one time I actually felt scared. She was charged with phone harassment for calling for this doctor hundreds of times and making threats. She also broke an older nurse’s humerus by jail slamming her to the ground in triage, in front of her kids. Also known to threaten racist and targeted verbal and physical attacks in the community that was documented in local news.

#55

Pharmacist here not a doctor, a girl was getting the morning after pill, very young 17 yo, and had lots of questions etc because she was scared I presume, but told me it was her first time having s*x and that she’d done vaginal then a**l and back to vaginal and would that be more or less likely to result pregnancy etc

It made me despair because I realised this generation is raised on p**n, with all the ridiculous expectations for real s*x that would bring.

#56

Not a doctor, but still terrifying.

About a hundred years ago :), I was 19 and an R.N.A. at a long term care facility. I had a resident who’d been there for years and years when I started. She was stiffend into the shape of sitting in her wheelchair, solid, hef limbs did not move other than a sort of flailing she could do with her arms (which allowed her to masterbate and scream “I need a man” on repeat at the top of her lungs -.- ) and most of the time was incoherent, apparently unaware of the goings on around her.

One day she seemed to “snap out of it” long enough to look me in the eye and say “I used to be like you, I used to be normal.” And then as quick as that, she was ‘gone’ again. I was stunned. She’d never actually communicated before.

Freaked me right out. How aware was she, had she been? I’ve thought about her many times over the years. Talk about “don’t take your health for granted.”

She was old then and has surely passed by now, so I can say her name, I remember you Norma. I hope you found peace.

#57

Scariest thing a patient has done? I had a notoriously violent inmate slip out of the cuffs in the ED room and start beating the s**t out of the CO with him. I’m a pretty big dude so I go running in to help. And it’s like me and this cop trying to get this dude under control for what felt like an hour. Punches. Kicks. Chokes. It was a full blown street fight with this guy trying to grab the COs gun. I honestly thought one of us was going to die or get seriously injured. Tried to press charges…went to court and was told by the judge that “this was accepted” as part of my job. And that was my first foray into NYS bail reform and the fact that nobody in the criminal justice system has our backs. Really changed my view on this county and my state. Only time I’ve ever actually had to punch a patient in self defense. Although I’ve got combative patient stories for days like we all do.

Sketchiest? I had a pgy3 resident and she goes into see a patient for a cc of penile problem. Dude pulls his p***s out and shoots a load right on this female residents hand. How this dude had such control over that I will never know. Then throws the entire jug or urine at bedside onto the nurse and elopes. Tried again to press charges bc it’s literally sexual a*****t and again were told no because he’s a “psych patient.”

This is life in the ED folks.

#58

Pharmacy tech here, but I’ll still always remember the woman who looked me dead in the eye in our drivethrough, and with 100% seriousness, said, “If I don’t get these (antipsychotic injections), I am going to k**l myself.”

I’ll also never forget when my colleagues saw me rushing to get that out to her, they giggled and said, “haha, first time?”.

#59

Nurse but was working as an aid at the time of this story. Have a lot of em but for example a pt who was in high acuity behavioral health unit after beating his girlfriend to a pulp during a psychotic episode and had chucked a chair (they are heavy on that unit to prevent this) at the nurses station the day before, looked me dead in the eye and “calmly” said “you look like my ex wife.” I did not go near him alone again.

Also thank f**k for plexiglass surrounding said station.

#60

Not a doctor but a CNA.. have two instances that totally freaked me out. The nursing facility I worked at had been a farm back in the day and people had lived on the property since like at least the early 1900s. It was town lore that a young man was run over and k****d by a tractor. One time I was doing care on a lady and I was facing her. She was dying from pressure sores and cancer but was pretty lucid still. She goes “I bet you’re stronger than him!”..wanting to brag to the male nurses I asked her “who?”..she goes “that boy”…again there were like 3 young male nurses so I asked her “what boy?” because she still knew all of us by name and like I said I wanted to brag. She goes “that boy sitting in the chair behind you.” There was no one else in the room. I never left a room so fast after that..still get chills retelling it! A lot of times before people would pass they would mention seeing a boy and a black dog. Call light flicks on and the nurse and I go into this other ladies room who was 100% lucid. Again..this lady was totally lucid and barely needed assistance. We honestly went in together because we would often sit and chat with her. She goes “hey girls! Where did that big black dog go?” We go “what black dog?” ..”the black dog that was just laying in my bed. His owner brought him in and then he ran out.” Obviously this freaked us out because usually only the residents about to pass on talked like this and this lady was totally fine. We ended up leaving ..few hours later she falls and completely cracks her head open on her metal table. Totally unexpected. Passed away as soon as she got in the ambulance.

#61

I’m not a doctor but my partner is. Naturally, she always shares her best “war” stories with me. This is one that stands out as particularly freaky/shocking/unsettling.

She works in the emergency department. A female patient presented with an open wound on her left arm. The cause of the injury wasn’t clear. It had rough edges and likely wasn’t caused by a blade. It was too fresh to be from xylazine. My partner was closely inspecting it and trying to gather information from the patient. Suddenly, the patient screamed, looked down at her right arm, and bit into her own bicep. She proceeded to rip a golf ball sized chuck of flesh out of her arm before staring directly into my partner’s eyes with skin in her mouth and blood dripping down her chin. Sounded to me like a scene straight out of a zombie movie.

In keeping with the zombie theme, she also had a different patient present with leg pain from a pretty bad xylazine wound. What the patient was seemingly unconcerned about was the fact that his arm from the elbow down had fallen off several months prior. All that remained of his right arm was the humerus which was completely exposed. No skin, no muscle, no tendons, no blood, just exposed bone from the shoulder to the elbow. I can’t imagine seeing that guy walking down the street.

#62

I’m a student paramedic, not a doctor, but a farmer picking up the phone himself to call us is absolutely terrifying 😂.

#63

Not a doctor, but a nurse. I was doing a rotation in a locked mental institution. I was in the day room having a good conversation with a seemingly nice young man. He said something about his past job. I asked him “Oh, what did you do for a living?” And looked at me with an odd smile on his face and said “I could tell you, but then I would have to k**l you.” I believed him and quickly changed the subject.

#64

“I am your grandchild and I have come back from the future to warn you not to have children”.

#65

Was working as a coroner, not ER doc one day, when a young Asian woman ran into the ER screaming, “help me! I’m dying!” And she promptly dropped dead. She couldn’t be resuscitated. Trying to find a reason, it was a thrilling race with police to where she lived and watched them clear the house with guns drawn. (And this is rare in Ontario Canada). Long story short, her autopsy revealed an incredible rare inherited disease of the brain. She was a ticking time b**b and somehow knew when her time was up!

#66

I work as a ER Nurse. When I was starting off in a rural ER we had a Hmong lady come in and said she “fell”. Her ear was missing and there was a clear human bite mark to her cheek. She refused to tell the actual story. She came in with some friends that seemed equally shocked and I pulled them aside and confronted them, ‘who bit this woman?’ He said ‘a cat’ and before I can stop myself I said ‘what like a f*****g tiger?’, and he pretty much went into his shell.

She did not open up to the cops, she was flown to a hospital with plastics and as luck would have it I knew the nurse that took care of her over there, the plastic surgeons also asked, and still no answer. I’ve always thought it was a scorned lover in an insular community and they covered for them.

It really hit me on the drive home at 3AM, driving through this tiny town knowing this guy was out there. .

#67

On a lighter note, Patient told me he was gonna slit my throat and cut my balls off. I’m a female nurse.

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