A lot of people tend to go into denial when they feel like something’s wrong with their body. “Eh, I’m sure this headache’s nothing. I’ll just pop a couple tablets of ibuprofen and call it a day.” But if you’re in extreme pain, your symptoms haven’t gone away for days or you start to feel delirious, it’s definitely time to go to the hospital. In fact, your body is probably screaming at you that you should have called an ambulance days ago!

Medical professionals on Reddit have been sharing stories of patients who waited far too long before going to the hospital, so we’ve compiled a list of their most disturbing stories below. We’ll warn you right now that some of these are incredibly hard to stomach, but we hope they’ll be reminders that you should never ignore health warnings. And when in doubt, just get it checked out!

#1

Had a patient brought in by her son who “took care of her,” when she arrived to our unit I performed a skin assessment…took off her socks and found a fallen off gangrenous toe. Seems fake and I wish this was but it was by far the nastiest thing I’ve witnessed. Son said he had no idea when his mother’s foot became “that bad.” No words.

Image credits: humanamphibian55

#2

A&E/ED doctor here!
A farmer in his 70s reluctantly came in with his wife after falling over outside while wrangling a sheep one WEEK earlier. He did not want to be there but had been “forced” to come by his wife who was worried about him. On questioning/examining he was pale, short of breath, and clearly in pain all over the right side of his chest but not wanting to show it! X-ray and bloods showed he’d broken loads of ribs, punctured his lung and bled profusely into his chest and was now very anaemic!

Image credits: LPScot

#3

Story from my SIL who is a nurse. Young man was brought in to the ER. He had a sinus infection that he had let go to the point that it had eaten through the skull and into this brain. She was told that it had started several months before. He didn’t want to go to the doctor for it. All it would have needed was 10 days of antibiotic pills. Instead, he was not brought in until he was unconscious, and died within a few hours.

Image credits: VeryBigTrouble

#4

I had a patient come in saying he couldn’t see. How long had it been going on? For five days. The man had been blind for five days and didn’t come in because he thought it might be “like a cold Or something”.

During the exam when I asked him to move his legs he said “oh, I can’t do that”… (??) I asked how long he’d been unable to move his legs or walk? Wife chimes in- about two years. Never saw a doctor about it- They just borrowed a friends wheelchair and kept it rolling.

Turned out he’d had multiple strokes with multiple risk factors he never addressed. Given how little insight he appeared to have into the condition I honestly felt sorry- he didn’t have insurance so I’m sure that played a role in him avoiding seeing anyone.

Image credits: DOctermom

#5

Children’s nurse here, my first week in paediatric ED we had a young girl (6/7) come in with a really swollen jaw/face. Poor girl was unable to move her jaw without intense pain and hadn’t been able to eat for several days. Turns out she had only just started cleaning her teeth for the first time ever and managed to develop several abscesses and rotten teeth in the process. To make it worse her mum told us she was recovering from the same procedures to remove most of her teeth because of almost the same thing… they didn’t want to bother the gp as they thought she was just messing about to get out of school.

Image credits: MontanaT13

#6

My girlfriend is a care worker and she recently told me that she slipped off a patient’s slippers and remarked “I didn’t know you had lost your toes” to which the patient responded “Well I hadn’t till you took the slipper off dear”

Sounds like something from a grim sketch show, god bless anyone who can do jobs like that.

Image credits: Treesydoesit

#7

I’ve seen a few over the years, and they generally fall into the category of ‘If it’s not diagnosed then I can’t have it,’ or ‘I didn’t think it was that bad.’ As a medical student I remember an older lady that had a breast that was necrotic and falling off. It had been progressing over the last several years. But, if she didn’t get diagnosed with breast cancer, then she couldn’t have it. In the other category I’ve seen a few cases of Fournier’s Gangrene. Pretty much obese, male diabetics that had a pimple/sore that started in the pubic region. By the time they come to the hospital it’s a raging infection where the treatment is basically to cut away everything in the pubic/ groin region down to the muscle layer. That little sore didn’t seem like much at first.

Image credits: Pasngas42

#8

I was working as a surgical junior when my team was called down to A&E to see a patient who had come in with a complication from a recent hernia operation. When we came down, we saw that the patient was holding a plastic bag over their abdomen. When this was removed, we found that their wound had opened and their intestine was visible to the air. It transpired that this was not something that had happened over night, it had taken several days. The patient had started using plastic bags and newspaper to dress the wound when they ran out of dressings.

Edit: Addendum – because this is getting a lot of views, I must stress that this case was exceptionally uncommon, and an example of what happens when someone does not seek medical attention when it is obviously required. In general, hernia operations are very common and very safe; that being said, if you have any surgical procedure and you are not certain the wound is healing properly, you must seek medical attention.

Image credits: chewingthefatchungus

#9

We once had a patient who went to Emergency for abdominal pain and they discovered a fungating breast wound (don’t image search that) that she’d had for two years and hadn’t gotten medical attention for. A biopsy and a PET scan later she was diagnosed with breast cancer with extensive liver, lung and bone mets. This was also in Australia so it wasn’t a money issue. Just sad.

Image credits: godricspaw

#10

Guy came in with a dead leg. Waited until it turned black and then decided to head to the ER. They tried an angiogram to open up blood flow but it was way late for that. Guy had several clots in his lungs and legs. Undiagnosed atrial fibrillation. He couldn’t believe we were going to amputate, kept asking me what else I could do.

Go back in time a week ago and come in. Kinda around when it turned blue.

Image credits: Almostjelly

#11

Nurse here.

I work in a very rural hospital, and we have a patient population that seems to avoid the hospital at all costs. I have had so many, usually related to diabetics with foot sores- almost always resulting in amputation of a toe (or more).

However, my favorite was an elderly farmer who came in with chest pain that, ‘Wouldn’t go away’, as he put it. When we asked him if he had it before had it before- he had said that he had been having chest pain on and off for years, but it would typically go away after he grabbed his electric fence.

Apparently, the first time he had the pain- he was standing out near an electric fence on his farm, and he reached out to steady himself and accidentally grabbed the electric fence, which shocked him, and made the pain go away. So after that, whenever he would have the pain, he just went and grabbed the fence and it made him feel better.

He had literally been cardioverting himself for years.

He was fixed up and sent on his way- but we all still chuckle about it now and then because he was so nonchalant about it.

Image credits: FlaviusArrianus

#12

Former medic here. Called to a patient who had cut their leg while chopping wood about a week prior and now it was really itchy. Old gentleman, didn’t drive, lived alone. Got to his house, unwrapped the ungodly swollen leg to find that he’d tried to superglue the wound closed and maggots had commenced to growing inside. The itching he was feeling was the writhing maggots under his skin.

Image credits: LillyPasta

#13

This has happened a few times, actually…

But I had a gal come in on Monday after being discharged from the hospital Friday after giving birth.

So basically, we tell ladies to avoid intercourse until a doctor clears you, and well, her spouse kept insisting and insisting and insisting that Friday night she caved and let him go to town. He wound up tearing some stitches that were placed and bleeding like a stuck hog all weekend long.

Came into our clinic, blue in the lips and fingers, and her hemoglobin was 4 (normal should be 12 – 15).

She didn’t wanna be a bother, so she waited until she started feeling dizzy all the time. She got another trip to the hospital for transfusion and repair for that.

But…like I said, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen that, so for the love of God…if homeboy is begging for it after you just had a baby, maybe he needs a lesson in self control and a bottle of moisturizer.

Image credits: Ssutuanjoe

#14

A colleague of mine removed a diabetic patient’s sock and their toes came off inside it.

Image credits: anon

#15

My favorite story (psych NP). I was called to a suburban ER to see a man who said he had a horrible stomach cancer and needed to lose weight in order to get better. He insisted that he’d been diagnosed by a very prominent gastroenterologist with “Barrett’s stomach” which isn’t even a thing (it’s an esophageal problem). I guess I got called in because the story was bizarre and the staff didn’t know what to do with him.

He eventually disclosed that he’d shot himself in the leg a few days previously and was waiting for gangrene to set in. He believed that the resulting amputation of the leg would allow him to lose the required amount of weight, thus curing his cancer.

I excused myself to let the ER staff know that they should probably examine the leg and to call the county psychiatric service, which was protocol at this particular hospital. I’m not sure what ever happened to him but that was a very impressive manifestation of a delusion!

Image credits: _perl_

#16

Not a doctor but medical physicist. About 12 years ago I was asked to look at and give advice on a lady who had a very slow growing tumour on their nose. A Basel cell carcinoma. Usually not much of an issue as if caught early can be cut off with surgery and that’s it or a short course of radiotherapy.

Turns out this lady was quite vain, and as soon as the lump had started to grow she hid it under a scarf. She ended up hiding it for 20 years. By the time it was seen by any medical professional the tumor had taken over most of her nasal cavity, had crushed 1 eye, deformed her whole face, and grown inbetween all the nerves and blood vessels. It was inoperable and there was very little you could do with radiotherapy without doing alot of damage to everything else.

Such a shame as it would have been so easy to fix 20 years ago. Please get lumps and random bleeding checked out.

Image credits: PPENNYYY

#17

I am an EMT and have some pretty gnarly stories. One of the worst things I’ve seen (mostly is because of the smell) is gangrene due to lack of control over diabetes.
The call came in as extreme lower limb pain. We pull up on scene. I examine the wound to see a man’s metatarsal exposed (yes, the bone). And maggots were eating the wound.
Long history of diabetes, and of course, did not do anything to control it. He eventually had his foot amputated.
The smell is something that has stuck with me and probably will forever. Just take care of yourself. Get help when you need it.

Image credits: anon

#18

OR RN, was on call on a Friday night. Got called in for an exploratory laparotomy. Some late staff had gotten the case ready and patient in the room when I arrived. I walked into the room to see the patients testicle was bigger then a basketball, two people holding it up to prep it. The guy had a large part of his bowel in his l ft testicle, and his bowel had ruptured due to the pressure. We suctioned poop out of his abdomen for over an hour. Apparently the week before he lifted something heavy and felt a pop. Hadn’t urinated in two days because it was so swollen his p***s was not visible. That’s why he finally came in, he couldn’t pee. Although his testicle had been slowly growing for a week. Unfortunately he didn’t make it, he lived thru 3 abdominal surgeries but sepsis did him in from the ruptured bowel.

Image credits: DynamoRN

#19

ER PA here. The worst I ever saw was a man in his 50’s who was an alcoholic and had anxiety problems who was brought in by his neighbors for a “facial infection”. Turned he had squamous cell skin cancer that made the left side of his face look like the Batman villain two face. The ct of his face and neck revealed that it had spread into his lymph nodes and mandible. The skin on his face was literally sloughing off as I spoke with him and the smell was absolutely horrible (and I smell terrible things all the time). I have never almost vomited in a room except for him just due to the smell. I asked him why he waited and he said he was just terrified of doctors and hospitals and I believe him. He was extremely anxious the entire time he was in our ED. His neighbors were saints, they said they had been trying to get him to the hospital for months but he wouldn’t come in. We transferred him to a tertiary hospital with ENT and cancer specialists. When I checked his chart a few days later they basically said he was terminal.

Image credits: Cybariss

#20

I’m still just a nursing student, but my professor told us a story of when he was an ER nurse. An elderly 80 something year old woman came in to the ER, and as he assessed her, he noticed her oral temperature was normal despite her neck being extremely hot to the touch. He decided to take a rectal temperature, which ended up being like 103 or something crazy. While he was down there, he noticed something peeking out of her v****a and proceeded to remove it. It was an old sock. She said her uterus had prolapsed months before and she was using the sock to keep it in. They began treating her for TSS immediately but sadly she went septic and died later that day.

Tongue in cheek, he told us she died of toxic sock syndrome. 😩💀 nurses have to use dark humor to cope.

Image credits: pinkawapuhi

#21

Lady with very poorly controlled diabetes and morbidly obese came in via ED with a gaping hole on her thigh…like so deep you could put you’re whole fist through it. It was oozing ridiculous amount of blood, so much so she had to be transfused. Her blood levels were rock bottom. It transpires she’d accidentally cut herself when tryna to wriggle into jeans. Meantime, the wound just kept getting bigger and bigger, and she attempted to just sort it by packing the wound with socks! Single worst thing I’ve seen.

Image credits: Rini_28

#22

Work in the ED as a medical student. Had a guy the other day who let a leg infection get worse for years and when he finally came in his infected leg was at least 4 times the size of the other one and was draining copious amounts of foul-smelling pus.If the infection had been seen earlier, he would have just needed antibiotics. Because he waited so long, he’s going to lose the leg, if not his life.

Image credits: argyllrobertsonpupil

#23

Elderly woman fell at home and broke both femurs. Son thought she just needed to rest so he carried her to her bed. She laid there in her own filth for 3 days before anyone called 911. The son lives with her, and there’s family next door as well. HOW. WHY?!

Image credits: rirry

#24

Maggots. Whenever it’s gotten to the point of maggots it’s like 100 alarm bells that this person’s living situation is no bueno.

Image credits: clangalangalang

#25

Once had an older lady call in wanting a prescription for pain meds because she was sure she had shingles. Said her neighbor had them and she was sure that’s what it was. She hadn’t been in for an exam in almost 2 years, so the doctor asked that she come in to be evaluated before a prescription could be given. She refused and called again the next day asking for a prescription. This went on all week. Her calling for pain meds, the doctor asking her to come in to be seen. She finally agreed to make an appointment. It wasn’t shingles. It was a skin ulceration from advanced breast cancer. :(.

Image credits: anon

#26

Not a nurse/doctor but a lab scientist. Had a guy come in at the end of the day for chest pain that’s been bothering him “all weekend”. The ED doc ordered a troponin blood test which helps rule in/out heart attacks. If the test runs above 0.03, we consider that a sign for a heart attack and act accordingly. This guy’s very first troponin was 21.00. TWENTY-ONE. The highest we’ve ever had up till then was an 8.00. The guy should’ve been dead ages ago, but he somehow pulled through. Don’t ignore chest pains, people.

Edit: Just wanna clarify that the hospital I work for is a tiny a*s, 25 bed, rural community critical care hospital. Definitely not a place with dedicated cardiologists, cath lab, bedside assays, or even a big test menu, period. Bare basics! And the guy did, somehow, end up surviving.

Image credits: LimeGap

#27

My cousin is a Pathologist Assistant and was telling me about how she had to dissect a testicle that was 11 pounds. Turns out it was testicular cancer.

Image credits: PenguinWITTaSunburn

#28

I am a doctor and while working in A&E we had an older chap, possibly in his 70s, who several days prior to presentation had a sudden onset severe chest pain and vomiting while loading the car with shopping. He ignored it and struggled home.
The next day he started to lose the use of both legs and by the time he came to hospital had been CRAWLING around his house for SEVERAL DAYS because he thought it would get better.

He had had a major cardiac event, developed a clot which his heart had pumped out, it went down his body, broke in half and blocked off the blood supply to both legs. He literally had dead legs.

I don’t know what ended up happening to him, but there was no way to save the legs and I reckon the outcome was very poor, if not fatal.

Edit because there is a lot of USA assumption going on: this is in the UK where healthcare is free-at-point-of-access, so debt is not a contributing concern for our patients.

Image credits: ozzborne

#29

I work in Orthopedics, a very common occurrence is a patient is told to follow up within the week (we like to see fractures between 5-7 days) and the patient will call on the 6th day and say “I broke something and need to be seen tomorrow”. This is frustrating because we very rarely have the ability to get a patient in next day, and if they had called the day of or the day after then we definitely could have gotten them seen.

BUT my number one “why didn’t you come in sooner?!” moment was getting a call from a patient who had broken their forearm *two months ago* and never followed up. I got them scheduled, they no showed their appointment. Rescheduled, they no showed. Second reschedule, they arrive with a very obvious deformity to their arm due to the fracture healing incorrectly. If they had just come in, it wouldn’t have been an issue at all. Blows my mind that they went almost three months without care.

Image credits: Aviouse96

#30

Oh, so many stories here. We can start with a gentleman in his 70s who was diagnosed with diabetes. His doctor had instructed him that it’s important for him to wear socks and supportive shoes throughout the day. So this guy decides that meant “wear the same pair of socks for weeks and never take them off.” He had showered, slept, and carried on in the same pair of socks for weeks. He came to the ER because there was blood oozing through his sock and there was pain under there. Take the sock off, he’s got a diabetic ulcer that had opened and was full of maggots. Not a pretty site. We clarified those instructions pretty quickly.

Image credits: mdm_pomfrey

#31

Not a doctor, but an Army medic. Had a dude come in to the aid station at like, 2am with his arm all wrapped up. Took the wraps off, s**t looked necrotic. I asked him what the f**k was going on.
Turns out, the weekend before we went out to the field, this man went and got his whole forearm tattooed. He then spent the next week wading through chest-deep swamps, figuring that if he just kept his arm wrapped, he’d be okay.
I was like…brother no.

Edit: oh yeah, there was also that time some female LT came in with vaginal pain. Took a look, saw one helluva infection. Apparently, she hadn’t changed her tampon in nearly a week. We (meaning I, while the Dr watched) had to “retrieve” it.

#32

I’m a PA in ortho, working in hand surgery at the time. Patient says he had a wrist replacement a number of years ago, and has a hole in his wrist. I figure he has a small draining sinus. He comes in, first I see his X-rays which looks like he has a massive contracture. Not ideal, but not uncommon. He has coband on his wrist which I peel off to see a 3X6cm hole in his wrist opening directly on his implanted wrist replacement, specifically on the poly insert that allows the two portions of the implants to glide on one another. He said he noticed the hole about 4 YEARS AGO and when it got so large he finally decided to see someone!!!

#33

When I was training to be a nurse, I got paired with a play specialist for a few weeks. A mum came into a and e with a little boy of about 4 or 5. Doc requested we come and entertain/ distract little man while he examined him and left it at that. He was happy, chatty and a picture of health from the shoulders up. His belly however looked like he was expecting very soon. This was a shock to both me and the other girl who had taken the usual toys (we had little baskets for each of us to take where needed). We trailed this little guy while he had a multitude of tests and he was extremely brave letting the docs do what they had to. Mum was asked how long it had been going on and she said 3 months. He had a tumour and the surgeons managed to remove it but the poor kid was so embarrassed after surgery because he had saggy skin and stretch marks. He often plays on my mind, even more so since having a kid of my own. Hope he’s doing OK now.

#34

Imaging guy here. I have a million of these, I work with vascular patients and wounds. Had a guy whose foot was completely broken sideways at the ankle. he had it still wrapped from when he left the hospital. He would use the stumpy part to move around on his wheelchair and leave little blood sponge prints on the floor.

Another guy with bad ankle and foot wounds decided to stop going to wound care, and was afraid to take the wraps off even after his foot started to stink. By the time I saw him his skin had kinda liquified.

Earlier on in my career I saw a guy with necrotizing wounds to both legs that had eaten to muscle in multiple places below the knee. I asked him how long they looked like that and he said about two years. Next time I saw him he was bilateral above knee amp.

Stump wounds. Just… Stump wounds.

Take care of your feet people. If you’re diabetic and can’t feel the bumps and scrapes please check your feet regularly.

#35

Last term medical student here. For part of your surgical rotation we had patients selected from the ER to be “student friendly” in regards to the symptoms they were seeing healthcare for.

An elderly man had a lump in hos groin and was then selected to see me. Went in and talked to the patient aswell as examined him. The lump had trumbled him putting on his pants for a couple of months. He hadent shown his wife or no one else. I could instantly see that it wasnt a hernia as suspected, but a giant tumor with several lymphatic metastases, found around 5. T-cell lymfoma it turned out.

Dont know if he lived or not, as students we dont follow our patients for very long. The thing i’ll never forget is the fact that he’d come straight from work, had a badge with his picture on it, and it looked like another person. It was like he was a husk of himself. His face was so skinny.
PS: Swedish medstudent

#36

My dad works as a nurse in the ER. I man had been doing mechanic work all night in the middle of winter. He came in complaining that he couldn’t feel his fingers because they had gotten so cold. They weren’t just pale or purple, they were literally black. His fingers had gotten so cold that they literally died and had to be amputated.

#37

Doctor here, might be a bit late and will probably be buried but had a 65 year old dude who was diagnosed with lymphoma 8 months before we saw him. He lived an hour out of the city and didn’t want to drive in for treatment so decided he wouldn’t get treated at all and stayed on his little remote place in the country by himself.

Essentially, because it didn’t get treated, it spread along his skin and his neighbors called an ambulance when popping in on him.
It had spread so far that it essentially went from his head to his knees. It had started to invade his eyes and mouth membranes. He couldn’t drink and could barely see. His skin had started to slough off and he was so severely dehydrated because he was losing so much excess fluid from his open skin that we had to treat him like a severe burns patient and had plastics involvement.

The consultant said if he had received treatment, there was a chance he could have recovered. Instead he died 3 weeks later.

#38

Had a guy come in with his pregnant wife in a wheelchair. The baby’s head was hanging out of her and we asked why she didn’t go to the maternity ward when she was 4-1-1.
He said that the waiting room was busy and he wasn’t waiting because she had some pains and they were only there to shut her up.

She ended up delivering around 20 minutes after she got taken back and I dread what could have happened if he refused to wait the A&E times too.

#39

PICU nurse here. Known diabetic 15 year old told her parents she wouldn’t go into the hospital for high blood sugars. (All they would say is over 300). Since she knew she would be in the hospital for a few days and wanted to be out of the hospital for her sweet 16. A very long story short: she went unresponsive on the way to the hospital after passing out. She went into DIC and when she was allowed to pass she had 10L of blood products that were not hers. We tried everything we possibly could for 8 hours.

#40

I had a patient come in who was blind in one eye. He’d waited a week to get to the ER. If he’s come in when it happened we could have saved his vision. He was too scared of the cost and thought it may go away on its own.

#41

Nurse here. Had a patient come in due to pain in her chest four months after having a mastectomy. When we changed her dressings the site was so infected that I could see her lung inflating when she took a breath. She died a week later. Still don’t know why she didn’t come in earlier.

#42

My Dad is the one that wouldn’t go in. He got a sore in the crease on the bottom of his second toe (the one next to the big toe, so it would be the Piggy That Stayed Home) and just kept ignoring it. He would go with his wife to her nail place and have his toe nails trimmed and I think that’s where the infection probably got in when they soaked his feet. He blew it off for a couple of weeks until the wife made him see the doc. It’s a good thing she did. The infection had gotten into the bone so they had to snip his toe off to the first knuckle to catch it before it went any further. The doc said had he waited any longer, he could have lost the entire foot. He’s lucky to just have a Stubby Piggy and not a Stubby Leg.

#43

This happens all the time…. People have a big stroke at home and can’t move an entire side of the body. They wait several days thinking it’s a flu or something. Nope, not the flu…. Just a large clot in the brain that could have been reversed if you came in right away.

#44

Years ago as a nursing assistant on an oncology floor we had a guy admitted because he had had an erection for several days and had lost the ability to pee. His bladder was close to bursting and his poor junk was… think microwaved hotdog. Really bad.

But NONE of that was as interesting as the fact that this guy had untreated skin cancer on his nose for several years that had over time become infected, developed MRSA, and spread across his face. He had no nose, no cheek, and no eye on one side of his face, and was starting to lose his other eye. You could see part of his f*****g skull. I dont know why he chose to leave it untreated and I have no idea how long it took to get that bad, but I will never ever forget the smell and texture of his rotting face.

On the upside, we were eventually able to convince him to have reconstructive surgery. He ended up getting a skin graft that covered up his eye, nose and cheek. So, if you ever meet a very grumpy dude with nothing but a mouth and one eye, know that this is way better than the alternative.

#45

Not me but my brother is an EMT for a warehouse. He recently had a guy come to his station saying something was wrong with his toe. So he asks him to take off his shoe, which he does. My brother was about to ask him to take off the bandage around his big toe before he realizes that that wasn’t a bandage, it was his skin. Apparently, this guy dropped a 20 pound tote on his toe a week earlier and had been showing up at work anyway. They sent him to the doctor; the doctor sent him to the ER. Diagnosis came back as a tissue infection as well as osteomyelitis (a bone infection). But wait, there’s more! The guy come back from the ER and tells him that he doesn’t want to go through the ER doctor and would rather go through his own insurance. My brother explained to him as best as he could that, as it stood, he was already likely going to lose his toe and if he waited any longer to get it treated, he ran the risk of losing his entire leg. Not sure what happened after that, I just hope he got the point.

#46

Nurse here: Had a diabetic who couldn’t afford to fill his oil tank during the winter. He was young too, early 40’s. Any who. Had neuropathy in his feet so couldn’t feel that they were becoming frost bitten. He had also been wearing his winter boots 24/7 for warmth. His sister went to check on him one day after she realized his phone was shut off by. She brought him in because she thought he seemed off. The doc asked me to take his boots off, one of his toes came off with the boot (no joke). He ended up having a below the knee amputation to one leg and a transmetatarsal amputation to the other and on IV antibiotics for weeks.

Diabetics, this is why us nurses always preach “check your feet”!

#47

I had just gotten my first job out of college at the ER at my local hospital. My first week went by with the usual stitches and broken bones. My second week around midnight, this very obese woman came in complaining of chest pains. So we rush her back, grab her vitals and do an EKG and blood work. Everything comes backs normal but this woman is still complaing of chest pain.

So my supervisor and I ask the lady if we can do a head to toe check up. Now this woman had a rather pungent smell to her when she came in but I’ve learned to not think of it, as people in the area weren’t known for their cleanliness. So we’re looking at her chest and I notice that her left breast was reddened and swollen. So I tell her that I’m going to lift up her breast to rule out any skin infections; as I lifted up her breast a wave of noxious stench engulfed the air around me.

Thank the gods for facemasks. As I lifted up her breast even more I could seen what looked my a mass of rotting tissue going into her chest. Now my supervisor ran out of the exam room and proceeded to vomit in the nearest trash can. I looked at the lady and asked her why she didn’t come in earlier as it looks like a massive skin infection was raging under her left breast. She replied that she didn’t have insurance and that she didn’t think it was a huge deal.

So I called in a few other nurses and the doctor to assist with cleaning the wound. Well as we begone cleaning, one nurse noticed a bit of fur and bone. As we further inspected, we come to find out its a small animal of sorts. So they collect the sample and sent it to pathology. After we removed said animal, we noticed that it had rotted into her chest so much that her ribs could be seen. In the end it ended up being the ladies missing kitten and she spent 4 months in the hospital for massive sepsis and other related issues.

#48

Had a guy show up in my clinic one day with a complaint of finger swelling. So as the story went, his finger got swollen and painful about a week prior. Just got worse and worse, and about 3 days prior to coming, a hole opened up in the tip of his finger (this is where I, personally, would have noped right to the office).

So come the day of the visit, he says, “By the way, I pulled something out of the hole in my finger yesterday with a pair of tweezers, no idea what it is.” I asked him if he took a picture or kept it, and he produced a tissue from his shirt pocket.

It was his distal phalanx (read: last bone in the finger). The bone had gotten infected and the body did it’s thing and basically tried to eject what was now a hot foreign body.

The guy pulled his fingertip out of his fingertip. A better magic trick, I have not since seen.

#49

I had a patient in the ER who struggled with alcoholism. She’d been having dark stools for some time and then had been vomiting up blood and clots for a few days. She ended up coding and had either esophageal varices or a massive dissecting aortic aneurysm, I don’t remember which. If she’d come in earlier in the week they probably could have saved her in surgery. It was sad, especially to see her family say goodbye.

Also the patient with diabetes who had wounded, caked leg sores. For **years**. That smell may never leave me. Super nice lady, I felt awful for her.

#50

Nurse here: There’s plenty, but the latest one that comes to mind is this woman who came in for abdominal pain.

Thing in, 5 days before admission, she had fell and hurt her head. It got ignored through ED(Because why look closely at an open head wound) and straight up to our floor, where we decided to clean her up. After cleaning up some of the blood, it seemed like the wound was moving.

Surely f*****g enough – maggots.

Ended up cleaning them out, but I raised both the question of “Why would you wait” and “Wait, you didn’t even come in because if this?”.

#51

Doc here. This is far more common than you’d think. Even in Australia (where healthcare is free) I’d get several instances every week. The general populace is medically illiterate and/or willfully ignorant, especially so when I was working rurally.

1) A woman with a facial basal cell carcinoma (common and easily treatable skin cancer in the early phases) that she refused to acknowlege until it had eroded half of her face and developed a severe systemic infection that ended up k**ling her. I could see into the back of her nose from the side, one eyeball was being held in place only by muscle (the bony eye socket was completely gone) and she had no cheek on that side. This woman genuinely looked like a zombie. Poor thing.

2) Countless folks in their 30’s who couldn’t feel either of their feet due to permanent nerve damage from uncontrolled type 1 diabetes. It’s a tough conversation to have when they ask “Can’t you just fix them so I can go back to work?”.

3) Last week. A previously *very* healthy gentleman in his 60s (we’re talking several long bike rides every week) who had chest pain, breathlessness and some near faints for a few days. Rocks up to ED after collapsing with a cold right leg and his ‘heart damage’ markers are through the roof. Straight to theatre to have his coronary arteries stented. 100% blockage of the LAD (aka the Widowmaker), horrendous cardiogenic shock (c**p heart, c**p oxygen delivery to everything else), and since his heart hadn’t been pumping properly a **HUGE** clot (static blood clots like mad) in the left ventricle of his heart that was flicking off mini-clots and cutting off the blood supply to half of his organs including an entire leg. Poor dude had clocked up 200km on his bike the previous week.

#52

I’m a nurse, and I am my own “Why didn’t you come in sooner!?” patient.

I had a sore throat and didn’t think much of it; my daughter had come home from school with strep a few days before. I spiked a temp, and let it ride. My head hurt, and my neck began to get stiff. Now I’m thinking “oh s**t, do I have meningitis??” Fever gets to 104, so I call my own doc and explain the symptoms. They essentially tell me to f**k off until tomorrow morning. I’m like “okay cool, I’ll take Advil and do that.” Well, lo and behold throughout the night my temp spiked higher and higher. I don’t remember much of what happened, but I know at some point my ex husband demanded I call in with my newest temp that was above 105, and they still told me to ride it out at home, so in my brain cooked state I thought “yeah, okay.” Well, thank goodness at one point my ex got fed up and fireman carried me to the car and drove me to the hospital I’d just finished my ER internship at. My temp was still 106 or above, and my HR was a bit much. What I remember most vividly was my shock at my triage rating lol 2/5! That’s what they made possible heart attacks. All the nurses and techs just kept judge shaking their heads at me like “duuuuuddee you know these things! Why didn’t you come in sooner???”

First of all, nurses don’t seek care for s**t. Second of all, you try remembering common sense with a 106something Fever 😅.

#53

“My tooth has been hurting for a couple of months. My face started swelling a few days ago. It became hard to swallow last night and now I’m having trouble breathing.”

Guy had Ludwig’s Angina. He couldn’t be intubated because of the swelling and had to get an emergency trach when he stopped breathing and his O2 stats plummeted. IV antibiotics for 2 weeks. Admitted to the hospital for 4 weeks. Easily could have died. All because of a dental infection. SEE YOUR DENTIST, BOYS AND GIRLS! (I’m a dentist and saw this when I was on call during my hospital residency)

EDIT: To the people who are yelling at me “Yeah, well, insurance! I don’t see you paying for it! It’s too expensive!” — I get it. Dental insurance is NOT insurance. It’s a discount program you pay for, or it’s a benefit from your employer. In this instance, the patient had state medical and dental coverage — it covered all exams, fillings, and extractions. He still didn’t come in until it was really bad. He didn’t pay a dime for the care he received. I also worked in my residency seeing 90% medicaid patients. The other 10% were charity cases. I am acutely aware of the problems with cost for dentistry and access to care. Blame the insurance companies, not the dentist.

If you are looking for cheaper dental care, look into dental schools and Federally Qualified Health Centers. The former works at ~50% private practice fees. The latter works on sliding scales. In the meantime, DO WHAT YOU CAN TO PROTECT YOUR TEETH. Dollar store has toothbrushes and toothpaste. Actually use them. A VAST majority of dental problems can be prevented with adequate oral hygiene. Cut out soda from your diet, get rid of energy drinks, don’t live off of candy and cookies. Get in at LEAST once a year for an exam.

#54

I’m still mad about it. The kid broke his leg (he’s 3 years old) and the mother bring him to revision 3 days later because “she was busy”.

#55

I’m an Emt. One day me and my partner got called to a house for the “unable to to ambulated”. This is a common thing we get dispatched to and it usual means someone is too weak to get out of a recliner or out of bed. We expected to go and help this person to their feet and maybe get a refusal, or transport them to the hospital based on an assessment. When we arrived on scene, a cop was there along with a neighbor who told us it was really bad in there. The second I walked through the door of the house, the smell hit me. I have smelled many dead decaying bodies that were not this pungent. We walk into the living room to find a man laying on the floor of his living room saying he could not get up. His legs were wrapped in what appeared to be plastic wrap and plastic bags. You could see the wrappings filled and dripping with brown liquid. The guy said he had started gettin sores on his feet and rather then go to a doctor, he elected to just wrap them up in plastic wrap. I don’t know how long he had been doing this but it had reached a point where he could no longer gather the strength to get up and he was extremely septic. It was HORRIBLE. We carried him out of the house and I was down at the legs and the gangrene juice was dripping all over me. The back of the ambulance smelled like death for days. We dropped him off at the hospital and I went outside and puked. I see nasty s**t every day but this was by far the nastiest. When they took the wrappings off in the ED, the nurses told me both his legs were completely black and rotten up to the knees. They had to amputate both legs up to the hip and they found the gangrene went up into his pelvis so they had to transfer him out for more surgery. I don’t know if he lived but if he had just gone to the doctor when it started he would have probably just found out he had diabetes and been given medication and lived many more years with two functioning legs.

#56

Two patients come to mind:

The first patient is a 50 something male alcoholic who, per his family, drinks “at least a gallon of Taylor Port a day”. Over the previous month the patient became more and more confused, stopped drinking, and couldn’t walk or recognize his family. So his family recognized that this was abnormal, but did nothing. They were concerned for him and tried encouraging him to drink, saying they were happy when he would drink but he had problems holding the glass. Came into the ED finally after becoming unresponsive. Lactate and ammonia throught the roof. GI bleed, suspected esophageal varies. Hgb like 5. Ended up having encephalopathy. He was wrecked up.

The second patient was in his twenties. I can’t remember the specifics as it was 4 years ago and wasn’t my patient. But this patient either took Viagra or had some sort of issue and had a erection that lasted 4 DAYS. YES 4 DAYS. His business was super engorged and purple/black even though he was relatively fair. He was too embarrassed to go to the ED. If I remember correctly the poor man ended up getting a partial penectomy and had a lot of complications.

RIP his peen.

#57

Dental hygienist here. I see a lot of bad cases due to many Americans not having health insurance. I was taking x-rays on a patient once when suddenly one of her lower front teeth fell into her lap!! She hastily picked it up and put it BACK INTO HER JAW. It was only being held in by hardened up plaque and had been for over a year. She had to have all of her teeth extracted do to advanced periodontal disease.

#58

Training as an EMT so not a doctor, but in the ER.

Old guy shuffles in with his girlfriend both mid-fifties. He is holding a “Members Only” jacket in front of his crotch and wobbling in. We take him through triage to the back and get him on the exam table. His scrotum was the size a large watermelon. It hung below his knees and was easily 18” in diameter. Serious hernia issue.

Just a big oblong mass of flesh that had overwhelmed the rest of his nethers. I think every physician in the Hospital came down to consult on it. I mean every one. Cardiologists, ENTs etc. everyone made an excuse to come take a look.

This was clearly an issue he had been avoiding for years. The prescribed treatment if I remember properly was to Kevlar reinforce his belly and shove all his intestines back up and in. They were going to transport him to a nearby by hospital for the treatment, but because it was across state lines he refused to go. So he slid off the table pulled his jeans up around his crotch, grabbed his jacket and his girlfriend and shuffled off to the bus stop.

It’s an image you never forgot, closest thing I can relate it to is when Hugh Jackman is trying to carry the fishbowl between his legs in The Prestige”.

#59

The human capacity to deny the undeniable is amazing. As a radiologist I’ve seen an 80 lb ovarian tumor, a hand sized facial malignancy neglected until it eroded an underlying artery, numerous neglected breast cancers ( eroding through the skin ). People will refuse to see what they really don’t want to see.

#60

Just last week I had a guy over 400lbs (BMI 60). He was a hoarder and kept getting cellulitis in his legs because his house was so cluttered he kept hitting his legs into things and getting cuts and infections. When he came in we had to remove his socks with scissors because he hadn’t taken them off in over 3 months, his socks had imbedded into his skin and somehow become one (I didn’t learn in medical school how that happens).

#61

I got called down to the Emergency Department around 2AM to admit a patient to the ICU. The patient had been found in a car in a parking lot, unconscious and obviously having trouble breathing. The guy had a huge mass in his right neck, around the size of a grapefruit. His oxygen level was frighteningly low, so the ED docs tried to intubate him. They couldn’t pass the tube due to the mass making his airway around the size of a drinking straw. After repeated attempts, they called in the surgeons on call, which consisted of a chief surgical resident and a surgical intern. Those two attempted a bedside crike but also failed due to the neck mass. Finally after calling in other ED docs, they managed to pass a small tube and hook the guy up to a ventilator.

When I arrive, he’s laying on the bed completely unresponsive. He has an ugly, gaping (but relatively shallow) wound in his throat packed with gauze from the failed crike. He has no reflexes at at all. His pupils are fixed and dilated. He isn’t breathing on his own, relying entirely on the ventilator. The only thing he has is a pulse. The guy is dead, his heart just doesn’t know it yet. We see this all the time… the patient will hold on for a little while until someone (ie family) decides to pull the breathing tube, at which point they’ll die. So we get him upstairs to the ICU and I go back to sleep. I wake up an couple hours later and hand my patients, including the guy off to the day team.

Later that afternoon I wake up again and check up on him. Turns out he woke up around noon. He pulled out his breathing tube on his own. After coughing for a minute or two, he proceeded to loudly cuss out every person within 50 feet, asking why they didn’t let him die. Turns out he’s had this neck cancer for a while, and just wants to let it k**l him without doing anything about it. He just wanted to peacefully suffocate (??) and be left alone. He got out of bed, signed his AMA paper, and left the hospital. Never saw him again.

#62

Was working in A&E a few years ago. The witching hour was upon us and a man came in looking in some discomfort. He had a delicate issue in his nether regions. He was very embarrassed so off we went to a cubicle where he told us that he had fashioned himself a not-made-for-purpose cockring out of a large metal nut. Unfortunately there was no venous return possible and his p*nis had become oedematous (swollen) and painful. He thought (hoped) it might subside but then it started turning blue. By the time we saw it it was extremely swollen and turning black. If he thought he was saving himself embarrassment by waiting, he thought again when we called the fire brigade to bring their large cutting instruments to free his strangulated member.

EDIT: the urologist said he would keep his piece but may suffer functional problems in the future…

#63

I had a patient once who I use as an inspiration to others.

In his late 40s he was diagnosed with alcoholic cardiomyopathy (his heart was only pumping 15% of the blood out per stroke, normal is 60%+), atrial fibrillation (fast irregular heart), diabetes, and hypertension in the same day. He weighed 140kg, smoked heavily, ate nothing but food from the pie shop, and spent every night in the pub. The cardiologist told him he was basically about to die (true), and was put on five different medications.

He stopped drinking altogether, started exercising, quit smoking, ate nothing but salad. He lost 45kg, his diabetes reversed and he stopped some medications, his heart went back to 55% stroke volume (pretty much normal) and most of his HF meds were stopped, his blood pressure dropped to normal.

He was “the happiest he’d ever been, and not just to be alive”. After a couple of false starts, he found himself a decent girlfriend. He still went to the pub for the social aspects, but drank soda-water.

He was a really decent bloke too, and was quite the inspiration to many people in the small country town where we were living at the time to improve their lives.

#64

Had an older female patient come in for abnormal labs secondary to extreme diarrhea. Her potassium was critically low and all of her other labs were out of whack. Turns out she had been having at least 5 totally liquid stools for SIX WEEKS before she sought out any treatment. Three days of that nonsense and I would’ve been in urgent care.

Her poor, poor butt. Totally red and excoriated. Everytime I had to clean her up I could only think of the scene in P&R where Chris says “Stop. Pooping.” in the mirror.

#65

NAD, German Paramedic. Got a call: Maggots falling out of the shoe.
He was a guy with a government supervisor because of mental health, who had worn the same sock for about four weeks, because a little wound dried blood into it. It hurt to try taking it off.
After two weeks it seeped into his shoe, so he kept that on too, for the two weeks until we got called.
Luckily I had a cold, meaning blocked nose.
We didn’t do anything, just a trash bag around foot and leg, and off to the hospital.
The head nurse took one look at the trashbagged foot and directed us to the operating room.

If the gov. Guy had directed him to his normal doc early on, he’d still have both feet.
At least my colleague got to tell the gov guy that this was his responsibility, in which he failed, and that spectacular.

#66

I’m late to the thread here but have to write this. I’m a 22yr paramedic and I once responded to a cardiac arrest where a police officer had called us after responding to a welfare check where she found a man unresponsive.

We worked the guy but it was quite futile. The cop had started CPR after calling it in so we continued for a half hour or so with no response to treatment. Called it after he remained in asystole without a hint of a response.

The story was that the guy was out mowing his lawn when he began having chest pain. He stopped mowing, went inside, and called his wife who was at work. He told her he wasn’t feeling well and wanted her to know. He then sat down in a living room chair, took out a notebook and started journaling his symptoms. The two sentences he wrote that I’ll always remember are:

“My chest hurts. It’s hard to breathe.”

“I think I’m having a heart attack.”

His wife tried calling him back after an hour and couldn’t get him on the phone. After another hour she called 911 to request the police do a welfare check. They found him in that living room chair next to his journal, dead as can be.

Literally this guy lived a block from our ambulance station. We hadn’t had a call all morning until we responded to his house. He died a block away from me and my ambulance. I was just mucking about the station. Had he just called me I could have saved him.

Don’t be this guy. Call 911 for chest pain, folks. I’ll come. It’s ok.

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