Emergency and medical workers are taught to stay calm under pressure. And to expect the unexpected. But there are just some things that no amount of training can prepare them for. The moments that make their heart skip a beat and haunt them for years to come.
If we’ve learned anything from watching the endless medical dramas on television, it’s that hospital emergency rooms are not for the faint of heart. But when it comes to real life, the ER is ground zero. What happens behind closed doors can make or break even the best doctors and nurses.
Medical workers have been sharing the wildest things they’ve witnessed on the job. We’re not talking a few broken bones, or lots of blood. These stories are the stuff nightmares are made of. Chainsaws to the face, babies forgotten in hot tubs, and darkened, rotting limbs.
Bored Panda has put together a list of some of the goriest and shocking true tales from the trenches of various ERs. And if you’ve ever needed to look away while watching Grey’s Anatomy, House, or any other hospital series, then be warned: this list probably isn’t for you.
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#1
A family was in a very bad car accident on an interstate. Car banged up pretty bad. The fire rescue got the family out and mom realized her child and her car seat were gone. They searched the accident scene and found the infant and carrier about 75 ft down the road, upright with the infant happily watching them. No damage to the child at all from being ejected. I admitted the child for observation, but didn’t have a scratch. Whole family was ok, mom and older child banged up bad but nothing serious. Was the most incredible thing I have ever seen in the ER.
© Photo: rlwiv
Staying calm in the midst of chaos can literally be a matter of life and death for those working in emergency rooms. That’s why they are trained to keep their composure even when it seems like the world is falling apart. But as with anything, it takes practice.
“We do mock codes and mock emergency drills, and that helps everyone stay calm when the real thing happens,” reveals Dr. Brian Burrows, chair and medical director of the Emergency Department at Duke Regional Hospital, in Durham, North Carolina.
“Even as I’m driving into work, I’m running through different scenarios in my mind,” he adds. “‘What would I do if a child comes in suffering from cardiac arrest?’ or if ‘What if someone fell down the stairs and hit their head?’ My mentor once said, ‘Your attitude will end up saving someone’s life one day.’”
Burrows says that in a stressful situation, people gravitate to the calmest person in the room, so you want to be “pragmatic, prepared, and in control of the situation.”
#2
Ok, here we go. This happened around last new years. We get a call for an incoming level one trauma, and the EMTs on the radio tell us it’s an impalement injury. Ok, that’s pretty unusual, but whatever. Fast forward ten minutes. EMS brings the patient in, accompanied by a crew of fire fighters, and with no further ado, here’s the story:
20 year old kid gets new skis for Christmas. It’s around 2 a.m. a few days later and the streets are covered in several inches of fresh snow. So, the kid straps on his new skis, his dad hops in the car, and is towing the kid along through the snowy streets at 30 mph. Big surprise, the Toyota loses traction and starts to skid. The skier, seeing what’s happening, doesn’t want to be anywhere near the car and bails. Of course, he’s flying, and needs to stop, so he aims for a big pile of snow on the curb and slams into it.
Turns out, it’s not a pile of snow. It’s a pile of construction debris under a thin layer of powder. Oops.
The kid comes into the trauma bay with a five foot long piece of steel rebar entering his thigh, exiting at the groin, then re-entering his abdomen at the crest of the pelvis and exiting again about 5 inches later.
The kid is fully oriented and awake, and besides the rebar skewer, is uninjured. After the survey and imaging is complete, the trauma attending makes the decision to head straight up to the OR. I work in the ER, so everything from here on in is second hand.
Three firefighters scrub into the OR and they bring a special saw that can cut the steel without creating sparks and igniting the oxygen. The saw immediately malfunctions, and the trauma surgeons decide that rather than cut the metal, they’ll cut the patient. They “de-roof” the rebar, essentially slicing the top off the skin tunnel, and lift the bar out.
This five foot steel spike missed every bone, every major blood vessel, and every organ, not to mention missing his gentleman’s sausage. The kid spends two days in the hospital and walks out on his own.
© Photo: User
#3
People tend to think the sudden, abrupt stuff are the hardest to deal with. The 40 year old hoping to enjoy his son’s birthday and turned up dead in a heart attack. The lost limb in a chainsaw accident. The drowned infant. These all are terrible of course, but I deal with the acute stuff well. S**t happens and it’s fast and this is why I’m in ED.
But nothing can get me like the non acute stuff. The same old lady turning up for the 3rd time, worse each wear. You chatted enough to know her. She orphaned young and raised herself with cleaner work. A balloon operator on WWII. Married childhood sweetheart who ran away 10 years later leaving her to fend for the young children. Fiercely independent. Children grew up loving but in their own struggles. All she ever wanted was to be dignified, independent and not burden anyone. Now notice her progressive worsening. First she stopped being so mobile. Then can’t clean and started tripping. Don’t know her meds as well. Can’t shop anymore. Decline. Decline. Now you break it to her this is it. She will not get better. She will be more and more relying mobile aid. Then bed bound. Then lose her bowel and urine function. Then need to be fed. She might never lose her mind. She asks you if she will only suffer for a little longer. You have to be honest. You don’t know. Maybe months. Maybe years. Maybe even decades. Alive but as everything she never wanted to be and there are no hope.
F****d me up. That.
© Photo: anon
A New York paramedic says his trick to remaining calm is silence, focus and delegation. “I’m usually very talkative, but when I walk into a situation where things are bad, I internally flip that switch and just focus on my team and what we need to do for the patient,” Larry Morgenlander told happify.com.
“Delegation is so important,” he adds. “EMTs do what they need to do, then we do what we need to do, then we get the patient to the hospital and let the doctors take over and do what they need to do.”
#4
A 2 year old baby that the “boyfriend” forgot in the hot tub for 15 minutes. The baby was screaming, but the boyfriend was too busy being on the phone. Meanwhile, the mother was in the kitchen cooking dinner. The result? 3rd degree burns that were bigger than the baby. I can still see those huge bubbles in front of me. I can’t imagine what the pain must have been. Scarred for life, literally.
© Photo: PULVERSCHNEE
#5
Not an ER doctor, but a dentist who had to sometimes go to the ER if someone got popped in the face with something and messed up their teeth.
One guy chainsawed through his face. They wanted me to just look and make sure the broken teeth wouldn’t be a problem and prevent him from going to the OR.
WHAT THE H**L ARE YOU WAITING FOR? SURE HE HAS A COUPLE TEETH BROKEN BUT THAT’S THE SMALLEST PROBLEM HE HAS RIGHT NOW.
© Photo: mdp300
#6
An 18 month old (don’t remember the exact age, but less than 3) comes in in full arrest. Earlier in the day, his mother, an optometrist, was driving him to a play date. For some inexplicable reason, when backing out of the driveway, she didn’t notice that the child was missing in the backseat. Somehow he had gotten himself under one of the rear wheels. It was only after feeling an unexpected speed bump in her driveway that she noticed her missing child. She scrambled out of the car to find she had driven over her son’s head. Upon noting the immediate cranial swelling, she then decides that her optometry training qualifies her to make the important medical decision to create a burr hole – usually drilled in the skull for hemorrhaging – WITH A PAIR OF SCISSORS to relieve pressure. Brain matter started spilling out. It is at this point that she resolves to drive the *5 minutes* to our ER. The child passed soon after arrival. Very sad. We never did get an update on the legal ratifications of the case.
© Photo: Angelmass
#7
Well, the *grossest* thing I’ve seen so far has been a diabetic homeless guy with necrotizing fasciitis and a rediculously uncontrolled maggot infestation of his right leg. Dude’s entire right lower extremity below the knee was black and smelled like a rotting animal carcass, with uncounted maggots boiling around inside. You could hear them from the doorway to his room. After he went upstairs to the ICU we had to close that room for multiple days and have it sprayed for bugs because there were *thousands* of flies in there.
Best part of the story is that he subsequently left the hospital AMA — against medical advice — presumably, to die within a day or two, after telling the critical care docs and the surgeons that he refused to lose his leg because he wanted to be whole in the afterlife. I really hope that worked out for him as he planned for it to…
© Photo: erdoc_throwaway1
#8
A guy walking in through the front entrance holding his own balls in his hands….
He had been climbing a flagpole and slipped down and his ball sack was caught on the part where you tie the rope for the flag…
© Photo: rejdus
#9
Had a woman and her 16 year old daughter come in. Daughter complaining of abdominal pain. Mom is carrying a bible. During exam, doctor asks if there is any chance she is pregnant. Mom goes ballistic. “WE ARE A GOOD CHRISTIAN FAMILY! HOW DARE YOU!! I’LL SEE THAT YOU ARE FIRED!!”
Get the labs back and of course she is pregnant. Doctor gets huge smile on his face.
We return to the exam room and he again asks the daughter if there is any chance that she is pregnant. Mom responds as expected, demanding to see another doctor, etc. Doctor looks at mom and says, “I’m not talking to YOU!” He again asks the girl if she could be pregnant and she responds with the typical, “Oh goodness no, I’m a virgin.” The doctor hands the lab results to the mother and says, “CONGRATULATIONS! Another immaculate conception!” and walked out of the room.
© Photo: TurnTheTVOff
#10
My all time favorite: A lady was all gorked out on d***s and alcohol and was passed out on a gurney late one night in the ER. We had the lights dimmed and all was generally quiet. Every so often she would awaken and sing at the top of her lungs, “Doooon’ttt cryyyy foooor meeeee Argentiiiina!” That was 20+ years ago and it still cracks me up.
© Photo: nellirn
#11
I’m a biomed undergrad; so not a true worker but I’ve gotten a couple hundred hours worth in the ER.
Little girl came in with her parents and without her foot. Apparently her grandpa was riding the lawnmower with her on his lap and she fell off and he ran over her foot/leg. Sadly couldn’t be reattached. That girl was cool as a cucumber though.
© Photo: smokeouts
#12
Not a doc or nurse but a former patient transport (it was my job to move the gurney/body/patient while med staff focuses on administering life saving stuffs in a trauma center in downtown LA. Saw a lot of stuff but the two worst are:
1. Guy attempts s*****e and shoots himself in the face (gun barrel in mouth). Initially fails his attempt and has enough brains left in his head to call 911. Shows up at the hospital with a mostly normal looking face, talking coherently, making small chat, the majority of the top of his head was missing and his brain was exposed and oozing out. Eventually his failed attempt turned into an unfortunate success and I bagged that body and took him to the morgue about an hour after arrival.
2. Motorcycle accident and the biker is in full leather with a helmet on as the EMT was nervous about neck and spinal injuries. No pulse. Doc in the ER is doing chest compressions trying to keep the heart moving and there is A LOT of blood. To his credit he put some effort into this rescue attempt but ultimately the motorcyclist’s head eventually rolled off the stretcher. And by eventually I mean fairly quickly. We had barely gotten all the way into trauma room 1. Guys head was likely severed from the get go. We all stopped working and I remember initially feeling sick (I was 18). Lead doc yells out sarcastically “WELL, there’s your problem!” Takes off his gloves and mask and walks out. That was a hard patient to figure out how to bag. . .
© Photo: __fake_account__
#13
Once, we received an ambulance call of a guy who was involved in an motor vehicle accident. He was riding shotgun. He buddy hit a lamppost and the post impaled his entire abdomen the post was at least 10 to 15 cm in diameter. Lucky for him the post penetrated his entire abdomen thus, stopping excessive bleeding. When we arrived on scene the fire department was working on cutting the lamppost as it was too long for the ambulance an cutting too close would cause too much heat and risk injury. So we too the ambulance to the nearest seven eleven to get some ice to cool the post. Then, we placed him in the ambulance. On the way there I called the surgeon on call and presented the case. He accepted and we prepared the patient. As we were wheeling him into the elevator. The pole got lodged as it was too big for the elevator door. We had to call the fire department again but, this time they came with packets of ice form seven eleven. The patient went on to the theatre where they managed to remove the pole. He survived with no disabilities.
© Photo: superstoked
#14
Working as a security officer at a trauma center one of our responsibilities were responding and assisting with medivacs. Our helipad was on the roof of the hospital. Usually our medivac cases were vehicle accidents from outer island that needed critical care, (this is Hawaii).
There were several of us on the roof with several trauma nurses as well as 3 gurneys waiting for the bird to come in. Already this is out of the ordinary as there is usually one nurse present accompanied with one officer. We hear the propellers of the helicopter and turn to see this huge Coastguard aircraft. We are confused since the Coastguard is not the agency contracted for medivacs. They land and immediately half of us respond to the bird pushing a gurney. I stayed back with the elevator to [working woman] the team to the ER and assist with any crowd control. The first gurney is rushed into the bay.
At first I can’t decipher what I’m looking at and then suddenly my brain catches up to my eyes. I’m looking at one of the Coastguard’s guardsmen facedown still in his flight suit with helmet on. His flight suit is torn in places and you can see that his body is just completely broken. And, there is so much blood just pouring onto the floor. You see no life in his eyes. They pull 2 more like him off of the helicopter. We get down to the ER as fast as we could. Literally running down the white halls of the hospital leaving a [darn] trail.
No one in the ER knows what type of case is coming in other than the Coastguard was transporting and to be ready for multiple patients. We make it to the ER and what is normally a noisy place becomes dead silent, minus the beeps of medical equipment. Those brave men was completing a rescue training exercise about 3 miles off island when their helicopter went down. They were already gone before they got to us and only 3 of the 4 on board were rescued.
I don’t know what was more heart wrenching. Seeing those men in the condition they were, or seeing the worry faces of their wives come into the ER not knowing they’re about to receive the worse news of their lives. One wife hurriedly arrived pushing a stroller of infant twins. That was the only time in the 7 years I was there that the ER was that quiet and tears laced everyone’s eyes or even cried.
© Photo: xotcflwr
#15
I take x-rays and CT in a big ER.
Had a really old, sad guy they brought in from the prison, who had taken the blades out of a safety razor, folded them in half and swallowed them. He suddenly vomited blood all over the floor and crashed in the radiology suit. He didn’t code, but he collapsed, vomitted all this blood, turned all pale, andI had to call for help.
A girl with a bunch of d***s smuggled in leaky balloons in her colon collapsed and had a seizure like I’ve never seen. I was doing abdominal films, and she was fine one second, then started seizing, and I barely caught her. She bent backwards like a f*****g horseshoe, arched on one heel, and her head, and one shoulder, eyes rolled back, and making the weirdest noise. Poor kid.
Some guy swallowed a huge fishing lure (Called a Rapala). Drunk, and who knows why, but he just did. like a 3″ balsa wood plug, with two treble hooks.
A skinny old psychotic guy, found down, who had stabbed himself beyond counting with a tiny little knife. Dozens of stab wounds, put out his eye, stabbed his face, neck, arms and legs, stomach, groin, everything, at least 50 times. They found him covered in blood, hypothermic, naked, barely conscious.
A guy speeding like H**L on a motorcycle hit a fence, and they brought him in with his arm completely detached at the shoulder, literally ripped off, but still inside his jacket. So him lying there clumped off, and a jacket with an arm in it.
Had them bring us a bulletbike guy who hit a deer at over 100 mph. Broke all kinds of extremities, but, the weird deal was he was covered with deer hair and blood, and also rocks, twigs, pine needles.
Something new every week. Saw my 2nd lightning strike victim the other day.. A lady came in with a sinus infection that had worked it’s way into her brain, and she had these matching cerebral abcesses in her frontal lobes. Had a lady with gigantic ovarian tumors you could see on x-ray. Impalements, GSW, a lady had a metal stake fall off a tru k in front of her and go through her face. A guy with a nail in his heart a lawnmower through at him. Stuff like that.
© Photo: ADDeviant
#16
At a children’s hospital…it was the mother who freaked out over something. Not quite sure what, but she was upset.
So like most rational upset people, she took off all her clothes and was screaming at the top of her lungs about how the doctors were f****d up. She’s stomping around the ward just starkers. Naked screaming lady isn’t a thing sick kids should be seeing, so security came and took her into an isolation room (that’s used for bad psych cases). Whenever someone approached the observation window, she’d spread her legs, point at her [private part] and go, “What do you think of this?”
She got taken to an adult psych unit. Not sure what happened to her or her kid.
© Photo: impossible_planet
#17
Posting the obvious buttstuff in my 2 weeks of ER: It was in mid December, when i had to call in a patient with some “private” problems.
Usually you’d take something to stuff up your a*s that you can get out easily, right? Like a plug, with a plate on the bottom so it doesn’t go into hiding. This guy however chose a table tennis ball in the beginning of November and it’s been up there since then.
I s**t you not, and neither did he since he no longer could.
© Photo: minuq
#18
A real live gorilla. Not a suit. There had been some sort of altercation at the zoo between the male gorillas and one dropped the other on its head quite violently. The zoo had put in a breathing tube and knew the injury was bad. Called our neurosurgeons and asked if they would look at him as a last resort. So they brought this massive beast in with IV’s, heart monitor, etc. They did a CT scan of it and the docs said even if it was a human that it wasn’t survivable. Zoo staff were crying it was sad. An amazing beast and crazy that it was in my ER!
© Photo: _Stamos
#19
I was in nursing school and working night shift in the medical respiratory ICU we got a patient from the ER who was h*gh on something. All of the sudden we hear his nurse screaming. He had her by the [private parts] kind of like a hawk grasping its prey. It took all five of us could do to get her free. She screamed for us to unhook her bra to get her free unfortunately it was a front hook and we couldn’t get at the hooks. At the time I was a weight lifter, I started squeezing his hands and finally got her free. Told us she had bruises for six months.
© Photo: vasharpshooter
#20
Late to the post but: pancaked legs.
i was coming into the ER to relieve my partner and saw a man with these strangely looking flat legs from the waist down. I initially thought it was some form of elephantiasis. I did a double take and realized they were literally flattened. a shipping container landed on them. Picture your legs: bones, cartilage, blood vessels, and all. Now picture all of that occupying a total thickness of about 1/2 cm. It was surreal.
© Photo: f_ranz1224
#21
A woman that successfully committed s*****e by trying to cut her head off with a chain saw. She bled out in the ER before anyone had a chance to help her. Also, a 9 year old boy was in the psych ward having an “acute episode” during the psych eval this kid was telling us how he had plans to sneak into his mothers room and use the telephone with the cord by her bed to strangle her until she died. He then went into very descriptive detail the sounds she would make, what her face would look like and how excited he was to see her die. He also had numerous plans to commit s*****e that were potentially feasible. It was life altering to hear such a small child have such vivid plans.
© Photo: YellyYally
#22
Not a doc but a CNA, we had a person come in complaining about leg pains and, once we got her pants off, the pains were revealed to be a darkened (rotting) leg. Apparently she had noticed it but decided not to get it checked due to costs (this is ‘Murica after all). She ended up getting the leg amputated in what could have been a simple case of triple antibiotics and a band-aid.
© Photo: StannisIsTheMannis
#23
Car wreck and rollover where the driver was not wearing his seatbelt. Traumatic code (heart stops due to trauma, not a blockage) and his whole leg had been de gloved (skinned off) while his testicles were outside of his s*****m. So even if I’m having a bad day, it could always be worse.
© Photo: jdawg09
#24
I had a Homeless guy walk into the ED and set himself on fire. He covered himself in lighter fluid first.
He survived, ended up transferred to a burn unit. From there I dont know.
The smell in the ED was awful. Hepa filters for over a day to remove the smell.
© Photo: majaba1999
#25
Not a doctor or ER worker. Just a regular doctors receptionist. Guy game in once asking to see a nurse. I ask what the problem is, he takes his hand out of his pocket. And the missing end of his finger from the other pocket. I spent 15 minutes convincing him to go to accident and emergency, he wanted to wait and see a nurse to reattach his finger!
© Photo: User
#26
As a Psych Tech before I became a Social Worker I got called in during code situations in the ER pretty regularly as psych unit staff was point in any ‘hands on’ situations. I work at a medium sized hospital in between larger towns so it generally stays pretty quite. We have an inpatient psych unit so get all kinds brought in by police, it just strolling in. A few of my favorites-
A guy who had walked over forty miles (his starting point was confirmed later by family) hugging every walnut tree, because they are the nicest trees, and god told him to do so. It took him three days. He said they were the nicest trees because walnuts are so delicious. He was arrested trying to bath in a water feature in the downtown area.
A very large woman who was convinced she was pregnant with six babies, not just any baby’s but George Straight’s. She was furious that we would not give her an ultrasound so she could see if they looked like him. She would slow dance to country music then all of the sudden start head banging. She also ate crayons.
Had another young kid coming off of some crazy d**g (he wouldn’t tell us and it didn’t show up on the UA). He had been mostly normal beyond staying he was hearing voices until he put his call light on while going to the bathroom. I open the door up and he is naked on the toilet balling like a baby because he s**t a spider that was trying to crawl out the bowl. Later, he was convinced the valet workers he could see from the window had stolen his ‘star dust’. He was a perfectly normal stoner type kid a few days later.
By the way, if you ever wondered about the efficacy of psyc meds- the first two I mentioned were totally normal at baseline. I have so many more stories, lol, it was a fun place to work must of the time.
© Photo: User
#27
Not my story, but an ER story I vividly recall hearing from a neighbor who was an ER Nurse.
Extremely obese woman comes in complaining of abdomen pains. After a few tests, doctor is pretty sure it’s gas (fairly common issue, I guess). They roll the woman on her side and put a “pressure relief tube” up woman’s b**t. Not so crazy…yet.
Woman proceeds to [gas], assisted, for a ridiculously long time, smiling and laughing hysterically the whole time (because a: it’s funny and b: she feels a lot better). It’s so rank, the staff clears out and lets her do her thing, but they’re all cracking up and ready to barf from the smell at the same time. I still think this would make a great scene in a Scrubs-type show.
© Photo: EdAbobo
#28
Abdominal exam on a large woman (bmi of 74). Lifted up Panus to find a dead and rotting frog completely unbeknownst to the patient. Turns out the husband and wife use a pond to get the dirty on for the buoyancy and wildlife suffered for it.
Other cool ones: Take off diabetic’s sock to find maggots infesting a foot ulcer/wound (probably saved the foot). Cockroach (German) in the ear canal occurred once. Freaked me out, as my initial thoughts went to alien!!! Then back to reality.
© Photo: User
#29
This actually happens a lot, but confused patients like to rip their Foley (urinary) Catheters out with the tip inflated. It’s about the size of a big grape, and come the entire way from the bladder down and out their p***s/urethra.
They then get up, and walk over to you confused dripping blood every where to tell you that their p***s hurts.
When I say happens a lot, if you’re on a team with a lot of elderly/alcoholic/demented/psychiatric patients, its about once a month event.
I’ve seen it before in A&E so it qualifies for this thread.
Edit: when I say dripping blood, I mean they leave pools of blood across the ward floor.
© Photo: anon
#30
Nothing as crazy as the rest of you since I only see children, but I’ve seen a couple of rough p***s issues. One was a pre-teen who enjoyed sticking elastic strings up his p***s for reasons that were unclear, and accidentally lost one up there but was too afraid to tell anyone. Came in a week later peeing blood. Another was a teenage boy who wore shorts with a zipper to bed and then got up to pee at night and got himself caught in his zipper. He was pretty mortified as two female doctors and a female nurse helped glue his p***s back together.
#31
When I was a med student I was doing my psych rotation and was called in to see this guy who was as mad as a hatter. Guy was restrained and raving and spat his false teeth at me in am effort to bite me. We admitted him, part of which involved a full physical (this was supposed to be done by the ER physician but never was where psych patients were concerned). Got him stripped off and into a gown at which point we determined that a component of his delirium was sepsis related as he (or somebody else) had wound a coat hanger around the base of his p***s and it was gangrenous and necrotic. Cue the urology consult and the amputation. That certainly didn’t improve his outlook on things.
#32
I’ve been an ER tech for four years now at a fairly large hospital so I’ve seen some gruesome injuries: de-gloved limbs, amputations, brain matter coming out of the nasal cavity, clam shell c*****d chests to try to treat internal bleeding (where they crack the chest horizontally all the way across and then open it up like a clam shell).
Some of my favorite stories though are the patients who insert foreign objects into their rectums. The explanations they come up with to explain how the objects got there are always so creative. “I was gardening and fell and the cucumber went up my b**t”, “I slipped in the shower and fell and the shampoo bottle went up my b**t”.
Then there was the guy who came in and was completely honest about putting lemons up his b**t but said it was only three. X-Ray showed seven lemons wedged all the way up and around in his colon. We’ve retrieved quite a lot of objects from patients’ v*ginas as well (i.e. A light up bouncy ball, a clean urine sample they were planning on using for their next pee test and then forgot about, two bags of d***s and one bag of razor blades, the woman who was apparently using her v****a as a wallet for her money and tissues). And then there was the girl who superglued her [private part] shut. Good times.
© Photo: sweetbabyheyzeus
#33
ER Technician here. I did most of the grunt work while nurses were administering d***s and dealing with doctors. Guy gets stabbed in heart, medics bring him in. ER doctor immediately “cracks his chest” to get to his heart. Makes a huge incision between two ribs on his left side then puts rib spreaders between them and cranks. A cpl seconds later, there are his lungs (purple btw) and his pumping heart spewing blood. He then cuts open the pericardial sac (thin sac around the heart) and a lot of congealed blood pours out. Picture spoon chunks of red jello. So I help him get out all these chunks of jello (blood) out of the sac while he desperately tries to sew up the bleed. He died. But a great anatomy lesson was had by all. Nurses said they’d worked 25 years and never seen that.
© Photo: anon
#34
Agoraphobic man came in and hadn’t taken his socks off in two years. Feet were gangrenous. Xray showed little bone left. I removed his socks and what little of his feet was left crumbled into my hands.
© Photo: anon
#35
I worked as a transporter/security in a rough E.R. for 3 years :
We had a lady come in once. ~400 lbs. Nurse is going over the basic questions, normal. Then he ask “Are you on your period?” she replies “No.” Noticing the string he then ask why she has a tampon in. She with no emotion says ” Oh, my son must of put it in….” There are few sentences I’ve heard in my life more wrong than that.
Had a 918 lbs man. Who then tried to hit on the on-call nurse as I took him to nuclear medicine….the line ” I’m coming in to some money soon!”
Had a guy “fall on a paint roller” which got lodged in his rectal cavity.
We had a psych ward with double magnet locked doors. One night I was taking a patient up, and a patient had gotten in the area between the doors. I open the door to go in, she jumps on me, shes naked, and starts biting my head (not hard) and hitting me. She then jumps off and starts running down the hallway yelling about purple butterflies and raccoons.
#36
Had a woman that had chunks of wood/splinters in her panus (technical term for a FUPA) This woman was very large. When we asked about it she said it was from her “Love board”- we had to inquire further and the love board was the 2×4 that her husband used to push up her FUPA so that he could get to her v****a.
#37
I had a woman who was walking down some steps and fell on some plastic piping her husband was using to fix some plumbing. The pipe had gone right into her v****a and up into her abdomen. She had so much blood loss we had to give her 3 units of blood. Nobody believed her story but we felt bad for her, it looked really painful.
#38
ER RN here. 20-something homeless guy came in complaining of penile pain. A quick exam reveals something seriously wrong: swollen, red, infected, with multiple puncture wounds in various stages of healing. I casually ask if he’s been shooting up in his d**k. He says, no, but he has been shooting up in his arm then inserting the used needles into the shaft of his p***s “to hide them” A p***s xray revealed around 30 fine guage needles lodged in the p***s. He’d broken the needles off the used syringes and shoved them into the corpus cavernosum and glans. Emergency surgery got most of them out. Pt left AMA and who knows what happened to him.
TL/DR guy shoved 30+ needles in his p***s.
#39
Nurse here, I work in another department but managed to injure myself on shift a few weeks back and decided to drag myself to A&E at 4am instead of having a break, where I was privileged to witness two chaps breaking into the alcohol hand gel dispensers and drinking from them. Apparently this is a regular occurrence. I prefer where I work…
Bonus story, when I was working in A&E as a student I spent three hours trying to de-escalate a crazy lady who kept shouting loudly that men would only understand the pain of childbirth if they were forced to “s**t a watermelon”. That was a long night.
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#40
Maggots in the legs of a shut in diabetic.
Decapitated driver of a convertible car that hit a wire median.
A lady with a festering cancerous hole in her chest where her breast should have been.
Homeless lady who thought her v****a was a “secret pocket” for her to hide things in; the worst was a 10″ steak knife, tip first.
A 18 year old girl with a 3″ x 4″ flask in her r****m, came in with her father. Those are a few highlights of my 5 years in the ER.
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#41
Before I could enter nursing school I had to have volunteer hours in a healthcare setting. I decided to do ER.
It was probably my 2nd day, 4 hr volunteer time slot I was given. Older gentleman drove himself to the hospital and when he pulled in a bystander came running in to the ER asking for help. They rush him in and there is blood all over the front of him. They ask me get towels, blankets, a gown, and packing gauze. As I gather all this stuff up and come back into the room, his chest was wide open. Turns out he recently had heart bypass surgery and had a coughing episode that he dehisced his sternal incision exposing his beating heart.
Hard to believe that was 20 years ago.
I never made it in to ER after graduation, but have seen some crazy stuff since then just working ICU, orthpedics, oncology, and now LTAC.
#42
I had a dude in refractory v-fib that was conscious as long as the Lucas was running. Fighting the machine, eyes tracking and would scream when we defibrillated him. After several shocks we sedated and intubated him but I think he got shocked 10-12 times before we hit the cath lab. He looked terrified before we put him under.
Had another guy who overd**ed on research chemicals or something who bashed his face through plate glass window. When we found him he was naked, covered in blood and trying to peel his face off. He had a flap hanging like a mask over the right side of his face that he kept pulling on. We sedated him and as we were loading him up I stepped on something squishy. It was his ear.
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#43
Paramedic here.
Several years ago I responded to a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. This guy did it in front of his ex-girlfriends house, and evidently no one actually heard the gunshot. 911 was called a few hours later, and it was cold that night. He shot himself just above his right ear, with an exit wound near his left temple, and slumped forward a little bit.
When I got there and looked in I was slightly confused, for there was like a red, bulbous, shiny, thing hanging from his exit wound to the floor. It was a brain-cicle. A blood and brain cicle that had slowly poured out, congealed, and frozen solid. Like two feet long. Weird. He was obviously dead and we just pronounced him as opposed to try and resuscitate him, so we left him exactly as we found him.
As a consequence I didn’t get to see the eventual fate of the brain-cicle. How did the medical examiner deal with the brain-cicle? Did he/she just break it off? Break it into pieces so he could fit it into biohazard bags? I’ll never know.
#44
Actual ER nurse here. I thought I’d share a few of my favorites.
I took care of a lady who was high on m**h. The police found her in a shopping cart in the street. She was too high to even acknowledge the real world and was apparently having s*x with someone in her hallucinations since she would spread eagle on the bed and scream, “[darn] me hard, daddy!!” at the top of her lungs.
I also had a confused man rip off his colostomy bag full of liquid s**t and throw it in my direction like a live grenade.
We have a regular psych patient who is only cooperative and happy while singing “Shine Bright Like a Diamond”.. As a cruel joke on fellow co-workers, we would walk by and start singing to him so he would finish the entire song, loudly of course, while his nurse gave you the ol’ “I’m going to k**l you” glare from beside the bed.
Every day is a new adventure.
#45
Worked in a psychiatric ER. Saw a case of Foile a deux which is a shared delusional disorder between two people. I’m this case a mother and her adult daughter. The mother was soooo paranoid, believed the government was after them, that they were reading their thoughts, they legit had aluminum foil in their purses that they would put on their heads to block out the government from reading their thoughts. She’d obviously raised her daughter to believe this was true. I believe they were found in a train or bus station and we’re acting so strange the police brought them in to be checked out. They barely spoke to us, would not tell us where they were from or where they were going, I’m assuming they gave us false names and dates of birth. They also would not be separated, and we couldn’t try as the mother had some sort of heart condition and making her panic could’ve possibly made her heart give out. They wanted to admit the mother as she was the one most obviously ill but didn’t dare separating her from the daughter. They eventually just let them go as they were not a danger to themselves or others. I remember calling them a free taxi to take them whenever they wished but they never waited for it and walked off into the night.
To let you know how rare one of these cases is, I’ve worked in psychiatry for over 10 years and this is the one and only time I’ve ever seen a shared psychotic disorder.
#46
Some of the grossest things I see (and very often) is people coming in holding their arm/hand in the other hand. Blown off by a homemade explosive.
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