We all make some decisions without giving them much thought. Most of the time, they are harmless. But now and then, one seemingly minor choice can send things seriously off course.

Medical workers have seen plenty of these cases up close, and some of the stories are hard to forget. We found a Reddit thread where medical professionals shared shocking cases of small choices with surprisingly serious consequences, and we’ve rounded up some of the wildest ones. Scroll through for some jaw-dropping stories you probably won’t see coming.

#1

Mortician here: refusal to wear a seatbelt has sent more people into my care than I ever expected.

© Photo: 70switch

#2

I work in a specialist musculoskeletal hospital. I’ve met three patients who suffered various levels of paralysis, including quadriplegia, from sneezing. You can also rupture your larynx. Do NOT hold in a sneeze!

© Photo: QueenEris

#3

Had a dialysis patient with consistently high potassium levels and large fluid gains between dialysis treatments.

Wouldn’t give up orange juice.

Passed away one weekend from sudden cardiac arrest (heart stopped beating) due to high potassium.

© Photo: BrieBelle00

It is funny how the things we barely think about can end up mattering the most. You buckle your seatbelt, take a sip of water, pop a pill, step into the pool, and carry on with your day. Most of those moments are so ordinary that you would never expect them to become part of a medical emergency.

Then you hear a story from someone who works in healthcare and think, “Wait, that’s how it happened?” Now you are reconsidering a few of the things you do on autopilot every day.

#4

Cat bites. Those little fangs can pierce deep and cat mouths are full of nasty bacteria. People think “oh it’s just a little bite” and ignore it, by the time you realize something’s wrong it might be too late. Sepsis doesn’t care if it was “just a little bite.”.

#5

Positive cologuard ignored and patient declined colonoscopy for years.

Now has end stage metastatic cancer that likely could have been completely prevented with a simple outpatient procedure.

© Photo: DrAndrewStill

#6

Young dude wakes up, cracks his neck, then all of a sudden he’s got a cut in his visual field and his face is numb. He ended up having a stroke from a vertebral dissection.

© Photo: mark5hs

A short drive can make people feel like safety rules are optional, especially when the destination is just around the corner. World Health Organization says wearing a seatbelt can reduce the risk of fatal injury among vehicle occupants by up to 50%.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration also estimates that seatbelts saved nearly 15,000 lives in the U.S. in 2017 alone. Putting on your seatbelt before you pull out of the driveway really can make a huge difference when a routine drive takes an unexpected turn.

#7

I had a guy this week with very poorly controlled diabetes. Apparently his phone screen was cracked and wasn’t working well so he was aggressively smashing the screen with his finger trying to get it to register. Well that broke the skin and created a little wound which never really healed because of his diabetes.

The cut got infected and started slowly eating away his finger. By the time he finally came to the hospital (he lives in the middle of nowhere) the bone was poking out and the surgeons had to take off most of the finger to make sure it didn’t progress. So now he’s down a right index finger because he tapped his phone screen too hard.

© Photo: squamesh

#8

My husband fell while fishing in our local river. Took a large gash to the shin.

We had to pass a hospital and 2 urgent care facilities to get home. I encouraged him each time to stop in and get it professionally cleaned and bandaged. But noOoOOooOo. He flat refused.

Went home, said he washed it with soap and water when he was in the shower.

The result was cellulitis so severe it took 3 rounds of antibiotics, 2 urgent care visits, 1 hospital visit for surgical debridement, and multiple gp follow ups. He could have lost his leg.

It finally did heal but it took a very long time. And now, 3 years later, the skin is so delicate that a casual bump against it opens the skin right back up.

So next time your wife says “hey, you should get that looked at” save yourself a little agony and take the suggestion.

© Photo: Luckypenny4683

#9

Me personally. I needed 5 surgeries (2 overnight) and about $100,000 worth of medical care because I changed my toilet seat.

ETA Details: I needed to replace my toilet seat. On a whim, got a padded one. Terrible mistake. Because I always flush with the lid down, and the padding provided a moisture-resistant seal, I ended up with a bunch of bacteria growing on the underside of the lid. This led to me getting a persistent UTI that I couldn’t shake. By the time I considered the toilet seat as the cause and started wiping it each day with antibacterial wipes, it was too late.

I went to a urologist, who tested for cancer, said I didn’t have it, and didn’t seem concerned, so I just lived with it. I ate crasins and cranberry juice to reduce symptoms and dealt with the pain.

After at least a year a routine urine test from my regular doctor showed I had blood in my urine. She was worried I might have kidney stones, and ordered an ultrasound and CAT scan. Boy was she right. My kidney was at least 1/4 stones. They weren’t passing, just hiding out quietly in my kidneys, growing.

Staghorn kidney stones will hold bacteria safely tucked away from antibiotics, so no matter what I took to clear up the infection they came back. And the bacteria made the kidney stones grow.

It took 2 surgeries where they cut into my back and inserted a laser to blast away the stones. Then 2 more using sound waves to clean up the residuals. One more to take out the stent because it had gotten cemented to the walls of my bladder by flakes of kidney stone.

Because one of the surgeries went through my diaphragm, it hurt to breath for 6 weeks, and to take a deep breath like a yawn or sneeze for 6 months.

All because I wanted a comphy toilet seat.

Medication is another everyday thing that can go wrong in ways you might never see coming. You take the wrong dose, grab the wrong bottle, or misread an instruction, and a routine part of your day can turn into a medical problem.

The World Health Organization estimates that medication-related harm accounts for nearly half of preventable incidents in medical care. And it does not always come down to someone being careless. Being tired, distracted, in a hurry, or confused by similar-looking medicines can be enough to cause a mix-up.

#10

Had a rather young patient who ignored a small brown spot until it became a bigger black spot that turned into an even bigger black lump, that then started causing their leg to swell. They finally went to the doctor when they couldn’t get it to stop bleeding. By then it was too late. They passed away from metastatic melanoma less than 2 months later.

Don’t ignore changing skin spots.

© Photo: The-Real-Dr-Jan-Itor

#11

Choked on a cough drop after falling asleep with it in their mouth. Sustained an anoxic brain injury. And a stroke during recovery (causing more brain damage) resulting in the person living in a nursing home in their 20s.

© Photo: anhedoniandonair

#12

New parents struggling financially diluted their baby formula to make it last longer. The excess water messed with baby’s kidneys and electrolyte levels, mainly sodium. Baby’s brain swelled and she seized repeatedly, stopped breathing, and eventually passed away. We did everything we could for her but it was pretty much all a moot point by the time parents called 911 :(.

Feeling hot is such a normal part of a warm day that most of us barely give it a second thought. You sweat, feel a little tired, grab some water, and carry on with whatever you were doing. But prolonged heat can put real stress on the body.

According to Dr. Raukar, heat exhaustion happens when the body struggles to cool itself properly. And if it progresses to heatstroke, it can potentially cause damage to the brain and other organs.

#13

Haemolytic strep A due to a small graze from a rose thorn. Husband had brought her flowers from the garden, she held them to her chest while getting scissors out in the kitchen, got a small cut from a thorn which then got infected, passed away in ICU less than 72h later.

© Photo: arfur_narmful

#14

These are all pretty gnarly compared to this, but I’m a dentist and I have seen multiple young people lose their lower front teeth and a big chunk of bone because they had a metal tongue stud that they would play with by flicking it against their gums for years. Sometimes with no other problems going on.

© Photo: weaselodeath

#15

Diabetic woman stepped on a tack. Didnt take her antibiotics because the pills made her nauseous. She just stopped taking them, never asked for alternative options, then went a cruise. Ended up having to get a BKA.

© Photo: AwkwardEmergenC

An ordinary meal can become a medical emergency for someone with a severe food allergy. Expert guidelines on anaphylaxis warn that allergic reactions can become fatal, which is why epinephrine is recommended as the first-line treatment to help control the reaction.

Sadly, many people have lost their lives because the right treatment was not available when they needed it.

#16

Necrotizing fasciitis in a dudes shoulder, during a car ride he reached into his back seat and got a little cut on his shoulder. Boom.

© Photo: HistoricalSuspect580

#17

I’m an RN that worked on a cardiac floor. Multiple times per month we get patients who had debilitating strokes due to being unable to take their blood pressure medications. The reason why was because they were homeless and had nowhere to keep their meds.

© Photo: CABGPatchDoll

#18

Guy came to A&E with sore throat diagnosed with suspected tonsillitis and send home with antibiotics.

He came back a few days later with really bad pain in his foot, and was booked for a diagnostic arthroscopy and washout of the foot.

Long story short turned out this patient had Strep A in their throat. (When it is confined to the places it is usually found for the most part you’ll have a sore throat possible swelling etc. but nothing too serious 9/10)

The strep A has tracked down his body into his foot causing sepsis and then began to track back up his leg, while they were completing the arthroscopy they noticed necrotising fascitis had begun to take hold of the tissues (flesh eating bacteria)

He ended up with a below knee amputation and the rest of his leg up to his hind quarter being degloved to save his life. Spent atleast 3weeks intubated on ITU.

Poor guy was supposed to be getting married 3weeks later. Went to sleep thinking he was just having a washout of hit foot to wake up without one.

TLDR: guy came in with sore throat, ended up loosing his lower leg and all the skin up to his buttocks.

© Photo: lawbringer1990

Some things can have serious consequences without looking or even smelling unusual. For example, carbon monoxide has no color or smell, so you can be breathing it in without even realizing it. It can come from something as ordinary as generator fumes or a running car in an enclosed space.

Experts explain that carbon monoxide poisoning can cause lasting brain damage, with children and older adults being particularly vulnerable. In some cases, it can also be fatal.

#19

I’ll share some we see in vet med a lot: people think preventative care like vaccines & spay are too expensive, so they skip it. Then they are shocked when their dog suddenly needs treatment for parvovirus, or pyometra (uterus infection), that’s going to cost 4x as much as the preventative treatments they didn’t get.

© Photo: disapproving_vanilla

#20

The number of people my husband sees every holiday season with life changing injuries from falling off 6’ ladders while putting up Christmas lights is incredible.

© Photo: whitezhang

#21

A while ago we had a guy come in, he was helping a friend move and felt a pop in his torso. He thought it was just his spine or something, but a couple days later his feet started getting numb and was having abdominal pain. Came to the emergency department and was diagnosed with an aortic dissection that had traveled down his femoral arteries. He was paralyzed from the waist down. Passed away 3 days later.

© Photo: Capable_Situation324

A quick swim or a casual boat trip feels like a completely harmless way to spend the day. You are having fun, everyone is relaxed, and nobody is expecting anything to go wrong.

But the WHO warns that drowning can happen within seconds, which is why things like supervision, swimming skills, and lifejackets matter so much.

#22

Patients sleeping in their contacts or showering/swimming in them, leading to an infection. It can lead to corneal scarring and ultimately reduced vision for life.

© Photo: Capable_Artist7027

#23

Kid was vaping, a common enough thing among adolescents. Unluckily for them, they ended up with vape associated lung injury. Team was trying to decide if they could lung transplant or if they were too neurologically devastated to be a candidate.

#24

PACU RN: woman in her mid-twenties had a tooth infection she ignored. By the time she got help for it, the infection had spread into her chest and she was septic. She had to have emergent surgery to drain the infection, a PICC line for IV antibiotics, and two drains running from inside her mouth to under her jaw. The extent of the infection was severe, and she had to remain sedated and intubated in the ICU for a couple days.
There was also a minor complication during the surgery where a facial artery was clipped. She had quite a bit of blood loss and needed 2 units of blood transfused.

We are all guilty of ignoring a small symptom now and then. Maybe you hit your head, feel like something is off, or notice a change in your body, but instead of getting it checked out, you carry on and hope it goes away. Sometimes that works out just fine. Other times, waiting can turn something that could have been treated early into a much bigger problem.

That’s what makes these cases so interesting. Some outcomes could have been avoided by making a safer choice or getting medical help sooner rather than later.

#25

I’m a patient, I recently walked into a pole and got a brain bleed. Wasn’t even walking that fast.

© Photo: anxious-american

#26

Blood in urine, especially in women, gets constantly dismissed by patients and doctors alike. I have seen enough women with metastatic urothelial carcinoma that have told me they’d been having bloody urine for months.

© Photo: anna_marie_earth-616

#27

Not a medical person. But I was the dumb person.

I almost lost my finger and hand because I left a cat bite fester too long. If I ignored it for maybe..2 more days it would of been bad.

They had to slice a hole from my finger to my palm to flush out the infection.

© Photo: The_Shadow_Watches

It is wild how something that feels so minor at the time can end up having such a huge impact.

Have you ever seen a small mistake turn into a much bigger medical problem? Tell us what happened in the comments.

#28

Stroke from a chiropractors “readjustment”.

© Photo: eye_have_no_clue

#29

Patient had folliculitis (infected hair follicle) from shaving his beard. Bacteria spread and got into his bloodstream. Bacteria set up shop on his aortic valve and destroyed it. Bacteria grew and he developed an aortic root abscess. We operated, surgeon did his best to decontaminate everything. An aortic valve replacement and root reconstruction for endocarditis is a big big operation. He did great postop, went home in a few days.

6 weeks later he had fevers and chills. Root was destroyed by bacteria. Patient ended up passing away at the local university hospital. All from an infected hair follicle.

© Photo: DrSuprane

#30

Drinking at the golf course, fell off the cart. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but had a TBI resulting in not being able to do anything, barely able to talk at all either. Was in his 30s and likely to be in a nursing home for the rest of his life.

© Photo: HotSauceSwagBag

#31

Not sure this counts as a minor thing but during a residency rotation a sweet elderly man came in for a skin concern that was a simple benign fix and patient said he had no other concerns but dermatology attending did a full skin check. On patient’s shoulder was a gnarly looking growth larger than a plum (insert attending looking at me shaking his head because he knew right away). It was black, blue, green, white, red, crusted, scaly etc. When attending scraped (biopsied) it, parts just crumbled apart. Patient said it’d been there for like 15-20 years so he wasn’t concerned. Sadly, the patient passed away a few months later from something so treatable. 😞.

© Photo: SMtnRainier

#32

I once saw a pedicure result in amputation, which caused depression, and the patient ended up passing because of the depression. So heartbreaking. The pedicure place had run out of nail polish remover and had instead used chemical grade acetone.

© Photo: grandma_cant_fly

#33

Ignoring routine foot care when you have type 2 diabetes… Diabetic neuropathy can manifest as lack of feeling, so injury to the foot in those cases can go unnoticed and untreated, lead to ulcers, and possibly to amputation if the situation isn’t corrected in time.

#34

We had a patient that was gonna discharge. He was inpt for one night, he had something simple. I can’t remember his original thing, but it was probably like a knee or a lap appe. Regardless, he was in his 30s young, no medical history, a great independent patient. The nurse did not put an O2 monitor on him overnight because he was getting up and going to the bathroom on his own and he was going to discharge the next morning. The LNA found him deceased in his bed during 2 AM vitals. He was already cold by the time we started compressions, we got 1 weird rhythm on the AED but he was gone. Turns out he had had like an unknown heart condition…

But I always wonder if we would’ve been able to save him had that o2 monitor been on.

#35

My doctor didn’t realize that my years of diarrhea was due to gallstones, which resulted in severe necrotizing pancreatitis and a two month hospital stay.

#36

Misdiagnosed and therefore untreated otitis externa (swimmer’s ear) eventually led to 2 craniotomies to remove pus pockets putting pressure on his brain, plus months of IV antibiotics.

#37

Former hospice worker here. Our medical director expressed frustration at a patient who was golfing two weeks prior to hospice admission and then passed away from a hernia that was easily repaired by surgery. Patient had fashioned a sort of sling to support the hernia instead of going to the doctor.

#38

Spent only a year out of 13 as an ICU nurse. Had an absolute train wreck of a patient in his 40s who had a bad stroke. Totally unstable for a week, stable but still super critical for a while after that. Sometimes his nurse was 1:1 that shift. Money was tight, and he thought he could get away with skipping his warfarin for a few months, maybe save him $30 at most. That’s still a lot money for some people in some circumstances. I still think about him more a decade later and hope his wife is okay

#39

A minor intervention that prevents a major thing. Not giving their newborn the vit k shot. Have seen way too many babies with brain bleeds over the years.

#40

My mom’s best friend was sick for months, coughing and losing weight. She refused to go to the doctor because she thought it was cancer (so many people their age have/had it) and didn’t want to go through the suffering of treating it. One day she collapsed and was taken to hospital. It wasn’t cancer – it was tuberculosis. If she’d gone to the doctor earlier it could have been easily treated. She passed away a week later.

#41

Me. Training for a running race. Diagnosed with tendonitis. Did all the things to fix it. Strengthening, PT, reduced workload etc. only for it to continue to get worse.

Turns out I had bone marrow edema which has now morphed into a chronic neuropathy. I’ve spent over $100k out of pocket in 9 months trying to fix it. Will likely lose my job/house over the next year and its likely it will be chronic and worsen.

#42

Mother brought her kids next door so the kid there could transmit their chicken pox to her three children “to get it over with.” All got the chicken pox. One of them appeared in the ER comatose and seizing. Varicella had made its way into her brain, caused infection there, not just the skin.

#43

Friend of a friend took her 3 year old to a petting zoo. Child gets e.coli from the animals, spends 7 weeks in hospital with kidney failure and eventually such severe brain damage that they end up turning off life support. She passed away a few weeks ago. All because she patted some farm animals. Craziest part is that another child was infected the same day and made a full recovery.

#44

I had a poor patient that lost an infant and had her footprint tattooed on his shoulder as a memorial. It got infected and it led to sepsis and spinal osteomyelitis that eventually left him a quadriplegic.

#45

Riding mowers and tractors with a child passenger. The kid inevitably sees you out mowing one day, runs to join, and loses a limb or their life. Totally unnecessary.

#46

A healthy woman in her early 30s ended up with locked-in syndrome (everything paralyzed but eyes) after a serious of complications which started with a slipped epidural during childbirth.

#47

Had a patient apply some salve for her leg pain. Ended up with chemical burns. It was superficial at first, but no matter what we did to save the leg, the necrosis became too much and we had to amputate.

#48

One of my nursing instructors had an abscessed tooth and didn’t want to take time off to get it dealt with, spring break was 2 weeks away. They had it pulled first day of spring break, infection had already gone to their heart. They developed sepsis and passed a week later. They were only in their late 40’s.

#49

Patient popped a pimple on her face and then ended up with a cavernous sinus thrombosis (blood clot to the brain) because of it.

© Photo: Longjumping-Word8336

#50

EM doc. So many people with devastating head injuries because they didn’t wear a helmet.

#51

Saw a person who’d accidentally lacerated a tendon in their pinky finger. They refused tendon repair to that finger (mentally unwell) and wrapped the whole hand up in bandages and carried it around wrapped up like it was acutely wounded and *didn’t use it at all*. By the time I saw them just a few weeks after the initial injury, they’d generally lost function *in the whole hand* due to atrophy and contracture. .

© Photo: secretburner

#52

From a bicycle crash. Guy was on a paved cycle path, missed a bend and rode down into a grassy ditch about 1m deep. Soft landing on thick heather and grass. Wasn’t going particularly fast. Wearing a helmet. Ended up with 8 vertebral fractures, upwards of 14 rib fractures, bilateral haemothorices, and the rest I don’t remember now. Ended up intubated / ventilated in ITU. A relatively moderate mechanism compared to many I’ve seen (and usually with far less injury burden!), but this guy’s body basically just exploded when he came off.

#53

Patients not taking their ARVs despite knowing their HIV status. So many disastrous complications that I couldn’t even begin to list them all. I’m not blaming the patients, not taking medication is often a result of systemic failings, it is just terribly sad.

#54

I had a friend for years who suddenly started having what looked like pimples under the skin on his thighs and arms. Not diabetic, no heart disease, early 40s, just overweight. Over the next few years, the things kept coming back and getting bigger to the point where they were decubitus ulcers, but the skin was mostly intact outside of a pimple and you could see the redness underneath about the size of a quarter, like someone with a mosquito bite welt. He had to have them pierced and drained and then started doing the whole pack with saline and gauze routine. Again, this went on for a couple years.

Finally, the breakdown got into his femoral artery and he was hospitalized and ended up needing a femoral artery transplant on both legs. Before the surgery, I went to see him and he got up to just walk to the hospital room bathroom to pee, next thing I knew, he was bleeding out from blood gushing out of one of the injuries. I ended up literally applying pressure and yelling at his spouse to push the code button.

Post surgery, he went through rehab and eventually discharged with IV antibiotics via a port. Took his kids to school, sat down on the couch, probably threw a clot, and his older daughter found him cold about an hour after the school trip. He was 46.

#55

During my time at paliative care, I saw a retired first responder. He noticed a minor bleed occur from a freckle on his upper back. He didn’t really pay much attention to it, until it ulcerated and started to hurt. At that point it turned out it was full blown metastatic melanoma. Mets in the brain, bones, liver…

#56

During Covid a patient had a small lesion on his lip. Because of masking no one saw his face for months. When I saw him he took his mask off and there was a huge skin cancer growing off of his lip. Could’ve been cut out in the office if caught early instead he had to go for reconstructive surgery.

#57

My collegue (a nurse). She broke her ankle, on the stairs, in the hospital, during a shift. After years of pain treatment she developed CRPS, she was almost bedbound, and now she just had an upper leg amputation…

#58

Guy who nicked his foot with a nail clipper, ignored it, and got full-blown tetanus

get your shots everyone.

#59

I had a diabetic patient who got lobster red sun burn on his feet one day at the beach. It didn’t register with him that anything involving the feet in diabetics is serious. He wound up with bilateral AK amputations. Very, very sad.

#60

Severe liver failure from taking st John’s wort and paracetamol.

#61

Devastating head bleed because they didn’t take their blood pressure meds.

#62

Not a doctor but experience is still wisdom.
My little sister was born premature. No big deal right? She grew up to be taller than me. Stronger than me. Healthier than me. But back in the 90s they never did a work up with her birth.
Fast forward to her being 14 and I was 15 and I watched my little sister collapse to the ground and passed immediately. No. Reason.
Until the autopsy showed she had an over sized heart and it wasn’t treated and she was being super active. And it just gave out.

PLEASE even if your baby is healthy coming out.
Do
The
Tests

I know they are frustrating and they make parents uncomfortable and the baby cry

But I’d rather have my son go through it all now while young and won’t remember and have a clean bill of health

© Photo: CLVPTRVP

#63

Pregnant patient came into the hospital with the sniffles.

Mother and baby passed away in less than 18 hours from a (likely) rickettsial disease.

#64

Patient got a coronary CT as a cardiovascular risk stratification tool and as a result of a false positive the patient ended up requiring a heart transplant.

Edit: coronary CT was read as having a high risk blockage. Patient went for angiogram, gold standard for diagnosis coronary artery blockages, which showed no blockage. Unfortunately patient suffered a procedural complication called a coronary artery dissection that required open heart surgery to fix. Patient did poorly in surgery. Went into post-cardiotomy shock. Went on ECMO. Got listed for and eventually received a heart transplant.

#65

Worked with a young teenager once with a spinal cord injury from jumping, feet first, into the deep end of a pool.

#66

Nec fas secondary to a thrombus in a young carpenter’s hand. She’d gotten decent sized splinter in it at work, pulled it out, and finished the work day wearing leather gloves which were moderately (standard) work-site dirty and too small for her.

Ignored the increasing pain for far too long bc she a) thought she was making too big of a deal out of nothing b) figured it was just normal pain and the pain meds weren’t working and c) previous negative experiences in hospital. Understandably.

#67

Older men who climb to the roof without any safety precautions to do “a minor thing/work up there” just like they used to do back when they were younger.

#68

Someone with a shellfish allergy ate a crawdad. Admitted for 5 days of treatment. He likes the taste.

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