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“Her Scream Has Been Imprinted On My Heart”: 40 Moments That Left Hospital Staff Shaken
Working in a hospital is beyond stressful. One minute you have to pretend to be calm while you're actually freaking out, and the next you're faced with the most bizarre medical case any of your colleagues have ever seen. One in three doctors and nurses in Europe reports experiencing anxiety and depression. In the U.S., 55% of physicians say they felt debilitating levels of stress.
After you've read some of the stories on this list, you might understand why. It's not only aggressive and difficult patients that they have to deal with. Each case presents a different challenge: sometimes medical professionals get overwhelmed by hopelessness; other times they get frightened by some creepy phenomenon that's hard to explain.
So, check out the most interesting stories medical workers shared in the thread where someone asked, "Nurses, Doctors, Hospital Workers: What's your creepiest experience in a hospital?"
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
I’ve told this story on here before, but it still haunts me. I worked night shift and I had an older lady admitted for abdominal pain/constipation. She was around 75 years old and was a recently retired nurse. She had just stopped working less than a week ago. We had talked a lot the night I took care of her, and she told me all of the future travel plans she made. She was finally going to go to Europe. She told me that she had bowel obstructions before, and thought maybe the stress from retirement triggered another one. She told me she had a CT scan done in the ED, and her doctor would read it in the morning. I looked at the preliminary results, and it showed tumors on the pancreas, liver, and colon. It hit me hard, and I cried a bit that night thinking about this nurse who worked her entire life and won’t live long enough to enjoy her retirement because she has pancreatic cancer.
Tyranamar Seuss 5 days ago
This is why you should do stuff the minute you're able to. Tomorrow is never guaranteed. I'm grateful for all the travel experiences I've already had.
RELATED:
#2
I had. 17yo pt. He had been out drinking with friends. His friends didn’t take home to his house instead put him on a couch in the garage of their house. He vomited and aspirated his friends found him barely alive the next morning. He came to our hospital brain dead. His parents donated his organs. I took care of him the night before his organ procurement. His mom stayed the night with him we pulled him over as far as we could in the bed and his mom crawled up in bed with and had her head on his chest all night. I told this story to my kids many times and told them I didn’t ever want to be that mom to please call me I would come. And they did.
#3
I worked for a rural hospital and we had a patient that came in with a heart attack. We worked on her fruitlessly for 30-40 mins. The doctor declared her and invited the family in. Her body layed in front of the grieving family for almost another half hour. Her family members begged her to come back and say goodbye, she promptly obliged. She sat up hugged one of them and said goodbye. The entire re staff rushed in and ran a full code for the second time. She was pulseless and cold when we started the first time, and worse when we ran the second. She never made it. But she was back to say goodbye. It was one of the most unsettling things I ever saw there.
glowworm2 5 days ago
Wait, we're just straight out removing the word "D-E-A-D" now, BP? Oh, but this one is really heart wrenching. For a second there, I thought it was a false alarm, but no, she really did just "come back to say goodbye".
AndyR 4 days ago (edited)
Advertisers don't like d-e-a-d people. They can't spend money.
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Ace 4 days ago
If (big IF) this is real then there was a serious medical mistake. she was either déad or she was not, no way she magically came back to life half an hour later, had bodily and mental function, then just dropped déad again. Brain déath typically occurs withing less than five minutes (could be a little longer, especially if hypothermic, which she was not, but nowhere near 30 minutes) of no oxygen, by so for this to happen she would have needed continued breathing and circulation and nobody noticed.
Bob Brooce 3 days ago
Recently dead bodies can move a bit, so I'm willing to believe a corpse sat up. I'm willing to believe that, perhaps as a direct result of sitting up, so air was expelled and made a sound. I'm willing to believe that the arms moved. Sat up, hugged somebody and said goodbye 30 minutes after being actually dead? Not a chance.
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Emilu 5 days ago
Someone really took a shit on your slippers today, huh?
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#4
A 9 year old girl came in once. Her parents had been finding her dolls hanging around the house with belts or strings tied around their necks. She went into a rage and held a knife to her own throat. They brought her to the hospital and during her psych evaluation she said she heard voices in her head telling her she was stupid and telling her to [end her own life]. She said she didn't want to but she had to listen to the voices. I couldn't sleep for weeks...
#5
He was 14 in advanced heart failure. He was the oldest child of 5 and during the six months he lived on our floor, his mother was also a pt in advanced HF. He wasn’t eligible for an LVAD or a heart transplant bc he was “non-compliant”. He lived 2 hours away in a family with complex issues and he often missed clinic appointments. This poor child with no ability to get to doctors appts was denied life-saving care. He was so sweet and had the hugest innocent brown eyes and soft-spoken voice. I just wanted to take him home so bad and rescue him. Life is unfairly cruel at times.
#6
Covid in NYC in the ED. a woman in the resus area was panicking and begged me for help saying she couldn’t breathe. a patient near her who i was getting to also couldn’t breathe but was starting to slip and we were getting ready to intubate. no one was around to help the panicked woman who wasn’t required for the intubation. i had to decide between helping this panicked woman or going to the intubation where maybe someone’s life could be saved. i said “i am so sorry, but i can’t help you. i have to go.” because it really was like that (these were NOT normal times)
The panicked woman i think [was gone] later that shift and i was one of the last people to speak to her on the last day of her life. i will never forget her. i cry every time i think about her
i know there was nothing else i could’ve done but it’s my job to always remember her.
#7
A man with ALS who was a DNR. He coded and his sons overturned it, wanted everything done. The poor soul ended up on ventilator, unable to be weaned off. He ended up in the nursing home I worked at back then; we were one of very few in the state that took long term vent patients. He had no use of his arms and his legs from the advanced stage of ALS, and couldn’t turn his head at all. He begged anyone and everyone who came into the room to take him off the vent. He would cry and beg. He had to mouth the words because of the trach. Many of the staff would just ignore him. Family rarely visited. That was 38 years ago and it haunts me to this day. I sure hope a situation like this wouldn’t happen today.
#8
Maybe more disturbing than creepy, but..I get called into work late one night. I am an RN working in surgery, and late night calls are always a roll of the dice as to what you might get. The hospital operator calling had very little detail as to what we were coming in for, just the surgeon and patient name. I get there and the doctor had booked a transmetatarsal amputation on a diabetic patient, which is not unusual. When I go to talk to the patient, it turns out that due to his diabetic neuropathy, and therefore lack of sensation in his feet, he had a sore on his toes that had gone untreated (again, not unusual).
Well, in this case, he had awoken to crunching noises in the middle of the night...he wakes up and turns on the light to find that underneath the covers, his beloved chihuahua had eaten all 4 of his smaller toes and was working on the great toe. The wound was a pretty ghastly site, and the site of those tiny teeth marks is something I'll never forget.
#9
I work in dispatch in the basement of the hospital. I was working the night shift and I was alone. I had the door closed, and there is a key code needed to unlock the door. I am the only one in my corridor of the basement at this time.
I heard over the intercom that there was a code yellow (missing patient) from the mental health floor. I have no idea how he got out, but now he was roaming the hospital.
About 10 minutes later, the door handle starts shaking and someone is trying to get in. I stayed completely silent until it stopped, then got up and looked through the peephole. There was a man just sitting against the wall wearing a hospital gown.
I went back to my desk and called security, and I spoke as quietly as I could so he wouldn't hear and run away. Security came and I heard them take him away. He was yelling all sorts of stuff that didn't make sense and was clearly resisting them. A guard came in afterwards and asked if I was okay and I told him I was fine thanks to the door lock.
Thank you, keypad.
#10
Daughter and father drowning. 7 year old on floatie went in river and dad went after her. She was my patient in resus bay and dad was in resus bay next door.
She was already long gone when young fire department dovers with still dripping wetsuits brought her in. We tried to start all the code stuff while the physician called it really quickly.
She was cold and I wanted to put a blanket on her. She still had little heart stud earrings in. She looked a lot like my own kid and I thought about how normal her day probably started.
I am still disturbed by the image of the family being brought into a room down the hall to deliver the news. I wasn't involved in that part but felt guilty already knowing what they were about to learn.
Writing this made me realize how much this actually still bothers me.
Riley Quinn 5 days ago
I can handle the death of an old person, but a child? No, that's not something easily accepted.
#11
I once had a severe malnourish, comatose 18 y.o. (later found out actually 12y.o.) girl in IMCU when I was an aide. Neighbor called the police because they did not see the patient for days and they found her lying unconscious in the bathroom.
"She was just sleeping." according to her family. Stage 2 pressure ulcer on both knees and nose from "sleeping" on the bathroom floor. Covered with various size and healing stage wounds all over the body. One of them is clearly from an iron. Missing one of the eyes from previous "accident". The husband and in-laws that lived in the same house being suspects of possible domestic violence according to the police that came with her.
Risk of elopement because groups of "family" kept trying to pull the tube and carry her out of the hospital. We did 1 on 1, 2 on 1, 1+security on 1. There would always be new group of "family member" after we ban the previous from visiting.
She was announced braindead the same week because these family kept pulling tubes out when they try to carry her away.
#12
I was a hospital aide for a year working in a unit that saw its fair share of DNRs.
One night my shift was almost over, and a patient in the next unit passed. That unit only had one aide, so I went over to help her. She'd been there for years, so we get to work without really talking (cleaning the body, removing tubes, changing soiled linens). When it came time to put the deceased into a body bag, she rolled the patient (a large man) towards me, with the intention of sliding the bag underneath his frame. However, she rolled him and a large groan escaped his lips, and we both jumped and nearly dropped him.
It was just air or gas escaping his lungs, but it sounded exactly like a moan someone makes in their sleep. We double checked for a pulse, found none, and by now he was mottling on his underside (a color change when blood pools beneath the skin due to lack of flow from a heart beat) and hadn't had vitals for a few hours. Still it creeped me the [hell] out and gave me the heebie jeebies.
Riley Quinn 5 days ago
Knew a mortician who I'd occasionally assist with the non-technical procedures. They use a trocar that's much longer than one used by doctors to pierce the body so gas can escape. That way the body doesn't issue sounds or move in the coffin.
#13
Creepy like the patient who kept eating himself, creepy like the patient who had lice to such an extent you could see his scalp moving, creepy like the ghost playing the piano, or creepy like the demented patients we keep alive for no reason?
Patient is covered in sores. They can't strap him down because he is basically lucid and there are rules, so he stayed in the hospital with his mrsa, his distressing numbers of untreated STIs, his various other major medical conditions. And with his talons of fingernails that have... stuff... crusted under them, he scratches himself until he bleeds. Then he eats the skin and scabs he's just peeled off. They coat him in what I assume is medical grade antibiotic ointment so he's covered in this skin/blood/slime slurry, so it all sludges up on your gloves when you try to hold his arm to draw blood. It's... there are no words.
Lice patient, homeless and immunocompromised, with semi dreads that were literally crawling with lice. You put on an isolation gown, shoe covers, a surgical hairnet, a mask because homeless usually means stinky, and try not to gag when his hair moves. Some nurses, bless them forever, shaved the patient and at least the most obvious infestation was taken care of.
The piano ghost... a patient walked into one of the lobby elevators with me and told me she saw the ghost of a young Asian woman playing the piano in the main lobby area. It was 3 am, and nobody was there. As a complete killjoy, though, I want to point out that it's an automatic piano and the patient was probably just confused, heard the piano playing with nobody at it, and thought she saw a ghost. Several co-workers still refuse to walk through there at night.
As to the awful [things] we do to demented old people... I wouldn't keep a gerbil alive under the conditions some of these folks are trapped in, and it's shameful that we have to.
Chris the Bobcat 5 days ago
Thank a conservative Christian when you aren't allowed to die with dignity.
#14
I was an x-ray tech for years. At one point, I worked the night shift and I worked alone. One night I had to x-ray a homeless man who had hurt his shoulder or something. Anyway, I had rolled him into the room and parked him against the door opposite where the control panel was. I got some film and was walking back into the room towards the man and he looked at me and said, "it's like watching an aquarium. You're surrounded." He went on to say I was surrounded by people and animals and that I was also "being watched by" people from some native tribe I had never heard of and told me I should feel honored since they didn't follow just anyone. It was like 5am and this freaked me out. For the only time in my life I actually had that cold icy feeling going down my spine. I know he was probably suffering from some mental issue but isn't that just the type of person who does this?
Weirdly, a year or so later when I was visiting San Francisco, I had a fortune teller stop me on the street and ask to do my reading. She said the same thing, that I was "surrounded.".
#15
I worked in a nursing home as an RNA. While I worked there 7 residents called me into their rooms to tell me thank you and good bye on different nights over the 3 years I was there. All of them [passed] during the night after they told me. They all knew, I don't know how but there is no other way to explain it. One would be a coincidence, maybe even 2 but 7?
iseefractals 4 days ago
Knowing and accepting that you're at the end are two very different things. I think everyone knows, but few can accept....besides which when you're already on the brink, having the will to continue hanging on, is an actual thing. When that goes, so too do you.
#16
On my way to the morgue with a colleague. Pushing a bed with a recently deceased man. My first time going down there, so I was a little bit creeped out, but it was with a kind of cute colleague, so I kept my cool.
We leave the body in the cold storage room, she goes out while I handle the paperwork and I shortly follow and reach to close the door behind me.
After that follows one of the most terrifying screeches I have ever heard from the room behind me. I jump about 2 meters in the air and let out a loud screech.
Turns out the door screeches when closing, but not when opening. My colleague was laughing.
#17
Young guy, 45. 2 young sons, a wife. I was a new ICU nurse. This was during Covid so 2021. He had been transferred to us via ambulance from a small hospital due to being covid positive and respiratory distress. He arrived with o2 sat in the 60s and maxed on bipap. Not intubated. Day shift nurse “stabilized” him- barely satting 85. I come on, help him prone himself, start precedex. Intensivist had gone home. I call her and am like look this dude needs intubated it’s not good. Tube him, prone him, paralyze him. Develops a cardiac dysthymia- flip him supine but we have another code in the room next door and are begging over the intercom for more people to come help us because we literally don’t have enough people. He codes. We coded this poor man for 3 hours. I remember doing CPR as his wife sobbed over him. Security jumped in to help with compressions. My other patient went into SVT and we were short staffed to begin with then add in 2 simultaneous codes and another unstable patient.
I will never forget that awful night. That week my ICU lost every single patient due to Covid. 20. In one week.
Emilu 5 days ago
Our healthcare workers still don't get enough credit for lasting (physically and mentally) through Covid. You get office workers bitching about how they had to work from home (and are now bitching about how they have to go back to the office), meanwhile there are stories like this.
#18
I remember a woman in her early 30s diagnosed with breast cancer and she decided not to seek treatment at all. She did not believe in medical treatment and was using “holistic” methods. Her chest was full of sores, cancer, and she was pungent. She had two sons and she went hospice 2 weeks later after being in the hospital. Husband was SO torn up. I don’t blame him.
#19
I used to work as an STNA in a nursing home. Worked third shift throughout university. During the night we turned half the lights off so it was darker for the evening and didn't get a lot of light in the residents' rooms. We had one resident who was younger (70s) and was mostly in for mental reasons. She had long, dark hair and was very thin.
I was sitting at the nurse's station at the top of the hall and heard a call light go off. I stood up, looked down the dark hall, and on all fours - straight out of The Ring - this resident was crawling up the hall toward me. The other STNA had forgotten to put the bed rail up and the resident was VERY good at climbing out of bed.
Needless to say, I needed some new britches and my heart was racing a mile a minute.
Nik Odongray 5 days ago
Hopefully she wasn’t doing that creepy backbend crawling thing. I’d for sure nope right out then!
#20
I got the opportunity to shadow nurses and surgeons for two of my class periods in high school. I never really experienced being in the ICU before. What was creepy for me was seeing how many unconscious people were fighting for their lives. I followed a nurse to a major heart attack patient. This guy was put under an induced coma but his eyes stayed open. The nurse had me help put gel over his eyes. It's been three years and I still have his gaze stuck in my head. I also had to help reposition the guy and it was like trying to move an extremely stiff mannequin. Seeing a human in a not so human state is extremely uncomfortable and creepy.
Drop Bear from Hell 4 days ago
This is not living - it's just existing. I would NEVER want to be in that situation.
#21
(M26) When the 95 year old female patient says if I were a little younger I would have you faster than butter falls of a hot Spoon....
#22
I used to work patient transport. I got a call to take a body from ICU to the morgue. Nothing crazy.
I got to the ICU and because it was shift change, a large group of nurses were circled around the nursing station. There were 2 doctors there as well. I went up to the group to say I was ready. That was when I felt an incredible wave of dread. I saw that they were creeped out, nurses and doctors alike.
One doctor asked, "What was the temperature?"
"101.5," replied a nurse.
"When did he expire?"
"Over 3 hours ago. Family requested additional time."
(Bodies are usually only allowed to stay 2 hours on the floor before going to the morgue.)
The whole group, with me trailing, walked to the patients bedside. The doctor placed his hand on the patients stomach. The immediate shock that came across his face was terrifying. The patient was burning up. After 3 hours, they should be cold.
He said there was no medical explanation. He is an esteemed ICU doctor with years of experience so I trust him.
I took that body down and while in the elevator, I thought of zombies. I have never been so scared. But while waiting, I knew that I had to touch his stomach or else I would never forgive myself. I had to be a tangential part of this medical anomaly. Through a pair of gloves, a body bag, and 2 sheets, I touched his stomach and felt the radiating heat.
Riley Quinn 5 days ago
I helped an old woman clean her flat and box things up for donation bc she knew her time was coming up fast. She told me about living in Nevada near the area where the US tested nuclear devices. She took my hand and placed it on her forehead. It was a normal temperature. Then she placed it on her stomach and it was hot. We both figured it was radiation poisoning.
#23
Mine was a 24 yo woman pregnant with her first baby. Type I DM. On her way to the OB for the glucose tolerance test, she passes out from hypoglycemia and has an MVA. Arrests in the car, EMS resuscitate, but she is nearly brain dead. Baby still has a heartbeat so her parents and husband agree to keep her alive until baby is viable for delivery. She sits in our ICU for 2 months, gets transferred to a hospital closer to a major children's hospital. At 25 weeks she runs a fever, they do an emergency c section. Baby boy lives 1 week. Her parents change it up and won't let the daughter go. So her parents move her in her vegetative state to LTC and the husband has to file for divorce to be able to start over. Sad all around. Not sure what happened with her after the move, but the pattern is predictable.
qpnf96zhn5 4 days ago
Please remember that non-medical people don’t know what you are talking about when you use abbreviations.
#24
Woman in her 50s got admitted to our cardiac step down for weakness, she had breast cancer. Her nurse was one of our male nurses and he was in there doing her admission and him and the husband were talking and they knew some of the same people. They both loved to hunt and fish so they spoke of that a lot. She had been on the floor maybe 30 minutes. Next thing we know, rapid went off and we all ran in there and she was just staring off into space and not reacting to anything, we checked and there was no pulse. We called a code and started working on her and never ended up getting her back.
The husband was in total shock and asked if he could go tell his kids in person and come back and we said of course. We get her all cleaned up and he comes back and spends some time with her. Then he comes out and thanks us all and puts his hand on that male nurses shoulder and said “thank you man, one day I’ll take you out fishing.” All of us started to tear up because they were such a sweet family and hearing him say that was just gut wrenching.
Chris the Bobcat 5 days ago
She's gone to a better place. One with no size restrictions and no count limit.
#25
When I was in nursing school I had a day in the ER. A boy my age (20ish) came in. He had fallen about 25 feet while cleaning gutters. He had likely been picked up from HD or Lowes to work a job that the homeowners were too cheap to pay a real company for. He was paralyzed and scared. No one in his family knew what had happened to him and no one came to check on him for the rest of that shift. The honeowners called 911 and probably went to go find someone else to finish the job. I will forever remember cutting off his jeans and leaves falling all over the floor of the trauma bay. It was just freaky that if I had not gone to college and nursing school it could have been me on that roof cleaningthe gutters.
TruthoftheHeart 4 days ago (edited)
Homeowner should be sued for hiring him to do a dangerous job without the proper safety equipment, when the homeowner realized that he had no proper equipment and they knew it was potentially a dangerous job they should have sent him home. If somebody drowns in your pool you're liable so they should be liable for that too.
#26
ICU nurse. Anyone who has performed compressions can attest to this. The first time you break through someone's ribs. I will never forget that grim feeling.
CD Mills 4 days ago
You should try it from the patient's side! I coded twice and CPR got me back both times. My ribs were still sore several months after. I was still in the ICU the first time I sneezed. OMG don't sneeze if you have broken ribs! It felt like they had broken again! My son said if they aren't breaking ribs they aren't doing CPR right.
#27
This was from when I was a CNA in a nursing home/sub-acute rehab.
My first severe paranoid schizophrenic patient. He was actually only in for rehab after a hip replacement. He was very well behaved, and actually mild mannered, but his eyes had nothing behind them. He was very independent, but needed some help with dressing.
He had a huge flag in his care plan advising to make direct eye contact with him as much as possible during direct care. He had only mild auditory hallucination, but his paranoia was off the charts, and if he noticed you "looking at someone" anywhere else in the room he would fall into a panic. This entailed a lot of screaming, and trying to hide from us. It was very disturbing to see, and honestly heartbreaking. He was horrified of what he thought we would do to him, or about who else was there.
I guess it wasn't any one situation with him, but his demeanor... the staring... the monotone voice. Even if he wasn't in a panic (which only happened 2-3 times over his 6 weeks), everything about it was unnerving.
Bartlet for world domination 4 days ago
I've seen antipsychotics take someone's sparkle away, but there's more - every psychotic episode causes brain damage and sometimes there's not much left.
#28
Patient comes up to the unit from the ED. ED nurse warns me this is a bad elder [mistreatment] case and the local PD is involved as well as adult protective services. She was found on a mattress covered in urine and stool. The poor woman was horribly demented and her arms and legs were contracted in the fetal position. Her eyes were blood shot and she was covered in wounds and open sores. Even though she couldn't move those blood shot eyes would follow me while I was in her room. She kept trying to talk but her mouth was swollen and full of sores. She ended up [passing] shortly after we changed her code status. Her eyes were open and looking through the door way when I walked in after the monitor showed asystole. I will never forget her face and those eyes will stay with me forever. Creepy as [hell].
#29
A lady in the dementia ward told me the lady under my chair didn't have any arms.
WednesdayAddams'HashbrownOrder 5 days ago
Well, she didn't! The lady who isn't there, who isn't sitting under your chair, despite all her charms, has no arms.
#30
My mom works as a nurse in the ICU and she always says that the patients know when it is their time. They usually say "nandito na sila" or "they are alreay here" in Filipino.
They also usually ask for a glass of water and just flat line right before it was given to them.
Most patients, days before they say that they can see a black figure in the corner of their room.
Scary. My mom usually experiences not less than 2 [loses] a week, whether her patient or not. I can't imagine the stress she goes through, and I admire her strength for that.
#31
When victims of violent crimes are admitted we take certain precautions, at least until the police are confident they "have the guy" and nobody is coming to finish the job.
Anywho, my coworker was taking one of these patients down for a stat head CT. Two sketchy AF dudes came to my unit looking for the patient and tried to get in (locked unit). Our hospitals police/security team is great and they arrived shortly after we called but the guys vanished. Had trouble getting ahold of my friend in CT briefly but she got the message and waited for security to escort them back. Security found the two dudes loitering outside one of the other xray areas... So somehow they knew/figured out there patient wasn't on the unit and down in radiology, but luckily they went to the wrong one...
Never found out anything about it afterwards; but that one stuck with me for some reason.
#32
Had a patient record a video of me without my permission and post it on YouTube claiming that I was his new radio/webshow cohost.
When he is discharged from the hospital, he then proceeds to stalk me waiting for me in the cafe and by leaving notes on the floor I worked on asking me to call the number he wrote on the paper so we can meet for the show.
Weeks pass and a fellow coworker saw him waiting for me in the cafe, so she reported him and security escorted him away and I had to file a report.
Coworkers looked up the video on YouTube. Still there. Creepy comments from his "supporters" of his web show/radio series comment about me and how they "need to see more" of me.
Harry Gondalf 4 days ago
Won't YouTube take down such videos, if asked? Especially if asked by a lawyer?
#33
Guy in his 40s. Liver failure. Long history of alcohol misuse disorder. Found unresponsive on the floor of his apartment. EMS assumed he had been on the ground for more than 24 hours.
Admitted to our unit. Cachexic, but his ascites made him look 9 months pregnant. His skin and eyes were highlighter yellow. He was covered in bruises due to poor coagulation from his liver failure and also from having been lying on a hard surface for so long. Very encephalopathic. His breathing was shallow and laboured, like he could only make these tiny gasps for air. He had constant diarrhea from how much lactose we were administering him. This sounds horrible to say, but his body repulsed me. I felt scared of him.
Changing his brief would almost bring me to tears. He would grip onto the shoulder of my scrub top when I’d turn him and he would just cry out. He was in so much pain. So much suffering. We managed to contact his daughter, but she wanted nothing to do with him. No other family. They changed his goals of care to M1 almost immediately and he passed after a few days.
Sometimes when I drink I think about him— how his breath sounded, the look of terror in his eyes, how he smelt, how his fingers felt when gripping my shirt. I’m so turned off from alcohol now. It feels wrong to drink after caring for a patient like that.
#34
Do long-term care facilities count? If so, I have one.
My mother used to work housekeeping at a nursing home. She would oftentimes take my sister and I to go visit some of her coworkers or the old folks. One of my great aunts also lived there too so we would visit her as well, but she's not involved in this story. I was maybe five or six and my sister was seven or eight. This nursing home was always incredibly dark inside, despite having huge skylights and floor-to-ceiling windows in every wing. Even from a young age I knew this was a place of death, from the decrepit frail bodies gathered around the wood-paneled television showing Lawrence Welk reruns, to the black enamel "tree of life" they hung on the wall in the lobby, where every little bronze leaf was engraved with the name of a patient who died there, and the overwhelming smell of urine and sickness.
Regardless, my mother is an upbeat and chipper person, and loves old people. Even now in her sixties she doesn't consider herself an "old person" and loves to volunteer with the elderly. So in spite of the aura of decay coming from her workplace, she thought it was a wonderful place to show off her children. So we'd visit her along with my dad on her lunch hour during her weekend shifts, and also were forced to go to Mass with her on Sundays, as it was a Catholic facility. Afterward we'd mill around on her break before she went back to work.
Anyways, one day she took us down one of the wings of the facility to greet one of her coworkers. The two of them chatted, my sister hanging with my mother while I just amused myself by wandering. Everything was completely normal, except for the woman in the room next us. I didn't look in the room, but I could hear a woman shouting "I'M IN PAIN", over and over again, her voice echoing like the wail of a cat mixed with the voicebox of a doll who needed its batteries changed.
I asked my mother, "Shouldn't we do something about her?"
My mother replied with something like, "No, she does that all the time, like 24 hours a day". So that was the day I learned that oftentimes, stroke or dementia patients can have verbal perseveration, or the repetition of certain words or phrases, due to their condition.
Cut to about ten years later. I'm working dietary at the sister facility to this nursing home; an independent and assisted living facility. Our two facilities were connected by a wing so staff could travel between the two, as well as patients if they were able. When I worked there I made the trip many times to the other facility's kitchen. It just so happens this was the same wing where the shouting woman used to live, but I didn't remember at the time. I walked through the wing and heard a distant "I'M IN PAIN" repeat a few times before it trailed off.
The facility has a policy that all patients must keep their doors open, so I poked my head into a room where I thought the sound was coming from, but it was empty, no patients currently living in it at the time. Beds were made, no decorations on the wall, nothing. Confused, I walked out and met immediately with a nurse.
"Oh hey, [nurse's name]. I thought I heard someone shouting on this wing while I was walking to the kitchen." I said.
"You did," she replied. She pointed to the lights next to the door and the call light was on. I didn't trip it or anything; I wasn't even near it while I was in the room.
She explained, "Occasionally people will hear a woman shout--"
"I'm in pain," I said.
"Exactly. And the call light will go off so we have to go in and reset it. Happens every couple weeks.".
Tyranamar Seuss 5 days ago
I think it's very presumptuous to assume "I'm in pain!" Is a verbal perseveration and not- you know- someone in pain.
#35
I created a creepy situation in a hospital once...
One level of the hospital basements hosted only two things: The x-ray archive, which nearly filled the whole level, and the morgue. I was working in the x-ray department, and part of my job was to get old pictures from the archive (and put them back again). After a short time, I knew my way around and didn't need the lights to find the right room off the corridor, which was good, as the corridor lights had issues.
So one day, I was on my way back to the upstairs world, and waited for the elevator, standing in a dark corner. The elevator came, and a young nurse pushed a hospital bed with an ex-customer into the corridor. She tried the lights, but it stayed dark (I said they had issues!), so she pushed the bed towards the morgue in the dark. She passed me without noticing me, and I said "Boo!". I nearly had to scratch her from the ceiling...
Got a stern talk with the head nurse for that, but she could not fire me ;-).
Riley Quinn 5 days ago
Due to having PTSD, when I'm startled I physically react, and depending on the situation the reaction can be painful for the idiot who startled me.
#36
I work at a nursing home. I'm not actively involved in the direct care of the residents, but I still interact with them on a daily basis.
There was one woman on my unit who had a son who visited her every day. She was on hospice, so he wanted to be around as much as possible for his mom. She passed away during one of the rare times he wasn't in the building. We called him to let him know, and he got in his car immediately to come be there when the funeral home came.
The aides had finished preparing her body to be taken out, and we were all just waiting on the son to get there to call the funeral home. Her room was empty.
The moment he rounded the corner to the hallway her room was in, her call light went on. The nurse on duty and I looked at it, then at each other, as if confirming that we both saw it. As soon as he went into the room, it went off again.
That's the strangest experience I've had so far.
#37
Final Year Student Nurse here, with a load of [messed] up stories.
Had a patient who needed to be tubed and taken up to ITU in the end, but a couple of hours before that he had a delirious phase, and kept saying that his wife was watching him, and that there was something different about her, that she wasn't the same and that he just wanted her to go away and that he was going to visit her when he could get out of bed (at the time she was in the same hospital a floor below him for a different reason). Turns out she had [passed] about 2 days before that, whilst he was in surgery.
Respiratory - First time I saw a [corpse], no one told me that when you close a person's eyes, they don't stay shut like in the movies, they can spring back open. Cue me, washing this persons chest after having closed the eyes, to turn around to see him staring at me because his eyes have re-opened, I screamed like a little girl, and everyone came rushing in.
#38
As a student nurse, I was assigned a patient with peritonitis. His wound was wide open and we had to do wound care TID. He constantly was crying for water. One day I walked in and found him sucking the wet mop from the dirty bucket left by the housekeeper.
Debby Keir 4 days ago
Umm, no drip? no ice slivers? TID is three times a day, so who the beep was looking after him the other 20+ hours a day?
#39
I work in palliative. One guy was silently screaming through his last few hours of life. Another guy (who up until this point had been unresponsive) reached up and grabbed me when we attempted to lower his bed to turn him.
One time while doing post-mortem care I walked into the room and thought "that's weird, how come nobody has closed his eyes yet?" He had that movie-perfect look, with pale blue staring eyes and slack jaw and greyish, waxy skin. I closed his eyes and started the care, and when I looked again those eyes, still staring at me, were slowly opening, one slightly slower than the other. He groaned when we turned him to wash his back and his hand managed to clamp onto the bed rail and we had to pry it off. When we finally got him onto his back again, there was a foul-smelling, oily black, viscous liquid on the pillow case. I cleaned his mouth again thinking it must have come from there, but his mouth and nose were clean. The best I could figure the stuff had come from his eye. I couldn't wait to get that bag zipped up.
Grumpy old man 5 days ago
Repeal or amend the ADA to allow end-of-life for people like this. This isnt living
#40
I'm a nurse in an emergency medical unit and when somebody comes in under section awaiting a mental health bed, if they have acute psychosis 99% of the time they talk about Jesus, 666 and the devil as if they are actually possessed.
Tyranamar Seuss 5 days ago
This is not true. Maybe this person is in the south. But the only MH patients who talk about Jesus and the devil are Christian. Otherwise the talk about Mohammed or Elvis, or Insane Clown Possey, or whatever happens to be going on in social media at the time.
#41
Locked-in syndrome. Seen it twice.. One was recently diagnosed and an older lady so I think she was made comfort care at some point. The other was a man in his 40s or 50/ after having a pontine stroke at some point years earlier, left to live in a nursing home for the rest of his life.
#42
My mom works for a hospital (former ICU nurse) where creepy stuff happens all the time. A lot of the staff are convinced the woman the hospital was named after still haunts the place. I find a majority of the stories comforting as this woman was a former nurse who cared deeply about her patients. It's nice to think she still checks up on the place every once in awhile.
#43
Worked as a hospital chaplain this summer. We get called to every Code Blue in order to be with the family and/or pray while the staff works on the patient.
3:30 a.m I get paged to the cardiac ICU. A 30 year old woman has coded and they are working hard to get her back. She is flat on her back while they're doing compressions and she's not conscious. No family present so I am working hard to stay out of the way and pray silently.
Suddenly this woman sits straight up in bed and full on screams "LET ME GO!" Everyone just stops and stares at her.
Finally, after a pause that felt like forever, someone says "Not today." Everyone kind of starts chuckling and breaks what was a very tense room. The staff quickly got back to work trying to stabilize her (much of which she actively refused for the first minute or so).
After she was stabilized a little more, I returned to the on call room and continued with my night, but months later thinking about her and that scream I still wonder what she may have seen and why she wanted to go so bad. Her scream has been imprinted on my heart and still gives me chills.
LakotaWolf (she/her) 4 days ago
I personally don't find it amusing and chuckleworthy when someone is suffering so much that they want to die/be allowed to let die and someone on the medical staff says "lol not today" and everyone laughs. I know they need to do their job, and that is fine and I don't fault them for that, but jfc, really? LAUGHING after she basically says "please let me die" and someone responds "nope"? I'm sure the staff was incredibly tense and stressed, but they're grown adults who can manage to refrain from laughing at a woman who was clearly suffering.
#44
Started working as a CNA at an LTAC hospital about 3 years ago. For those who don't know, CNA is a nurses assistant. I do it for the experience, but essentially it's a glorified janitor that gets to take vitals.
Anyways, we had an older patient that stayed in what the staff would refer to as the "quieter" hall of rooms. She had been with us for about 2 weeks at this point. She didn't talk, but was capable as far as I knew. One day I go in to take her vitals, about 6am right as my shift started. I expected her to be asleep, but I soon as I walked in I heard murmuring. I went to put the blood pressure cuff on her arm without disturbing her. As I got closer I could begin to hear what she was saying. It was the "mother mary full of grace" prayer the Catholics do. She turned and looked at me, and kept repeating it without really acknowledging me. I got out of there as fast as I could, and didn't see her again that day. I came back to work two days later and she had [passed].
Drop Bear from Hell 4 days ago
Ah why would this have been scary? A Catholic saying the Rosary seems to be perfectly normal when in a hospital (and no I'm an atheist but I'm sure this would be a regular occurrence).
#45
When I was a nurse in an LTAC, I had a pt who had a spinal injury that rendered her to bed. She was an outgoing person but she was hanging the wash to dry on a stool. It's scary that something is run-of-the-mill but it takes your life away. :'(.
#46
Power outage caused a cascade failure of all three generators and the entire floor I worked on went pitch black.
No battery pack lighting. Just the confused groans of the patients waiting outside radiology and the crying of someones baby.
Smeghead Tribble Down Under 4 days ago
Again, if that's the worst you have or will experience, think yourself lucky.
#47
I wasn't a nurse at the time, but a PTC in an emergency room. I went into a room where a patient was sedated and intubated after a code I wasn't present for.
I was detaching some monitors and putting on portables when transport came to get the patient. I had my back turned talking to him for a minute, and he suddenly gasped. I turned around and the patient was lurching up from the bed, fighting the tube, and reaching out for me. I quickly laid her back on the bed and was telling her to calm down, don't try to fight it, it's ok that you can't talk, etc, etc.
I'm glad I didn't just smack her because that was my initial, startled thought. It can happen with sedated patients, but it was my first experience with it and it certainly threw me off my game.
#48
Had a patient with anorexia who was close to my age around when I first started. She weighed like 87 lbs and she was like 5’7”. She had so many health issues. I’d bring her coffee and magazines. For some reason, the case managers and doctors were awfully just downright mean to her. She’d ask for me if I wasn’t working. One day she was arguing with the case manager about something and she passed out and hit her head on the door jam. I was in an isolation room holding 2 iv bags and I was still the first person to get to her on the floor.
She was discharged and about a week later she was exercising outside in the heat and her heart stopped. She came in to the ER but they couldn’t get her back. When I heard about it, my knees got weak.
For some reason that same case manager pulled me aside and begged me not to go to the funeral, because she said it would look bad for the hospital. I was still young I guess and it just didn’t occur to me until way later. My eyes are tearing up just thinking about it.
Peripheral Visionary 5 days ago
It always amazes me that people have the ability to starve themselves on purpose.
#49
My mom used to work as a nurse in the cardiac ward of a major city hospital. She told me that if they couldn't seal a incision after open hear surgery, they'd have to be vigilant and bandage the wound while cleaning it constantly. She told me she'd have to clean wounds while watching the heart beat within their body. She told me that one time she had to watch a doctor dig into a dude's chest cavity to remove an obstruction, all while the dude was conscious. I'm always amazed how brute force medicine can be.
#50
I have a couple.
22yo m, 85% tbsa burns mostly 3rd degree from a horrible work accident. Has been on my unit since May. He is unrecognizable. Skin contractures so bad that he can’t close his eyes or mouth. Refusing cares left and right. Now he’s having to do contracture releases but has so little areas to graft from that they’re struggling to close those areas. Mom is making them go through court because she’s fighting for POA but he’s an adult with no cognitive defects so he’s having to fight his own parents in court to continue making his own medical choices.
18yo f, Unrestrained passenger sitting in the middle of back seat in an MVC. She flew from the back seat all the way to the dash board. Spinal coward injury at C3. Just turned 18yo. 3rd degree pressure injury from ltach. She really had no will to live, refusing all cares except pain meds round the clock the moment they were available (nothing to do but watch the clock I suppose).
#51
I studied recreational therapy in college and we had to shadow many different hospitals. One of the ones we had to shadow was an old state psychiatric facility, which is rumored to be haunted. Since it was so far, they offered to let us stay in the dorms they have for their interns. My friend and I were the last to get there out of all our class. The campus was huge, so when we arrived, we got out where we thought we were supposed to go. As we approached the building, we heard a god awful scream. I screamed. Followed by maniacal laughter. I thought it was our professor/fellow classmates playing a joke on us. We finally found where they were and we told them that they got us good. They told us it wasn't them. I was terrified to sleep there that night.
#52
I used to work in St Barts hospital in London, which in parts is over 1000 years old. One of the buildings had 2 floors (with massively high ceilings), and so the floors were taken out and rearranged to make into 5 floors. The nurses working night shift would often tell us of the ghost of a night nurse who wandered silently doing her 'rounds' at night- but due to the new floors, only her head would be visible drifting down the ward.
#53
I worked for a year as a storekeeper in the pediatric OR. One day, in the corridor outside the operating theatres, I hear this loud, echoing sound.
**PING**
**PING**
**PING**
**PING**
I walk down to try and figure out what it is, and I look into the Orthopedic room, and I see a surgeon with a steel hammer and a chisel hammering a hip.
As if it was a rail spike. Big overhand hammer swings.
**PING**
**PING**
**PING**.
#54
Fresh intern in a massive University Hospital. As with a lot of hospitals in the UK half of it is space aged while the other half hasn't had a lick of paint since the 70s. A lot of the old section of the hospital has been out of use for years but late at night interns would navigate these closed wards and corridors for shortcuts when under pressure.
My cardiac arrest bleep (yanks call this a code) went off about 3am. I was on the ground floor of the old section of hospital and the call was to the far end of the top floor of the same section. I ran up 5 flights of stairs to bring me to the right floor but the wrong side. I had to pass through a massive abandoned ward that was completely pitch black to get to the ward I wanted. I sprinted down a long dark corridor, huffing and puffing I nearly smashed into an elderly lady. She grabbed my arm, I'll never forget how ice cold her grip was - "how do I get out?" she said. I pointed towards where I had just come from and told her to get into the elevators. I continued my sprint.
I was the first doctor to make it to the bedside, a nurse was performing CPR and another was drawing up adrenaline. I went to the top of the bed to manage the airway. I looked down........ it was the same old lady I met in the corridor.
#55
This starts off very cheesy but it's all true.
One dark and very stormy night at the hospital I was working with a new CNA and training her on how things run around the hospital. Basically she needed to know how to help me (the nurse) and how I did things.
Well we start to walk down one hall way and we both are paralyzed in fear because we see a dark malevolent looking figure at the end of the hall by the exit sign . I take off running and she follows.
We scream/talk about what we saw and she swears she saw a fog around the entity. In the end we chalk it up to late night shifts and too much coffee. Laughs ensue.
Well even though it's night time , no one sleeps in a hospital so we are paged to go in a room and continue our rounds. We carefully look down the hall way and nothing is there . We do our work with a patient and as soon as we step out of the room there is the scary shadow man at the end of the hall.
We scream and take off running again. I call security and they come up and check everything. Of course nothing is found .
But then we hear an alarm start to go off in a room so we bolt in there. It's the room at the end of the hall where the figure was. A doctor and another nurse had made it in there before us and the patient had [passed away]. Now this was a stroke patient who was paralyzed and could not walk.
The weird part was her window was open.
So the CNA and I start crying and explain what had been happening. The doctor requested security play back the video of the hallway to make sure no one hurt the patient. In the video we all could clearly see a dark shadow that never disappeared and yes it did look like it was surrounded by fog. Right before the patient alarm went off... The shadow vanished.
I'm glad I don't work there anymore!!
#56
The unit I work on used to be an old maternity unit. Not a lot of people know that, but we still have tons of patients report hearing crying babies.
#57
Mine was when I responded to a code on peds rehab. A girl who just turned 18 a few days prior. She had been in a MVA and was ejected from the vehicle. Brought in as a trauma to the ED screaming about her neck hurting. At some point she asked for a bedpan and staff attempted it. Her legs fell limp at that point. I didn’t hear the rest what happened in the ED but I do know this poor girl was a quadriplegic. I found all this out later.
So the code. This girl was vent dependent. Had a diaphragmatic stimulator and all that. She was getting close to discharging and figuring out her life. Apparently that night, somehow her oxygen got knocked away from her and she was found in PEA. We achieved ROSC after awhile, maybe 10 minutes, but she was deprived of oxygen longer than that of course. She went to MICU and was posturing, no corneal reflex, no cough, no oculovestibular. They tried TTM. But it was evident she was neurologically gone. The worst part was that her parents weren’t together and fought about what to do. Dad wanted DNR. Mom wanted full code. Dad wanted her in a LTC in Jersey. Mom didn’t want her leaving their home state.
I don’t know what happened to her after MICU. It all haunts me.
#58
I do hospital security, creepy stuff would be when you find doors unlocked that you locked and such or touring through abandoned areas and hearing things can be creepy. Most things out of the ordinary aren't creepy to me, more sad, tragic or morbid.
#59
I worked IT helpdesk in a hospital for three years, which meant working a late shift one week out of every six. The first time I ever did this, most people went home between 5 - 6 and it was dead quiet by 7. Later in the evening I started hearing doors and windows opening and closing in the building's other wings. This went on until I left at 1 AM. Windows opening then immediately closing, doors opening at both ends of a long hallway simultaneously. It just went on and on all night.
I commented to my manager the next day that the security guards took an awfully long time to do their rounds of the building and check all the windows were locked, it went on for hours by my watch. He gave me a funny look and told me that there was *no* security in our building after hours. I'd been the only living soul in there.
It's worth noting that the building had originally been a nuns' dormitory, and when they moved out it was converted into a morgue before getting its final makeover and becoming an office block.
Same thing happened every time I pulled a late shift. I heard these noises all night but never saw anything disturbing, so I decided in the end that it simply wasn't a problem. However, leaving the building meant turning all the lights off then walking 30 metres in the dark to the main door. I hated that part of going home.
Smeghead Tribble Down Under 4 days ago
''However, leaving the building meant turning all the lights off then walking 30 metres in the dark to the main door. I hated that part of going home.'' Take a torch to work with you? Not rocket science.
#60
I worked in psych...I would say most of the super old paranoid schizophrenics. A couple of them looked creepy during the day. But I worked nights. This one lady would peek out of her room, slowly come to the desk, ring girl style, and bless the desk while mouthing gibberish. Scared the [hell] out of me.
#61
I'm a SRNA that works at a rehabilitation center. I prefer to work thirds and one night while i was doing my rounds and checking on everyone I walked in on a dementia patient that didn't have use of her legs anymore. She was just thrashing around in her bed and when I asked what was wrong she started crying and just said "I'm sad", of course I asked why and she responded "I'm always sad at a funeral" and started to giggle. I just noped the [hell] outa that room and asked the nurse to come in there with me, we got back and she was fast asleep.
#62
I volunteered at a nursing home a few days a week. Got close to the maintenance and security guys. There was security footage of a little girl walking down the hallway in the basement then entering the break room. The video was from around 1-2AM. There was no way a girl who was around 10 could have been there. They would also find candy from the vending machine all over the floor with no one having to been in the room.
#63
We have a room on my floor that is known by staff to jokingly be haunted. I have had numerous patients in that room see things come from the ceiling and materialize in the room with them, sometimes our staff attributes these to the hallucinations but I was taking with a guy who was totally with it and he saw the same [thing]. To add further credit to this a staff member's father was staying in that room and my coworker joked "Dad you got the haunted room" and not 10 minutes later the picture on the wall lifted off the backing wire and fell to the floor. My personal experience in there is that the pulse oxygen monitor and EKG start reading when no one is hooked up in room. The room always gives me goosebumps.
#64
Security here. In the cancer institute for one of my hospital plazas you can always feel someone watching you, or if your standing in the parking lot you can watch tvs go on and off, or if your extremely unlucky you can see a figure standing in the window then vanish.
#65
CNA in a nursing home. I swear I heard a walker going down the hallway for a full few minutes. Hallways were empty, no doors opened or closed and we did rounds 15 minutes after hearing that and every Single person was in bed.
#66
Working overnight in a nursing home, the call bell kept turning on in an empty room. Wasnt the staff because there were only 4 of scheduled, and we were all at the nurse's station. I don't believe in the supernatural, but it was weird.
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Drop Bear from Hell 4 days ago
I worked in a Nursing home for two summers. Creepy as hell, found people rarely die quietly, saw some godawful things like an old lady who slit her own throat in a bathroom, a 40something yo man with all his faculties but had Frederick's Ataxia so had been abandoned in the home by his b***h of a sister who wanted the family home and all the assets. Never visited, never called. he was a lovely man and we had some long, delightful conversations.
moggiemoo 4 days ago
This would have been so much better if I hadn't had to look up so many acronyms
Drop Bear from Hell 4 days ago
I worked in a Nursing home for two summers. Creepy as hell, found people rarely die quietly, saw some godawful things like an old lady who slit her own throat in a bathroom, a 40something yo man with all his faculties but had Frederick's Ataxia so had been abandoned in the home by his b***h of a sister who wanted the family home and all the assets. Never visited, never called. he was a lovely man and we had some long, delightful conversations.
moggiemoo 4 days ago
This would have been so much better if I hadn't had to look up so many acronyms
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