Get Premium
Dark mode theme is available exclusively for premium users. Learn more about the benefits of subscribing.
No fees, cancel anytime.
Dark Mode 
No fees, cancel anytime 
40submissions
1week left
40 Times Medical Workers Pretended To Be Calm While Seeing Something Truly Unbelievable
The human body is an extraordinary thing. Even the most experienced doctors are sometimes surprised by the things it can do. In the U.S., 30 million people (half of them children) have rare diseases, and doctors may not know how to treat them every time.
Then, there are urgent cases where the body undergoes a trauma so severe or distinct that some medical professionals may have never seen before.
One netizen was curious to know what doctors do in such situations, so they asked: "Medical professionals of Reddit, when did you have to tell a patient, 'I've seen it all before' to comfort them, but really you had never seen something so bad or of that nature?"
And healthcare workers delivered: from miracle success stories to cases with not-so-happy endings, some medical professionals have really seen a lot.
Click here & follow us for more lists, facts, and stories.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Years ago my then 11 year old shattered both femurs and her hip. At the time, her Orthopaedic specialist was so reassuring and confident that we had no doubts about her recovery.
A year later, we went back for a review and he asked me if I'd like to see her trauma x-rays. Not having any idea of the reality I said yes. What I saw looked like her leg bones had exploded.
After my freaked out reaction I commented on how cool and calm he was, and how certain that she'd be fine. He said he'd actually had to go for a short walk around the hospital to collect his thoughts since he had no idea how he would put this child back together. He also told me had used the films as a teaching aid. He's one of my heroes.
RELATED:
#2
A dog bit my little sister in the face, ripping through her mouth and cheek. It was at a soccer game, she crawled on top of a big dog called a borzoi, which startled it, it rolled over and bit her in the face. This was the late 80's, smaller town. There were no pediatric surgeons available, no plastic surgeons, she was in the ER with her face ripped open.
Anyways, our general pediatrician (who is now my kids pediatrician, 30 years later), who had only graduated maybe 10 years prior, sewed her face back together. It was 30 stitches on the inside of her mouth, and 30 or so on the outside. She had a massive scar down the whole side of her face.
Anway, fast forward 15 years. She grew normally, her face is fine, her smile is fine, no long term damage. Apparently, a face is full of nerves and muscles, and thats why only plastic surgeons work on faces. Particularly with children, having nerve and muscle damage can make their face grow crooked as they age, it is a highly specialized field. But in this case, there was nobody else, just a general pediatrician, and he managed to save her face, with no long term nerve or muscle damage, or even scarring now that shes an adult.
We found out 25 years later from our pediatrician's wife, that he spent an hour or so crunching his old med school books in the seat of his Plymouth Reliant in the hospital parking lot, studying facial anatomy, nerves and cheek structure, etc. He walked into the hospital and performed a multiple hour surgery, on her face, sewed it back together, perfectly. You would think a plastic surgeon did it.
His wife told us he came home that night, just flopped down on the couch, and sat that there, amazed that he'd done it. Proud, but cautious. A new general pediatrician, sews a toddlers face back together.
And it worked. Now, you would never know it happened.
...and he has never, ever, done another surgery like that again lol
edit: if the tenses seem odd, it is because he was MY pediatrician then, and now that I am old and have a child, he is our daughters' pediatrician again. And he still calls my by my full first name which still drives me nuts. We chose him for his excellent medicine skills, not his personality. Thank you all for the gold and stories, I will share this with my sister and probably not him next time we see him, though I can promise you he doesn't know or care what reddit is. He doesn't even have a computer except the one he is forced to have at his clinic, and he calls it "henry", to spite the man who made all the doctors in his pediatrics group carry tablet pcs.
#3
Lots of stories, many already covered by others. I will share this particular story with my legs crossed.
Motorcyclist came in after some one left turned without checking. He had gone over the hood, slid and somehow somersaulted landing on his a*s sitting up. He slid across intersection mostly on his a*s, getting serious road rash. Luckily he was only a block from hospital and ambulance. They pack him and bring him to the ER.
We end up c*****g off his chaps and jeans and begin the cleanup of gravel and sand embedded in his thighs and a*s when all of a sudden, his testicles fall out of his s*****m. He had basically sandpapered a hole in his s*****m while skidding on his a*s.
The attending pauses, grabs the saline, irrigates s*****m and nuts, fondles them back into place while humming. I handed him some gauze to pack the wound and smiled at the patient who was under a local.
Then I went on break, went fetal and dry heaved.
#4
Young man (18) apparently comes in about something else (trying to work up courage). Right before he should actually be leaving (this can be really annoying if there are people waiting), he says 'I need your advice. `i'm having s*x with my mother.' What do I say? 'Oh my god'? No, I didn't... I said, 'This isn't the first time someone has told me this.' This wasn't true. Turns out that he knew it was wrong, that mother had initiated it, he was trying to extricate himself, and he was desperate for help. But the thought that someone else had been in his position meant to him that he hadn't been judged, that he wasn't doomed or would go to h**l, and that there was hope. But he didn't know what to do because the person to whom he should've looked for advice was actually his a****r. But the lie helped defuse the situation.
#5
I had to have my leg rebuilt after a car accident and was eventually sent to Duke university for my surgery. My surgeon was supposed to be like the best orthopedic surgeon in the country, I think he used to work for the Baltimore ravens. Anyway all the doctors from my hospital at home were very unsure if I would even have a functioning leg let alone walk normal again. The first appointment at Duke that dude told me it was really not a big deal and he would have me fixed almost good as new. I honestly thought he was just trying to be nice and optimistic but he was very serious. 5 months later I was walking and learning how to run again. He said I was one of the most complicated surgeries he has had to do and a group of surgeons flew in to observe him do it.
#6
In 2011 I had a saddle pulmonary embolism two weeks before my scheduled wedding. My quite seasoned heart surgeon seemed pretty confident that I'd be okay, and he even said he'd get me to my wedding on time.
Long story short, I was in the hospital for about a month due to complications. Several weeks later, when I was visiting my heart surgeon for a follow-up, he told me he'd only ever seen two other people as sick as I was. Those two didn't survive.
#7
Not the doctor, but the patient. In 6th grade, i contracted so many different forms of dysentery that I was placed into CDC quarantine while they tried to figure out where I got it. I was barely conscious throughout the whole time but all I remember is my doctor in my room with me, having hooked up my Wii and playing Brawl as I recovered. I had no clue that my parents were being investigated for child abuse or that I was in quarantine until a few months later, or that I had passed out and had been covered in vomit and s**t for hours before my mom found me and took me to the hospital.
I ended up getting it from someone not washing their hands after handling a snake and then cooking dinner at my science camp. Wash your d**n hands people!
EDIT: I do work in the medical field, but I'm not a doctor so technically I am a medical professional. Also, I can't believe my top rated comment is about me being covered in various bodily fluids.
#8
Not medical professionals, but we were the patients. My daughter, who was 3 at the time, had to have a cavity filled. As we were leaving, the dentist told me just to watch my daughter because sometimes kids chew their gums because it's numb and feels weird. So the drive home took 30 minutes and I had been talking to my daughter the entire time to keep her busy. I park my car in my drive way, opened the passenger seat to get my daughter out, and her entire lower lip on the left side is gone. She had chewed it off down to her chin. She ended up in emergency surgery, but the surgeon kept telling us it would be fine and he sees this stuff all the time. She ended up having multiple surgeries, and when she was finally healed, the surgeon told us that it was the worst injury like that he had ever seen. He wasn't sure how she would heal, but you can hardly tell it happened now.
#9
As a medical student doing my first placement in the emergency department, I was waiting outside the triage room to ask the nurse something. I was the lowest ranking, most clueless person in the department. I knew a lot about the Kreb cycle, not a whole lot about, you know, medicine.
A young man came up to me and said he was sorry to disturb me, he just wanted to check, it was just, well, not to queue-jump or anything, but he wanted to check, can this definitely wait for triage..?
He then unwrapped a towel from his hand and showed me his thumb, which he had dropped a loaded barbell onto. It was shattered, just flattened, with splinters of bone coming out. I stared at it. He stared at it. I stared at it.
Then I told him oh yes, no problem at all, he'd better take a seat and I'd make sure someone was with him right away.
#10
I was the patient in this case. Had pain in the lower right part of my abdomen that grew more serious over a few days. Eventually got so bad I nearly passed out and was on my bathroom floor screaming on the third night. That morning I felt much better and went to work, but felt the pain coming on again that evening. Also decided to go into work the next morning while running a fever that was getting steadily worse. Finally decided to go to the doctor, where they immediately referred me for a CT scan. My appendix had been ruptured for a day and a half at that point, and I had sepsis/gangrene/massive infection. I was in surgery within a few hours, but prior to that the nurse that was with me said, "Yeah, this will be no problem. You'll be fine." Surgery was ok, but was followed up with a bunch of time in the hospital on intravenous antibiotics. My primary care doctor called me while I was recovering and told me the CT scan was one of the worst they had seen. The doctors I saw post recovery all had a *holy s**t* look when they saw scans and read the surgeon's report. Kudos to that nurse who kept me calm before surgery. Don't screw around with lower abdominal pain.
#11
Not a medicalprofessional, but I have impressed a couple.
It's not super weird but just uncommon I guess. I was overweight but active when I was younger and broke my lowest rib while snowboarding, long story short, I did not know it was broken (honestly) so I never got it checked by a doctor. The rib traveled up over the next 2 ribs and has since fused to them. I now have a permanent tilt on my spine where this rib attaches to it and now that I have lost some weight a bump you can see/feel on my chest.
It is kinda weird when you tell a doctor about something on your body and their face lights up like a kid on Christmas and they ask for permission to feel it.
#12
A little late to the party—
Not the worst, but I had a patient once with a stomach bleed and a small bowel obstruction. We had to put in an NG tube (tube that goes in your nose and down to your stomach) to drain/decompress his stomach, which was pretty distended and hard.
I’m inserting the tube and has soon as it hits this guy’s gag reflex he projectile vomits and SPRAYS very dark, half digested blood all over himself, the bed, the wall, and the floor. It’s basically a scene from the exorcist. I had to dive out of the way and somehow was unscathed. He couldn’t stop for almost ten minutes as we’re trying to get this thing down to where it needs to go. Finally finish placement and it immediately suctions out ~3 liters of this black sludge that is old, digested blood. Pt was mortified and we had to play it off like “oh no no it’s fine, it’s really common to vomit during the procedure. We’ll just go get some towels and clean you up!”
My coworker and I left the room and just stared at each other in silent shock.
#13
Posted this before:
4th year med student here. On my ER rotation a couple months back, I walked in to the ED and was immediately asked to help a nurse and resident put a catheter in a patient. Now a catheter placement is usually a one person job so I was pretty confused as to why they needed my help.
I walk into the patient room, and I’m immediately greeted by a disgusting rotting flesh smell. Worst thing I’ve smelled in my life. The patient has to be pushing 400 lbs and has the worst edema (soft tissue swelling) from congestive heart failure I’ve ever seen. His s*****m and p***s f******n are about the size if a small watermelon, and the f******n had swollen completely over the tip of his p***s.
The nurse had a speculum (t**l OBGYNs use to look inside vaginas) inserted into the man’s f******n while the resident took the catheter in a hemostat (pliers type thing) and jammed it into the man’s pee hole for 20 minutes. They finally got the catheter in and took the speculum out. It was covered in a thick brown discharge that looked like fermented p**s-s**t. I still don’t know how he let his s*****m and p***s swell that much.
Edit: We comforted the patient the whole time and kept telling him we had done it like this before. Total lie. No one in the ED had ever done or seen anything like it.
#14
Ooh, me, I have a story.
I've been an RN for 12 years now, seen a lot of s**t. I was particularly lucky in nursing school and got to watch open heart surgery, joint replacement, kidney removal, all kinds of neat stuff right over the surgeon's shoulder.
The only one that ever gave me a problem was this kid about 10 years old getting his tonsils removed. The doc had this hooked knife, he's reach into the kids mouth, hook the tonsil, and yank it back to cut it out. Blood flying out of the unconscious kid's mouth. So I'm standing there, I look up and all of a sudden everything's getting sparkly. I just said "I need to leave. Right now."
Surgeon takes his tools out of the kid's mouth and says "OK. Someone please walk him out, thanks."
So I learned that for some reason, I get queasy when it's kids being hurt. Which is funny, because I was a pediatrics nurse for quite a while after school.
Anyway, the actual story. I wasn't even at work, but maybe four years ago, was living with my girlfriend at the time and her three young boys. That day, the youngest (about 7), had been climbing up a big lilac bush in the yard that I'd trimmed the day before. He slipped and fell out. A sharp, cut branch caught him in the face on his way down. I was in the kitchen, and heard this blood-curdling scream and ran outside.
I brought him in, sat him on the kitchen table and took a look. It seemed like he was pretty lucky, there was just a deep cut on the bottom of his nose. Well, it was bleeding pretty decently so his mother and I took him to the emergency room.
We get there, there's only a physician's assistant on duty. He takes a look and thinks maybe it could use a couple of stitches. Or, he says, he could call the on-call ENT surgeon for another opinion. We told him that, all due respect, we would like to have a surgeon take a look, just in case.
Good thing we did.
The boy had nearly taken his entire nose off his face. The stick cut up under the nose, and traveled along under the flesh up to the bridge. The entire nose was hanging by a half inch of skin at the top. We just hadn't moved it much.
As soon as the surgeon came in and pulled this little boy's nose off his face, while he's laying on the exam table screaming absolute [darn] [end], suddenly I got really hot, things start getting hazy, I realize I'm about to pass out. So I quickly exited the room and sat down, at the exact same time as my girlfriend, who was also a nurse. Neither of us could take it.
#15
Years ago (2000) I was playing soccer and noticed a little skin irritation underneath my arm. I thought it would go away but it developed into a weird thing. It was about 2 in in diameter and grew to be a collection of essentially looked like hundreds of skin tags grew together in a little circle. I went to the doctor who didnt have a clue and he sent me to a specialist. While there it seemed like he didnt know either. This was further evidenced when 4 other doctors came in to take a look and were really interested. They took a ton of photos and told me they hadnt seen this before and couldnt really offer any medication and said they would monitor it. About a week later the 'skin tags' developed little circles on the top that turned into scabs within a couple days. Then, the thing just kinda dried up and fell off me. It was f*****g weird and to this day I have no idea what it was.
I was not comforted.
#16
Nurse in corrections here. Had an inmate/patient come in with complaints about severe lower abdominal pain. He told me that he had something stuck in his "prison pocket." Before i could ask him what he stuck up his a**s, he bends over and shows me a cord sticking out. I told him, "Don't trip, I'm sure the doctor can help you out with that. You'll be alright." Come to find out, the prong of the phone charger got caught up into something and it was stuck.
As i was trying to comfort him, I started to hear this vibrating sound. So i asked him if he heard it do. He said, "It's the phone inside me that stuck with the charger." It wasn't just a regular flip phone, it was one of those samsung smart phones.
#17
I worked as a tech in the ER for a while and had a woman in her 40's present with "burning and pain down below, discharge and a bad smell." I got the cart set up for a vaginal exam, got her vitals, blood and urine (she couldnt pee because of the pain she said), all the basic jazz you do when someone comes into the ER. I process my samples and let the nurse know everything is done and she goes to talk to the woman and it essentially goes as this: no, she hasn't had any trauma, no no a*****t, no she doesn't know what's going on, but it started about 3 weeks prior. Long story short, we get the Dr as the woman refused to let the nurse take a look, and we are all in the room when the Dr turns the light on under the drape and immediately asks if she's been using any medication vaginally, there's clearly a lot of irritation and swelling as well as a VERY strong odor and she hadn't even inserted the spec yet. The woman says no, nothing. At this point the nurse goes to get some saline and I'm left to hand off tools and handle any swabs. The first swab handed to me was literally tinged a pale green, clearly infection. I'm capping it and the woman smells the odor slowly filling the room finally and starts apologizing. I had to say while trying not to gag "no no need to apologize, I've seen much crazier things, just relax and we will get you all fixed up." Well, the nurse comes back with saline and the Dr starts essentially flushing this woman's v****a trying to clear out all this discharge and infection so she can see what's going on, and all of the sudden she stops and asks if she's SURE she hasn't been putting anything in her v****a to treat any medical condition, even something not given by a Dr. And that's when we found out for about a month, this woman had been douching with a bleach and water mix to try and cure a yeast infection, because she read that "in hospitals we wash down with diluted bleach to k**l germs and thought it would work." She was riddled with chemical burns and infection and was immediately transported to a bigger hospital. So yeah, that happened.
#18
Had a patient who needed a lower gi study to find/fix a bowel bleed. To get a study done you need to p**p clear mucus. Three days we bowel prepped with heavy laxatives and enemas. He barely pooped anything. He puts on the call light at 6:45, 15 minutes before my shift ends. He calmly says, "I kinda want to try and p**p." He said it so casually I figured he was going to toot out another gas bubble and walk back.
He stood from the bed, took one step, and the floodgates burst. 3+ days of the most rancid liquid stool I had ever encountered. It just wouldn't stop. He left a river of stool from the bed to the bathroom, coated the walls as he bend to park his b**t on the toilet, and continued to dump out 7 people worth of p**p.
In my 9 years I have never seen that much come out of a person. He was not a large man.
He was so embarrassed but I just kept my face as solid as possible, grabbed half the linen closet and 3 packages of cavi wipes, and sopped it up. Told him this happens all the time.
#19
I'm a nurse and I work in a pediatric ER. A young woman brought her baby in to be seen for vomiting. I ask her to put the baby on the scale. While on the scale I notice a strong odor of bug spray so I asked about it.
Mom: "A roach crawled into her mouth so I sprayed a little Raid in there." She said it matter of factually like it was no big deal.
Que up calls to the police, CPS and a 1:1 sitter for the child and the mom.
When all was said and done the baby was fine and turned over to her grandmother so no worries there. I have no idea what happened to the mother.
I don't believe she was intending to hurt the child. I think she was just b**t-a*s ignorant.
#20
Paramedic here. Had a homeless guy call saying he stepped on a nail "about a year ago". I could smell it from the door so I expected it to be bad, but when I went to pick up the leg by his heel there was just...nothing there. His foot just evaporated into pus and maggots and his metatarsals clinked through my fingers. While I'm standing there trying to comprehend what happened he just sighed and asked me to pick up his foot (what foot buddy?), put it back on. He said "it falls off a lot these days, but it still hurts so that's good right?" I had no clue what to tell him. The nurses thought it was hilarious that "the baby medic(that's me btw)" got grossed out.
#21
When I was a med student on the trauma service, there was a gentleman who decided to attempt s*****e using a shotgun aimed at his heart. Unfortunately, the first thing that comes out of a shotgun when it is fired is a gust of air... which changed where the gun barrel was pointed when the shot came out. The shot pellets ended up hitting everything but his heart - lungs, ribs, spleen, stomach, liver, pancreas, and large and small intestines.
In the OR, the attending surgeon told me to put my hand on his beating heart because that will likely be the only time in my medical career that I would touch a beating heart. I did. It was cool.
He survived. Though, he was on the trauma service for the entire month I was there, and was in the hospital for a long time further.
#22
Not my story but my SO was in training as a Nurse's Aide.
On her first internship, she was assigned to the ER at a trauma center.
The first person, on her first shift, of her first internship (of 3), was an older homeless man, complaining of his foot hurting.
After the medical staff took a quick look at the foot, they didn't initially see anything wrong, so they tried to remove his pants to examine the leg.
The pants didn't move. They were fused to his skin from the middle of the hip all the way down to his calf.
They had to surgically remove his jeans by basically cutting the skin around the point where it was fused, and the moment the scalpel made the first incision, she described it as "As if Slimer from Ghostbusters barfed out of his leg."
Apparently, there was enough gushing, green fluid, filled with maggots, that it covered the floor in the (small) examination room, and the nurse ran out of the room gagging.
After getting over the initial shock, they managed to peel a good amount of the skin off with the pant leg, and revealed that his lower leg had basically rotted all the way to the bone, and was full of maggots.
Apparently that's the moment when she knew she was meant for the job. Even the surgeon was having a pretty hard time keeping his composure, but she was fine. More fascinated than anything, and apparently not affected by bad smells as most people are.
They had to tell him his leg was going to be OK - he was severely mentally ill and might have freaked the h**l out - despite knowing he could die from the infection.
Apparently he survived and they managed to save the leg, which is beyond incredible.
#23
I'm a medical secretary for a podiatrist. I obviously didn't treat the patient myself, but I discussed his case with his doctor.
The patient had severe anxiety and therefore hadn't been to a doctor of any kind in approximately twenty years. He ended up in our office because his wife had called the day before and expressed that he needed to be seen due to a foot infection.
When he arrived, he approached the window and told the receptionist that he was sorry because his socks were dirty as he hadn't made it to the laundromat recently, which was a bit weird in and of itself, but we work for a podiatrist--we've seen it all before, as it were. He then sat in the waiting room, and it was mere moments before the smell seeped into the administration office.
The receptionist put him in an exam room as quickly as possible, and upon her return, she informed me that the infection was literally oozing out of his sneaker. All we could do was open the widows and apologize to other patients as they arrived. It was foul, and when I entered the room after his appointment to clean it (the medical assistant was out that day), I immediately began gagging and had to forcefully push my manager out of the way as to avoid vomiting on her on my way to the restroom.
As it turned out, the dude had had the infection for approximately three months, and had been showering with his sock on since he'd discovered it. He literally hadn't removed his sock from his infected foot in three months, and his wife had somehow been living with the overwhelming smell.
The doctor said it was the worst infection he'd ever seen, but the patient was so incredibly anxious that he got the standard, "I've seen it all before," throughout his appointment.
#24
I used to do psychiatric evaluations in an emergency room setting. One time, I'm evaluating this 60 year old woman who is lying in the hospital bed. I'm asking her questions, and she stops me and says, "Excuse me, but I need to pass some gas." I let her know that this is a medical setting and that is a completely normal body function and not to be embarrassed. People pass gas all the time.
I was not prepared for what came next. She let it rip, and out came the loudest, wettest, and longest sounding [gas] I have ever heard. It was bubbly and juicy, hitting all the deep notes while ending on a squeaker. I don't think Satan could have made a noise like that with his a**s. It sounded so relieving, but then the smell hit me. It was bad enough that I started to gag and had to excuse myself from the room. When I came back I politely asked if she needed a nurse for anything in case she needed to be cleaned up after that, but she declined.
Obviously I've witnessed people [gassiness] before, but I've never heard or smelled anything like that before. That was something else.
#25
I’m an RN who specializes in wound care. We see a lot of crazy things in my clinic. A common occurrence is a pilonidal cyst, which is an abnormal growth in you gluteal cleft (aka b**t crack) that contains hair. It usually happens with younger ppl (say 13-20s) and is obviously very embarrassing to the patient. When we get them, they’ve already had the surgery to open and extract the cyst, so there’s a few holes left that we have to heal. One poor soul that came in had the worst post surgical “hole” I’ve ever seen. It was so big, it extended from the top of her crack to the top of her a**s, then our on either side about 12 centimeters. It was like the surgeon carved out most of her b**t :( The patient was devastated, and I tried to comfort her by telling her she’s not the worst I’ve ever seen. Poor girl.
#26
Not a medical profesional...
My husband was born with a pretty insane heart defect that all the doctors were in agreement shouldn't have worked and he certainly shouldn't have lived as long as he did. One called it a ticking time bomb. His heart had 2 chambers instead of the normal 4. He didn't have the big arteries that led from the heart to the lungs but a series of smaller ones.
I will never forget the first time I saw him take his shirt off and you could literally see his heart beating in his skinny chest. Literally, every beat.
At the age of 25, 3 years after we were married, the time bomb blew. 7 years later I very vividly remember his chest moving as his f****d up heart beat.
#27
I was working as a CNA in a nursing home. There was a lady who had been neglected before she came in so she had stage 4 bed sores (all the way to the bone) and the treatment nurse wanted me because I am calming and really good with the residents that needed a little support. She has me roll her on her side and then carefully peels back the bandage. I'm staring done in half horror/ half fascination as I can clearly see the bone, ligaments, muscle, layers of skin...
I'm gawking hard and the nurse is showing me some neat procedure when I hear a small, frail voice, "Is it getting better?" I turn on my biggest, friendliest smile and reply, "It does! It looks SO much better. Does it feel better?" She smiles and nods; I change the subject to grand kids (she had a picture of them).
I haven't seen anything like it before or since. But she was such a lovely lady and I started looking forward to helping because she was such a nice lady to talk to.
#28
I am a surgical tech. I got called in on a Saturday for a lady who had an infection from a component separation. Basically they put a giant piece of mesh in you for hernias. I wasn’t prepared. When we lifted up her gown.... the smell wafted and I have never almost puked before until that moment. About 20 cm circle around her umbillicus was black and necrotic. It was absolutely awful. We basically removed the entirety of the necrotic tissue all the way down to the peritoneum. Just gray and black slimy mass of fat and skin. The worst part is that I had to measure the necrotic tissue and it requires me to lean in a little close to it. The surgeon was laughing because I was green when I got back to the surgical field. Then during that surgery another person who had the same procedure had come to the ER with an infection. AND THEN A THIRD! We stopped using the mesh because that’s what was getting infected.
#29
Worked in a heart procedure lab that helped try to get rid of bad heart rhythms. A prisoner came in for a last ditch effort to help his failing heart and had developed a condition called Ventricular Tachycardia. Setting the patient up and looking at his rhythm / heart, it looked pretty bad.
Before we got started he grabbed me on the arm and said "I'm scared. Is it going to be okay?"
"We have very talented physicians here sir, and they do this all the time."
The Ventricular Tachycardia was set off during the procedure and deteriorated into Ventricular Fibrillation. We were able to resuscitate him, but he never woke back up.
Comfort your patients folks.
#30
I'm the patient here and the nurses didn't even try to say they had seen it before but it still fits. When I was getting treated for cancer I got a really bad case of pneumonia and had to be intubated and put into like a semi-coma type deal (I don't remember anything that happened in those six days but I was apparently made sober enough to open my eyes for visitors every day so I don't know if that counts as a coma). It was some pretty serious pneumonia because it was like less than two days between my first cough and them making the call that I would need to be intubated to stop me from drowning in my own fluids, so they didn't mess around and gave me a ton of antibiotics. You know how some hospital beds have a track along the ceiling that they can hang IV bags from? I had enough antibiotics hanging from mine that it broke and fell to the floor (again, no memory of this).
But the thing that was truly unprecedented occurred when they were changing out my b**t-bag (I don't fully understand what it was but they had something on or under my b**t that collected all my bowel movements, they put it on after I was heavily sedated, and removed it before I was totally awake so I don't really remember it). For anyone who doesn't know, antibiotics can cause a lot of diarrhea. Apparently when they rolled me on my side that day I let loose a fire-hose of liquid s**t that arched through the air across the room and splattered all over the door and window which were about twelve feet away from my bed. I think it's super cool and funny so they didn't have to pretend like it was normal to comfort me.
#31
Crowbar stuck in a patient's head sideways (curved end in brain and bar across his face). Elderly man who was attacked in his home during a robbery. He was "alive" on arrival in ER but died several days later despite an heroic effort by neurosurgery to remove the bar. Too much brain damage. Never encountered any relatives as my only contact was in ER. One of the most vivid and disturbing episodes in my career. This was about 25 yrs ago but the image is burned in my memory.
The assaulter was caught and charged with second degree [end] (Canada). Pretty straight forward conviction. [jerk].
#32
We had a patient in the ER who was sick of her visual hallucinations so she scooped her eyeballs out. She looked like something out of Hellraiser and unfortunately did not fix her hallucinations.
Another patient came in with a colostomy and ran out of his equipment so he duct taped a trash bag to it. It had several pounds of feces in it.
#33
I’m a surgeon.
A couple of years ago they send us this guy (52 yes old) that had shown up in the ER because he allegedly hadn’t pooped in a week or so.
To make a long story short X-ray showed he had SOMETHING lodged in his r****m (and sigma, and descending colon... so way up there) that was a little over a foot long.
He denied having put anything up there. Yeah, right.
We try to go from the bottom up and nothing. We see something but we can’t clamp onto it.
So. What now.
Operating room.
Ended up opening him up, and inside the colon we see a hand. I just about s**t myself, ended up being a mannequin’s arm. Like store mannequin. It was stuck up there up to the elbow.
That was an odd one.
#34
My aunt started her nursing career in a county hospital, which means you get all the homeless folks. A guy came in with the whole of the back of his leg and b**t utterly and very deeply infested with maggots. He just "hadn't gotten around to" coming in earlier, he said.
The depressing thing is that while it was a first for my aunt, it was by no means the last. Apparently it's more common than you'd think.
#35
Obligatory not a medical professional, but a first aider. I was doing a duty at the finish line of the London marathon as I have done for many years. I've seen enough chafing, dehydration and blisters galore. Someone always has the worst of the day but it happens so fast that you can hardly mentally tally who's [private parts] were the most raw....
Until I had a runner come in covered in blood complaining that her [private parts] had completely gone. She had chafed so bad that her [private parts] and areolas were rubbed to nothing... And the worst part was that she had her [private parts] pierced and the piercings had EMBEDDED THEMSELVES IN HER EXPOSED BREAST TISSUE.
I had to talk her through sterilising the wounds while trying to assure her that 'it happens to everyone'. The image of a n****e bar peeking out of red, raw breast tissue will haunt me.
#36
Not a professional but I do medical research so closely related. One of my patients (alcohol detox clinic) had stored a mickey of whiskey up his a*s. It broke off inside his a*s and cut him deep. Blood absolutely everywhere. Had to tell him it wasn't the first time it has happened. It definitely was the first time it happened.
#37
Yep. Had a patient who was 62 and he had never seen a dentist before (I am a dentist). Had literally everything going on orally (especially the smell OMG, the smell). Me and the assistant were like: don’t worry we see this kind of stuff all the time!” ... not a lie. Just never all at once.
#38
In dental school, I had an emergency patient come in, complaining of sore gums. Upon examination, I found a massive calculus bridge (google it for pictures) behind her lower front teeth. She only had about 3 remaining lower teeth, but they were all connected with a whitish brown mineral deposit that was about the size of a golf ball. She had never had her teeth cleaned and she was probably 55 or so.
I basically performed an emergency cleaning. She could speak so much better afterwords. Of course I had to play it off like it was normal, but in my years of practice I still haven’t seen a case that bad again. Get your teeth cleaned people. Even if you can’t afford every 6 months, once a year, or every other year is a h**l of a lot better than never.
#39
Not a medical professional, but a story about my father.
After years of a blood disease, his spleen had to be removed as it had swollen to a size that made breathing difficult. Apparently the surgeon had a photo taken, post extraction, where he is cradling my dad's ~22.0 lb spleen.
To top it off, one day into recovery, when doing on of those "gentle push on the abdomen" type exams on him, my dad's sutures catastrophically failed and he let loose a spray that coated the doctor, his nurse, and a good portion of the ceiling. Luckily for dad, the hospital staff was on point that day and kept him alive despite his body's best effort.
I heard all of this from the doctor while he was removing the line of staples (that went from c****h to sternum) some weeks later.
Dad didn't like to share, apparently.
#40
Not even close to a medical professional but my Aunt is a nurse and told me about a guy who came in coughing up blood and maggots and it turned out to be some worms he got from eating something that ate through his stomach lining into his esophogaus and were in his throat.
You Might Also Like: 33 funny times the comments were better than our pictures
Add Your Answer! This post is a community curated
Add Your Answer!
Explore more of these tags
You May Like 60 Weird Jobs Nobody Knows About, As Shared By People In This Online Thread 48 Fun But Weird Sports That More People Should Know About “The Very Worst Horrors”: 68 People Who Have Been In A Coma Reveal What It Was Really Like
Justina Čiapaitė
Žydrūnė Trukanavičiūtė
Justinas Keturka
Related on Bored Panda
