As incredible and fascinating as the human body is for allowing us to move and experience the world, it can also be equally as strange and even frightening at times. The thought alone that our body can start attacking itself, like in the case of autoimmune diseases, sends shivers down my spine.If you’re curious to know more about the strange things our body can hide, scroll down to find the list of the most unusual discoveries medical and autopsy experts have made while examining bodies. But be warned, as some of these can get quite intense.
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A mummified foetus - I was working in Africa and the usually very stoic Congolese surgeons called me in to theatre, gagging - the patient was an elderly woman with a protruding abdominal mass. When they opened it, they found that it was a long, long dead mummified foetus which as a result of an ectopic pregnancy, had somehow managed to both wall off after it died and somehow avoid k*****g the mother. Her body had encapsulted the alien tissue and over the years, it had slowly eroded her anterior abdominal wall to the point where it finally caused her to have enough symptoms to get something done about it.
It was horrific and the smell was worse.
Happily, though, the patient survived the procedure and just left the surgical team with a .. memory.
Good thing this happened some where in Africa and not in a American state like Texas.
Not really fitting with the question posed, but a medical oddity just the same. My Mother in law miscarried twice before she had my husband and his twin brother. She had some kind of cyst or protrusion in her uterus that once one of the previous fetus got to a certain week of growth, it would rub against the protrusion and rupture the sac...and the fetus would not be at a point of viability and would perish. So when she became pregnant with twins, she knew inevitably she would sadly lose them at that stage. The timeframe comes and goes, fetuses are still ok and growing normally. Comes time to have them (early as with twins) and lo and behold, not only are they in the same amniotic sac, but the other twin's sac is around the one they shared. They were double bubbled. They had twin transfusion syndrome, so no one at the time had a moment to think about it (life or death emergency at that time) but the fact that they were double wrapped is more than likely the only reason they made it that far. Both survived the twin transfusion (very rare in the early 80s for one if not both to die.) Just an amazing story, I think.
Twin to twin transfusion. One baby is a lot smaller and a lot of times doesn't make it. It happened to a friend of mine. Daniel was much smaller and didn't live very long after birth.
Are you sure it is twin transfusion syndrome? Because from the pictures on google that would be if both twins were in their own sacks but one twin with his sack in the sack of the other twin. Not both twins together double sacked….. gosh that sounds strange. But I hope you understand me
I saw a patient with endometriosis (lining of inner uterus cells) in her nose. Meaning that she would get epistaxis (bleeding from nose) every month or so related to her menstrual periods.
Interesting that the current #3 and #4 are both endometriosis. Something that is still generally dismissed by medical professionals.
The problem is that it doesn't show up on any imaging. I had SO many tests but it took 10 years before I was finally diagnosed - with surgery. By that time the stuff had already done major damage to my tubes.
Load More Replies...Endo can happen in any part of the body, there was one entry on an article like this where a guy had it diagnosed in his knee
Young man comes in complaining of headache. I work in radiology.
We ask for history. Nothing to report, he says.
We scan his head. CT shows a bullet rattling loose inside his sphenoid sinus (kind of between the nasal cavity and the brain).
I asked the guy: "Have you ever been shot in the face?"
"Oh, yeah, I guess I forgot to mention that."
To clarify, the guy had been shot in the face a few years earlier, never sought treatment for it. The bullet had somehow missed all the vital structures.
Surely, he must have had considerable pain when it happened? I suspect that he had a reason not to seek medical assistance at the time.
That reason could be as simple as "no insurance". Which is horrifying.
Load More Replies...My father had a patient who presented with nasal bleeding, turns out he had been shot right up one nostril.
You would think there would have been a pretty obvious scar that they would have asked about.
Not a doctor. I have a friend who has an AMAZING medical history.
Three types of DNA malformations.
He was conceived in his mother's second much smaller womb. His mother didn't know until she was almost due because the womb had nowhere to expand.
His ligament on his left leg wrapped around his calf instead of going down to his toes.
His left foot has two distinct forms of club foot.
He has spina bifida.
He has kleinfelters. (He isn't XX female or XY male)
He was born with an extra vestigial kidney.
The stuff that protects your spine? His is 10 times stronger due to his weird DNA
He is missing a vertebrae. He had an experimental spinal surgery which was tried only 7/8 times/cases, he was the only one to walk afterwards.
He was given shots of testosterone as a teen to make him have a male puberty. Now many years later this has given him prostate cancer. Testosterone blockers have now meant his kleinfelters has decided he is woman and he now has b***s. He is okay with this since he is a magician that also does bearded lady gigs.
There's probably more to his medical history, but that's all I can genuinely remember right now.
He has been to patient/ doctor soirees where he walks around talking to doctors about how his existence disproves their medical theroems lol.
That is entirely bonkers, and he needs to talk to certain politicians. Loudly. Specifically about the Klinefelter's.
A quick thing for those who don't know, OP has kind of said it's a séx chromosome anomaly, but Klinefelter's is specifically where an individual has three séx chromosomes. It's specifically denoted as 47XXY. Either the egg or spérm didn't fully separate their chromosomes and ended up with an additional X. This, and other genetic anomalies, is something that certain politicians - especially in the US and UK right now - are trying to deny happens, because it doesn't fit their nice, neat theory of there only being two genetic possibilities for séx determination in humans.
Load More Replies...Klinefelter's is one of 44 conditions that results in 1.7% of all humans being intersex
An old lady that I worked with years ago has a daughter that was adopted from S Korea & she has a double uterus. They had no idea until she was pregnant.
She isn't dead, but this week i saw a patient with endometriosis in her lungs.
Somehow, womb-lining cells had travelled to her thorax and colonised on the lung. She previously had symptoms of coughing up blood while menstruating, but because the endometriosis was so severe, was on the pill to stop her periods entirely.
Then she came off it to have a baby, and after the birth, with her hormones all over the place, she developed two pulmonary embolisms (blood clots in the lung), and a few weeks after that, three successive pneumothorax (collapsed lung). The womb cells had tried to shed, and made a hole between the airways and the sac surrounding the lung, letting air escape.
She's deciding now whether to let the surgeons cut out the part of her lung with the endometrial cells, to go back on the pill for life, or to have a full hysterectomy and remove her ovaries. Tough choice at 32.
Endometriosis is freaking horrifying. It's a lot like cancer actually, only it usually doesn't k**l you right off
I was diagnosed in the early 1980s with endometriosis - I was a very early case. I had multiple surgeries due to this horrid disease and my periods were agonizing. Some women who've had endometriosis and have also had children have said the the pain from the disease was worse than childbirth; mine was that bad. When I had a full hysterectomy, my surgeon had to spend 45 minutes cutting through endometriosis scar tissue in order to perform the surgery. Menopause has been a blessing.
Load More Replies...Do it. Endo has torn up my sisters health and life!
Load More Replies...I have endo and currently my bowels are glued to my uterus because of it. It's horrible stuff. It also destroyed my tubes. I was planning to have a hysterectomy but we found a med that works to keep everything at bay. I haven't menstruated in 2 years now, which keeps my symptoms from returning. It's called Slynd and is a progesterone-only birth control. I'm nearing menopause so I'm hoping the solution lasts.
I was 45 when they did my total hysterectomy, and it made my life 1000% better (I missed work a couple days a month with vomiting and diarrhea)
As I mentioned in a previous post, my caring OBGYN administered three shots to induce menopause. Surgery wasn't even discussed. It was Leuprolide (https://www.mayoclinic.org/d***s-supplements/leuprolide-intradermal-route-intramuscular-route-subcutaneous-route/description/drg-20067038). My side effects were minimal and as to be expected for someone starting menopause. It was great to be free of all of that pain!!!
I had a full hysterectomy at 35 due to stage 4 Endo. I can't even fathom how bad it must have been in the lungs. It's extremely painful and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.
A colleague of mine saw an obese woman in the ED for flank pain. Workup included a CT that showed a frog skeleton just outside the ribs. A second physical exam revealed a necrotic frog carcass between some fat rolls with very irritated surrounding skin. When asked about it, the patient said she and her obese husband were too large to have s*x in the usual fashion, so they would get in the pond behind the house whenever they wanted to have s*x.
My SIL is probably the strangest medical case I know. She’d been feeling “off” for a few months but couldn’t figure out why. One night she starts having really intense RLQ pain and goes to the ER. Everyone assumed appendicitis and took her to the OR. They open her up and her appendix is fine. Her colon, however, had a very large tumor in it. That’s not the strange part.
They send the tumor to the lab and confirm it’s a carcinoid tumor. Those are very rare in the first place, but her case was esp rare, as the doctors told her 99% of the time it’s found in elderly black men. She was a 17 year old white girl. She was treated for the cancer and has been cancer free for 14 years.
Poor thing. That's very young to have to go through treatment for later-in-life type of cancer.
Sometimes, when it hasn't attached itself to anything and hasn't metastasized, a colon tumor can just be cut out and then you're fine.
Load More Replies...Glad she opened her up and didn't dismiss it as period pain. (No idea btw what RLQ pain is_
Right lower quadrant...down in the lower right part of the abdomen
Load More Replies...i had a bowel operation to remove pre cancerous tumors, i was 21, it certainly can happen at a young age
When I was an ultrasound student, a woman came in for her 20wk anatomy scan. It was right before Christmas. All her family was in town, and she was going to have a gender reveal. Her baby had anencephaly (absent brain), acrania (absent skull bones), omphalocele (herniation of the intestines into the cord), and a club foot. The Ob doc asked her if she wanted to be induced right then and there or wait until after the holidays. She chose to terminate her pregnancy immediately. I can’t even imagine how she was feeling. The baby looked like an alien.
In some US states, almost certainly. I know some parents choose to bring some meaning to their baby's existence by carrying to they and donating any viable organs, but to be forced into carrying a foetus that's incompatible with life is just horrifying.
Load More Replies...This is why baby showers and gender reveals haven't taken off everywhere. This kind of loss is made all the worse by pre-birth celebrations.
Yep, in some cultures it's bad luck to make pregnancy stuff too public. We did a 100 days party instead
Load More Replies...That's so sad I had to read the clinic notes on a lady last week that had been pregnant with twins and both babies had several severe birth defects and they decided to go ahead and terminate because both of them would have been stillborn. I can't even the pain that lady and her husband are going through.
Antiabortion advocates should be forced to see and read examples like this and then explain why abortion is bad
This is a GREAT case for why Abortion should not be illegal or criminalizeid! If this happened today in a 'Red' state she would have been FORCED to carry the baby to full terrm - what ever that may have been. I just can not in my mind why women are being forced to go thru these types of horrifying situations.
In my anatomy lab, my groups’s cadaver had died from systemic complications of stage 4 lung cancer and when we got to the lungs they were two rock hard, necrotic blackened masses that looked nothing like the other cadaver’s pink and spongy lungs.
My anatomy prof took one lung out and wrung it resulting in this putrid black goo flowing out of the lung.
As he was draining the lung, he mentioned in an Indian accent
“This. This is what happens when you smoke”.
I thought the same thing. I imagine the phrase is permanently etched in ops brain and they wanted us to hear it the way they do?
Load More Replies...Congratulations! That's not an easy task, so be proud of your achievement!
Load More Replies...And this is something that the general population needs to see. This and the lungs of vapers, because that's not pretty either
My dad told me he started smoking when he was 16. He smoked for most of the rest of his life. Dies at age 86 and death certificate says it is not due to tobacco usage. I don't doubt his lungs were likely like that of the cadaver.
There used to be a tv quit smoking ad like that many years ago in australia
ER nurse; man comes in after a car accident, we do a brain scan for safety and find a 3 inch nail imbedded in his brain. Ask man about it, he says he has no idea. Admits he was once shot with a nail gun but HAD NO IDEA A NAIL HAD BEEN LODGED IN HIS HEAD. Had been there for well over 4 years.
I wonder whether it was this case (BEWARE Graphic x-ray and description): https://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/jan/21/man-survives-shooting-nail-brain
Nope, cos the guy above went around for 4 yrs with it!
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Guy came in for an outpatient MRI of his cervical spine. On the form where it asks if he ever had any metal in his body (specifically asks if any injured by a metal object) he selected no. Same with a verbal questionnaire. Also we do a keyword search in the patients hard chart for the term foreign body incase it’s documented- nothing came up.
He lays down, and I start taking images while talking to him though the speaker. During one of the image sets- he starts pounding on the inside of the scanner and screaming. Figured he was claustrophobic- so I stop the machine and get him out. Immediately he jumps up and starts talking nonsense and runs into the wall,
screaming he needs to get away from the ‘ocean’. I call overhead for emergency room staff to come down and security as he’s flailing, continues screaming and running into the wall before we restrained him.
The staff rush down, and he’s talking a mile a minute and explaining how he is inside of the poster of the beach that covers the entire wall in the room he’s in, scared out of his mind and hallucinating. Security restrains him, and he’s taken down to get an X-ray of his skull. There was a BB in his frontal lobe. It had just enough ferrous metal left in it to travel a few millimeters in his brain. In the emergency department he kept trying to escape, and was very fast. While unrestrained he got up (somehow convinced the guard he was ‘better’). Patient bolted out of his room into the main hallway. A code was called for a lost patient. For over an hour nobody could find him, until a nurse looked into a large storage closet. Poor guy was found in a pool of blood. He crashed into a large mirror that was leaning on the wall, and had severe lacerations of his neck, face and arms. Efforts were made to transfuse him but it was too late. Still haunts me how a simple BB from 40 years earlier could do that. Discovered his brother accidentally shot him with a BB gun when they were kids.
I'm not a medic, but I assume that an x-ray would have been a prerequisite to having an MRI. Especially considering that a diagnosis may come from the x-ray alone.
He was getting an MRI of the cervical spine, which is neck-level. A c-spine xray would not normally show the part of the head/brain where the BB was lodged, which was the frontal lobe, behind the forehead.
Load More Replies...No wonder he was screaming those magnets are strong enough to pick up a truck. I worked in Radiology for 7 years and half of it was in MRI. If you have any piercings they have to be removed. A college student came in 1 day and I told her to remove all jewelry. But I have a lot of piercings... I gave her a denture cup and it was full when she came out of the bathroom. I don't even want to know where all of them were! Another time a black lady came in with an elaborate hairdo and got mad that she had to take out all of the bobby pins. She missed ONE and crashed the magnet for 3 days.
My first MRI was lumbar spine, going in feet first, (fortunately). When I got on the bench, I could feel this weird floaty sensation in my feet. Told the radiographer there must be something in my shoes. They didn't believe me - they were slip-on, ballet pump style things. Fortunately, I insisted. Her face when she removed the first one and the machine almost ate it because she wasn't holding it tightly... Yep, turns out Sketchers put something ferromagnetic in their shoes, even though they can be bent almost in half... (The really stupid thing is I wore them to my second MRI because I forgot. I'd deliberately thought that I definitely shouldn't wear them, then put them on anyway 🤦🏼♀️. But I wasn't questioned when I went barefoot to the scanner.)
Load More Replies...Where I get my MRIs done - outpatient - they make you strip and put on paper shorts and gown. They've apparently had trouble with fibers in underwear, even if no metal is obvious.
Yes. Lululemon pants had fibers in it that were heating up!
Load More Replies...A tiny round metal pellet that is shot from a bb gun
Load More Replies...I couldn't have my most recent CT without having an X-ray first. I know it wasn't an MRI, but my doctor insisted that they couldn't do one without the other.
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When I was working as an ICU nurse in San Diego, I took care of woman with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease for a few days (the human version of mad cow disease). She was only 44 years old, lived in Mexico. Her husband was a butcher... and they owned a restaurant in Mexico. They had 3 daughters, 18-22, and were a really lovely family. It was really really sad. My heart broke for them. There was nothing that could be done.
My unit had a strict “no more than 2 visitors overnight” policy, even despite my pleas given the situation (she didn’t have much time left). So I did what I hope someone would do for me: I told the family the bad news of the policy, and then gave them the good news that I would be pretending they were obeying it as soon as my boss left. The family donated her brain to University of Wisconsin so they could study it.
Visiting maybe? Or maybe the place they lived in Mexico didn't have the treatment she needed for hospice care so they went there for treatment? There are people from other countries that go to countries with better medical care all the time.
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Not me, but my dad is in ICU nurse, he was also a combat medic in Iraq from 2003-2004. He told me once they had this guy sedated because of all his injuries, and he saw something white coming out of the patients nose. My dad, thinking it was a booger, grabbed a tissue to wipe it away. Not a booger. He pulled it outwards and it turned out to be a huge foot and a half parasite that was trying to get out out of the dudes body, probably due to the antibiotics they had pumped him up with.
I love these lists, they help me so much with my calories reduction.... AAAAAARRRGHH!!! (And for those trying to lecture me on how to lose weight - darlings, unless you are menopausal with a genetic history of obesity and starvation at early age in your Mum, grandmum and great-grandmum, get lost).
Asked this to an emergency doctor friend of mine a while ago. Patient comes in complainjng of severe abdominal pain, nurses take vitals, ask questions etc. Eventually my friend sees her and, after a few questions, he has her lift her shirt.
The "severe abdominal pain" on the chart was in fact due to a gash so severe part of her intestines were sticking out of her. No one had noticed and she hadn't thought to mention that her organs had started leaking out. In fact, she seemed just as surprised as he was.
I would have checked for a brain injury too, which might have been the reason for not being aware/remembering.
Could be as simple as adrenaline masking the severity, but agreed - always better to check.
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I was a combat medic in the Army.
Not super super uncommon (about 1 in 10,000 people have it), but I had a buddy with situs inversus. All of his major internal organs were reversed (heart on the rights side instead of the left, for example). As soon as he got to the unit, it was the first thing he told me. Wanted to make sure if he got hurt I wasn't curious as to why he had no heart, I guess.
It makes sense to have told medics about this, before anything happened. They don't want to have to spend time trying to locate organs in a life/dēath situation. Especially in the field.
I think I'd be tempted to wear a medic alert, if I had this. Just in case something happens.
Load More Replies...It makes for a really wonkey electrocardiogram. The leads have to be placed in mirrored position. Done this.
Donny Osmond has this, if memory serves. It's utterly fascinating. I'm surprised he passed an army medical, though - they usually try to weed out anything that might cause problems for medics in the field, like unusual blood types or anatomical abnormalities.
Not a pathologist but I work in a Coroner's office. On more than one occasion we have directed a Post Mortem on someone who has died abroad, often due to heart-related issues. I once got a phone call from the pathologist after he had opened the body to examine the heart:
"This person died from a heart attack, yes?"
"Apparently so"
"You want me to examine the heart?"
"Yes please"
"...where is it?"
Some other countries routinely remove organs when they are determining a cause of death, then the body is embalmed and sent back to their home country. We still often have to confirm the cause of death, so I've spent a lot of my time chasing missing organs around the world...
Seeing song lyrics made me think of “my heart is in Havana”
Load More Replies...Just read about a case where this happened to a lady who died on holiday, the hospital she died in claims they put the heart back but it wasn’t there when the post mortem was done back at home and no one seems to know where it is. Her family were terribly upset (understandably) and don’t want to bury her without it. Very sad
Yes, happened in Turkey earlier this year! Family are from the UK. Incredibly sad
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Pulled 5 carrots out of a 72 yo guy's a*s 2 days ago. Each one was 8"+. He said his girlfriend put them up there to stimulate his prostate so he could achieve an erection. The funny thing is he failed to mention to her that he had his prostate removed some years ago.
Not a medical professional but I have one. Bit of background info for clarity: I was born with a potentially fatal kidney condition and had a few close calls in my childhood. By time I reached my teens my doctors were really concerned that I would end up needing a kidney transplant before I even reached adulthood. Now my dad is a universal donor so he volunteered to go ahead and give me one of his if it would even give me a chance. Doctors were game and he had to get examined and stuff only to find something really odd and kinda upsetting for both of us.
Turns out that my dad was born with only one kidney. So that wasn’t happening. Lucky for me I ended up not needing a transplant anyways but my dad was really upset about that for a while.
My mum's twin godsons are like that - they have one each. One, however, is a "horseshoe" kidney and is a bit iffy. The other twin is absolutely fine with his one normal kidney.
My dad had an ultrasound. The technician called someone in to take a look at it (scaring my dad). They found that he had but one kidney. He thinks it is possible that he lost it when they operated on him when he was a kid in the 1950s or 1960s when he was run over by a bicycle.
One of our cadavers had two spinal cords, aka split spinal cord malformation.
Edit: just a first year med student here folks. Unfortunately it's against our school's policy for me to even take photographs, yet alone share them. One of our groups during our laminectomy (removing the back of your vertebra to expose spinal cord) lab, once they cut into the dura mater (the tissue that wraps around the spinal cord) noticed a spit cord in the in the thoracolumbar region, side-by-side. Our lead anatomist was very excited to see this and had the whole class come see. Apparently it's not the most incredibly rare thing, but it is the weirdest anomaly I've seen thus far.
Edit 2: So a lot of people are mentioning Spina Bifida. From what I understand in my studies, that would be the result of bones in the spine not forming correctly. This was not what we saw. There were no signs of prior surgery or herniation of the meninges.
This is very cool. (Also, yes, definitely not spina bifida - that's a very different neural cord anomaly, with associated bony defects)
Diastematomyelia, also known as a split cord malformation, refers to a type of spinal dysraphism (spina bifida occulta) characterized by a longitudinal split in the spinal cord.
I have spina bifida occulta. I just have a small gap in two of my vertebrae. Doctor's didn't pick up on this until I was 22.
Load More Replies...Sounds like maybe it was conjoined twins and the 1 twin died and this person absorbed part of the twin???
I suppose it might be a very late attempt at separation, but never got any further than the neural tube. The anatomy is too normal otherwise to be anything more than that. I'm assuming the two strands functioned normally too, because I believe first year cadavers have to be medically "normal" (other than cause of death), so the students get a good grasp of normal anatomy. That said, it's also good for the students to see that "normal" can include something weird and wonderful like this - didn't affect the person in any way, but just slightly odd.
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Not a doctor, but my brother and I were the first for my mom's doctor. My brother and I are twins, but I was born a month premature. My brother was actually a few days over due. My mom got pregnant with my brother and a month or so later she got pregnant with me. Her body released another egg despite her already being pregnant.
Because of the way we were conceived my brother shoved me up under our mom's ribs.
Her heartbeat concealed mine, so a month before my brother's due date the doctor finally realized that there were two of us. This was in 1985 ultrasounds weren't nearly as good as they are now.
I'm female. Another sort of rare occurrence, and I was born breech. My mom told me that the doctor had to pull me out because I wasn't coming out on my own. To add to my mom's luck I was sucking my thumb and tore her quite a bit because the doctor didn't realize my elbow was sticking up. Luckily for her though my brother had already been born.
So do you celebrate your birthday and xmas together?
Load More Replies...My mother was breech, I was breech and so was 1 of my son's. I asked my OB/GYN about it and he said it's not genetic. He will be 34 in about 6 weeks.
ur OB/GYN is going to be 36 in about 6 weeks are you throwing ur OB/GYN a party?
Load More Replies...I’m confused. First she says she was born premature, then she says she was born after her brother?
born after and also conceived later so she would be early
Load More Replies...These cases are not rare. I know two women, who have had twins like these.
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I work as a statistician in a major hospital so I see and catalogue A LOT of weird things.
Worst thing id seen was someone come in complaining of leg pain and showing signs of septic shock. After examination dr orders scans and theres 2 metal rods (one in each leg) that weren't on their file. Turns out the patient has been to SE Asia to get a height altering surgery and the 'dr' had used items youd pick up from the local hardware store to fix the bones after breaking.
After extensive surgery patient lost the lower part of one leg and was lucky to keep the 2nd.
There’s patient information (name, ID) on that x-ray. Hope it’s fake.
Just clicked it, it's from a stock image website so completely unrelated to the story. Not sure about the patient info on it though.
Load More Replies...That depends on the country though. From US to Canada is all right for instance.
Load More Replies...Those breaks are horrific too. And what's going on with that right fibula? I'm guessing that's the leg the patient lost?
I worked in medicine as an X-ray tech/medical assistant. One day we had a patient come in complaining of a stomach ache. Considering the time of the year it wasn’t an abnormal complaint to have come in our family practice. So we run him through the normal test urinalysis, and an abdominal X-ray (KUB for those medically inclined). Well, he was a shorter fella so I had a lot of room on the film. This kind of X-ray is one large shot centered on your belly button, it’s mostly used to see how full of s**t you are.
I went to the dark room to process his film when something weird could be seen near his butt. There was definitely a lot of poop backed up but I couldn’t tell what was causing the blockage. I showed the doc the film and she busted out laughing. The doctor I worked with was usually stone-faced and serious about these kinds of things. So it was odd, we were all confused.
She asked me to go into the room with her while she asked him some questions. The first thing she asked him was what he shoved up his butt. I was so taken aback by this statement I almost missed what he said.
You see, this 40 year old man has diarrhea the week before and decided to shove a tampon up his butt to stop it. He tried to take it out but the string got caught, and then he “simply” forgot about it.
We had to remove it. It was disgusting, and I never did another procedure ever again.
The string got caught ON WHAT? And HOW does one forget about a tampon up their a*s?
When they come in contact with liquid, they swell up to fill the space they're in. Doesn't have to be a large tampon to fill a larger space.
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Medical student here.
This guy was one of the patients of our tutor. The patient was 30 years old and he was first time in the hospital with something more serious. They took CT scan of his chest and the doctor found he had kidney right next to his lung. Normal functioning kidney just hanging out in the chest area and the other kidney one was in its usual place. Cool.
The real question here is was it the abnormal anatomy causing the patient's problem, or is that an incidental finding to something else?
My brother's cadaver (when bro was in chiropractic school) didn't 'have a stomach.' The dissection team called over the professor who did find the stomach...above the diaphragm!
There is a great book out by Adam Kay. He talks about when he was a jr. Doctor. PRobably intern in the US and Canada. A lady come into emerg with severe burns in her v****a. She had stuffed christmas lights up and turned them on.
Gives new meaning to the phrase she put the christmas lights up herself.
Just to prove it's not *always* guys who insert inappropriate items into their body.
Poor woman. This sounds like a very risky thing to have done with traditional light bulbs.
Wait until you see the girl who did the same with christmas candles!
Undertaker here. Seen lots of abnormalities but afraid to be specific as it might give away the identities of the decedents as they are very specific. One that I can say is once I did a Autopsy on a person who had a history of various substance abuse. Upon opening him we found the inside lining of all of his organs to be bright turquoise blue. From his trachea down to his colon was bright blue. It was a weird but welcome break from the usual red and yellow.
I don't expect to ever read the words 'welcome break' from an undertaker again.
In some small towns, they're the same person. Still a very strange story.
Load More Replies...Someone hitting the antifreeze? It's the only thing I can think of that might have that effect. Blue is NOT a natural colour. And the methanol would certainly be more effective than ethanol, for someone with that kind of history. (Would also be a reasonable cause of death)
This sounds like huffing spray paint. Truly one of the dumbest things you can do in an attempt to get high.
Load More Replies...In America they are finding wild boar with blue innards from eating rat bait. My sister the m**h head would eat the bait for attention.
colloidal silver could have caused it, but that usually happens to your skin, not your insides.
My dad had a patient that “slipped and fell” on a whole mayonnaise jar.
NOOOOOOOO! Miracle Whip is a salad dressing! Mayo is an aioli !
Load More Replies...Funny how often that happens. Lots of clumsy people walking naked near things that have no business being on a floor.
How does the jar make a great salad? Being neither a fan of salad not mayo, I'm feeling a bit baffled by the inclusion of a shatterproof jar
This needs more context. Did it break? Did the patient get a broken, or dislocated limb? or was this an injury of a more 'personal' nature?
"slipped and fell" in medical situations often means an object ended up inside a person. Often in their rect um. It's code for ' I put it there for my enjoyment but I'm too embarrassed to admit it'
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My dad is a mortician and sometimes when accidents happen he shows up for the removal right after the coroner gets there.
He told me one of the craziest things he saw was when he showed up to a construction site where someone was pressure washing out a pipe or hole of some kind. The sprayer the operator was using had the nozzle back up somehow and backfired the rod that the nozzle hooks onto straight though the handle and into the operators head. Ever since he told me that story I hold the pressure washer sprayer so it’s not aligned with me at all haha.
Teratoma consisting of a couple molars as an incidental finding in a pelvis xray (it was in the patient's uterus).
Guy in his 20s who had a neck xray. It was discovered that the peg holding his head onto his body was congenitally absent (sans odontoid). It's probably a good thing he never played football.
They don’t. They’re just relating 2 things that they say on x-rays. I’m more impressed with the elegant sleeves the radiologist is wearing in the stock photo.
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I’m a carer for the elderly at a hospital. A nurse asked me to help her insert a catheter into a lady with dementia, but when we propped her legs open there was a horrific smell and we could see something dark in the vaginal cavity. It was a teddy bear. We think it was there a while.
Yes it does. Common misconception is that the cervix is immediately inside the v***nal opening. In fact, the cervix abuts the uterus.
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Neurologist here..we don’t get as many cool stories as the ER docs. However, when I was a medical student we had a cadaver with a very large and very tiger stripe tattooed p***s. This was the only tattoo this man had, and was very unexpected when it came time to genital dissection. Obviously, this was saved by the staff for use on all of our anatomy exams (you walk around the room to different parts/bodies and identify whatever is tagged, and this specimen was always identifiable by the only laughing medical student as they kept rotating around the room).
Most likely done for just that reason
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My sister eventually went to the Dr about a hard lump in her stomach which ended up being a cyst on her ovary. By the time they operated on her 2 months later she looked like she was full term pregnant.
Removed a 13kg cyst. Strangely, she doesn’t have PCOS, just the one, unlike me who has suffered they symptoms of it all my adult life. She lost an ovary but recovered well.
When i was in med school, i had a 3 y/o girl come in for a check up. Was checking her heart, and it seemed abit off. When i brought it up to the mother, she said that the girl had situs inversus totalis, or, in other words, all of her organs were on the opposite side of the body, including the heart. When I checked the right side of the child's chest, the PMI ( point of maximal impulse) was normal and the heart sound was normal. What the kicker of this girls condition was that not only was this a very rare condition, she was the only person in the world to have the particular mutation. In other words, her mutation was rare, even among other people with situs inversus totalis.
To clarify for the non-biologists among us, especially since this is the second post about situs inversus, there are degrees to which the anatomy can be flipped. Sometimes it's as simple as a person who is genetically right handed actually being left handed (or vice versa) - it's the brain that's flipped. Sometimes the chest cavity is normal, but the abdominal organs are all backwards. Sometimes the abdomen is normal, but the chest cavity is flipped. In the case of Situs Inversus Totalis, the *entire* anatomy is reversed. Usually it's harmless to the person, but can cause medical confusion. Appendicitis is a big problem because it appears on the left rather than right, and is often mis-diagnosed. (Iirc, this is why I remember Donny Osmond specifically, because he nearly died of missed appendicitis.) And can you imagine needing a transplant? Almost impossible because of the anatomical differences, though I'm sure transplant surgeons will give it a darned good go to figure something out.
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My grandmother has 2 stomachs, like a cow. Her doctor asked if he could publish an essay about this, and she agreed. I have searched and searched and never found the actual article, but it's still pretty interesting. She is like 5'2 and 100lbs so no she isn't overweight or excessively hungry. She also found out she was pregnant with my mom after having a tumor removed from her stomach. We joke that they left the tumor and took my mom out, because she's kind of a human cancer lol.
I went to the University of Illinois, where the famous cows with windows were first done. They lived in a part of campus I didn’t go to often. One day, I was headed home after taking my Tuxedo cat to the university vet, and we stopped to look at the cows and introduce Raleigh to them. I don’t know what I was thinking because, of course, Raleigh was terrified. His head was smaller than their noses, but the cows were interested in him. They were Holsteins, so kinda like Tuxedo cats in being black and white.
It's not quite like that - more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruminant#Digestive_system_of_ruminants
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A p***s with two heads. Only one had a true urethra orifice. Funniest thing, he had 8 kids. I couldn't stop staring at his wife the whole time he was at the ER.
My colleague was embalming an autopsied male and found two hairnets, numerous plastic tissue sample slides, a plastic urine container (with another person’s name on it) and over twenty seven latex gloves within his abdominal cavity...
Kind of sounds like the abdominal cavity was being used as a wastebasket
Oh that's so disrespectful and I really hope it was reported and that somebody lost their license
Sirenomelia (mermaid syndrome). Born about 5 months premature. She didn't make it, and she was brought down to the pathology lab for examination.
Five months early birth is not premature it's miscarriage (loss of fetus before 20 weeks).
Another reason why abortion should be available to all women. Not every pregnancy is sunshine and rainbows
Rare congenital deformity. Legs fused together= a tail. Usually live less than a week. Main causes include smoking, dr ug and alcohol use during pregnancy, lack of oxygen in uterus, amino acid imbalance but there are other reasons
In cadaver anatomy, the woman we dissected was just filled with tumors. That wasn’t the way she died. One of her ovaries was basically entirely taken over by tumors. It was really odd to see, and odd that they had apparently never known/found out until after death.
That was the big one, but there were so many weird small things that it makes you wonder what there is weird about your own body that you may never know!
Ovarian tumours are difficult to detect until too late. Not for nothing is it known as the silent killer. My large tumour was found after I'd been x-rayed for an unrelated issue. Thanks to my local NHS hospital I am still here 21 years on.
Mine was found in a routine physical when my GP palpated my abdomen. Like the deceased in the post, it had pretty much taken over my ovary, and I had a second one on the other side that was smaller. Turned out to be borderline; I'm still on surveillance for a couple more years, but I'm expected to be fine.
Load More Replies...This is why most doctors are wary of these new full body scans being offered. There are so many little things that are unusual but perfectly normal and harmless for the person who has it that the scans will cause more harm than good. However, early identification of cancers that are mainly asymptomatic, like ovarian cancer, can only be a good thing.
I have 5 autoimmune sicknesses and another persons liver in my body. Aka a whole lot of s***s going on in my body. I do NOT want to know, what I dont know! 😳 You know?? 😉
I also had to remove a nail from a guy's head. He figured it must've went off while reloading. He had intractable tooth pain, so he got sent by his dentist for a CT and low and behold there was a nail in his cranium.
I assume the dentist will have done x-rays first, before referring for something expensive? Did they not think to mention this?
Have you never had dental X-rays before?! They X-ray your teeth. Not your entire skull
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ER physician and i think I’ve seen almost everything... really... it’s like anything anyone can think that is messed up they have come to see me in the ER! Welded c**k ring on for a week causing guy to lose his junk, fingernail polish remover bottle in an 85 year old mans a*s that ended up causing him to get a colostomy, multiple small vibrators on and active in a lady that said she couldn’t reach it...
even a terrible case where i found a big a*s square 6Volt battery in a woman’s v****a ... she came in because she thought her pimp had put an oil can in her because black liquid was coming out, but turns out the moisture caused the battery to make connection and charred the inside of her to crisp!
I had a patient intern year who had an interesting story about his abdominal pain and constipation. CT showed a can of hairspray which had been inserted rectally but migrated up his sigmoid to the descending colon. It had to be removed surgically, rectoscopes could not grasp the end of the can.
Edit descending colon and pic.
My friend's mum was a student nurse in her earlier years.
She was with the doctor in charge at the hospital when a young man was presented to them with a small bust of Queen Victoria wedged in his backside.
"How on earth did he swallow that?" she asked the doctor...
A strange choice of sovereign for this particular activity.
Oh, I don't know. From what's said about Queen Victoria when she was younger, she'd probably approve. Perhaps not of using a bust of her, but in general? More than likely.
Load More Replies... Not a doctor, but my mother was born with a rare condition that, in 1968, should have k**led her.
A “twin” that failed never got fully reabsorbed into her body before she was born which resulted in a *massive* cervical teratoma (as in, was crushing her heart and lungs as well as her throat). The only reason she wasn’t stillborn was because her mother had a UTI which caused a premature birth by about 60 days (on Christmas, nonetheless). Only 1 surgeon was willing to even attempt an operation and he *just so happened* to be passing through town for a medical conference.
Due to the loss of almost her entire thyroid as well as oxygen deprivation issues she was supposed to be mentally challenged, but she turned out fine. Couldn’t put on any weight for most of her childhood and persistent temperature regulations issues (she’s always cold) but other than that she’s fine.
A glowstick in a guys bladder. The dude went to a club and shoved the glowstick up his urethra.
You'd REALLY have to try. Putting a 24 Fr Foley with a ton of lube is hard enough.
Load More Replies...Probably the autopsy I did on conjoined twins. Posterior thoracic fusion. Two mouths into 1 esophagus to 1 stomach split at the pylorus into 2 sets of intestines, then it all came back together in this cloaca style mess at the bottom. Heads were in such close proximity that their occiputs moved laterally to accommodate for room and fused together too. Which in turn made the spinal column make a 90 rotation to reach the base of the brain. All kinds of crazy stuff on that one. Oh, and it was the first autopsy I did in medical school.
I was a mortician for a religious organisation, and I have to say that The Butt Plug Conundrum of 2013 was among the more difficult issues I’ve faced in the field. A decedent arrived in my morgue with a bejewelled butt plug firmly in place within the r****m, which led to a very interesting issue- if the family had known that the deceased was likely to have had such an item, we’d be screwed if we didn’t list it amongst personal effects to be returned to the family, but if they were as vanilla as most of the relevant religious community claimed to be such an item would probably be considered a slanderous perversion. Fortunately, my boss was a member of the relevant clergy, so I simply removed the item and popped it into a biohazard bag for him to decide upon.
Edit- I actually don’t know what decision was reached, and alas, that boss has since shuffled off the mortal coil himself.
I'm guessing that if it went into a biohazard bag, if would have to have been appropriately destroyed.
As a "personal effect", I wouldn't want that to be returned. Nor any similar item. Either to me, or from me.
In med school my anatomy group had trouble transecting the p***s on genital dissection day. Turns out the cadaver had a penile inplant. Two thick braided wires coated in plastic. We couldn't figure it out but the instructor came by and recognized it immediately, liberating the shaft with a vigorous upward thrust and leaving the implant protruding from the pelvis. He also had some hernia mesh but that was less interesting.
The IPP (inflatable penile implant) gives another meaning to pump it up.
Another unusual finding that's good for students to see and accept as being normal. Although I can understand that's a confusing one as they're still relatively uncommon
My girlfriend is a dental nurse. She's only been working for a year or so, but she's already seen her fair share of weird stuff. So anyways, a dude comes in and says his teeth hurt really badly so she and the dentist have a look around. They tell the guy that everything looks in order, but he insists that there must be something wrong. After double checking again they can't find anything, but the guy insists so they send him to get X-rayed. They look at the results and, well, his teeth are fine, but his jaw is perfectly broken in half along the middle, the only thing keeping it in place being the flesh around it. After some coaxing, the guy says that he got into a bar fight and got hit across the face with a baseball bat, but he didn't think it was that serious or that they would find out. Needless to say, they sent him to the hospital instead. I don't know why, but the thought of your jaw getting broken along the middle is really discomforting.
Oh and there was also this other time where they found a huge fly between a chick's teeth, and the patient hadn't even realised it was there.
Wouldn't there be bruising if one was hit hard enough in the face with a baseball bat to break bone?????
Although it's not mentioned, maybe the guy had facial hair?
Load More Replies...This is a comparatively fragile joint, as it is where the skeleton joins in the womb. He may have had a congenital weakness.
Removed a man who died standing up. His feet were so blistered from gravity filling his feet with his fluids that i could clearly see his foot bones in the like seeing something in an inflated baloon.
I'd never thought about what would happen if someone diēd standing up. This makes perfect sense.
You would need to remain standing after dieing and I would think not have shoes on
Load More Replies...Nursing student here. I was taking care an older male patient who had recently been paralyzed from the waste down and had bouts of confusion and disorientation. I went to bath him only to see that his p***s was completely split down the middle from the urethra all the way down the shaft folding out the like a banana peel. Poor guy didn’t know it was like that and luckily couldn’t feel it. I think it may have been due to the catheter...
Urologist here. It is called urethral decubitus (bed sore) caused by catheter. It doesn't hurt (since most of the patients are unconscious or paralyzed) and it doesn't bleed. It develops very slowly and can split p***s in half in extreme cases.
When was that catheter last changed??? Extra care should be taken with paraplegic patients, not less. They can't tell you if something doesn't feel right. He might be lucky he couldn't feel the end result, but he might have known earlier if something was going wrong. That doesn't just happen.
I work in mortuaries in England. There's the usual beheadings, train jumpers and decomps etc but as to weird you don't get much of interest outside of the occasionally interesting history of death (most are just depressing).
I did once do a post mortem on an elderly (84) gentleman and while the doctor was dissecting his bladder they found and old felt-tip pen lid (anyone growing up before the millennium will recognise the type I'm talking about, the tops look crenellated like a castle walls) not a comfortable item to of inserted up your urethra but apparently at some time in his (hopefully) youth he had done exactly that, maybe he'd put the whole pen up and lost the lid? Not sure...
A friend of mine once did a post mortem and a 600 year old knight that was dug up underneath st bees abbey. They'd preserved him so well that his clothes, hair, everything was still intact. He even had some blood left in him when they eviscerated him, crazy really.
Tbh I think that once you've been doing it for a while your idea of weird changes a bit and it's hard to pick out what you'd be interested in as it's all a bit ubiquitous to us.
"Internal decapitation" is a relatively common [traumatic] cause of death.
Load More Replies... MRI:
2 kidneys(normal)
2 bladders, urethras, vaginas and uteruses.
Knew a girl who had her entire reproductive system duplicated. She had two periods a month and could conceivably (no pun intended) get pregnant twice, four months apart.
Father owns a crematory, we once cremated a man (with no clothes and not in any container) and along with his ashes came a massive belt buckle. I kid you not, we have no idea how it got in him but it was definitely there.
Any medical hardware is removed from the ashes and given to or sold to recycling companies before the ashes go in the urn. Sometimes they are even turned into other medical hardware
Weirdest thing was in a woman’s intestine- a dead mouse. Tiny little thing.... obviously never got the chance to ask how the mouse got there as this was post mortem. Definitely unexpected though...
Hopefully this happened post-mortem. If not, it's going to have been gross.
Doctor here. Guy came in and told me he stuck a giant Cuban cigar up his ballon knot because he had an itch in his intestine. Apparently, his wife usually does it but she’s out of town. Okaaaay dude.
Teratomas (tumors) with teeth/hair. Pretty gross.
Another dude who was constantly putting screws up his ureathra because it “kept him hard”.
You want to start with the impossible intestinal "itch", or the scréws?
Load More Replies...The last one did a hell of a lot of damage and he needed a shrink and a Urologist
Not me, but my boyfriend's mom is a doctor for people with special needs.
One of her patients, an older man with Down Syndrome (among other diagnoses) appeared to have extreme abdominal pains that lasted for weeks. They did several tests and tried some medication but the pain wouldn't stop. He also suffered from constipation and stopped eating altogether at some point. The source of his trouble remained a mystery for almost two weeks and the doctors were starting to get desperate. Then suddenly one afternoon my boyfriend's mom got a call from her clinic (she's the head of the department so they let her know when something important happens while she's not on duty) that this man had finally been able to go to the toilet and among some stool was a blue latex glove.
Over the following days he passed about 20 of these in total and he felt better and better and luckily started eating again. Most likely he had somehow been able to steal the gloves from the cleaning lady's cart and ate them without anybody knowing/seeing, causing the gloves to get stuck in his intestine while absorbing his digested food, filling up like little poop balloons in his stomach.
This really is one of the weirdest stories I've ever heard, but my boyfriend's mom said he had been known for eating weird stuff, like this one time he ate a T shirt.
Edit: TL;DR Man experiences abdominal pains, unable to s**t and stops eating. After nearly two weeks of this he starts s******g blue latex gloves filled with poop and feels fine again.
I'm assuming one of his diagnoses was pica? And has enough of a mental deficit to not be able to communicate that he's eaten something he shouldn't have? Such a shame. Probably needs more care than the home is able to give him.
Worked for the local medical examiners for a few years. Got a guy who died at home and wasn’t found for a couple days. His cats had snacked in him a bit (not super uncommon but still unnerving in concept). In his pockets, found a receipt for cat food.
Sad. But once you dīe you lose relevance to pets when they're hungry. On the plus side - dog owners - apparently dogs will wait until they're at dēath's door before munching on you. Cats, apparently not.
If I died and my cats had no food I'd prefer that they eat me rather than starve.
Load More Replies...I have no doubt that my cats would eat me if I died. Sometimes I swear they're trying to trip me so they can speed up the process. ;)
Med student here:
Mom comes in with her son saying he hasn't been able to pee the last day. Kid asks if we can see him without the mom present. She obliged. Well it turns out the kid shoved about 3 meters of a clothe line up his urethra. The clothe line got tied up into a knot in his bladder an he couldn't get it back out himself. Fun times!
Why? For what purpose would anyone do this? I cringe, just thinking about it.
Age of kid is important here. Are we talking about actual kid, or a teen who's experimenting with the wrong thing?
To clarify: wrong thing being something other than an appropriate, clean toy. If sounding is his thing, then by all means, do so safely.
Load More Replies...Paramedic here. For our morgue rotation, Isaw a couple of cool cases. The first guy was a older-middle aged black guy, found in his apartment that was sealed very well. He was NEON GREEN. Not really decomposed but intact and actually green. He had HIV, hep c and all the co- morbities that come with it. They pathologist said it was a mixture of all his meds and the environment of the apartment. The next guy was a s*****e who jumped from a bridge, he shattered his legs from the landing in the water. He got caught on a piece of floating debris and half the body was submerged and half above water. The half above the water was mummified by the sun and the other half a bloated watery mess. The last guy was brought in as we were cleaning up. Approximately 40yo man, morbidly obese still wrapped in his blanket from home. He had an apparent MI from all the coke and physical exertion with the hooker that called 911 and dipped after taking all his money. When they took the blanket off, this guy had THE BIGGEST d**k piercing anyone has ever seen. When they opened him up his heart was the size of my head.
Depends on your viewpoint, I suppose. I think they sound very cool. It's the same way that I found my uni lectures on cancer and HIV extremely cool, from a clinical perspective. Weirdly, I can even do it with my own unusual condition - the science is something I want to get in a lab and poke with a (sterile) stick, even though I'm one of the people I want to poke with said stick. It's all a question of how the brain works. And is why some doctors should *not* be doctors... They can do the science, but not the people
Load More Replies... I'm a medical student so I haven't seen much, but the first autopsy I attended was interesting.
The medical examiner found a cyst in the spleen about the size of a cantaloupe. The examiner told us to back away while she popped it because of the potential burst of fluid/pus. But it didn't burst, instead we heard a huge crack! It had calcified and looked like a huge, pus-filled ostrich egg.
The examiner was visibly shaken and said she hadn't seen anything of that size and that we should feel lucky that we got to witness it.
Not sure if I feel lucky, but it was certainly interesting!
A broken of piece of a cd in a wound. It was a mental ill girl who self harmed her with broken CD and she shoved a piece (3-4cm) under her skin. I was about to sew the wound when I thought it looked kinda weird.
A real grub inside a tooth.
An old patient came to us with a longterm and several pain in her tooth.
The doctor extracted the tooth and put it into a tray. After 1 minute, we saw a grub crawling out from the tooth. This woman had lived with it for at least 6 month...
I think it is probably maggot.
Tooth was probably rotten for six months, maggot was probably a relatively new addition
Load More Replies... Heard a story from a urologist when I was in medical school about a guy who came in for a vasectomy. During the procedure, the urologist has trouble finding the vas deferens. So he orders a few tests, turns out the guy has bilateral congenital absence of the vas deferens (CAVD).
But the guy had three kids...
That must have been an awkward conversation post-op. It's not like you can just not tell him - it's part of his medical records. And his kids deserve to be aware of any medical issues on their bio father(s)'s side.
Theatre nurse here. Probably not to weird but we started a gastric sleeve on a huge women, stuck the camera in and she was riddled with cancer. Really weird she had no symptoms. She ended up losing all her weight without the sleeve.
I assume that a theatre nurse is what would be known as an operating room nurse in the US? Two nations separated by a common language. https://daily.jstor.org/inside-the-operating-theater-surgery-as-spectacle/
During an autopsy, we found a plastic shamrock that was about 3-4" big in some guy's stomach.
The list goes on, but recently saw a patient with the complain of vaporizer cartridge stuck up his a*s #vapenaish.
Christmas lights, potatoes, hairspray cans, bejewelled butt-plug, vaporiser. Does human ingenuity have no bounds?
I'm a pathologist and during training I was working with the local medical examiner and had a case of gunshot wound to the chest that penetrated the heart; however, no exit wound was found and no bullet was recovered upon evaluation of the heart. An X-ray revealed bullet fragments within the major arterial vessels in the legs which presumably occurred when the bullet, lodged in the ventricular spaces of the heart, was taken up by the last agonal circulatory heart beats and carried down to the lower extremities via the aorta through to the femoral arteries.
Work in theatres with lots of other nurses who have worked in ER and one told me about a woman who came in with a buzz light year inside her... she had been using it to pleasure herself and the wings had released and it got stuck.
Not an anomaly but my favourite “what’s the weirdest thing anyone has come in with” story.
https://daily.jstor.org/inside-the-operating-theater-surgery-as-spectacle/
Lukas did, as a reply to Nathaniel. Unless you meant the joke Nathaniel made. Either way, you're covered.
Load More Replies... I used to teach human anatomy. Weirdest cadaver we ever had came in with cause of death listed as chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (very common for our cadavers.) Once we opened him up we discovered a lot of weird s**t.
He had a baseball-sized tumor right at the curve between his ascending and transverse colon, which f****d up both sections. His liver was malformed and tilted posteriorly. We never found his gallbladder but there were still cystic ducts, so I’m not sure if the tumor wrapped around it or he has had it removed. He had a number is cysts on his kidneys, including once the size of a over-filled water balloon that was filled with dark green fluid.
The kicker though was a massive aneurysm at the end of the abdominal aorta. It was the size of a duck’s egg. It was so big when I first saw it I assumed it was a tumor on his spine and not an aneurysm. It was also full of plaque, like a centimeter thick on the entire arterial wall.
The problem with getting cadavers fo teaching is that we get limited medical history. There was a lot of shrugging from me when my students asked why something looked weird.
Yikes. That cyst sounds like it should probably be avoided. Dark green fluid probably does not smell awesome.
Nurse here. When caring for the super-morbidly obese, it is important to do a thorough skin assessment to ensure they don’t have any wounds or other strangeness. It isn’t uncommon for people to hide food there because they know we aren’t going to give them some of their favorite things in the hospital. Sometimes stuff gets in there by accident, like wrappers or, in one instance, a small remote control. Sometimes, tragedy strikes...
Weirdest thing I ever found hiding in a fold: a dead mouse. Poor thing crawled in there and got stuck. It had been dead for a bit by the time I found it, too.
I'm none of those workers but my mom's new husband had a kidney stone once. It turned out it is not just a stone, practically his whole kidney turned into stone. Cannot imagine how painfull it was. After surgery they give it to us but they say the NEED it back after a week for educational purposes. It was a half-fist size bean-formed shimmering black stone. Shame i forget to film it.
Can’t say I’m a doctor(or anything else), but due to serval surgical mishaps from my father getting put under, the hospital in my area is now legally required to make you sign a form that says you don’t have atypical anatomy.
For clarification, my father went in to get his appendicitis checked out and the doctor didn’t listen to him when he said that his appendix wasn’t where it was supposed to be. The doctor straight up told him he was lying and then tried to remove it normally.
To make a long story short, that didn’t go so well. After the surgery, my father was woken up to the doctor apologizing (never a good thing to do to a patient), saying my father was right about everything. Well, except for the foot long appendix that had grown from its normal place and was basically strangling his liver.
Again, sorry I’m not a doctor or a medical professional. You guys rock and I wish I had the guts(sorry pun) to go through with what you guys do.
Actually, it's a good thing to apologise to a patient when they're right. It's a sign of humility, and hopefully a learning opportunity for that doctor. I'm a bit intrigued about the documentation though - most people don't know they've got unusual anatomy unless it's caused problems in the past. And if you know, what does the hospital do? Refuse life-saving care?
First Assist for a Cesarean Section and The Baby I pulled up is Anencephalic (Meaning No Skull/Brain).
That usually known these days. Shows up on ultrasound - it's fairly noticeable. If the pregnant person has chosen to carry to term, it's usually to donate the organs to other babies in need. Neonatal organs are, unsurprisingly, in short supply, and choosing to do this is an amazing thing. The parent(s) must be so strong.
Not in the biz, but my Granda went for an ultrasound at 80 (his first) turned out his liver was twice as big, only had one kidney, and his gull bladder and some intestines were all twisted and backwards. The doctors felt it should have caused problems earlier, they just removed his gull and a some other stuff and he lived another 8 years.
I’m hoping they actually removed his gall bladder, rather than there being a gull to remove,. Judging by the rest of these posts, I’m not that really that hopeful though.
Maggots in a guy’s suprapubic catheter. They were borrowing around the tubing, and the urologist had to flush maggots from the guy’s bladder.
Suprapubic catheters are inserted in the abdomen and held by a stitch, so technically an 'open wound' which obviously became infected.
Load More Replies... *NOT FOR THE SQUEAMISH*
Used to work in a psychiatric hospital. Had many trips to A&E due to somebody trying to insert objects into their body as a form of self harm. And not just ingesting it (although people swallowing knives/blades and other objects was common), but literally inserting items into their limbs. Pens were really common and some patients would show me on their arms where the pens still are and could move them around under the skin etc. I wasn’t usually squeamish in that job but that made me nauseous. It took a lot of effort to get them in which I think is the bit that disturbed me the most.
I worked very briefly for my states department of corrections and can confirm that prisoners in the mental health facilities routinely stick pens up their urethra. We don't even let them have hard pens, so IDK how they were getting them.
I'm a funeral director. I haven't seen anything too anatomically weird. But I did have an innocent seeming old man with a tattoo on his shaft. Also, we had an obese woman and when we were embalming/bathing her, a sugar packet fell out of a fat roll. Just one of those little pink ones. It seemed like it had been in there for a while...
ICU nurse here. Had to prep a patient with a rectal-vaginal anastomosis (a connection between the v****a and r****m). Every time I would insert the enema into her r****m, all the s**t water would come out of her v****a.
I honestly don't know if this is my weirdest but it's the first that comes to mind.
Did an autopsy once where the patient’s plasma separated from the blood. One giant plasma ball. It was really weird.
Not a doctor/ME, we had a car accident case with a single female driver in really bad condition. While being treated it was discovered she had a very large purple vibrator inside of her. I believe it was was still on.
https://babylonbee.com/news/experts-confirm-you-are-the-only-person-on-earth-who-can-safely-text-and-drive
Hamartoma on ovary filled with hair and mucus.
Had a pt that had such bad nasal polyps that he hadn't breathed thru his nose in 25+years. The polyps had deformed his nose to the point where he looked like he had a lion-like nose. It got to the point where he had polyps visibly dangling in his nose. Took 3, 3hr sessions with the roto rooter just to open a passageway.
Had a pt with a clouded over eye that stayed open when anesthetized. She was a crack a****t, the d**g had taken a toll on her looks, and it was really creepy.
I was had an ENT tell me I had the second worst nasal polyps he'd ever seen. Clearly he hadn't met this guy. Eeeek.
The cadaver used in my anatomy class was an elderly man with the largest inguinal hernia I've ever seen. Almost all of his small bowel had slipped into his s*****m, meaning it had stretched all the way down to his knees.
Apparently it was not related to his cause of death, but still, can't imagine it was easy to live with your guts in your balls.
We had a dialysis patient with a huge hernia. Every time she coughed it looked like something out of Alien.
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Here’s another weird one... 3 golf b***s in a man's stomach. His cause of death was lung cancer. Still trying to figure out how he ate golf b***s/how long they were in there considering he was on life support for 2 weeks before he died.
Had a kid, a**s imperforate, not that uncommon. Basically, his intestines ended in a blind pouch. What *was* odd though, is that his genitals were rotated. When you took off his diaper, the s*****m sat on top, the p***s was under it, pointing back.
A fair number of cloverleaf head kids.
An omphalocele that contained all of the large intestine, the liver, part of the small, and part of a lung.
Edit: am peds nurse.
Cloverleaf head syndrome, also known as Kleeblattschädel syndrome or deformity, is a rare skull deformity characterized by a trilobed skull shape, resembling a cloverleaf. This syndrome is a form of craniosynostosis, where the skull sutures (joints between bones) fuse prematurely, causing the skull to bulge outward.
Load More Replies...Interned with an ME and we had a case where the death was very, very sudden. He didn’t really complain about any pain or anything, and then was gone. We open him up and there’s blood behind a kidney. Almost an entire liter of blood in the cavity, with no sign at all of internal bleeding.
Every letter of the English alphabet tattooed on a piece of extra skin flapping on some chicks v****a. Hence the name.
How does the skin of a v****a flap? Unless it's prolapsed? Or did OP mean labia? Hence what name?
MicrowaveGoddess has, I think, sussed this one -the OP's Reddit username is AZ_Anomaly. I'd love to know the answer to the other part though - I'm thinking the person in question had some larger than usual labía minora, but I could be wrong. I'm really hoping not a prolapse, though I suppose it could be that they had a very thick hymén, that remained attached after breaking, and hung out?
Load More Replies... I dissected a cadaver that had his liver shifted superior (upward) to the point where it was under his ribcage. There was so little space for his lungs, like the maximum width of his thoracic cavity was my hand-length (15cm)
His kidneys were also shifted upward, and the right one had this huge calcified cyst. It was VERY odd feeling some bone-like shards from where I thought his kidneys were.
About a decade ago, I was doing a ride along with a local paramedic EMS crew to recertify my EMT license. We got a call for transport FROM the hospital, and directions to swap rigs to the bariatric bus. Driver calls on the phone to get more details and keep chatter off of the radio. We have a patient being discharged from the ER who is too obese to be taken home via any other really available transport.
Yay! A big, big fat guy. This will make a great story later, right?
We get to the hospital and the paramedic goes in with the supervisor while the driver and I swap rigs with the super a who brought the bariatric bus. Pretty similar to a typical box ambulance with better suspension, an lower deck height, a wider patient area, a stowable ramp, and a Warn winch (like on your buddy's Jeep) up front to pull the patient in on the gurney.
We wander into the ER, curious about the hold up, and wait near the nurse's station nearest his curtain. He's big, maybe 450-500#, but surprisingly ambulatory (or at least standing). We're getting disappointed, thinking we were getting a >600# dude and a great story to tell.
As the nurse's finish up with him everyone starts to prepare to get the big fella on the super gurney for the ride home. And then he turned around, with the poor, under-sized hospital gown hopelessly wide open in the back.
What the f**k was that between his legs? It looked like 2 watermelon-sized fleshy cysts hanging down between his legs.
I looked at the driver and said, "He's going home with tumors on his c****h?"
The driver looks at me and chuckles, and simply said, "Not tumors."
It took me a moment to realize, those were his testicles. ELEPHANTIASIS OF THE TESTES. I still can't un-see it, and I've seen all manner of gruesome road accidents over the years. This was the one that haunts me.
Do yourself a favor and don't Google it. You're welcome.
I work as an embalmer at a high volume funeral home. One day I was working on a deceased who had been autopsied (very common, nothing out of the ordinary there) except when I opened up their cranial sutures to remove the skull cap before injection, I noticed something very different than what Ive seen many times before. There was a baseball size area behind the ear at the base of the skull that was missing. In place of the missing skull, were pieces of her ribs, they looked to be split in half And wired together and then bolted to her skull to form a sheild of ribs.
Sounds like a mastoidectomy, possibly to remove a tumour. They need to replace the missing bone with something - floating ribs are nice and easy to access
Not a doctor but one of my twins was born with two holes in his p***s. One for wee and the other we wouldn’t talk to him about until he was of age. There’s a name for it but cba Googling it. Anyway, one quick operation and that was fixed before he was even 1. He has no idea.
Mate's mum was a nurse and she told the tail of an old lady that came in complaining of sprouts growing out of her v****a, turns out she had a prolapsed uterus and had put a potato up there to help it and forgot.
This is a very good post. Gross in 'several' places, but still very interesting.
Urologist here. Once I found a tiny bottle of perfume tester in woman's bladder. She showed it up her urethra due to pleasure.
Didn't know until I was in my 30s but found out I have an extra discount in my lumber. Turns out it causes issues for any injection into my spinal cord since access isn't where doctors expect it to be
Wow! They charge you less for injections even though it’s harder work? I haven’t gotten a discount from my body on anything!
Load More Replies...This is a very good post. Gross in 'several' places, but still very interesting.
Urologist here. Once I found a tiny bottle of perfume tester in woman's bladder. She showed it up her urethra due to pleasure.
Didn't know until I was in my 30s but found out I have an extra discount in my lumber. Turns out it causes issues for any injection into my spinal cord since access isn't where doctors expect it to be
Wow! They charge you less for injections even though it’s harder work? I haven’t gotten a discount from my body on anything!
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