This article is based on the AskReddit question "Redditors who work in the ER, what's the scariest/dumbest/weirdest thing someone has came in for?"
[Source can be found at the end of the article.]
1/16. Had a lady come in for shortness of breath. Began to place an oxygen mask on her. She yells "I'm allergic to oxygen!" and pulls the mask off. I heard the doctor laugh behind the curtain.
-Hoax13
2/16. My friend worked in ER. She had an obese man come in complaining of a rash under his gut. Upon close examination they found several splinters. When asked, the man casually replied "oh, that must be from the love board." So the crew had to ask for details. Apparently, the couple had to use a board to pry the man's gut up to get to his penis for love making activities.
-11111one11111
3/16. My wife is an ER nurse. Valentine's Day tends to bring in the best stories. A few years ago a couple came in with lacerations all over their bodies. Apparently, the guy had duct taped a large mirror to the ceiling for sex and it fell and broke all over them. My wife got to pull little pieces of glass out of the lady's scull and back for a few hours.
-FundipTuesday
4/16. A 20 year old male came in for stomach pains. Said he was hungry. Hadn't eaten in two days.
-mech3
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5/16. My aunt is a nurse and this is her story:
Two extremely drunk men came in. One of them fell down the stairs and somehow he got glass in his eye. His friends pulled out the glass and sealed the gash in his eye with superglue. The meds had to soak his eye in acetone to get it open.
-brianofcortlandt
6/16. A lady who came into the ER, spilled her soda on the floor then frantically began cleaning it up with her hands because she "didn't want the government coming in to collect her DNA". Now you may be thinking she had Schizophrenia or something else that causes delusions like I did, but nope. All that was wrong was she had pain in her knees, overall though, she was healthy, just dumb.
-barrancabermeja
7/16. Currently writing this in the ER, during a slow moment. Probably the dumbest I've had was a husband and wife who rode in an ambulance together, both clearly drug seeking. For whatever reason, they were placed in rooms across the hall from each other and kept yelling back and forth about what drugs they were getting.
The ambulance was initially called for the wife, who had fallen down stairs (no injuries visible or on x-rays). The husband rode in with them and checked in, claiming the wife had fallen into him and taken them both to the ground. The husband's only injury was where he said his feet had tangled in the steps. There was no bruising, swelling, abrasions, etc., but he had clearly just manually pulled out 5 of his toenails. They were not contiguous toes, and it involved both feet. Just the nails.
-therunnykind
8/16. Morbidly obese guy came in for right lower quadrant pain. I Lifted up his gut and found his lost wallet. Solved two problems.
-ferretnoise
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9/16. Two stories:
A 30-something year old rancher that was out four wheeling with friends, they bet him he couldn't climb a tree...he did. Then they bet him he couldn't jump out of the tree and land upright...he did. Both legs broke. He had a pretty good sense of humor about the whole thing, and barely needed pain meds.
Another was a teen boy, came in because he got upset at a party and punched a window, the glass cut him. When I say cut him I mean a few tiny cuts and scrapes. no glass lodged in the wounds, and he needed exactly zero stitches. We cleaned him up and he cried endlessly. The funny part was that he had full sleeve tattoos, and when the doc brought up the idea that the tattoos had to have hurt way worse than the scratches, he just cried more. We had to laugh about that one. It is kind of callous of us, but something about that situation was just funny.
-Inittornit
10/16. Guy comes in with a salt shaker lodged in his rectum. Said he was changing a lightbulb then somehow fell onto it.
-Theedukeybrown
11/16. I had a 19 year old guy come into the ED on the night shift on 4/20 this year. His complaint was that after he got high he decided to masturbate and his urethra felt harder than normal. Not his penis. His urethra. I got to the room to assess him and he was in the bathroom peeing. His poor girlfriend was sitting in the corner of the room with her head in her hands out of embarrassment. He got back from the bathroom, stood in the doorway and said "you know....I feel better now....I think I'm just going to go home...". And then he turned around and walked out.
-MadDoctor47
12/16. A parent was convinced their child had internal bleeding because she ate an entire pint of blueberries, which caused her poop to turn a blueish colour. Her discharge diagnosis was literally "ate a carton of blueberries
-BooRadler
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13/16. I used to be an EMT and one time we got called to a house in the middle of the night for a patient with belly pain.
We get to his house and he is bent over a chair in extreme pain.
We get him in the ambulance and start taking him to the ER. The whole drive he's letting out these tiny farts that are deadly. He's also yelling that he just needs to fart. Can't we give him something to make him fart?
The ER doc asks us if there is a possibility of a foreign body issue and I say that I didn't check. Doctor sends him to the CT scanner where he lets rip with a fart that echoed. He felt better and left the ER. They had to close the scanner to air it out.
-dev_c0t0d0s0
14/16. Guy came in said "I think a bug crawled up my ass this week! I'm sleeping somewhere..uh..not so nice. I feel him crawlin around in there!!" He had a hemorrhoid
Or the lady that had an allergy list a mile long, including: "all poisonous plants" (duh we're all allergic to them hence POISONOUS) and "cocaine gives me anaphylaxis
-Kaatiekay
15/16. Guy walked in completely impailed with a 4x4 wood post. He was drinking and working on his roof when he fell off. His buddy got a chainsaw, cut the bottom of the post, and somehow the impaled guy stood in the back of the pickup for the ride to the er. He walked in the reception area and said "hey everybody, I hope you don't mind if I cut in line a bit. This seems quite serious" and promptly passed out. He survived.
-butterflytestic
16/16. Did a chest x-Ray on a male in the ICU with severe pneumonia. He was barely able to get a breath. On an X-Ray his lungs were completely white. White means dense, hard material (like bone or metal) lungs are a mixture of black (air) and grey ( tissue/mucus). It was weird with the compete whiteness and I wondered what kind of material it is or what happened to his lungs so I called the doc for a medical history. The doc replied thusly:
"Patient was on a bender, looking for drugs. He broke into his neighbors garage and found a batch of powder in his neighbors fishing tackle box and snorted the whole thing. A few days later he developed pneumonia. It turns out that the fisherman neighbors sister had died years ago and the fisherman kept her ashes in his tacklebox so she went with him whenever he went fishing, just like when she was alive. The patient had snorted the leftover metallic ash of his neighbors dead sister."
He died a week later.
-TriscuitCracker
(Source)
Experiencing death is a fascinating and frightening idea.
Who doesn't want to know what is waiting for us on the other side?
But so many of us want to know and then come back and live a little longer.
It would be so great to be sure there is something else.
But the whole dying part is not that great, so we'll have to rely on other people's accounts.
Redditor AlaskaStiletto wanted to hear from everyone who has returned to life, so they asked:
"Redditors who have 'died' and come back to life, what did you see?"
Sensations
Happy Good Vibes GIF by Major League SoccerGiphy"My dad's heart stopped when he had a heart attack and he had to be brought back to life. He kept the paper copy of the heart monitor which shows he flatlined. He said he felt an overwhelming sensation of peace, like nothing he had felt before."
PeachesnPain
Recovery
"I had surgical complications in 2010 that caused a great deal of blood loss. As a result, I had extremely low blood pressure and could barely stay awake. I remember feeling like I was surrounded by loved ones who had passed. They were in a circle around me and I knew they were there to guide me onwards. I told them I was not ready to go because my kids needed me and I came back."
"My nurse later said she was afraid she’d find me dead every time she came into the room."
"It took months, and blood transfusions, but I recovered."
good_golly99
Take Me Back
"Overwhelming peace and happiness. A bright airy and floating feeling. I live a very stressful life. Imagine finding out the person you have had a crush on reveals they have the same feelings for you and then you win the lotto later that day - that was the feeling I had."
"I never feared death afterward and am relieved when I hear of people dying after suffering from an illness."
rayrayrayray
Free
The Light Minnie GIF by (G)I-DLEGiphy"I had a heart surgery with near-death experience, for me at least (well the possibility that those effects are caused by morphine is also there) I just saw black and nothing else but it was warm and I had such inner peace, its weird as I sometimes still think about it and wish this feeling of being so light and free again."
TooReDTooHigh
This is why I hate surgery.
You just never know.
Shocked
Giphy"More of a near-death experience. I was electrocuted. I felt like I was in a deep hole looking straight up in the sky. My life flashed before me. Felt sad for my family, but I had a deep sense of peace."
Admirable_Buyer6528
The SOB
"Nursing in the ICU, we’ve had people try to die on us many times during the years, some successfully. One guy stood out to me. His heart stopped. We called a code, are working on him, and suddenly he comes to. We hadn’t vented him yet, so he was able to talk, and he started screaming, 'Don’t let them take me, don’t let them take me, they are coming,' he was scared and yelling."
"Then he yelled a little more, as we tried to calm him down, he screamed, 'No, No,' and gestured towards the end of the bed, and died again. We didn’t get him back. It was seriously creepy. We called his son to tell him the news, and the son said basically, 'Good, he was an SOB.'”
1-cupcake-at-a-time
Colors
"My sister died and said it was extremely peaceful. She said it was very loud like a train station and lots of talking and she was stuck in this area that was like a curtain with lots of beautiful colors (colors that you don’t see in real life according to her) a man told her 'He was sorry, but she had to go back as it wasn’t her time.'"
Hannah_LL7
"I had a really similar experience except I was in an endless garden with flowers that were colors I had never seen before. It was quiet and peaceful and a woman in a dress looked at me, shook her head, and just said 'Not yet.' As I was coming back, it was extremely loud, like everyone in the world was trying to talk all at once. It was all very disorienting but it changed my perspective on life!"
huntokarrr
The Fog
"I was in a gray fog with a girl who looked a lot like a young version of my grandmother (who was still alive) but dressed like a pioneer in the 1800s she didn't say anything but kept pulling me towards an opening in the wall. I kept refusing to go because I was so tired."
"I finally got tired of her nagging and went and that's when I came to. I had bled out during a c-section and my heart could not beat without blood. They had to deliver the baby and sew up the bleeders. refill me with blood before they could restart my heart so, like, at least 12 minutes gone."
Fluffy-Hotel-5184
Through the Walls
"My spouse was dead for a couple of minutes one miserable night. She maintains that she saw nothing, but only heard people talking about her like through a wall. The only thing she remembers for absolute certain was begging an ER nurse that she didn't want to die."
"She's quite alive and well today."
Hot-Refrigerator6583
Well let's all be happy to be alive.
It seems to be all we have.
Trying to lose weight is a struggle understood by many people regardless of size.
The goal of reaching a healthy weight may seem unattainable, but with diet and exercise, it can pay off through persistence and discipline.
Seeing the pounds gradually drop off can also be a great motivator and incentivize people to stay the course.
Those who've achieved their respective weight goals shared their experiences when Redditor apprenti8455 asked:
"People who lost a lot of weight, what surprises you the most now?"
Redditors didn't see these coming.
Shiver Me Timbers
"I’m always cold now!"
– Telrom_1
"I had a coworker lose over 130 pounds five or six years ago. I’ve never seen him without a jacket on since."
– r7ndom
"140 lbs lost here starting just before COVID, I feel like that little old lady that's always cold, damn this top comment was on point lmao."
– mr_remy
Drawing Concern
"I lost 100 pounds over a year and a half but since I’m old(70’s) it seems few people comment on it because (I think) they think I’m wasting away from some terminal illness."
– dee-fondy
"Congrats on the weight loss! It’s honestly a real accomplishment 🙂"
"Working in oncology, I can never comment on someone’s weight loss unless I specifically know it was on purpose, regardless of their age. I think it kind of ruffles feathers at times, but like I don’t want to congratulate someone for having cancer or something. It’s a weird place to be in."
– LizardofDeath
Unleashing Insults
"I remember when I lost the first big chunk of weight (around 50 lbs) it was like it gave some people license to talk sh*t about the 'old' me. Old coworkers, friends, made a lot of not just negative, but harsh comments about what I used to look like. One person I met after the big loss saw a picture of me prior and said, 'Wow, we wouldn’t even be friends!'”
"It wasn’t extremely common, but I was a little alarmed by some of the attention. My weight has been up and down since then, but every time I gain a little it gets me a little down thinking about those things people said."
– alanamablamaspama
Not Everything Goes After Losing Weight
"The loose skin is a bit unexpected."
– KeltarCentauri
"I haven’t experienced it myself, but surgery to remove skin takes a long time to recover. Longer than bariatric surgery and usually isn’t covered by insurance unless you have both."
– KatMagic1977
"It definitely does take a long time to recover. My Dad dropped a little over 200 pounds a few years back and decided to go through with skin removal surgery to deal with the excess. His procedure was extensive, as in he had skin taken from just about every part of his body excluding his head, and he went through hell for weeks in recovery, and he was bedridden for a lot of it."
– Jaew96
These Redditors shared their pleasantly surprising experiences.
Shopping
"I can buy clothes in any store I want."
– WaySavvyD
"When I lost weight I was dying to go find cute, smaller clothes and I really struggled. As someone who had always been restricted to one or two stores that catered to plus-sized clothing, a full mall of shops with items in my size was daunting. Too many options and not enough knowledge of brands that were good vs cheap. I usually went home pretty frustrated."
– ganache98012
No More Symptoms
"Lost about 80 pounds in the past year and a half, biggest thing that I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen mentioned on here yet is my acid reflux and heartburn are basically gone. I used to be popping tums every couple hours and now they just sit in the medicine cabinet collecting dust."
– colleennicole93
Expanding Capabilities
"I'm all for not judging people by their appearance and I recognise that there are unhealthy, unachievable beauty standards, but one thing that is undeniable is that I can just do stuff now. Just stamina and flexibility alone are worth it, appearance is tertiary at best."
– Ramblonius
People Change Their Tune
"How much nicer people are to you."
"My feet weren't 'wide' they were 'fat.'"
– LiZZygsu
"Have to agree. Lost 220 lbs, people make eye contact and hold open doors and stuff"
"And on the foot thing, I also lost a full shoe size numerically and also wear regular width now 😅"
– awholedamngarden
It's gonna take some getting used to.
Bones Everywhere
"Having bones. Collarbones, wrist bones, knee bones, hip bones, ribs. I have so many bones sticking out everywhere and it’s weird as hell."
– Princess-Pancake-97
"I noticed the shadow of my ribs the other day and it threw me, there’s a whole skeleton in here."
– bekastrange
Knee Pillow
"Right?! And they’re so … pointy! Now I get why people sleep with pillows between their legs - the knee bones laying on top of each other (side sleeper here) is weird and jarring."
– snic2030
"I lost only 40 pounds within the last year or so. I’m struggling to relate to most of these comments as I feel like I just 'slimmed down' rather than dropped a ton. But wow, the pillow between the knees at night. YES! I can relate to this. I think a lot of my weight was in my thighs. I never needed to do this up until recently."
– Strongbad23
More Mobility
"I’ve lost 100 lbs since 2020. It’s a collection of little things that surprise me. For at least 10 years I couldn’t put on socks, or tie my shoes. I couldn’t bend over and pick something up. I couldn’t climb a ladder to fix something. Simple things like that I can do now that fascinate me."
"Edit: Some additional little things are sitting in a chair with arms, sitting in a booth in a restaurant, being able to shop in a normal store AND not needing to buy the biggest size there, being able to easily wipe my butt, and looking down and being able to see my penis."
– dma1965
People making significant changes, whether for mental or physical health, can surely find a newfound perspective on life.
But they can also discover different issues they never saw coming.
That being said, overcoming any challenge in life is laudable, especially if it leads to gaining confidence and ditching insecurities.