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)
The old wives' tales.
They are the stories of legend.
I think we all need a big DEEP Google dive though.
Where did they originate?
WHO ARE THE OLD WIVES!
You don't hear about them as much anymore.
It's like science and logic are suddenly a thing.
But they sure are a good way to keep your kids and their behavior in line.
Redditor the_spring_goddess wanted to discuss the tall tales we've all been fed through life, so they asked:
"What is an old wives tale that people still believe?"
"Wait an hour to swim after eating."
What a crock!
So many summer hours wasted.
I want revenge for that one.
Say Nothing
Giphy
"An undercover cop has to tell you he's a cop if you ask him."
LonelyMail5115
"Pretty much most advice when it comes to cops are old wives tales. I’m not even a cop but most of the advice you hear is pretty off."
I_AM_AN_A**HOLE_AMA
Say Something
"That you have to wait 24 hours to report someone missing."
Severe_Airport1426
"I really think this one is important and should be the top regardless. As it’s a piece of advice that needs to be relearned and the only way to do that is through awareness."
crappycurtains
"This used to be true. I think they changed it after some guy named Brandon went missing back in the '80s or '70s. You used to have to wait 24 hours if the missing person was an adult because they had 'a right to be missing' and then everyone realized that was stupid and stopped doing it."
AlbinoShavedGorilla
Body Temps
"That drinking ice cold water after eating oily foods will solidify the oil and permanently remain in your body. I informed my coworker that if your body temperature ever reached that point, you’d have bigger problems than weight gain."
chriseo22
"Oh, I have a cousin who 100% believed this. One of those guys who believed every early 2000s internet rumor and old wives tale. One night I chugged a big glass of ice water after dinner and he started freaking out and saying my guts were gonna harden."
"I sarcastically told him to drive me to the hospital if that happened. Obviously, nothing happened and the next morning I said something like 'Thanks for being on standby in case my guts filled with hardened oil.' He just walked off muttering under his breath."
apocalypticradish
Arms Down
"When I was pregnant, I was told by young and old alike that I should NOT raise my arms above my head or exert myself in such a manner because it could cause cord strangulation to my unborn sons and daughters."
Fatmouse84
10 Years Actually
Unimpressed Uh Huh GIF by Brooklyn Nine-Nine
Giphy
"Chewing gum stays in your stomach for 7 years."
"I remember accidentally swallowing a piece of gum when I was a kid in like 1995 and just accepting my fate like welp, gonna have this in my stomach til high school I guess."
Gecko-911
I was so afraid to sallow my gum when I was young.
This tale is haunting.
High/Low
Hungry Debra Messing GIF by Will & Grace
Giphy
"You can tell the sex of the baby by how you carry."
LeastFormal9366
"Pregnancy certainly wins awards for the most old wives tales. So much absolute BS was repeated to us by everyone we talked to."
IllIIIlIllIlIIlIllI
The Cursed
"If you’re a woman and you wear opal jewelry but opal is not your birthstone (October), you’ll never be able to have children, or will be widowed, or just generally have bad luck or something. You can counteract this by having a diamond in the same piece of jewelry as the opal, though."
"I have a nice opal ring that my parents gave me years ago, and I’ve had other women give me this 'advice' unprompted more than once when I’ve worn it. I have absolutely no idea where it started, but I’m pretty sure this little chunk of silicate rock has no concept of what month I was born in, let alone of how my reproductive organs work."
SmoreOfBabylon
Stay In
"Going outside with wet hair will make you get pneumonia. Or an earache. Or maybe arthritis. Depends on which old wife you listen to."
"Jokes on them - I haven't blow-dried my hair in decades and usually leave the house with wet hair in the morning. On winter mornings, the tips of my hair get frozen. No ear infections or pneumonia or arthritis yet."
worldbound0514
Dreams and Facts
"You never make anyone up in your dreams you've seen everyone in your dreams somewhere else before and never make anyone up entirely."
"How would you possibly prove that to be true? My partner adamantly believes this and tells me this 'fact' whenever I have a dream about someone I've never met before."
mattshonestreddit
"My late wife used to tell me that before she met me she would have dreams of standing at an alter on her wedding day but could never see the guy's face, no matter how hard she tried. After meeting me the face was filled in with mine. Don't know if it's true but one of those things I like thinking of every now and then when I miss her."
Darthdemented
Cracked
Getting Ready Episode 2 GIF by The Office
Giphy
"Some people still believe cracking knuckles causes arthritis."
Choice-Grapefruit-44
"There's a doctor (Donald Unger) that cracked his knuckles a couple of times a day for 60 years, but only on one hand, just to prove it. Both hands remained exactly the same."
MacyTmcterry
I love my knuckles.
Do you have any tall tales to add to the list? Let us know in the comments below.
People Reveal The Most Hurtful Thing A Medical Professional's Said To Them