The human body is capable of some amazing things normally when you consider everything required to keep us going daily. Sometimes we skin a knee or make it through something much, much worse by only the skin of our teeth.
To quote Ingrid Michaelson,
"We are so fragile
And our cracking bones make noise
And we are just
Breakable, breakable, breakable, girls and boys."
But every now and then you hear about someone who really beat the odds and survived the unsurvivable.
Who better to share those stories than doctors?
Reddit user TheDestroyer asked, "Doctors of Reddit, what made you say 'how are you still alive'?"
Here are some of their stories.
Got a call from a 50s male's wife who had just arrived home to find a suicide note. The note basically read that he lost his job a year earlier and was too ashamed to tell her so he just kept up the facade by dipping into savings. A year goes by and he's out of everything, retirement, reverse mortgage, everything was gone. He felt so ashamed he didn't know what to do. He was going through paperwork and found how his life insurance policy he maintained still paid out for suicide. He wrote her a letter explaining everything and how to cash out, left her the gun and took off.
His note told her he was going to hike into the nearby woods and to tell their police officer neighbor (one of my administrative guys) to come find him because he didn't want the wife to find him like that. That officer he named, and a few others set off in the woods to find him.
One of the Sergeants gets through this tick brush and over a gorge sees the guy slumped over in a camping chair bright red (which is a sign of lividity). Sergeant calls over the radio "hey, I see him he's over here. Not sure how to get to him though gimme a minute. Dispatch go ahead and record the time and outside temperature for the report" so I do.. A few seconds go by and the Sergeant keys up again "OH MY GOD DISPATCH GET ME MEDICS HE'S ALIVE!! HE'S ALIVE!!"
Guy had swallowed an entire full bottle of sleeping pills and drank a fifth of whiskey over two hours earlier and was still alive. He was bright red because he was sunburned as hell. They get him to the hospital and pump his stomach. He showed an alcohol level of 0.540.
While recovering he then asked one of my officers if he could borrow her gun. He said "I'll give it right back" she was not amused.
49. Jokes At A Time Like This Are Good, I Guess...
My friend who works in the ER told me about a motorcyclist who flew off his bike and got impaled by a tree in the air, high enough up nobody saw him for several hours, it may have even been overnight.
The man was cut out of the tree, taken to my friend in the ER but still had the trunk stuck in him. The guy was still totally coherent and making jokes. He asked the man for his weight and he said:
"With or without the tree?"
48. The Chances Were Low, But There It Was
Obligatory " I'm not a doctor but..." When I was working as a tech on a behavioral unit one of my tasks was taking blood sugars. One morning I was checking a blood sugar on an 80 some year old lady who was very alert and happily chatting with me. First reading was 12, so I retook it on both hands with same results.
For those of you unfamiliar with blood sugar levels, 12 is so low that it beat the ICUs lowest record and no one could believe she was awake, let alone alert. I had to interrupt staffing for it and I had never seen this group of doctors and nurses react in a panic before this.
She ended up being mostly annoyed with us because we had to force feed her really high sugar content food until she was stable. Given her age and how low her sugars were I'm still not sure how she was ok, let alone survived it.
47. Forcibly Pushed Back From The Light
This guy had some serious stab wounds all around his torso from a recent attack. He had even been stabbed in the heart. I think he'd been cornered by some guys he trusted, and I heard the thugs had even got a little kid to take part in the stabbing.
Turns out the victim had been clinically dead for an extended period of time. He miraculously came back, I don't know how. So, you see, the question isn't "how are you still alive?", but rather, "how are you alive AGAIN?" I haven't seen him in a long time, but I heard he moved back home, where the poor guy found some squatters. I hope things have turned around for him; he seemed like a good guy and had clearly been through a lot.
46. It Was The Funnest Of Times, It Was The Not So Funnest Of Times
GiphyNot a doctor. However I had a doctor ask me this! So I developed a disease called fibromyalgia and have a fairly severe case of it.
Before I was diagnosed I had to work as a delivery driver to pay bills, which I ended up having to quit because of my health. To make it through my shifts I'd pop 4 acetaminophen, 4 ibuprofen and 4 naproxen every day. That alone freaked out my doctor and immediately had my liver checked. Then I was sent to a pain management Dr because of not being able to keep the job.
The doctor decides to put me on a pain patch. The only warning I was given by him and the pharmacist was no alcohol. They never described much else about the patch, just that it's for pain and releases so much meds every hour. I figured if it worked it was worth it. However my tendons and ligaments like to tighten and lock up if I'm too cold and it was January.
I put the first patch on, turn my electric blanket on to keep me warm through the night. I woke up 21 hours later overdosed on a weeks worth of opioids. Turns out it was an opioid pain patch for opioid experienced patients only (I wasnt) and I wasn't even put on the lowest dosage.
To make it worse I have under developed bladder and kidneys so they're very sensitive. It took me a couple more hours to figure out to look up the meds and realized what happened. To put this in perspective having a fever has hospitalized people and electric blankets have killed many people on it.
I had some more side effects and the Dr tried to convince me to stay on it. I never went back. When I told my main doctor she freaked out, asked how I'm still alive and told me to not live alone anymore. I moved back home and started seeing my old Dr again. His face went very pale when I told him what happened. Said that Dr could lose their license for it. Fun times.
45. This Is Something From A Horror Film
There was this patient who had come in with some abdominal pain. He had described it as something vague and his vital signs and blood work never actually gave us much concern. So he ended up being warded for a while and had some tests done. He got a CT Abdomen done and it showed some weird collection in his abdomen.
We then proceeded with a diagnostic laparascopy. The moment the port was inserted, all we could see was pus. At this moment, the operation was converted to a laparatomy and when the abdomen was open, pus just started gushing out. Apparently he had a perforated appendix that looked to have been at least a couple of weeks old. The whole abdominal cavity was filled with pus. Every time we thought we drained it all, a pocket would arise somewhere. His bowels were so tightly adhered to each other with adhesions that parts actually spontaneously tore apart when during manipulation.
The surgeon that I was with was this stoic plump dude with a face made out of stone. All I can remember is his eyebrows raising a little as the first fountain of pus spurted forth. Oh yes, and the smell. Did I describe the smell? It was probably the foulest thing I had ever encountered. It was as though Satan himself had laid a turd within this man's abdomen. Anyway, this man was discharged well. Went to ICU for a night and was discharged to the general wards the next day. Walked out as he had walked in.
44. The Incident Likely Drove Her To Drink
Woman outside in a snowdrift overnight. Had been hit and buried by a snowplow. When we got her, her temp was 78F and her BAC was still 200. Rib fractures and pneumothorax on the CT. No reflexes. Blown pupils. HR in the 40s. Eventually sent her to the ICU after heated fluids got her into the low 80's.
A few months later the cops brought her in on IDO for public intoxication. I thought to myself, "I thought she would die."
Also, I just saw a case of psychogenic polydipsia (drinking water psychotically) with a serum sodium of 105. 140 is normal. Below 120 can cause seizures, and below 115 can be life-threatening. Somehow the patient was awake and talking to me, telling me her OCD won't let her stop drinking water. No medical person I've talked to since then (and trust me, something like this is frequently talked about) has ever seen a sodium below 110 in any patient, living or dead.
43. Cute Lil Thing
Vet here
I've seen an alpaca WALK in with a PCV of 6% due to parasitism. PCV=% of blood that is red blood cells, the part that carries oxygen. Normal is 30% +/- a bit. This sucker had literally lost 80% of its red blood cells and was still walking around.
A few transfusions later, good as new
42. Perhaps These Things Need More Warning Labels
I'm not a doctor but i work in a hospital OR and this actually happened about a week ago. A guy came into our ER with a drill bit in his eye and apparently he was using it to scratch his nose. The fun part is that the bit was still in the power drill when he was itching himself and he accidentally engaged the drill. Although the injury wasn't that bad, when i heard about it my initial reaction was like how do people like this make it this far in their lives and not choke on their cereal in the morning.
41. Anxiety, Take A Back Seat
GiphyNot the doctor, but the patient. I was in ventricular tachycardia (heart beating way too fast) for 18 days (ICU for 7 days and heart hospital for the other 11). I was in heart failure. During my second catheter ablation (go up the artery in your groin to burn troublesome spots in your heart) the doctor told my wife that my blood had less than 1% oxygen returning to my heart. During that whole hospital stay, I was told I should be dead multiple times.
Other fun instances while I was in the hospital: Presented to the ER with a heartbeat ranging from 210-260bpm. Had heart intentionally stopped. Cardioverted (shocked) over 12 times. 2 Catheter ablations. Proud owner of an implanted defibrillator and am not supposed to go through metal detectors.
40. Inspector Gadget
I'm not a doctor, but a friend of mine rolled a tractor as a teenager and wound up being crushed by it as he was thrown from the seat. After months of therapy and nearly $100k in skeletal reconstruction you would never know what happened. His jaw, top of his skull, both femurs, one of his shins and a 9" square in his chest were all replaced/reinforced by metal. He likes to show this off by having people hit him or by ramming a hole in a wall (I've seen him get drunk and literally run through a wall like a rhino). I tell people I'm friends with a cyborg.
39. Why Do We Need To Test These Things
General surgery resident here. Kid bought a "knife proof" vest online and tried it out with his friends by putting it on and asking them to stab him in the chest. Turns out.... it wasn't... and the kid ended up with a hole in his heart that needed an ER thoracotomy where they opened his chest and put their finger there to stop the bleeding. He was then taken to the operating room where it was repaired. Kid survived... left ICU against strong medical advice a couple of days later...
38. What A Journey
In middleschool a pair of kids in my class was playing with airsoft guns on the roof of one of their apartment buildings. One of them ends up falling 4 stories and hitting concrete. Broke just about every bone on his left side Including a shattered pelvis and skull fracture. My mom's friend worked in the hospital he was cared for and this being a 13 year old kid in a tight community, word got around. Every single step, people amazed he was alive.
The EMT's were shocked when they arrived at the scene, the ER was relieved to stabilize him, the doctors who induced a coma and the surgeon who realigned his shattered skeleton, it was all crazy. His mom blogged about it for a couple months tracking his recovery.
37. Nothing Like Shacking Up With An Attempted Murderer
My prof, a dentist, talks about how she had a patient that got stabbed from the eye socket to the mouth by his girlfriend (she found out he was cheating on him). Somehow she missed all the numerous nerves around the eye and ended up with zero permanent damage. And the best part is that he got back together with the girlfriend after healing up.
36. No Blood, Just Fat
GiphyMy dad was an ER doctor, and when I was little, he would tell me stories of his patients when he tucked me in at night. Yeah, not your typical bed time stories, but I loved it.
One of the stories that stuck out because it surprised him even was a very overweight guy who came in for some reason I don't remember now (sorry this was a bedtime story from 20 years ago) and got treated for something minor and sent back out on his way.
A few hours later the lab - which was supposed to run some routine blood tests and mail him the results - called the ER and asked if the guy was still there. His sample had settled after a little while, and it turned out that over a third of the tube was fat. You'll get that sometimes in patients with high cholesterol, but no one had ever seen this much in one sample.
They had to call the guy back in for a second round of tests and make sure it wasn't a mistake. Guy was through the roof lipids and cholesterol. Turned out he was eating Burger King three meals a day every day. They had to explain to him why burgers and milk shakes three meals a day wasn't good for him.
35. Pure Spirit Keeps Him Alive
I am not a Doctor, but I have seen multiple Doctors react this way to my father.
The full details would take far too long, but the short version - before the computerisation of medical files, everyone had their own little file. My dad had a cabinet.
Over the course of his life, he has been: Shot (several times), stabbed, hit by a bow and arrow, blown up, burned, nearly drowned, broken every bone in his body, and to cap it off, struck by lightning - twice.
Combined with various care related issues, like MRSA, along with terminal heart failure, several GPs have seen him, and said "you should be dead". He tends to agree.
Pretty much, hes alive because hes far too stubborn to die.
34. Just Barely Scraped By
This gets asked about once every other month, still with the same answer
Pediatrician here
18yo female came to the ED with shortness of breath
Most of the time this is anxiety, constochodritis or pneumonia. We put her on a monitor and her saturation are really low (normally 95% and above is normal on room air). We put the patient on 100% oxygen and her saturations don't change at all, when that happens its a bad sign because it tells you there is a ventilation/perfusion mismatch.
Long story short she ended up having a massive saddle pulmonary embolism.
https://img.wikinut.com/img/2gd4vsne2l7_kj5w/jpeg/0/A-Masive-Pulmonary-Saddle-Embolus.jpeg
When we got the CT result every doctor in the room turned pale. We all slowly turned around to look at the patient sitting on the exam table thinking... how the hell are you still breathing. For those that don't know these kind embolisms can be fatal because the blood from your heart can't get into your lungs.
33. Well It's Broke As Hell
Not a doctor, but a patient.
When I was 39, I got a pain in my shoulder neck and jaw so bad it took my breathe away. After taking a quick look online to see the symptoms of a heart attack, I decided to drive myself to the hospital. Told them that I think I might be having a heart attack. After a battery of tests, the ER doc decides to send me for a cat scan.
After getting back the results the doc comes in with a very solemn expression and says, "You have an Aortic dissection and you'll need surgery." This really doesn't phase me because as a tinkerer, my philosophy is if it's broken just fix it. So they have to fly my off to a larger hospital for surgery. ( I took a pic of the helicopter and posted it on FB saying, "Woohoo, my first helicopter ride." Also sent a text to my supervisor saying that I have to have open heart surgery and I probably won't be in Monday.
Few years later, I have a chest pain. Nothing like before, but I make sure to have certain twinges checked on, just in case. Well, I'm sitting in the ER when the doc quickly pops his head in and says, "IT IS YOU!" He tells me that he really didn't think I was going to make it when he shipped me off and that he tells EVERYONE about me.
32. Two Cases, One Day
US medical student here. I shadowed in one of the only Level 1 Trauma Centers in my region while I was in college. On one particular day we had a man helicoptered in from the reservation 50+ miles away. This gentleman had downed about 80oz of malt liquor by 11AM and got into an altercation with his neighbor over a woman.
The neighbor caved in the back of this man's head with a crowbar. It was gruesome. This guy had lost a good amount of blood by the time he rolled into our bay but he was completely lucid and conversational, his only deficits were evident alcohol intoxication and marked visual loss. Pretty sure he ended up surviving the ordeal.
The most striking thing about that day though was a case that rolled in not even two hours later. A middle aged woman–a lifelong equestrian–had been bucked off her quarter horse and hit her head. Superficially she looked fine, like she was peacefully sleeping. Under her skull, however, she had a massive hematoma and would almost certainly never wake up.
Sometimes medicine is crazy.
31. Truly A Miracle
GiphyYoung otherwise healthy woman with post partum pre-eclampsia and post partum cardiomyopathy. Basically her heart was severely weakened as a pump and the blood vessels it was pumping into were clamped down creating immense resistance for even a healthy heart to pump against.
She had the most rapid onset of flash pulmonary edema I've seen in 2 decades of ER practice. (Pulmonary edema is fluid in the lungs). There was so much fluid accumulating in her lungs when I tried to intubate her (put a tube into her trachea so she could be mechanically ventilated) I couldn't see her vocal chords because frothy water was pouring like a faucet from her trachea. I got the tube in by shoving it into the flowing fluid from her lungs.
She not only survived, she was out of the ICU in 2 days and spent less than a week in the hospital. Mostly this was because of her overall good health... Its hard to kill a healthy young person... Though not impossible.
30. Eighteen Years Later
Not doc, but patient. 2001, I'm 18. Severe abdominal pain starts on a Tuesday morning. Tuesday evening, moves on to vomiting. So frequently, in fact, that I begin to vomit bile...coils of bile (think of sh*tting out of your mouth). Convulsed all night. Wednesday around noon, head to ER. Admitted with fever of 105. White count still normal, treated for fever and dehydration and released.
Feel good, for two hours. Admitted again with fever of 107. Left alone and forgotten in ER for two hours. Still convulsing. G/f hunts down doc, get private room for observation at 10pm. Midnight, MRI and hear tech say "oh sh*t." Appendix had perferated. Full blood sepsis. Doc says emergency operation at midnight. 8am wheeled into preop. Surgeon tells my parents I probably won't survive surgery. Pfft, still here.
29. Circumstances Kept Him Alive
I've been a part of an EXIT (ex utero intrapartum treatment) procedure:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/EXIT_procedure
In this case a child had a giant facial mass called a lymphangioma growing on the face and obstructing the airway. It was detected on fetal ultrasound. It would block breathing if the baby was delivered and cause death.
When the baby was old enough a planned C-section was performed and only part of the baby was delivered and the baby was left connected to the mother via the umbilical cord to the placenta, thereby negating need for breathing and he was getting oxygenated blood from Mom..
A pediatric ENT surgically prepped this newborn baby immediately and then created a surgical airway in the neck (tracheostomy) and put in a tube to bypass the airway obstructed by the facial mass. Then the umbilical cord was cut and the baby started to breath through the artificial airway on his own.
Any kid born this way is the definition of 'how are you still alive' and would have died in another age and still in many poor countries to this day.
28. Ninety Eight Fractures
I'm not a doctor, but a patient.
I crashed my motorcycle at 170+mph I had 98 fractures (including some broken vertebrae), a punctured lung, ruptured spleen, massive internal bleeding, severe nerve damage, etc. Triage gave me a 2% chance of survival... I was so messed up that the cops didn't even show up at the hospital regarding the accident because they thought I had died. I'm still in touch with some of the people that saved my life and they still call me "miracle man".
Not only did I just celebrate my 10th anniversary since the accident, I'm also walking, working out, have VERY minimal long-term damage (some loss of sensitivity and range of motion in my arm due to nerve damage), and I just completed a Half Iron Man competition!
Life is amazing!
27. The Definition Of Heart Attack Is So Loose
Not a doctor, but a paramedic. I had a patient who was alert and sitting upright with a blood pressure of 60/30 with a heart rate of 50 (sinus). He was pale, but not even sweaty.
I don't really know how he was conscious, and looked so well.
Laying him supine and a fast bolus brought things up to 90/50. He ended up being NSTEMI. My 12 lead had 2.5mm elevation in v2, and 1.5mm in V1, V3 - not enough for me to call a STEMI. No reciprocal changes or chest pain/shortness of breath either, just dizziness and nausea
Non medical professionals - his blood pressure was barely enough to sustain consciousness, but he looked very well. Turns out he was having a heart attack with abnormal symptoms and no clear changes on his electrocardiogram.
26. Dyin' Ain't So Bad
Not a doctor, but I am a medic. (See post history.) But this is about my mother.
I get a call from my great-aunt that my mother collapsed on the bathroom floor from chest pain. Now, I'm on duty in practically another city. I tell her to hang up, call 911, and have them transport her to Hospital A, 15 minutes from the house, because it's a really amazing cardiac center.
Make it noted that my mother is 48 at the time of this incident, with a heart attack at 40, about 6 months after she had my little brother. 2 stents put in. You'd think she'd have lifestyle changes, right? Nope. Smoked a pack a day since she was 16, drank heavily, and had three BIG ASS CANS of monsters a day. You know, the ones with the twist off caps? And she ate like sh*t too, when she actually had food. She refused to eat a lot of the time because it would interfere with how drunk she would get, so she was maybe a size 6. Small but tall. This has been an ongoing battle with her for literally her entire life. I'm not expecting the best.
Anyway, I run into the hospital (still in uniform) and they think I'm here dropping off a patient. Husband and I get taken back into the private family waiting room, where my great-aunt already was. I'm technically next-of-kin, so after 45 minutes of agonizing waiting, the doc comes out. My mother is covered with a white sheet, intubated but bucking the tube. Her blood pressure was so low, they couldn't even sedate her.
They're taking her to the cath lab RIGHT NOW, she's having a full blown heart attack. I'd learn that she had a 100% right coronary artery occlusion. They shocked her once in the ambulance because she went into v-fib, and then was clinically dead for 8 minutes in the ER. Did CPR, got a shockable rhythm back, shocked her twice, got her back and threw her ass in the cath lab where they gave her 6 more stents (total of 8) and had to shock her AGAIN. She died 3 times. (Technically, kinda)
She got out, was intubated for 20 hours, in the ICU. On 8 different drips, pumps, ventilator, NG tube, cath, external defibrillator, you name it. Blood thinners out the ass. I didn't leave her side but once as soon as she was stable, to go home, shower, sleep for 4 hours, and come right back. I see critical patients like this and literally transport them all the time, multiple times a day even, but seeing your own mother? It's a different story. As much as I don't like my mom, it broke my heart to see her like this. It hurt.
She walked out of the hospital with zero defects or problems four days later. The doctors were stunned. The cath lab doc that came to see me, saw me in uniform when they were wheeling her out after surgery, and said, "I am not going to try and pull one over on you. You know how bad it looks. She shouldn't be alive right now, but she is, and we all need to be grateful for that." He also told me things he couldn't really use in layman's terms, (no offense, like, if I was a civilian with zero medical knowledge I would have been flipping sh*t, some med words sound terrifying) so I wasn't intimidated and was relieved.
You'd think that my mother would have a massive lifestyle change after this. Did she? Two weeks was all it lasted before she went right back to her old ways. Literally got a second chance at life, and threw it in the trash. I found out she was doing the sh*t again and told her that I was planning her funeral in my head, while at her bedside. I might as well have buried her that day for all it did. "What about little brother and sister?" "[Your ex-stepdad] will remarry, they'll have someone else."
How is she still alive? If she keeps this sh*t up, she won't be for long. It's sad. Sorry for the rant, I didn't realize how mad I still was about all this... but it's relevant so what the hell.
Supervisor relieves me himself and I race to the hospital with my husband (also a medic) and we are tense. I'm in full uniform. They wound up taking her to Hospital B. (It's sh*ttier, but closer, with a working cath lab.)
25. Be Still My Beating Heart
GiphyI had a guy with a Bowie knife sticking out of his chest. The knife was pulsating. I could literally count his pulse from across the room.
24. The Stories They Could Tell
I used to do elder care and was constantly amazed at some of the tough cookies I took care of.
Man - 99 - Once ate dinner with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. Made sure to serve me ice cream as his wife of 73 years lay dying (I was caring for her, she was in a coma and on her last journey), because it was a warm afternoon and manners must be followed, regardless of circumstances. I tried to refuse, but...he's 99 with a dying wife. It was strawberry.
Woman - 96 - Was in the Nursing Corps in the Navy/Marines in WWII. She married a Marine. She told me, "I always like 'em rough and ready!" Her lecherous grin spread its icy fingers into my soul, and I had to laugh.
Woman - 101 - Tried to attack me with a clothes iron because dementia can change people into superheroes when they think the care aide is a stranger breaking into their house.
Woman - 96 - An atheist Jew from New Jersey, with the accent to boot. WWII Navy nurse. She would threaten spam callers. Graphically. It was hilarious.
22. 100% Alive
GiphyGuy comes in with a bit of chest pain. tells me the big coronary artery on the front of the heart was 100% blocked. I tell him "who told you that?" he says his doctor did about 10 years ago. I don't believe him since patients never ever get any of the stuff their doctor tells them right. I let the cardiac surgeon know what this guy said and he too goes "haha 100%? so he's dead?"
If the biggest coronary artery is totally occluded and for 10 years no less, you are a dead man. Lo and behold...we get an angiogram and it was 100% occluded. The artery on the back of the heart made a connection with the front of the heart to pick up the slack. It was some lucky stuff.
21. Grocery Games
Haemoglobin of 35 (3.5)! In a 35 year old guy with a chronic rectal bleed he refused to have looked into for months because he didn't want anyone lookin' at his bum hole. Finally brought to the ER by ambulance when he fainted (aka "started dying") in a grocery store.
20. Helpful
Patient stabbed himself in the neck with a thermometer that pierced his trachea. Missed all the important arteries (carotids, vertebrals); just hit some minor nerves.
Good guy patient provided his own temperature reads until they removed the thermometer.
19. Touchdown
GiphyMy best friends brother-in-law during the Superbowl was acting totally normal until about halfway through and started talking gibberish, walking into walls, taking all his clothes off, and generally being NOT himself.
It took about 5 EMT's to even get him in the ambulance because he was fighting them all off, and he continued to do so until they took him to the local hospital where he was put into a medically induced coma and airlifted to 'The S*** Is Real Hospital'. Turns out he had bacterial meningitis and he had been acting like that because his brain was had gotten so swollen.
Everyone was convinced he was going to die because of how severe it had gotten before he presented any symptoms. It took him weeks to recover, relearn how to talk, understand where he was, etc...but he did. He completely 100% recovered. Doctors think it was caused by a dog bite. Which I've never heard of... his wife and kids also tested negative thankfully.
18. Benefits of Obesity
I'm an ER nurse. Had a guy walk up to the front desk after hitting himself in the throat with a chainsaw.
All the flesh of his neck was flayed open. I could see his trachea and his right jugular vein. If he had cut in just a tiny bit deeper, he would have sliced right into both.
The only thing that saved him was that he was a big fat guy with a huge neck. A skinnier man would have died very unpleasantly.
17. They're Called Internal Organs for a Reason
I was in school to be a paramedic and I was doing my externship in an ER. A guy came in happily complaining about a sore on his belly that wouldn't heal. He was really pleasant and didn't seem to be in much pain. When he lifted his shirt, we could see his liver.
16. Slight Overreaction
GiphyGuy had an argument with his girlfriend, wanted to leave the apartment. Instead of taking the door, was real angry and jumped off the balcony, fell down 40 feet directly on his heels on cement.
He ended up having an ankle sprain. I wondered how he managed previous issues in his life.
15. One for the Medical Books
Not a doctor: My grandfather had a heart attack. He went in for a simple stent in his heart. Hours go by and we hear code blue over the intercom. Doctor comes out to tell us his left ventricle has an inch and half tear in it. They had to transport him to another hospital ASAP. He died three times that night and went through 11 pints of blood. The surgeon successfully repaired the torn ventricle.
They woke him up on my birthday and he sung me happy birthday. 3 weeks in Cardiac ICU my grandfather walked out. The surgeon told us for a man of 75 years to have lived through a left ventricle tear is unheard of. The doctor wrote a Journal on him as well. He's still alive today. He even got his hip replaced a year after.
14. Don't I Look OK?
Saw a guy with a machete lodged up into his skull. Asked him if he was OK (not sarcastically, just threw a generic question to check his ability to respond), he said "yup!"
13. Small Mercies
GiphyA patient I took care of had a car fall on his face. He was underneath it working when it slid off of the jack. The only reason he survived was because he broke every bone in his face (he had a Lefort III) which allowed for his brain to swell (he also needed an additional surgery to relieve the pressure of cerebral edema, but the facial fractures did allow for a great deal of "give" in his skull).
I was rotating through ICU so I first saw him just a day after the accident. His head was so swollen, he didn't even look human. Fast forward a few weeks later... I was rotating through a different unit in the hospital and came across the same patient. He was quickly recovering and had minimal neural deficits.
12. This End Up
Pathologist here: Had a guy who had died suddenly and unexpectedly. I soon learned he was the recipient of a lung transplant about 15 years prior.
When I opened the man up, his transplanted lung was upside down. I flipped the lung into the proper position, and bloop. It flipped right back to upside down. That was quite alarming. The surgeons who originally performed the transplant incorrectly attached the organ. When he by chance entered the correct position, the lung flipped over, causing his pulmonary artery to seal shut, resulting in his death.
The man lived for 15 years with a lung that was dying to flip upside down. And it was only by sheer chance he didn't move in such a way that allowed it to do so until the fateful day of his death. It is one of the most fascinating cases I have ever witnessed.
11. Stroke Of Laughter
GiphyNot a doctor or anything, but my grandmother has had 7 strokes. I couldn't help but laugh at the 7th one, she said, "Aww sh*t, I'm having another stroke". She said this during a phone call abruptly. She's a very tough lady, she runs a garden and eats her weight in vegetables.
10. Head Over Heels
Not a doctor but I work in cardiology, and my doctors all do rotations at our hospital. Our hospital is a level 5 trauma and it's the closest hospital to a lot of rural area, so a lot of traumas that happen way out in the middle of nowhere end up at that hospital.
This guy came in having been in a car accident; he was covered in road rash and his chest was more or less torn open. Apparently, as we all later learned, he'd been drinking and riding passenger in his friend's car. He wanted out of the car, his friend said no, so this guy (once again, very drunk) decided to try and jump out of the car window. He somewhat succeeded, but his shirt caught on the side view mirror and he got dragged until the driver stopped flipping out enough to come to his senses and stop.
9. Tickle Me ECMO
Had a gentleman in his late 50s come in with multiple myeloma. Short history of progressively worsening breathlessness, turned out he had a pulmonary embolism (blood clot in his lungs). He was a good candidate for surgery, so he had the blood clot removed but unfortunately the clot had caused such bad issues with his heart (acute right heart failure) that he couldn't be weaned off the bypass machine. Instead, he went to ICU on ECMO (like a circuit for your heart and lungs outside the body to give your heart/lungs time to 'rest'). His chest was still open (cannulated centrally) but covered up with sterile stuff.
After 3 days, he was booked to be weaned off the ECMO or at least have the tubes put in peripherally so his chest could be closed. Morning of the procedure while he's waiting to be moved, somehow the tubing of the ECMO machine broke (oxygenator tube) and blood spilled all over the floor and he went into cardiac arrest. The Cardiothoracics consultant had to do internal cardiac massage (basically CPR on the heart by squeezing it via his still open chest) until the circuit got fixed and he returned to a normal circulation. He ended up going to OT and having his chest closed but he had more clots pulled out of his pulmonary arteries (clots had recurred).
At this point I thought this guy was utterly screwed. I figured if he even lived long enough to be woken up he'd have some degree of ischeamic brain injury. After about 2 weeks the guy left ICU and a week later went to rehabilitation. Speaking, walking, cognitively largely intact.
It was one of the most unbelievable things I've ever seen during my short career.
8. Double Take
GiphyAs a very junior doctor I looked after this mega-alcoholic who needed ascities (fluid in the abdomen caused by liver failure) tapping out every month or so. He kept coming in a worse and worse shade of yellow/ green (jaundice), needing more and more fluid removed, still merrily drinking all the while. Well, the obvious happened, he died. Now he dead.
So I wander onto the ward a few weeks later, to find him sitting there in bed, green as you like, looking very alive.
Turned out is was his twin, also an alcoholic, also not to live much longer.
7. Mercury In Retrograde
Patient stabbed himself in the neck with a thermometer that pierced his trachea. Missed all the important arteries (carotids, vertebrals); just hit some minor nerves.
Good guy patient provided his own temperature reads until they removed the thermometer.
6. Happy Ending?
Not a doctor but... encountered a woman that was shot blank in the head by her boyfriend. Bullet entered one of her eye sockets and exited above her and ear on the same side. She called 911 on her own and survived, was in ICU for weeks, and testified against the guy who is now thankfully in prison!
5. Just a Little More Time
GiphyAbout 20 years ago, I had a patient come in with obstruction of his colon by large colon cancer. The cancer had spread to his liver, and CT scan showed the liver basically replaced by metastatic tumor. So he wouldn't die of intestinal obstruction (I won't go into detail, but trust me, it is a very unpleasant way to die) the patient, his family, and I decided to try placing an expandable metal stent through the tumor. It worked! His obstruction was relieved and he was able to go home to spend his last days with his family.
18 months later the patient came in for an office visit...for heartburn. He was even more jaundiced than when I first met him, but he felt basically well and was eating well. The stent was still functioning. I never saw him again and assume he finally succumbed to his disease, but he got at least 18 months of precious and really GOOD time.
4. Helmet Reminder
Paramedic of 15 years. Had an 8 year old kid on a ripstick (similar to a skateboard) lose control and roll into the path of an oncoming SUV in his neighborhood. He was hit by then run over by it. We arrived to find him face down under the vehicle, unconscious, barely breathing.
After all was said and done he had: bilateral femur fractures, one lower leg fracture, multiple rib fractures, a blown pupil, and open skull fracture, subdural brain bleed, a tension pneumo (air escaping lungs into the chest cavity--will squish the lungs and heart if untreated), and when we were bagging him (breathing for him) we felt subcutaneous emphysema (free air that crackles like rice crispies/bubble wrap) in his hip... yes hip.
We flew him to the children's hospital expecting him to die within the hour. He was in a coma for days and had to have multiple surgeries, but made a complete recovery (100% neurologically intact as well) and graduates high school in the spring. His was such an amazing case the hospital made him one of their "miracle kids of the year".
Parents- please make your kids wear helmets. Even in the neighborhood. It wouldn't have prevented all of his injuries, but would have substantially lessened the brain trauma he suffered.
-- firefightin
3. Pace Yourself
Old guy comes in with his wife. She tells me "he passed out last week and I couldn't wake him up. After about two minutes he came around and he didn't want to go to the hospital so we booked an appointment to see you."
I'm a little concerned by this, and his heart rate is a little slow so I send him for an EKG (heart rhythm tracing). I get a call about an hour later from the cardiologist reviewing the EKG calmly thanking me for sending him in because the wiring in his heart essentially wasn't working and he could drop dead at any moment... again. Because the week before, he hadn't passed out - he'd died. Through some lucky miracle his heart started again. He's got a pacemaker now and he and his wife are doing just great.
2. Something Rotten
GiphyResponded to a well being check (basically check on someone no one has heard from in a while). Get there and police advise the woman is dead and appeared to be so for a while (middle of summer). Can smell her before getting close to house, put on protective gear and air packs to move the body. We go to carefully move her into body bag and she opens her eyes and gasps. She was alive and rotting alive, we got her to the hospital alive and she lived.
1. Thank Goodness There Weren't Any Fish
(Worked) in diagnostic imaging at a hospital and we had a man come in for an x-ray complaining of chest pain. His records showed his last visit was two years prior when he got drunk and fell into a fish tank, breaking it. ER stitched him up and sent him home. Fast forward two years, and we are all gathered around the computer screen looking at an X-ray that showed a 12 inch long piece of fish tank glass sitting in his chest, with his aorta resting right on top of it (it was on an angle running from his left shoulder down towards his right hip). There were other shards of glass too, but this one was the biggest. Emergency surgery happened right away.
Sometimes, those that grow up rich or sheltered have no idea how the real world works. Sometimes they’re willfully ignorant, and other times, they genuinely have no clue. Whatever the circumstances, these Redditors tell stories of when they met people who needed a real wake-up call.
1. Gimme My Privacy
My dad collects coins because his extremely Hungarian immigrant grandfather convinced him that all banks are determined to steal all his money from him, so he has to have a backup plan.
This in and of itself isn't too extreme; plenty of people choose self-sustenance due to a distrust in government and economics—but the real kicker happened when he tried to roll his coins.
He has to order his coin rolls online because he doesn't want to go to the bank and get coin rolls. That’s because then the bank will know how much money he's hiding from them. I'm not kidding. Anyway, he ordered a bag of coin rolls and waited about a month for them to come before he started getting curious about where they were.
He asked my mom to check the order tracking while he was at work one day, which led to this conversation: “It says here that the package made it to our town two weeks ago, but got sent back. It says you gave no delivery address”. My dad responds, “Yeah, why would I do that? I don't want them to know where I live, they might tell everyone”.
2. All The Free Food!
When I was a kid, I was on the swim team at an athletic club in a primarily rich area, with us being middle/lower class. The athletic club had a grill and I saw people all day going up and getting food just by showing their access card. I asked them what they did, and they said, "Just scan your access card and you get food”.
Of course, in my mind, that meant it was complimentary. So, I started getting all sorts of food and snacks: frozen yogurt, Slurpees, chicken fingers, cheese fries, smoothies, etc.
Come the end of the month, my parents get our membership bill and start freaking out. I didn't hear the beginning of the conversation, and walk in just in time for them to wonder where all these food charges came from.
I, in my naivety, said "I got all that food but it's free right?" They told me it all had to be paid for. When I asked the other kids, they all said, "No way, it's free, I never have to pay”. Turns out their parents were just so loaded they didn't care what the bill was it just got paid and they ate whatever they wanted, however much.
It was around that time I realized just how "out of class" I was compared to them.
3. Book Smarts
man in gray suit jacket holding white ipadPhoto by Usman Yousaf on UnsplashI once had a university professor who was absolutely brilliant knowledge of middle eastern politics, particularly around the Israel-Palestine conflict. He could remember insanely precise historical details going back thousands of years and seemed to understand the subtlest of nuances on both sides of the conflict. His lectures were amazing.
Or they would have been if he had turned off his cell phone. He simply couldn't figure out how to silence his phone, or even turn it on and off. He had let his TA do it for him a couple of times, but then he'd leave with it still off and couldn't figure out how to turn it back on until he came back the next day, so after going through that twice, he decided he would just leave it on.
And it appeared that every telemarketer on earth had his number, because it would ring at least five times an hour at full volume, and he'd just talk over the top of it like it wasn't happening.
He also never answered his email, because he apparently didn't realize that he had one or might need to use it. One day he'd forgotten to bring his little water jug and sent his TA to the vending machine in the middle of a lecture to bring him a bottle of water.
She brought it back and handed it to him, and he turned red in the face trying to get it open, before handing it back to her and declaring that something was wrong with it.
She opened it quickly and easily: he'd been turning the cap the wrong way.
4. Paycheck-To-Paycheck
My company is switching its non-exempt employees from a bi-monthly pay schedule to a bi-weekly pay schedule. Because of the reduction in per-paycheck pay, payroll is offering a one-time advance payment of the third paycheck in the upcoming three-paycheck month so that employees who live on a tight budget can divvy that up for bills or payments or whatever to transition to the impact of their new paycheck being slightly reduced.
You have to notify payroll if you want to take this option. One manager couldn't wrap their head around the existence of people living paycheck-to-paycheck. His ignorance was unbelievable. He asked, "Couldn't they make more money? Couldn't they learn to save?"
Problem solved, duh. Funny thing is his nanny is quitting because they aren't paying her enough, and the cost of living here is too high.
5. First-World Problems
I live in London as a welfare rep for American students. Knowing that American college costs a bundle, and the program to come over costs a load too, these students tend to be the richest and whitest of suburbia. One day, the Wi-Fi went down, and I may as well have told them that there was no drinking water in the U.K.
About 40 students were knocking on my door telling me it wasn't acceptable and that they were calling their 'daddies' to sort it out. They said things like, "My daddy is a lawyer, so if you think you're getting money for this accommodation when I haven't had Wi-Fi you've got another thing coming”.
I tried to calm them down, let them know it would be back on in an hour or two when one of them said the following line: "You can't blame us for being upset, we grew up in 'THE FIRST WORLD”. I was flabbergasted.
Not only did she talk about being from 'the first world' like that is something to be proud of, but her entire argument was that “Everything in my life has always been easy and perfect... how dare you take away the most minor of utilities for three hours?!”
6. Drive Thru Trouble
a close up of a mcdonald's sign on a buildingPhoto by Janet Ganbold on UnsplashI was 15 and working at McDonalds. I was at the back window where you take people’s money. A customer came and blew past the back speaker where you order. That was pretty typical, so I figured it was just a normal mistake. When they get to my window, I see that it is this very old lady.
She smiles at me and holds a grocery bag up with frozen chicken and two liters of soda. She holds out a 20$ bill and asks, "How much for the chicken and soda?"
15-year-old me didn't have the coping skills for this. I stared at her for what felt like forever. Finally, I said, "Uh, I think you're confused". She drove off, with her car halfway over the curb.
7. Counting The Cents
About three years ago, I had a young woman, probably early 20s, come into the cafe I work at. She ordered herself a drink and a pastry of some sort. Her total was around $6. She proceeded to hand me a 1-dollar bill and 6 quarters. I took the money and waited for her to procure more, but she just stood there staring at me. I told her, "I'm sorry, it's $6.87”.
She says, "I know, I gave you 7”. I said, "No, this is only $2.25”. She took the money from my hand and counted each item in front of me like I was an idiot, counting each item as $1. I pointed to the quarters and told her, "Those are quarters, not dollars”. Keep in mind this person was obviously not foreign or anything. She had no accent and seemed completely American.
Her response was, "I know they're quarters, but they're dollars”. She then proceeded to pick up one of the quarters and point to the word "dollar" inscribed on the bottom beneath George's head. At this point I was thinking, this is the single dumbest person I've ever seen, or this is the worst con ever conceived, but she didn't give up. She demanded to speak to a manager. I got the manager, and he told her the same thing.
She started getting visibly upset and holding back tears. She might have been embarrassed.
8. What Hippies Are Hiding
I'm a jeweler/metalsmith and often work at festivals and street fairs to sell my work. My husband and I were hanging out in my tent last summer at a festival and a woman walks in, looking harmless enough.
This may also be a sign of me being a little out of touch with reality as I took in her flowing 10-yard skirt, multiple colored scarves, and wavy brown-gray hair tied back with a leather rope, and assumed she was a sweet old hippie lady.
This assumption made her next few words all the more shocking. She started off simple enough, talking about her own and admiring a few pieces, trying a few things on, and then she noticed I was pregnant. This is when the ridiculousness began.
She asked if I knew that a blood moon was coming soon and that I should stay inside my house for fear of the power of this blood moon sending me into pre-term labor and possibly resulting in a stillbirth.
She then reminded us that this next blood moon was a sign of the apocalypse, and that Jesus would be returning to Earth soon to take all the righteous to heaven.
She said that if this happened before my baby was born that I would wake up miraculously not pregnant anymore, as he would claim all innocents in his name and spirit them away to glory. She then said "And you know, of course, this is all our fault. Humans, not God's”.
She didn't notice through her diatribe that our smiles had become completely frozen, and we were hunching down more and more in our seats. I said, "Okay, well thank you!" She left. I look sideways at all sweet old hippie ladies now.
9. IT Troubleshooting
brown 4-layer bricked buildingPhoto by Sigmund on UnsplashI was a field engineer on the construction of some very large expensive dorms at High Point University. The dorms included a three-story waterfall, sports bar, steak house, arcade, free movie theater, etc. It was very fancy.
We kept a small staff to help the university with the first student move in. The students were really pampered, but this was the worst case I remember.
One girl called for help because the power wasn't working in her dorm room. Our guys got there to troubleshoot and found that none of her stuff was plugged into the outlets! We explained that you have to plug things in for them to work.
She said, "I guess our maid must have always taken care of that”. She did not know how to plug something in! When we showed her, she still stood there expecting us to plug in all her stuff!
10. Absolutely Innocent
Years ago, when I worked fast food, a different fast-food store down the street kept getting vandalized, so they put up cameras, caught the culprits while they were doing it, and called the authorities. The culprits were two tweens. Siblings. They showed mom and dad the footage.
They insisted, "This footage is fake! Our kids are innocent!!" Yeah, because early 90s security camera footage was so easy to realistically falsify... Last we heard, the parents were trying to sue for false accusations. I'm sure the judge shut it down.
11. I Would Never!
There are a lot of older ugly apartment buildings near the house I grew up in. My friend at the time lived a very privileged lifestyle, with $200-300+ weekly weekend dinners with the family, timeshares over the place, skiing and snowboarding trips, etc. Her next comment turned me off completely: “Why would anyone want to live in these apartments? I would never”.
I told her people that who live there don't have a choice...
12. Working From Home
person holding red and white plastic containerPhoto by Meg Boulden on UnsplashMy co-worker's 17-year-old daughter had her first job interview recently. It was at a movie theatre. When she got home, her mom asked how it went. The daughter says, "I told them that I was only interested in a job that would let me work from home. That way, I can get snacks whenever I want”. I would have LOVED to have been a witness to the interviewer's expression at that moment.
13. A Clean Wipe
I remember a while back I read a post about a man who refused to wipe his bum after number two because he believed no man should have anything touch him there... I remember vividly thinking "How out of touch with reality do you have to be to have such a belief?" I am still occasionally haunted by this stranger.
14. The Family Business
I used to work at a machine shop owned and run by a family. All their kids worked there, and they were probably the most selfish, self absorbed, jaded people I've ever met.
So, the owners had a very nice house, which they let one of their children and family live in with them. Their old house was given to another child and her family. A third house was purchased and given to their last child and family.
All of these properties were being paid for by the parents, as well as all of their ~$40,000 salaries and benefits. All of the three children worked there, as well as their spouses. Also, they each had new company cars every two years. Who needs a company car when they work in an office? Also, why do they carpool together and leave some of the new cars at home everyday?
The parents are very nice people and very giving. The children and their families, however, are absolute jerks. Everyday after school all of the grandkids would come in the shop and run around, messing with things, and getting into trouble. This is a machine shop with heavy machinery constantly running! Don't let your kids shoot Nerf guns at each other while I'm running a hydraulic press!
One day at lunch, I hear two of the spouses and one of the owner's kids yelling at the owner. Like, screaming. Why, you ask? Because he didn't want to purchase season tickets three rows closer than what they had already for our local NFL team. Jaded, spoiled, jerks. Meanwhile, we non-family members are struggling to pay bills and being refused raises.
15. Just Buy A House!
man and woman sitting on chairsPhoto by Kenny Eliason on UnsplashI was involved in a nonprofit for women in my last city maybe two years back. My ex was from a rich area of the state, and the mean income for this area was $31k. A teacher talked about how 500+ kids in her school were homeless, and how seniors would pool their money together to get a hotel for days or weeks at a time.
I remember telling my ex about it, and how awful that’s gotta be to be 17 and living with 10 others in a hotel. His reply deeply disgusted me: “They’re stupid. If they had any brains, they’d buy a house so they could get equity; the hotel is just them throwing their money away and not getting anything from it”.
He was 100% convinced that these 17-year-olds, with no addresses, who are MINORS, could apply for and qualify for a mortgage.
I fussed at him and don’t regret it, because he is so out of touch with reality. Eventually, he went on months later to say he talks down about other people and acts like he’s better than everyone because he is better than everyone.
16. Library Lessons
A friend of mine in college was absolutely shocked when I and several other friends pulled out our childhood and hometown public library cards at dinner one night. She could not fathom that all of our families went to the library regularly when we were growing up and that this is an extremely common experience for a lot of people.
When I asked her what she did when she wanted to read books growing up, she said "My family just bought them all”.
17. You’re Not Them!
On the first day of the Marketing Research class at Wharton, the professor gives everyone a questionnaire asking them a bunch of questions like, what percentage of US parents feed their kids hot dogs at least once a week, what percentage of beer is sold in stores is craft beer, etc. The students did horribly, giving answers like 2% for things that were actually 90%.
The explicit point of the exercise was this: You are not representative of Americans. Unless you're marketing to fellow top-tier MBAs, your instincts are always completely wrong, even after you try to adjust for your biases. You must learn to do and interpret marketing research or change your major to finance.
18. Continental Drift
aerial view of green and brown mountains and lakePhoto by Karsten Winegeart on UnsplashI was 16 years old, in Driver's Ed, and the teacher asks us an extra credit question. "Why are there interstates in Hawaii? You can't drive there from any other state”. A girl in my class raised her hand and asked, "Was it because they were built before Hawaii broke off?"
This girl thought it was a possibility that Hawaii broke off, and drifted to the middle of the Pacific Ocean all in the last 50 years. The actual answer was that Hawaii has interstate because, if a highway is funded by the federal government, it's simply called an interstate.
19. Time For The Talk
When my mom was 18 or 19, she joined the military, and as soon as she was able, she moved off base into a cheap little apartment with another girl the same age that she had met in basic. One day, my mom is alone and cleaning up their place when she notices this smell coming from her roommate’s bedroom. She figures that it's old dishes or food, and goes to check it out. The room is spotless but it reeks.
My mom walks around trying to figure out where the smell is coming from. Finally, she looks under the bed and pulls out this box. It's dozens and dozens of bloody underwear. Her roommate had no clue about pads or tampons, and her mother never told her. She would just change her clothes and toss the nasty underwear under the bed. My mom had to sit down and have a talk with her.
20. Living The Life
This guy I know hit the Powerball for 150 million at age 19. He bought a little house on the river and now sits around drinking and fishing all day, every day. He has no phone, no internet, doesn't get mail, and has no way of getting any news about anything, his girlfriend left him, and the government thought he had passed till the IRS sent someone out to evaluate the property.
His parents passed two years ago, and his sister as well after complications from a hysterectomy last year, so he has no family, no friends, no job, nothing. His only living contact is his dog, the occasional person who comes by his house, and the people at the gas station up the road where he buys his bait and his drinks. He has bricks of cash in his house laying around because he just doesn't care.
He won't ever need as much as he has. I'd give him 10 years till he gets skin cancer as he sits in the sun all day.
21. Back To School
man reading in libraryPhoto by Dollar Gill on UnsplashWe were at a table, six of us, eating. The conversation turned to jobs and employment. One of the guys, a rich kid that had most of his life handed to him, including his tech job at mommy's company, commented that he didn't understand why if someone couldn't find a job, they just didn't go back to school, get a degree, and try some more.
He couldn't understand two things. One, most families cannot support an unemployed adult student for the time it takes to get a degree. Two, the jaw-dropping one, was he thought that all colleges, everywhere, were free. His 'logic' was that students go to college straight from high school and 'they don't have money' so how else could they afford school? We live in the U.S. and this guy was 27 years old!
We had to tell him that school costs money......
22. Losing The Plot
My ex-best friend became engaged to a guy that we had all been friends with before they started dating. He cheated on her with another woman while deployed. He broke off the engagement, and she lost it. I don't know if she was bipolar before this happened, but she became suicidal and went off the deep end.
She would quit taking her meds and go off on these big rants on Facebook about how they were going to be together forever.
She would take pictures of gifts he had given her and post them over and over again. Her profile picture was always of the two of them YEARS later. But here's the crazier part: By this time, the guy was married to another girl, and they had a few kids. She would go off on these rants, calling out anyone who tried to tell her to move on.
She would post rant after rant after rant, 10, 15, 20 times a day. Followed by more pictures of them together. She knew we were friends on Facebook and she would always ask me to send him messages, which I refused to do.
It got so bad that me and a group of girls who had gone to school with her reconnected, and they called her parents. Her parents said they knew that she was bipolar and not taking her meds, but in so many words told us all that "We got this, you can go away now". A few days after that, she just disappeared from FB. I haven't spoken to her in years... I hope she's okay.
23. My Precious Child
My parents have a 60lb Portuguese Water Dog that keeps biting people, like it's up to five now and they refuse to come to terms with the fact that the dog is dangerous, and they don't have the skill or the discipline to keep it in check. It's actually been really tough on the family because everyone is scared of it, and no one can reason with them.
The worst part is the dog hates children, like he flips out when he sees a kid, and recently bit a five-year-old. I'm so mad at them. They replaced their real children with a dog and instead of treating it like an animal, they act like it's their new kid. I've seriously considered alerting the authorities, but I know it'd tear my family apart... The whole thing is truly terrible.
24. Do You Know Who I Am?!
architectural photography of white aircraftPhoto by Chris Leipelt on UnsplashI was leaving a tropical location that is frequented by celebrities and billionaires on my friend’s brand-new Bombardier Global 6000 when we pull into the loading area and see his flight crew in an all-out brawl with four other people.
Apparently, a well-known celebrity had arrived at the airport early for a chartered flight, and upon finding out it wasn't supposed to arrive for a couple of hours, tried to commander my friend’s plane thinking it was owned by the same charter company.
She had her assistants and security go and try to remove our luggage while she boarded and refused to leave. It took about 30 minutes after our arrival to finally convince her minions that they were breaking the law and they finally stopped their attempted conquest.
The celebrity, however, refused to get off the plane and demanded my friend fly her and her entourage of eight to her destination first and then continue on to ours.
They thought based on her star power that my friend would just bow to her demands. It took another 20 minutes to get the celebrity off his plane.
As our party was trying to board, we were subject to a litany of curses and insults from the celebrity and her toadies because we were "nobodies," and her time was apparently more valuable than ours.
About a week later, my friend who owns the plane received a letter from a very well-known and litigious celebrity lawyer threatening legal action if any mention or videos of the incident wound up in the tabloids.
25. Extreme Views
My dad works in the HVAC industry. He went to go fix a seemingly nice little old lady's air conditioning a few weeks ago. She fed him homemade cookies, told him stories of her grandkids, and was overall a really nice lady. Until she started talking about current events.
"Oh, can you make sure the unit is secure? I don't want the blacks to steal it, they've been so rowdy lately”. My dad just said, "Uhh, no one is going to move the unit, ma'am, it's safe,” to which she replied, "Oh, don't underestimate, they managed to get one into the White House! You know that man steals from the house all the time? I saw him selling his own desk on Craigslist!"
Of course, my dad just let her talk, and she rambled along those lines for a while. Then, when he was finished, she thanked him, and as he left in a hurry, she said, "Make sure to pay the Jew tax! They say it's the PST (provincial sales tax), but it's not!"
Just waaaaaay out there.
26. The Middle Of The Party
I was at a New Year’s Eve rave. It was nothing too crazy, but this dude is enjoying his depth and focus complications, clearly out there, then he starts chasing the laser patterns; still pretty normal, all things considered. But then, he goes from chasing the lasers on the table, to the floor.
As he's getting up, he does the most peculiar thing—he begins rubbing my belly. He doesn't see my face, but I can see the telltale signs that he is flipping out about how soft and warm this wall is, totally out of reality. Then he looks up and we make eye contact.
I swear it was five seconds of just eye contact, until he smiles, peace signs, and backs off. It was the moment of eye contact when I realized he actually thought he was touching a wall!
27. Starting The Dream Job
man in green jacket and blue denim jeans sitting on train rail during daytimePhoto by Tharoushan Kandarajah on UnsplashI'm an expat living in Sri Lanka. Love the country, love the people... But some of them can play fast and loose with 'legality' though, which tends to happen in developing countries. Anyways, I have a guy that runs a food stall at the end of my road. Decent guy, and very well spoken... Something always seemed off though.
I finally discovered one day when chatting with him that he believes all Westerners have chips implanted in their brains that make them be controlled by the government and spy on the rest of the world.
The next time I saw him, he told me he was shutting down his food stall. He told me with a straight face that he had been thinking of business ideas. "What one job is guaranteed good money?" he asks. Without waiting for a response, he says "Doctors!"
So, he decided that he'd open a doctor's surgery and charge half the going rate for a doctor visit—despite having no medical training—because it paid better than a food stall owner.
Not only that, the guy actually did it. Within a week, his shop had a big red medical cross on it, and he was seeing very poor patients, diagnosing them with God knows what, and prescribing medicine on a random piece of paper. He was genuinely shocked after a couple of weeks when he was shut down.
28. I’m A Star!
A friend of mine met this girl while doing a play. She was tall, blonde, and almost attractive. She was one of those girls who was obsessed with being hot but just wasn't quite there. Something was off about her face. She was also set on becoming the next big actor or model and convinced that she had what it takes.
She did this unaired, never-released reality show about a swimsuit competition supposedly for the sexiest women in the world, but it was honestly a bunch of fairly average girls all with the same complex.
But because of that show that nobody has seen, she considers herself a D-list celebrity. She goes to events and takes pics with celebrities to then post and say she was hanging out with them.
She "endorses" products on her Instagram, on which she bought 90% of her 5,000 or so followers. The robots that follow her comment on her pictures with one-word comments all the time, like "sweet!" or "nice!"
She takes a million selfies, and also sometimes takes selfie videos where she addresses her "fans”. One, in particular, stands out where she told her fans she was having a contest to win a hoverboard… She also fancies herself a singer, although she is terrible, and releases videos of her singing into the camera out of key.
She released a single on iTunes that sounds nothing like her because it is autotuned, and it still manages to sound like two goats arguing.
She's also a writer—a term used loosely of course. She wrote an autobiography that she published on Amazon that you can buy for thirty dollars. She also quotes herself on her Instagram in those quote pictures things that girls like.
She even gives herself credit on IMDB for movies and things that she wasn't in, or she was just an extra in so that it looks like she's succeeding. It's like a car crash and I've never meant that more. She is the most delusional person I've ever met. I didn't believe my friend before I met her, and it's amazing.
29. What Am I Doing Wrong…?
I was in high school, I'd say probably about 12 years ago, in the weight room for my gym class. This one kid was quite muscular and not overweight but had the cardio of a walrus. After getting a miserable time on his mile run, I told him it might help if he cut down on his pack a day of smokes.
He had legitimately never even realized that it would not be good for his lungs or cardio, and I was apparently the first to make him realize it despite his being a junior or senior in high school. We all had mandatory health class to teach these things!
30. But I Don’t Get It
white and brown star on brown tree branchPhoto by David Holifield on UnsplashThis past semester, I was studying abroad, and I met people from all over the US. I met two different people, both from Virginia, and they were the nicest people. However, when I told them I was Jewish, they were completely dumbfounded.
They never met a Jew before, let alone be friends with one... I thought, "How strange," but I figured she lived in an extremely rural part of Virginia and goes to school in the South, so Jews are a rarity down there.
I also guessed that she probably has met a Jew before, but never really took note of it or didn't know, because it's not like we identify our religion every time we meet someone new. The most out-of-touch thing I heard in my life came from one of these girls.
I say, "I can't believe none of your friends are Jewish!" "I know! So do you celebrate Christmas?" I tell her, "Nope! I mean, I know some Jews do both holidays, but my family strictly follows Jewish holidays. No Easter, no Lent, etc”. She says again, "So you've never celebrated Christmas?"
"Don't get me wrong,” I say, “I love Christmas time; it's one of the jolliest times of the year. My ex celebrated Christmas and I 'celebrated' with them, but it's not like I go to mass or have a tree”.
She asks again, "So you don't celebrate it?" I say, "Not in my house, nope!" She continues asking me, "But it's Christmas, why don't you celebrate it?" I explain that "Well, Jews don't really believe in the whole ‘Jesus was the Messiah’ sort of thing”. I thought it'd end there...but things just continued to spiral.
She asks again, "But like, you don't celebrate Christmas?" And I say again, "Not in my house!" She continues, "So there's no tree in your house, you don't go to mass?"
...I swear to God, these questions persisted for a solid 10 minutes. I distinctly remember because we were standing outside the Tower of London, and I just thought it was a strange conversation.
I'm more than happy to answer questions about Judaism, what we believe in ,and why it's different, but it just felt like she couldn't wrap her head around this concept that I didn't celebrate Christmas.
Like, it was literally impossible for her to understand that Christmas is just a holiday celebrated everywhere except my house.
31. What Hard Work Gets
I grew up in Silicon Valley. In high school, kids were getting Audis, new Jeeps, "Dad's old bimmer,” etc. I mowed lawns, split firewood, worked six days a week at the hardware store, and saved up so that I could buy a truck when I was 16.
When I finally bought it, my buddies literally didn't believe that I bought it on my own and surely my father must have contributed.
It was only around $5k, but I seriously think that I was the only kid that I knew who bought his own vehicle. I drove by my old high school the other day and saw two Teslas and a few Range Rovers in the student lot.
32. Any Last Words?
My sister freaked out because my parents decided to make their will. She cried and screamed about how they were "ready to die for us" now. Didn't help that my dad has just retired and money's a little tighter than before.
But if I'm correct, I do believe most Americans make their wills when they get married, get a house, and have kids. It's generally not recommended to make your will later in life, but it's possible.
My parents are in their sixties. I'm 22. My sister is 25. I finally had to call my mom to ask her to explain the meaning of a will to my sister.
33. The Super Spoiled
woman wearing gray scoop-neck long-sleeved shirt smilingPhoto by June O on UnsplashI've known a few "Daddy's lil’ girls" in my lifetime that had credit cards that their dad paid. To them, it was free money. They could spend as much as they wanted and never saw a bill because it went straight to dad, and he paid it.
I could see them getting older and through being coddled all their life and having everything from vehicle registration and insurance to electricity bills handled for them thinking all this stuff is free and easy, and never realizing it's because someone was basically doing it all for you.
Some of these girls’ parents lost a lot in the 2008 market crash, and they couldn't comprehend at 26-30 that suddenly they had to do things themselves. The lucky ones married rich, but I know a couple of them that still live with their parents approaching 30 because they just can't function in the real world.
It's sad, but even sadder seeing them on Facebook, still taking multiple vacations a year, posting pics of their expensive shoes and purses and fruity drinks at the bar, and knowing they can only afford this stuff because they don't have any family, mortgage, car note, or responsibility, but only have a semi-decent job as a secretary somewhere.
34. To Believe Or Not To Believe
I love it when I get shamed for using a wheelchair when I can walk. Like, yes, I still have function of my legs, but I'm in immeasurable amounts of pain after using the for too long, even just to stand still! If people ask questions because they're trying to learn, that's fine by me! I know not everyone understands this type of stuff and I don't expect them to!
But heed my warning—Don't stare at me all high and mighty and judge what you think is happening. There's also "it's all in your head". Yes, Lucinda, my mental illnesses may be there, but my body physically not working is not psychosomatic! Also, I had a "friend" one time look me right in the eye and tell me he doesn't believe I'm sick. Like, okay, thanks for being a pal, dude.
35. Please Understand
My fiancé is a doctor, I'm an engineer here and I grew up very blue collar. We still have tons of student debt to pay off before we can reap the benefits of a good salary. Her friend, a doctor who was a resident when she was in med school, was talking to us about the new house she bought, and kept asking us when we planned on moving out of our awful apartment and getting a nice big townhouse.
She couldn't comprehend that unlike her, our parents aren't rich, and they can't buy a house for us in cash, and let us pay them back interest-free. I love her to death, and she's a sweet friend we have known for a long time. She has done so much for us in terms of friendship and emotional support.
But her mom was a successful surgeon, and her dad retired early after selling his successful business.
36. You’re Just Like Me!
man in green black and yellow floral button up shirtPhoto by Taylor Deas-Melesh on UnsplashI studied German in college with a guy who I thought was an alright dude when, one day, while out having some drinks with others in the department, he very seriously started talking about how the best way to get rid of race problems in the US was to partition the nation and separate all the races.
He kept saying stupid stuff like “It won’t be a big deal; it'll be perfectly equal” (ugh). I couldn't believe it when some others around were starting to agree with him as well. I felt like I was in some weird Twilight Zone episode.
The guy thought he was so intelligent and insightful. I never spoke to him again after that, and later found out from a female friend of mine who had gone on a date with him that he had a portrait of Adolf Hitler above his bed.
I'm a big, Swedish-looking guy, so I think he thought I was going to be with him on that. I was not.
37. A True Scientist
There once was an Evangelist that came to preach at my university in the quad. He said he had a bachelor’s degree in computer science and spent 'many years' doing 'Postgraduate study' and therefore was the most qualified to talk about all things science.
He claimed that, with Einstein's E=MC2 equation, Einstein proved that the speed of light changed over time and also that energy produced by the sun and starlight was converted to mass upon hitting the earth.
Therefore, when the speed of light gets faster or slower, the Earth gets larger or smaller respectively. And that's what makes it 'appear' that Plate Tectonics exist.
And when the earth last got smaller that was when Noah's flood occurred. He claimed to have written papers about it that had been published in 'major scientific journals'.
When we asked what journals they were, he said we were too stupid to understand them. When we asked where he got his degree, he claimed that he was too important to have to explain it to university students. When we asked who peer-reviewed his papers, he claimed that God himself did. I don't think you can get much more out of touch with reality than that.
38. The Twilight Zone
I had a friend all throughout high school and some time in college. She was a swimming champion in the making, breaking records left and right. She hurt her foot in some way, keeping her permanently out of the swimming game during her sophomore year of HS. She shortly after got "bit," by a vampire and is to this day convinced that she is a vampire.
I asked her in college to prove it—run fast, sparkle, actually suck another human's blood, turn into a bat, anything—and her uncalled-for response made me shake my head. She blocked me from social media, though I heard through the grapevine that she joined a real-life vampire group and manages a public blog about being a vampire. Shortly after I started talking about it, she texted me and demanded I clarify she's now a Pixie, no longer a vampire because she's part Native American.
39. Jamaican Ploy
woman in black and white striped long sleeve shirtPhoto by Julien L on UnsplashMy mom was scammed by Jamaican scammers. My sister and I had an impromptu intervention after my mom had my dad locked up. My dad found out she had given them thousands in exchange for winning their lottery. He then realized why she had $5000 in cash in her dresser.
She tried blocking the bedroom door from him and the money. When he pushed past her into the bedroom, she called the authorities, and he got taken in.
The next day, my sister and I went over. The scammers would call their house every 10 minutes. She would beg the scammers to give her the money because no one believed her. She was absolutely convinced it was real.
She got so angry with us because we didn’t believe her and because we would get on the phone and yell at the scammers.
She was bent on sending the scammers more money. It was like she was an addict. She had managed to send them $1500 more before we had gotten there. We ended up taking the $3500 that was left, her keys, purse, and phones.
We left someone with her to watch her until we were able to cut off access to bank accounts and my dad was released.
40. Pulling His Weight
My stepfather constantly complains that "Nobody pulls their weight around here, people need to learn responsibility!" Or, well, that's the gist of what he says. He tells us we need to get "real jobs" even though I work as a computer programmer and my brother, a teen, has his first job at a food service store and has future plans.
Problem is, my stepfather's unemployed. The last job he had was as a minimum-wage dishwasher. He got fired nearly two years ago because he kept showing up slammed. His claim to fame is doing the dishes at the house a few times a week, and based on conversations I've overheard, he threw out some old vegetable soup, which he talks about weeks later as if he moved the Earth to do it.
I had to lend my mom and brother a good amount to cover their rent when my brother made the mistake of giving his portion to my stepdad, who subsequently went out the next day and bought a load of drinks.
41. Complete Addiction
I've got a buddy who probably has a video game addiction and has had it for most of his life. We are both mid to late 20s now. His game of choice for the past few years has been DOTA 2. The championships for this game, if you are unaware, host the largest e-sports prize pools in history (7 figures). This guy thinks he has a chance to make it and compete as a pro.
The chances of that happening for anyone are incredibly slim. But the part of this, is he is only ranked in the top 70%-ish of people on the entire online ladder ranking system. On top of that, he only plays one of the 150+ heroes.
Apparently, you absolutely need to be able to play at least most of them efficiently since you can't play the same one every game. He is giving up his life basically to try this. He acts irrationally towards his friends who question his ability or goals and slowly but surely is alienating himself.
He takes no responsibility for this trend and blames other people for it. He has put off school for a time to play DOTA; he had one semester left until graduating and deferred, I'd be surprised if he actually finishes it. He hardly ever works, only barely enough to pay his tiny bit of rent split between four other roommates.
It's an unbelievable situation.
42. My Birthday Battle
Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice Review! | Oh man, it's f… | Flickrwww.flickr.com
It was the opening night of Batman v. Superman, before anyone knew how bad it was, and my friends and I decided to celebrate my birthday and get advance IMAX tickets. We reserved our seats, and they were decent seats, and we got into the theater with our popcorn and drinks and firmly sat in our seats.
There was still some time before the movie started, so we started talking. Then a woman with a little boy interrupted our conversation to talk to me. Sensing her tone, I could already tell things were going to get a little tense.
"Excuse me, can you swap seats with my son? He's only six and doesn't like sticking his head up far”. Now, I bought these tickets two weeks in advance, and this was for my birthday, so I looked her and her son right in the eye and said "No”. The woman got mad and told me I'm selfish and entitled.
I told her "I reserved these seats two weeks ago. It's my birthday. And just because he's six does not entitle him to my reserved seats”.
I saw her complaining to the usher and pointing at me five minutes later. The usher just shrugged.
43. Missed Opportunities
Me and three flatmates started working on a game together during our second year of university. What was originally just for an end-of-year project started to gain a huge amount of momentum, at least for a student game.
We entered an international student games competition and were one of the three winning teams from across the entire world. The three winning teams were nominated for a BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Television) Games award.
We showed the game at the Leftfield Collection at EGX, a UK game convention that had 80,000 attendees that year. We were one of 20 submissions accepted, narrowed down from over 200. PC Gamer, a magazine I used to pretend to be able to read when I snuck into my brother's room as a kid, previewed our game.
Our game was a page away from a preview of XCOM 2. Seeing our game talked about in print—and next to a franchise I revered—was crazy.
We had interest from several publishers, but one that stood out asked us over Skype how much we wanted. As in, they just asked how much money we needed to make the game into a finished product.
They didn't set us a time frame, or request any control over the product. They just asked us: "How much do you want?" All the time and risk I had put into this project seemed like it was going to come back tenfold.
It was going to fast-track us all to the careers we wanted. We could set up our studio. Our own funded studio. All the contacts we had made since the beginning of the project told us that university didn't matter—not for games. If you can make and finish a game, do it. It's more valuable than any piece of paper you can get from your classes.
So, what did we do? We stopped making the game. My team no longer "found it fun" to work on the game. The rest of the team set it aside so they could "focus on their projects".
For an entire year I've, had to live with the same people, each day trying to forget, or in any way move on from what we threw away. About a month ago me and one of the team members were outside a pub for a friend's birthday. We hadn't talked in a while.
He said to me, "it was just a student project. That's all it was ever meant to be".
44. Right In The Face
When I was on vacation in Aruba, I saw this group of little kids throwing around a football and one of the kids ended up hitting a man in the face with the football. The kid ran over to go to retrieve the ball, and started to walk away from the man without saying a word.
The man then utters in response, "Are you not going to apologize? You could've broken my teeth!"
The kid then responded, "My daddy's an orthodontist; if I broke your teeth, he would just fix them," and just walked away.
45. A Sudden Trip
smiling woman in shallow focus photographyPhoto by Edward Cisneros on UnsplashWhen I was still a kid, my now estranged mom used to be one of the most logical and understanding people I knew. When I was just a teenager, it was just the two of us, and we were trying our best to get out of her brother's house and have our own place. We lived on the east coast.
Then one day, out of the blue, my mom came home from work and told me in all seriousness that Jesus had come to her in her thoughts and told her we needed to move to the west coast, and we needed to leave on December 15th of that year.
I wasn't religious, but I had never once judged or expressed doubt about her faith. That wasn't and never will be my place. But this was worth an eyebrow raise—she expected me to throw everything I owned in a storage locker, pack a suitcase, throw my emotional support dog in the hatchback of her SUV, and drive across the country with no money or planning in advance.
I actually went along with this at first, ended up homeless over the course of two years, and actually lost my dog in the turbulence of everything. She always insisted that everything going wrong was my fault and that God wouldn't lie to her. That was several years ago now, and she and I are no longer in contact.
I've since moved north with my best friend and was forced to start my life completely over going into adulthood, and she ended up right back in her brother's house where we started.
46. Isn’t This The Best?
My husband's friend insisted on taking us to the 'best, most authentic' Chinese restaurant in town. I'm Chinese. He's a Jewish guy who has never been to any Chinese-speaking country. The food wasn't good, nor was it authentic. He had the suggest look on his face when he sat back and quirked his eyebrow at me as if expecting me to heap praise onto him. Anyway, I didn't.
The best part is that they aren't friends anymore, so now I don't have to pretend that crab rangoons are the peak of Chinese cuisine.
47. High Art
My ex is a photography major, but his photography is mediocre at best. One day, he angrily rants and rants to me about how the people in his city are so rude. He elaborates and says something along the lines of “I was taking pictures of all these homeless people, and they got so mad at me for no reason!!
I told them I’m a photography major and they just kept yelling at me to delete the pictures and asking why I am taking pictures! Like, ugh, it just looked cool, and they were being so stupid about it!!!”
On top of that, he truly thought that poverty was aesthetic, wanted to “become homeless and train hop,” while in the same breath complaining about the car bought especially for him, or how his study abroad in Japan might get postponed… I hate that guy with a passion, in hindsight.
48. A Baseless Breakdown
brown and white concrete building under blue sky during daytimePhoto by School My Kids on UnsplashMy sister went to a private high school in a very nice area with very rich kids. One day, my sister sees one of her friends crying and quickly runs over to her to ask what is wrong. Her friend, through sobs, manages to say, “Everything is just so unfairrrrrrr, I can't even believe my life!!!” My sister is so concerned because this girl seems on the verge of a breakdown.
After calming her down for a bit, my sister asks again what is bothering the friend, thinking maybe something happened, or her parents are getting divorced...
“Well, you know my birthday is coming up, and so is my sister's... and well, sobbing some more, my parents are getting us both brand new range rovers, and because she is older, she is getting the black one, but I wanted that one!!!” The only thing my sister could do was say, “I am so sorry for you” and walk away.
We still do feel bad for her... She’s so detached.
49. The Smallest Thing
My grandma was out walking her dog and stopped to talk to another lady who was a neighbor. Her dog peed on the edge of the lady’s lawn, and she freaked out and told my grandma she needed to 'pick' up the pee so my grandma just told her she would bring paper towels next time and left.
The lady got so mad she wouldn't talk to my grandparents for weeks, even after being neighbors for about nine years, and said my grandma needed to apologize.
The lady came out one day and told my grandpa that she didn't need his services anymore—he had mowed their lawn every week—and that they were going to pay another guy to do it. They never paid my grandpa; he had been doing it for free for two years.
50. A Real Emergency
I'm a 911 operator and once had a man call 911 because the internet at the hotel he was staying at got disconnected. I told him it was not an emergency issue, and that he would have to talk to the hotel staff and/or just wait for it to reboot. He did NOT like hearing that. He responded, "Not an emergency issue? This is criminal. If I unplugged someone's life support, isn't that a crime?"
We all have things that scare us enough to keep us awake at night.
A phobia, if you will.
Some of these are fairly common, be they somewhat trivial, such as heights, rodents, or the supernatural.
While others are on the more serious side, such as the possibility of your friends and families being in danger.
Others suffer from phobias which are anything but common.
Ridiculous as they may seem in the eyes of others, these phobias still send shivers up the spines of those who suffer from them, scaring them far more than a scary story or a turbulent flight.
Redditor NeZur was eager to hear the things that make the hairs on the backs of people's necks stand on end, leading them to ask:
"What type of phobia do yo have?"
It Is, In Fact, One Of The Most Dangerous Modes Of Transportation...
"Driving."
"I drive every day."
"People be crazy out on the roads."
"Scares me to death."- Same-Ad-1266
Arachnophobia To The Max...
"Spiders."- evandollardon
"Especially with big paws."- NeZur
"A pregnant spider, with big paws."- TwoLittleNeedleMarks
Some People Stick To Puddle Stomping
"Thalassophobia, the fear of deep bodies of water."- GentlyDead
Searching For The Nearest Boat...
"Gephyrophobia."
"I especially hate it when the traffic backs up and you are stuck on the bridge."- mspolytheist
Design 3D GIF by BADCODECGiphyThe Only Thing Scarier Than Snakes on A Plane...
"I have a phobia of anacondas coming up the toilet while I'm taking a dump."- dingbatyokel5000
Especially When They're Your Own...
"Teenagers."
"Scare the living sh*t outta me."- Randomees
Anything Scarier Than Getting Shot? Getting A Shot...
"Needles."- Chocolatelover4ever
"I always faint with needles."
"My blood pools into my legs and I'm out like a light."
"I have to clench and squeal if I see a needle ANYWHERE."
"I used to get faintish but COVID flashes of needles actually desensitized me a bit."
"I've only had one nurse keep me conscious through a blood draw and it was because she (Lowkey knowing I faint) started ranting about how her brother went to Colorado and got to smoke like snoop while she takes the other 'high' road (nursing)."
"Versus a nurse doing the cliche 'what's your favorite XYZ' while drawing 6 vials."
"She apparently got to 4 when I told her I was going to faint."
"She got another vial in while I was out."
"I got help from my ex to a room as they checked my pulse saying I was coma levels."
"Shots, I'm alright if I can lay down or sit with my head between my legs."
"I have tons of piercings but no ink."
"Hell I even pierced my own labret."- This_User_Said
Getting Nervous Could Be A Problem...
"Emetophobia."
"Haven't puked since preschool, now I'm a college freshman."- thrashmusican
gross james van der beek GIFGiphyThere Is Little Worse Than A Cracked Nail...
"Anything to do with damage to finger/toe nails."
"Makes me seriously queezy thinking about it."- silentarcher00
As If The Sound Isn't Scary Enough...
"The garbage disposal."
"Under NO circumstance will I put my hand in there."
"Lost a spoon?"
"It's dead to me until my husband gets home."- potato-keeper
Two For The Price Of One...
"Forgot the term for it but underwater machinery and deep water in general."- Limp_Telephone2280
Das Boot Water GIF by WoodblockGiphyNot "Sailing Away" Any Time Soon...
"I don't like the open sea as a concept."
"Not a fear of sharks/drowning or anything specific."
"The sh*t is just horrifying."-TreefrogJ
SIze Does Matter...
'"Megalophobia."
"I am pretty scared next to tall buildings and statues."
"For some reason I can't look up when I am close to it."- MIKE_THE_KILLER
Holey Moley...
"Trypophobia."
"Lately on my FYP, those videos of people with tons of seashells (I think, I didn’t get a close look) attached to they’re arms or legs keep popping up and it makes me physically sick."
"It legit ruins my mood."- irllylikeurpeaches
According to FDR, "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
If only all phobias were so simple...
