Medical Professionals Share The Dumbest Thing They've Ever Seen A Patient Do After Leaving The Hospital
Follow the doctors orders! How difficult is that rule? Why am I even asking? We're currently in a health crisis because people won't wear masks strictly because doctors say so. It's maddening. If you're not gonna do what the medical professionals say, then why even bother wasting your time and theirs? Why rack up the medical bills that most of us will ever be able to pay. Just stay home with scotch tape and prayer. Let us know how that works out.
Redditor u/vitortrv reached out to all the medical professionals here to see who wanted to vent about the foolish actions of some patients by asking..... Hospital workers of reddit, what was the dumbest thing you saw a patient do immediately after leaving?Light it Up!
Somebody lit up a cigarette (in a no smoking area) with a nasal cannula on, and lit their face on fire. Had to come right back into the ER.
your nurses are crap!!!
Not a hospital worker but I was in the emergency room due to a sports related injury. Finally got let out after hours of x rays and examinations as I was learning how to use crutches and watched someone with stitches on his arm start stretching like he was going to run all the way home.
He turned around, walked towards the desk and yelled "your nurses are crap!" after the cut on his arm reopened mid stretch. The woman at the desk looked so tired.
Slinged.
I saw someone pull his newly slung arm out of it's sling so he could put his jacket on as he was leaving the ER. He just stopped in front of my desk and started whimpering and yelling "Owwwwww! OHhh!" as he slowly worked his arm around to get it out of the sling and into the sleeve of his jacket. I'm pretty sure it wasn't very cold outside at the time.
I plead for him to stop but he ignored me. It was really bizarre.
Downtown!
Guy was discharged from our emergency room and wanted a cab voucher to get downtown. We wouldn't give him one because he didn't meet our requirements. He walked outside, called 911, and told the ambulance to take him to a hospital downtown.
So Screwed.
Go out to the carpark, meet their dealer in a car, and shoot up through their IV cannula. Then saunter back into their room as if we couldn't tell??! He got security on him after that to stop him leaving. It just meant he spent his entire stay in the toilets smoking so much we could barely breathe on the corridor and we had to watch his visitors like a hawk in case they passed him something on the ward.
He was a nice guy too. Just screwed up.
Baby You're a Firework...
In the Darwin Awards is a tale of a man in hospital with a skin problem. The staff coated him all over with a cream which is highly flammable, warned him about it and told him to keep away from any sources of ignition. He immediately snuck outside for a smoke. Went up like a roman candle.
"bad luck"
Not a doctor but.... I knew someone that is a fitness freak to an obnoxious level. She had a medical emergency (intestinal blockage) one day that involved major abdominal surgery and removal of part of her intestine. The day she was released from the hospital, she went back to her insane workout routine, trying to make up for the muscle she lost.
She claims her doctor told her she could. Her intestines ripped open. She barely survived. She still claimed after the fact that her working out had absolutely nothing to do with her body ripping open and it was just "bad luck."
Deep Breaths....
Patient came in for shortness of breath. She was seen and discharged. A nurse saw her walk into the parking lot, jab herself in the leg with an Epipen, and come right back in saying that she's short of breath.
Oh the stories....
- Inject heroin into their PICC line (big IV)
- leave to go smoke a cigarette and get hit by car
- steal from a 7-eleven while in a hospital gown
- escape from the ER and steal an ambulance senorkose
Off the Rails....
My brother works as a volunteer for the red cross. He mostly volunteers as a medic in ambulances. He told me how they picked up a guy because he crashed his bike after he didn't pay attention and got his tyre stuck in some tram tracks. About 3 hours later he was picked up again after he tried to ride his bike with one hand in a cast. First time round he sprained his elbow, second time round he broke his shoulder on the same side.
we can see inside of you....
I work in medical imaging where patients have to drink oral contrast for their exam.
Some folks really hate the stuff and one patient after being given the oral contrast went outside and dumped it in the bushes and came back in and said that they had drank it. Our front desk lady actually saw her dump it in the bushes and told us about it but we would have seen the lack of contrast in the image even if she hadn't told us. I talked to the patient and was like "we can see inside of you, we can tell if you drank it or not."
have some self control Sir....
When I was a nursing student I did a rotation on a transitional care unit in my first year of school(where people go to wait for a nursing home placement). Had an older man as a client who did not have any cognitive impairment complain about abrasions on his penis. Ok all is well and I call for a doctor to look at it to get some antibiotic ointment for it. The doctor can't come up to our floor for another few hours.
I tell the patient this and leave to go do something else. About half an hour later it's time to go take his blood sugar and guess what I find the man doing? Masturbating in plain sight and his hand and penis are bloody and raw. I literally had to have a conversation with a man my grandfather's age and have to tell him not to masturbate while the abrasions are healing and to take it easier once it was healed.
"tackle football"
I work for a medical device company that makes bone screws. We had a patient sue us for faulty implants - apparently his screws broke less than a month after surgery. This is a big deal, and not just from a financial standpoint, so of course we launched a full investigation.
Turns out the dumb fool decided to play tackle football less than a month after his major back surgery. Our bone screws are strong, but not "tackle football" strong.
NOOOOO!!!!
Discharged a patient after hysterectomy (removing uterus, stitches at top of her vagina) and she went home and had sexual relations, busting her stitches and allowing for her bowel to protrude through the vagina. Had to have an emergency procedure to fix it.
Bless Me Father.
I had a patient that was a regular, scans every 3 months. He knew the prep and always fasted for 6 hours like we required. I asked all the usual questions and got the exam started. As soon as I inject the medication he mentions in passing how he was at mass that morning and had taken communion!!
This is an exam that is royally messed up and invalidated if a person has consumed anything expect for water in the 6 hours prior to the injection of meds. My jaw hit the floor! When questioned it turns out he's very religious and basically did not consider communion food or drink (host and wine!) Yeah, he had to come back and repeat the test.
Help The Woofie....
I heard on my neurology rotation in vet school. They did a surgery on a doberman for wobbler's (neck instability). Dog came back a week after surgery quadriplegic. The owners let it play in the backyard with it's brother and he got tackled. The dog never walked again. :/ I couldn't believe the owners were so stupid to spend 6K on a surgery for a dog and not follow through with the recovery instructions.
Zero stars for Yelp!
Now retired but one of the things I liked about "my" hospital was the food. We have a lot of immigrants in our area and some wise person decided to hire a pretty diverse crowd of cooks - Jamaican ladies making spicy chicken, Japanese cooks making sushi, Mexican dudes making made-to-order burritos, local barbecue, etc. And it was all very "clean" from a nutritional viewpoint - all of it was inspected by our RDs.
And just about every day I would see patients turn down this excellent food and have their families bring them crap from fast food joints in town.
Edit: well, this caught fire while I was asleep. Yes, the food was good - the barbecue vendor also offered fried chicken. But, the reason I retired a year early is because that hospital was being absorbed into a large health care corporation and we all know that never benefits anyone but the suits. From what my former coworkers tell me, that cafeteria now offers the finest food service meals delivered daily in refrigerator trucks and served fresh from the microwave. Hiring cooks who needed/wanted a job is probably not part of the corporate profit plan.
Armed.
I feel like I am that person.
When I was 15 I broke my arm. Went to the hospital got a cast went about for a few weeks and got it removed. Great! I have my arm back. Now I wasn't the brightest kid and needed everything explained to me. No one told me not to have an arm wrestle with my fresh out of cast arm.
No one explained it was still healing. 4 hours after having my cast removed I was back in A&E and getting a new X-ray and then a new cast put on by the same nurse who just took it off. I have never seen such disappointment in the eyes of someone who wasn't my mother.
Do Decaf....
A lady came to our ER for tachycardia, and anxiety. The triage nurse, on a hunch, asked what she'd eaten that day, and if she'd had any coffee. "I haven't had time to eat (this now being mid afternoon), and only four or five cups of coffee." Genuinely clueless...
Light it Up!
Countless COPD/asthmatics coming in for wheezing, SOB, rapid breathing. We treat them and the second they feel better they will state, "I forgot something in my car", only to leave and light up a cig.
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- Medical Professionals Describe The Stupidest Misconception A Patient Has Ever Had About The Human Body - George Takei ›
- People Describe Warning Signs That Someone Should Go To The Hospital Immediately - George Takei ›
- People Who Were Fine One Minute And Then Woke Up In The Hospital Share Their Stories - George Takei ›
People Break Down Which Things About The Early Days Of The Internet Most Folks Have Forgotten
Oh, the beginning of the interwebs.
Those were the days.
We definitely did not see what was to come.
Maybe it should've stayed simple.
We'll never know.
Computers rule the world now.
Let's see where we are in another twenty years.
RedditorEzucraAaAa wanted to wax nostalgic about the good old days of technology and its humble beginnings.
"Redditors, what's something the internet was crazy about but is now forgotten?"
I miss the simplicity of not having a thousand apps. I'm simple.
Ah Memories...
"Search engines before Google existed. Alta Vista, Lycos, Web Crawler..."
deenali
Bad Downloads
"Downloading custom cursors for your computer. I gave my family computer so many viruses back in the '00s trying to click things with a lightsaber."
TW1103
"Amazing. I had totally forgotten about all the virusy stuff I downloaded to my home computer, purely so the cursor would disappear and reappear. My parents had zero knowhow with computers either, so likely had no idea wtf I was downloading. Cursors were cool though, despite all the malware."
AdderWibble
Collections
"During the early days of the web, when most websites weren't plastered with advertising... Website view counters."
over_clox
"Back in the day of counters, one day I went to my website and the counter was in the thousands. I just thought it malfunctioned and ignored it. Years later I learned that my website, which had a MIDI collection, was published in a newspaper in another country. I couldn't say for sure if that was true and whether it aligned with the counter change."
pupeno
The Look
"Yea the internet was simpler too, layout style I mean. I like old style HTML webpage layouts. I personally don’t like hyper modern logos and designs on interfaces. Something about old slightly pixelated designs about them home screens and app logos really made them satisfying. I’ve even went as far as seeing if I could install some extensions that could change the layout of sites, make them feel older, give them that 2000’s html look."
Original_Ad_1103
Found It
"Stumbleupon.com"
idont*uckwithstupid
"I used to waste so much time with stumble upon."
lilbroccoli13
What a strange and crazy place the internet was.
notification
"Poking on Facebook."
lamspartacus
"I had a friend that poked me and I never noticed the notification. He died. I now have this unreturned poke as a reminder that I’ll never be able to poke them back."
Klaus0225
Playtime
"Flash games."
mc_mike810
"Many flash games are not dead. BEHOLD! The flashpoint project. They have saved thousands of the old flash games in a playable format. Go forth and relive your childhood Also paging u/The_Middler_is_Here"
Jayccob
I will find you...
"There was a rhythm game that I don't remember the name of that me and some friends would challenge each other in, and it had the song Guitar vs Piano 2 which introduced me to Envy, who was a pretty big newgrounds artist at the time. I wanna go check out their stuff again now, I'd completely forgot about them till now."
Silvervirage
GroupMeet
"Forums. There used to be so many, incredibly active and dedicated forums."
FromJavatoCeylon
"A lot of the forums I visited were ruined by photobucket when they decided they wanted paid a lot of money from their users. So many build threads and tutorials ruined."
jus_like_at
"IMDb had the best message boards back in the day. Chatting with your internet friends around the globe about every nuance in your fave movie. Man I miss that. Reddit is close, but nothing beats the olden days."
FeFiFoMums
Fun
"Do you guys remember those egg things that hatched little creatures after a while? You'd put one on your website and then the artist would update the source url with images of it hatching? There were all kinds of little fun things like that."
Sapiencia6
Those were the days!
Do you have something you'd like to share? Let us know in the comments below.
Not all television and movies are loved by all.
A story and its characters have to appeal to you in order for you to be engaged.
It can take next to nothing for us to lose interest and let the screen go black.
Redditor BarooTangClan wanted to compare notes on all the entertainment we've said "that's enough" to.
"What will make you instantly stop watching a movie or show and why?"
I hate bad acting, writing, storytelling... I hate bad anything.
Stop Jumping
"Fight scenes with a million visual cuts. Gives me motion sickness. Contrast the absolutely masterful work in John Wick. long cuts, realistic use of weapons (mostly), 100% skill."
StabbyPants
Louder
"When the actors whisper the whole movie and you have to crank the volume to hear what's being said - but the soundtrack or some other misc noise starts blaring at a higher volume directly after."
Blaze*itch
"I basically had to watch Stranger Things up in my attic with the windows and doors closed. I was worried the neighbors would think something was wrong or be annoyed if I watched it downstairs in my single family home. It was ridiculous."
ForecastForFourCats
"spice things up"
"Love triangles out of no where in a second or third season to 'spice things up' because studio writers are hacks and their idea of relationship drama is 'potential infidelity' at all times. It's the most tired trope on the go**amn planet and the second I see it rear its head I dip right the hell out."
amalgamas
"The whole concept of a love triangle to begin with an incredibly juvenile. Any healthy functioning adult who found themselves in a love triangle would soon choose to find themselves single."
Ouch_i_fell_down
Save your lips...
"When couples in a movie/show have a fight and one of them instantly goes to a friend and end up kissing her/him after talking for 5 minutes. I cringe so hard i turn it off and never watch it again."
Dry-Mycologist3966
"This pissed me off so much in Manifest. Girl is desperate to get back her ex-fiancé, he finally breaks up with his wife to get back with her and she's like 'nah, it's not fair to your wife, let me do this other dude I just met through a calling and be pissed at you for being jealous.' Michaela was the worst and everyone acted as if she were a saint the entire time."
gingerisla
Talk to Me
"Shows where a single polite conversation could fix everything."
Horror_Librarian_133
We are going overboard with the witty repartee. Talk normal...
Shut Up
"Annoying main character, especially if it's a kid."
abananation
"Kids who have a quippy, sassy retort to everything, and everyone just kind of crumbles before their wit."
CarpetPure7924
Speak Good
"Shows where kids in high school talk like they are 30 years olds who have done everything, been everywhere, know it all and use a ridiculously flowery and extensive vocabulary in every conversation. Like, have any of these writers ever been to high school? Literally no one talks like that. Even worse is when, in addition to this, all the adults talk normal or are just plain stupid, like so weird parallel universe."
StretchArmstrong74
Nonsense
"If the movie is too dark. Not graphic, just literally dark. I lose all sense of intensity in dark scenes and I'm not straining my damn eyes trying to figure out what the hell is going on."
TheShadowOfKaos
"I've seen about 10 percent of all DC movies recently. I've seen all of the individual films in full, just actually saw 10% of each of them."
Mortlach78
"Movies in the late 80s had a lot of dark but you could see the depth because of different shooting techniques. Now you cant see crap because its a CGI fest drowned in black color so you can't see crap because you have no depth in a scene. Compare night scenes in dark alleys in 80's movies and movies now. Utter crap show in the new ones."
Bombzey
Pay Attention Storytellers
"Bad editing would be a big one. A lot of modern horror movies can't help but edit the movies like they're trailers, with added noises to scare the audience because they are afraid the script alone isn't enough to keep people watching."
ThisIsCreation
"I remember this is where the first transformers movie lost me. When the transformers are fighting at the end, it's all a big, jumbled mess of metal and I can barely tell what's going on or who is who."
1840_NO
Drama
"When they go straight to relationship drama right away when it wasn't the selling point of the show."
LightInthewater
Do better, Hollywood. It's not that hard.
I fear death.
I wake up in cold sweats dreaming about it.
I think about it in my waking hours.
It's an obsession and clearly, I'm not alone.
But there are more preferred ways to exit.
All we can do is hope to be lucky enough to skip the mercilessly awful.
Please just let me go quick and in my sleep.
RedditorCallMehRiverwanted to hear about all the ways none of us what to leave this life.
"What Do You Think Would Be The Worst Death Imaginable?"
My list of the worst deaths is long. My imagination runs amok.
Trapped
"For me? Being trapped in a small tube or cave (like the ones you have to wiggle through) and getting stuck to where you can’t move your arms. And all you can do is wait to die. I’m getting chills just thinking about it."
Stuck
"The more I hear about cavers that get stuck, the more I think that's a crap way to go."
- braydenmaine
"There’s a great YouTube channel called Ask a Mortician and this was her #1 worse way to die. I can’t remember the exact details or their names, but two well-known divers went into an underwater cave."
"One of them became entangled and died. Years later, his friend dives back down there to try and retrieve his body, the body itself is rotten and his head comes off and the other guy also becomes tangled and dies. Really sad."
- melancholybuzzard
A Long Process
"Believed to be in a coma but coherent through the whole 20 year process until they pull the plug."
weebeardedman
"Oh man this just reminded me of a story I read on here about a guy who lost the ability to move and speak but was completely conscious. Had to just lay there and be awake but trapped in a useless body. His family thought he was brain dead or something and he couldn’t communicate to them that he was 'all there.' Crazy"
habeeb51
Slow & Steady
"Being slowly impaled by a growing bamboo. It was a form of torture probably used by the japanese during WW2 against Allied prisoners."
JazzySocrate
"My uncle who served back in the day said that people would have the bamboo slipped under their fingernails because it would continue to grow still. It would just continue growing into the body."
Payness0826
Excruciating
"Rabies."
Santolmo
"The scariest part is that once you have symptoms, you 100% will die. A 100% mortality rate has to be a psychological torture in itself."
RonaldRawdog
"Not only that, you feel irrational fear. Your brain is literally being eaten apart by the virus and it fu*ks up everything on it. You can't drink water because it hurts you. You feel dizzy, present a fever, excessively salivate, everything hurts and it only gets worse. I'd rather take a bullet and die when the symptoms are still tolerable."
Santolmo
Why can't we all just go engulfed in calm and quiet?
Suspended
"Some pulpy sci-fi book I read a while back had one of the best deaths of this real piece of crap bad guy. Left to die in a drowning sea lab under the Antarctic ice, he freezes himself in a state of the art suspended animation pod with some kind cold fusion power source that would keep it running for millions of years."
"But he forgot to inject himself with the drug that would put him to sleep. So basically he is in suspended animation at the bottom of the Antarctic ocean while his mind is perfectly awake and conscious in a near unbreakable machine that won't run out of power for millions of years and nobody knows about it."
DubiousAlibi
No Cure
"As an RN I have always thought that the worst way to die (natural process) is ALS. Lou Gehrig's Disease."
randymn1963
"My mom and grandmother have Huntington's disease, which is essentially ALS, Alzheimer's, and Dementia combined into one really messed up genetic disease. I have a 50% chance of inheriting it and if I hit 40 and there's still no cure I can't promise I'll feel like continuing on with my life because that disease is absolutely freaking miserable."
DevTheDummy
Agony...
"Radiation poisoning."
binhan123ad
"The fact your chromosomes can be so destroyed your body basically lost it's genetic code and with it the ability to make any new cells. It's literally a 'dead man walking' and you slowly rot away in agony. Stuff is so unimaginably f**ked up."
yea_nah448
"What's also bad about radiation is that it affects your nerves and brain cells last, so you have everything in place to feel all the pain of the rest of your cells being destroyed."
nosmelc
Goo
"I want to believe anything that slowly kills you painfully to be the worst. Such as slowly being crushed or something where the pain is beyond compare and yet not enough to throw you into shock or unconsciousness."
Beardless_Man
"Alternatively, being rapidly crushed into goo would probably be the least painful. I'm talking one of those massive industrial hammers they use for large steel work. Basically smooshed before the nerve signals make it to the brain."
Bannon9k
Now I'll never sleep again without nightmares of death.
If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/
Foreigners Explain Which Stereotypically American Things They've Always Wanted To Try
Most Americans think nothing of their humdrum daily activities or amenities available to them.
However, others with a different perspective might romanticize the things that are otherwise commonplace ideas and concepts for US citizens, like going to a diner or riding the school bus.
One Redditor looked to foreigners to hear of their American desires to respond to the following:
"Non-Americans of Reddit: what is an American thing you have always wanted to try?"
The things depicted in film really captivated foreign audiences.
Casual Dining
"To visit a diner like in the movies. In the middle of the night, it’s raining and just a few people there with great music from a jukebox."
– TotalAd6225
Iconic Student Transport
"Ride a yellow school bus even if I'm too old. Growing up I always loved seeing them on TV."
– infiresemo
Just Like The Ones We Used To Know
"A white Christmas."
"Living in an Australian state where I've never even seen snow in our winter, let alone experiencing that classic Hallmark movie moment of waking up to a street full of it and sitting around a fireplace while opening gifts/preparing a feast."
"Guess it's not strictly American, but the imagery and trope is something I've only really seen from American Films."
– Stoibs
They may be ubiquitous for us, but they sure seem to be novel ideas to foreigners.
Let's Be Frank
"One of the hotdogs from those little street cart things."
– Who_is_lost
Kitchen Marvel
"A friend of mine from Indonesia said, 'the food chewer in the sink.'"
"Garbage disposal."
– Mnemonic22
American Pie
"Apple Pie made by white-haired grandma, placed near window, who says 'oh dear...' as I levitate towards it."
– MegaJoltik
Pre-Game Ritual
"Proper tailgating before a ball game, the kind where there's ribs and stuff."
– SpiralToNowhere
Fried Delicacies
"Deep fried foods at a state fair. I'm from Scotland and we love to deep fry everything and I wanna know if it's just as good or better."
– fenrisulfr94
There are places to see!
Places To See
"National parks."
– nhungoc1508
"America’s greatest invention!"
– nhungoc1508
Backpacking In Nature
"I always wanted to hike The Appalachian Trail if that counts. Or see Yellowstone."
– EphemeralRemedy
New Chapters
"Being able to start a whole new life 'elsewhere' without having to leave my country and going through an arduous immigration process."
– Gmtfoegy
My cousin told me she looks forward to visiting a Trader Joe's someday when she visits America for the first time.
Her bucket list option was hardly surprising. My parents used to bring treats from TJs as a novelty souvenir gift item, and my relatives ate it up. Literally.
Let's face it. The snacks at TJs rocks.
Even store locations in New York City would have ridiculously long lines during busy hours because the West-coast-based grocer was a novelty on the East Coast.