Doctors and nurses see stuff like this all the time, but to the average patient, it can be a mortifying experience. Thanks to these brave people for sharing their most embarrassing medical moments.
1. It was six years ago when I was eighteen. I had been in my first year of college so needless to say my student diet wasn't that great. My boyfriend and I were house sitting for a friend and on the third night there I was awoken to the most terrible stabbing pain in my stomach. I tried to get to the bathroom but I ended up collapsing on the floor in a near fetal position, barely able to breathe and sweating profusely. My boyfriend hears me fall and gets up to see what is wrong. I can't speak, the pain is so great and I am having a hard time breathing so he painstakingly leads me to our friend's car and drives me to the hospital.
At this point I'm in so much pain from him not really knowing how to drive a stick and jerking and stalling along the way that he has to go in and ask for assistance. I'm loaded onto a gurney and strapped in because the outstretched position nearly kills me with pain and I start lashing out. After the doctor cuts off my clothes and sees no outward injuries on my stomach, he begins to compress on my stomach, which nearly makes me pass out. He thinks my appendix must have burst, or that I had a ruptured intestine. I'm administered IV Morphine and finally get some relief.
They roll me down the hall and take some scans of my stomach. To get the X-rays back takes a while, so while we were all awaiting the pics I was administered more morphine. Eventually, a big woman with a Texas accent enters the room and exclaims, "You're full of sh-t!"
"What?" I ask, completely confused and holding my stomach. "I'm serious. I'm in a lot of pain."
"Oh, no doubt," she said, and pulls out an X-ray of my stomach. "See all that white in your guts?" She points with her pen and traces all the way from my anus up through my large intestines. "You are LITERALLY full of sh-t. I have never seen someone so full of sh-t in my life."
My boyfriend erupts in laughter and the nurse is trying her best to hide her amusement as she has been tending me through the hours and knows that I am obviously in a lot of pain. I groan but am a bit amused myself. It WAS pretty funny, after all. I ask the doctor what they were going to do about it and she said that they were going to do an enema and see how that went. I was given laxatives and a ton of water and told to wait 20 minutes. I can feel my stomach rumbling a bit at this point and it hurts me a lot when it does.
Eventually a nurse wheels in what looks like a dominatrix sex rack, complete with ankle and wrist straps. My boyfriend again erupts into a fit of laughter. I am not amused this time. I'm starting to get a bit embarrassed so before we begin I ask that he leave. He pretty much begs me to let him stay but I'm having none of it. After he leaves the nurse wheels in what looks to be some sort of futuristic pressure washer; I'm pretty much right.
She straps my ankles and wrists to the rack in an upright position and proceeds to insert the tube into my bum. It's uncomfortable and cold, but hey, I'm gay so it's like... whatever. She then turns it on, and like the first mate on the Titanic begins to slowly increase power and pressure. I can feel and SEE my stomach begin to inflate slightly and OH MERCY does it hurt like nothing else. It felt like knives were pushing OUT of me now, ever so slowly. I cry out but she insists MORE POWER and I keep filling up like a balloon, hollering in agony. After a minute or so of constant pressure she turns it off and tells me to clench up because she was removing the tube. I want nothing more than to do just the opposite, but I assume she knows what she's doing and follow orders. She then attached another tube to a hose and inserts it. This one is MUCH bigger and the lube is cold as hell, but I'm gay so it's still whatever.
She then proceeds to Hoover my insides. After 30 seconds I hear a "hmmm". I ask her what the problem was and she told me nothing was coming out but I beg her not to pressure wash my guts again. At this time the doc comes in as she's pulling out my butt plug and informs me that the poop packed in my colon is too wide in girth to be machine enema'd out. She was going to have to do this manually.
She has the nurse grab a bucket, a plain white janitors bucket and puts it underneath me. She then puts on the latex gloves, completely lubes up her hands and begins what I consider to be some sort of (Continued)
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medical fingerbang to loosen me up. After a while of this she brings out a stretching device and begins to open me with it. At this point I feel so ashamed of myself, but I'm also doped out of my mind. The pain begins to come back in full force and I start shouting for more painkillers but Lady McGuyver down there tells me that they can't administer more because it will stop me up even more. I'm just going to have to deal with it until they can "unclog me". So, I endure as I'm being stretched. It hurts like hell down on my bumhole, too. She tells me to push. So, I push. I push so hard that I feel like the blood vessels in my face are popping. My head starts to bang. I'm pushing hard and she's telling me to push more. I must have been screaming my head off. I can't imagine that I wasn't. Finally, I felt something give. She told me to push more and I did I could feel things moving. So, I push some more. After a minute I finally feel myself deflating as water and poop debris tumble out into the bucket. It all happened very quickly after that. I was unobstructed and gushing hot lava a minute later and finally felt complete, utter, blissful relief.
I was told after I woke up in the hospital 8 hours later, around 5 PM, that the doc literally helped deliver my poop child. I had never been more embarrassed in my life. But, as time passes, and my humor "evolves", I find myself laughing about it. I changed my diet immediately after and have a good healthy bowel movement at least once a day. I found it strange how my depression lifted a lot after that. I had been severely depressed for a couple of weeks before that and I found out that being constipated does that for me.
2. One night back in high school I woke up with ungodly stomach pains in the middle of the night. I spent an hour in the bathroom trying to vomit or poop so the pain would go away. Eventually my mother drove em to the hospital and after half an hour in the ER I finally got a room. The nurse came in to do all that pre doctor stuff and the moment she leaves I let rip a giant fart and feel 100% better. We left shortly after that and yes it was awkward.
3. One time a doctor tried to insert a nasal tube, patiently waited while I vomited the last contents of my stomach out on her, and tried again. I have immense respect for that woman; she kept me from having an unnecessary major surgery and was with me all two weeks I spent in the hospital. I should send her some chocolates or something.
4. MY father is a nurse. He used to be an ER nurse (he now works in patient transport, which is a bit less nutty). He once came home from a night shift, and said to me, with a straight face:
"You know you're a trained professional when you manage to keep a straight face while taking a lava lamp out of a woman."
I did not stop laughing for a solid minute.
5. I got circumcised at 13. After the whole mess, the doc pointed to some towels for me to wipe off with and left the room. After I was finished, the doctor, my mom, and I had a brief debrief of the operation, and the doctor actually (Continued)
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he actually boasted and elaborated to my mother how many stitches he had to use because my penis was so large.
To be perfectly honest, it's average at best. My mother had the most awkward face I'd ever seen.
6. This pretty young nurse used to hang out in my room in the couple of days before my surgery. She gave me company and I was her escape from rude older men. She always smelled nice.
So the surgery was at the end of my spine, or top of my butt basically. I was a hairy dude, even in high school. So this one time she comes in with breakfast and I'm like "hey!" and she's got dead eyes and a stone face. "Turn around please". I do, and off comes the gown, and she starts shaving my butt for the next hour.
It was never the same after that.
7. When I was about 10 I had an abscess in my butt. Like right next to my butthole. I went to the doctors office to get it checked out, and they decided they had to pop it. I'd gotten these things semi often and I had to operate away some tissue or something, still have a scar. Anyway the nurse that drew the shortest straw had to pop an abscess inside a 10 year old bum. It might be that it was kinda big, or that it was under a lot of pressure, but she got sprayed by a pus fountain. From my butt.
8. It's not too embarrassing but... I gave birth 2 weeks ago (to a baby not made of poop) and got an epidural, apparently those things make it impossible to hold in a fart. Did not know that. My technique was talking loud every time I farted.
9. I farted in the surgeon's face as he was stitching me up after birth. Not one of my most glamorous moments, but then again what part of birth is?
10. I became sexually active when I turned 18. I knew about sex, where babies came from, etc. Thanks to sex ed classes. So my boyfriend at the time and I had protected sex (condoms and birth control) 99.9% of the time we had sex.
Well, we slipped up once, but I thought, no big deal. I'm on birth control anyway.
Weeks later, I'm a couple hours away from taking a test for a class and I get these cold sweats. I'm talking extreme. Then I get this ridiculous pain close to where I thought my ovaries were. I felt like I was dying. I googled my symptoms and the first thing to pop up was (Continued)
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the first thing to pop up was an ectopic pregnancy. I immediately panicked.
I went to my professor, who saw that I was in no state to even come to class. He sent me home.
I asked my friend to drive me to the ER. I saw the doctor and told him of my suspicions. He asked me what I had eaten that day and pushed down on certain areas of my stomach.
Turns out, the food I ate and the time I ate it gave me gas that got trapped.
11. My Dad is the WORST. Dad has never had a major surgery in his life. He has what is known as white coat syndrome: he can't stand the sight of blood (it's an outright panic if it's his own blood) and he damn near passes when needles are being put in, even if it's not him. He avoids hospitals and doctors at all costs. The one time he has been in the hospital for anything serious, they had to sedate him.
When I got my first shoulder surgery, there were a series of shots to numb the nerve endings in my shoulder. Somewhere around 8 to 10 shots all around my shoulder.
The anesthesiologist laid out all the needles and I looked over at my Dad and said "are you okay?" and he tried to act tough with a "manly", "Yea, I am fine, why do you ask?" even though he was horribly pale. Anesthesiologist puts the first shot in me, I hear my dad go "Oh god" under his breath. Second shot goes in and the anesthesiologist had to stop because my Dad was going faint.
He tried to brave it out, made it through one more shot and said "I'll be in the waiting room" and got up and left. Nurses later went to check on him to make sure he was okay. After the surgery, one of the nurses jokingly said "Don't worry, your Dad is doing fine, he made it through without a problem" as I was laying in post op.
The second two shoulder surgeries and the knee surgery he decided to wait it out in the waiting room.
When my gallbladder decided that it was done and the doctors decided it needed to come out, it was a bit of a different story.
It was a quick onset, I went from "Hey, I have a little pain in my abdomen" to "HOLY CRAP MY INSIDES ARE ON FIRE MAKE IT STOP!" in a matter of hours.
My Dad had to come pick me up, the only comfortable place I could find was laying face down on the cool tile of my kitchen floor with my arms stretched out, like I was making a snow angel, just face down. It only reduced the pain, it didn't stop it. If I even moved in the slightest, it caused unbearable pain.
I make it to the ER and they're trying to check me in. I am just sweating and barely coherent enough to answer questions. It's all shady to me, because the doctor did some preliminary pushing on my stomach and decided what it was and we just needed an ultrasound to back it up. I was in so much pain, they pumped me full of pain relievers after about ten minutes of me being there.
So now I am doped up in pre-op. I have an IV shunt (think it's called a shunt) in my arm and the nurse says "We're going to bring your father back so he can keep you company, you've got a few minutes before your surgery." I tried to say "leave him in the waiting room" but I was just out of it, she thought it was just the drugs talking.
He comes into the pre-op room. He sits down as doctors and nurses are walking in and out of my room. He's sitting in the chair, staring at my IV shunt, he has the armrests gripped to the point where his knuckles are just turning white. He isn't saying a word. The doctors and nurses just keep doing what they're doing. I am half-awake/doped up in the bed.
I then hear one of the nurses say "Oh my god! are you alright?" and I answered "Hell yea, I'm doing great!", heck I was pumped full of the good stuff, probably could have hacked one of my arms off at that point and I wouldn't have felt it.
Needless to say, she was talking to my father. The white coats, the nurses, the needles and the monitors were just too much for him. He had worked himself into a frenzy, his face was all red, he was sweating, still grasped on to the chair like we were about to break the sound barrier and I really think on the verge of passing out.
In my dopey state of mind I looked over at him and said "What the hell jerk, I am the one they're cutting open, what are you so nervous about?". He didn't answer. Two nurses started tending to him and got him calmed down, and back out to the waiting room he went. I think they checked on him more than they checked on me.
I didn't see him again until I had my street clothes back on and I was sitting in a rocking chair with a cup of coffee and some cookies. He was jealous I had cookies, so the nurses brought him some. They were so awesome to him. I was apologetic about it, but they were completely cool with it.
12. I snapped my banjo string (a delicate piece of skin that circumcised people don't have) and it (Continued)
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and it was very very painful and bloody.
13. I had a rash develop on my left armpit when I was 18. It was awful. So bad that it looked like one of those 'frosty' burns which kids used to give to each other with cans of deodorant.
I assumed that I was an idiot and had given myself a frosty by using deodorant too vigorously.
Eventually got to the doctor and he just looked at me for a while before saying:
"I don't know what a 'frosty' is - and I don't condone those - but I CAN tell you that this is Impetigo... A rash mainly developed by dirty 2 - 5 year olds"
14. This happened to me when I was 26 years old. Id been having some bowel problems for a few weeks. I couldnt poop. Id been in a lot of pain but after some antibiotics my bowels slowly returned to normal. I was relieved because I was due to go overseas on Monday for a holiday. The Friday before I left I was seeing my regular doctor to discuss whether I would be able to travel. I was pretty confident because I was obviously on the mend and I was actually in a pretty buoyant mood as I walked to my local surgery.
My doc was pleased at my recovery and said travelling would be no problem. It might be a good idea, he told me, to go to a small local hospital for a very quick, painless procedure. It was called a sigmoidoscopy and would be a quick examination of my sigmoid colon, the part of your bowel closest to your arse. It was quite noninvasive, my doc said, they dont even need to give you an anaesthetic. Both the surgery and the hospital were in walking distance of my house, the hospital was just round the corner.
As I entered the small procedure room it slowly dawned on me that even though my doc had been very casual about this I might be in for something quite unpleasant.
I had been in quite a lot of pain the past few weeks though and figured it could hardly be worse than what I had already experienced. The gastroenterologist asked me to lie on my side on a cold steel table with my knees pulled up to my chest. He stood behind me and a nurse positioned herself near my head. The nurse was a nice old lady who reminded me of my grandmother. As I lay on the cold steel table a large tv on a trolley was wheeled in front of me, directly in front of my face. The tv was switched on and there appeared to be a static image of the corner of a room.
Okay, the doc said lets begin.
As he spoke I heard him pick up his instruments and the image on the screen wheeled round suddenly and I realized that it must be the video feed from whatever he was about to shove inside me. I caught a glimpse of the table and the tv itself on screen before they were replaced by a shape that seemed familiar somehow. I barely had time to recognize my own hairy arse before a gloved hand appeared, spread my cheeks and deftly applied some lubricant. I then watched in horror as we zoomed in on my anus which swelled to fill the entire screen. Something in my brain obviously decided that I couldn't watch the next part because my eyes pretty much closed automatically at that point. I absolutely lost interest anyway because at that point the doc started penetrating me with the freezing steel tube.
Man! I gasped
Is that uncomfortable? Asked the doctor
y-yeah... I said
Is it painful?
No... no its ok.
Im going to pump a little air into your bowel now just so we can get a better picture, he said and I heard a hissing noise. I realized immediately that this was to be a new level of discomfort. I felt the pressure inside my bowels increase suddenly and I could feel my bowel expanding. I had a sudden vision of a pufferfish blowing itself up as the discomfort turned to pain. The pressure in my bowels quickly became too much to bear and my body responded the only way it knew how - by (Continued)
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by evacuating the air in a loud fart, causing my arse cheeks to flap painfully around the metal scope. It provided some slight relief but I was overcome with shame and embarrassment on top of my discomfort and I opened my eyes enough to squint up at the kindly old nurse and apologize. She smiled and reassured me that it didn't matter, which was fortunate because I pretty much farted constantly after that. Sorry...(FART)... oh god sorry.... (FART)... sorry..... (FAAAAART) oh crap Im so sorry, I couldn't help but instinctively and repeatedly apologize and the nurse gently reassured me, even stroking my forehead gently. As I closed my eyes again I caught a brief glimpse of a lurid, glistening, undulating landscape on the TV. I kept them closed for the next ten minutes while I writhed and gasped like a fish out of water, occasionally opening them to apologize to the nurse.
As I walked slowly and carefully home after the procedure I realized that my face was frozen in a mask of shock and horror. Im sure that I walked home with my mouth open.
15. My dog had a sebaceous cyst on top of his head. He has several lick granulomas, and I thought that this was just another one of those and didn't do anything about it until it got pretty large and started (I'm sorry to use this word, I really am) oozing. So my dog's yearly visit comes around, and we're in the exam room with the veterinarian and the vet tech.
I should also mention that at the time, I was 33 weeks pregnant. Normally, I have a cast iron stomach when dealing with medical stuff, but I've also had pretty constant nausea through the whole pregnancy. So the vet tech very enthusiastically pops the cyst while giggling and saying "I love these things!" and a lot of smelly waxy whitish nasty gunk comes shooting out. Seriously, the gunk came out so forcefully that the vet herself dived for cover. I have pregnancy SuperNose, and the smell combined with the sight of it was enough to send me lunging for the sink in the exam room. There was dry heaving, which was forceful enough to cause, ahem, air expulsion from the other end. So, heave, fart, "I'm sorry!" Heave, fart, "I'm so sorry!" It was beyond mortifying.
16. Spent 8 hours in a hospital, enduring the laughs of all the nurses and doctors as they made me explain the story of how I hit myself in the eye with a bouncy ball hard enough to warrant being there.
I hate you, Super Bounce.
17. I have sickle cell anemia. One of the lesser known side effects, in men anyway, is priapism; a lengthy and incredibly painful erection.
When I was 25 I was hospitalized for depression. My first night they prescribed me trazadone, a drug that, in addition to sedation, increases blood flow; unbeknownst to me. After an hour I had a serious erection. After two it was pretty sore. By morning... Eight hours later... I wanted to kill myself.
At this point the entire nursing staff was aware of my situation and caught completely unprepared. They have never dealt with anything like this before in the psych ward. They informed the emergency doctor on call and they contacted the urologist on call. A urologist, I might add, that was one of the hottest women I've ever seen.
The remedy for this malady is to drain blood from the penis with very very large hypodermic needles. I had a burly male nurse holding my hand on one side (who had the most pained sympathetic and horrified look on his face), an older lady nurse mopping the sweat from my brow on the other side, and this beautiful urologist holding my dick in one hand, and sticking a huge needle into my dick with the other.
It took almost two hours of horror to go away.
Awesome.