Death. Death and disease. Anyway you discuss it or deliver it, those words can shatter you.
SAVE
Mad The Internet GIF by MOODMANGiphy"Save file corrupted." ~ gooniuswonfongo
"I just lost my 42 hour save of Persona 4 so I really feel this right now." ~ supremedalek925
get it together...
“You might want to get your legal affairs in order.” ~ RedditMayne
"I was told that twice in the span of 12 months. Both times, things went ok, but yeah... It's freaking terrifying." ~ thefreakychild
"I was given my biopsy results by telephone. They told me, 'You have Glioblastoma, get your affairs in order.'" ~ thelemonx
Tragedy
"There's been an accident." ~ TheDeadMonument
"Or, in my case, 'This is the police. Your wife has been admitted to the hospital. You need to come pick up your kids.' What they didn’t tell me until I got to the hospital was that she had died. In fact they didn’t tell me at all. It was my (14yo) daughter who told me." ~ kamuelak
Be Scared
"Rabies has gone airborne." ~ BudovicLagman
"When you show the first symptom, it's already too late and you're dead, the vaccine doesn't work then, the first symptoms are headaches, general weakness, fever... Just flu-like. And the incubation period ranges from a couple days to TWO YEARS so the outbreak might start and two years later, after basically every single person is infected, people start showing symptoms, and by the time we realize what's happening, we're dead." ~ Aloud87
flu shot GIFA little discomfort my butt. Who do these medical people think they're fooling with that one anymore?
Got Coins?
Giphy"Your card was declined." ~ syntaxz01
"And you don't have cash on you either." ~ -tweedledumb-
“We need to talk”
"We need to talk, let’s take a seat." ~ teddybaresall
"I made the mistake of telling my former boss, now retired and someone I’m still in touch with, that I hated when someone would call me into their office and say 'We need to talk' and it was never anything bad that I’d done. He made it a point to call me and troll me every time he needed me to come to his office, sometimes just to have a chat about life. It did end up desensitizing me to that, and I don’t know if it was an unintended side-effect of his trolling or if he was an evil genius." ~ Clusterf**kyShitshow
The Big C
"You got pancreatic cancer." ~ WillingnessSouthern4
"My brother calling me and asking if I had talked to Mom. 'You need to get over there.' Feb 4 2021. Worst day of my life so far finding out she has pancreatic cancer. Of all the effing cancers out there and the healthiest and most active parent between my husband and I. Here’s your PSA to not brush off any random little symptom you have." ~ PancakeAndGravy
These Low Effort Jobs Have Surprisingly High Salaries | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
Have you ever worked one of those jobs that paid you to kinda sit there? If you have, you know the joy that comes with watching the entirety of Breaking Bad ...Critical Missing
"Where is the baby?" ~ Specific-noise123
"That's when everyone freezes and stares at each other and listen for any baby sounds. Thankfully most of the time when this is done to me they are jokes."
"The one time it wasn't was when we lost my baby brother (2 or 3 years old) at a Burlington. Everyone thought someone else was watching him. Could've been very bad. Only noticed he was gone when we heard someone describing his outfit on the intercom." ~ cln16
Support
greys anatomy doctor GIFGiphy"Doctor calling asking you to come back with someone close to you." ~ Dirkerks
"Generally because the diagnosis you're about to receive is very bad, and the doctor wants you to have a loved one there to support you/drive you home/remember important information you might be too overwhelmed to recall." ~ ArcadiaPlanitia
For You
"The good news is we're going to name a disease after you." ~ therickeffect1
"A friend told me the weirdest doctor appointment he had was when the doctor went to the far corner, called in another doc and said, 'Hey, come take a look at this.' Then they PULLED OUT A BOOK to start looking crap up."
"After the consultation with the other doc, he tells my friend, 'Nothing to worry about.' (Turned out my friend had an intersexed condition they had multiple surgeries for as a child back in the 70's. His test had come back showing him as a woman.)" ~ TheCaptainInevitable
And you. And you.
"Let's go around the room and all say a bit to introduce ourselves." ~ hanamaste
"Or worse, do that game where you need to memorize the name of everyone that goes before you 😱." ~ thegreatpotatogod
SING!!
“I brought my guitar...” ~ Tyeveras
"So anyway, here’s Wonderwall." ~ Stillwater215
"Still popular with many buskers 20 years on! So much so that it has replaced Here Comes the Sun as the go to busker song." ~ Tyeveras
Aww shucks
Season 6 Aww Shucks GIF by FriendsGiphy"I actually liked you for a long time." ~ Trip_koLng
MAYO!!
"Your parent calling you by your full name." ~ Nik-ki
"Reminds of a dream I had where I had a friend called mayo and we were playing in the street when his mum stepped out onto her porch and shouted 'Mayonnaise!' And he looked real scared." ~ Mr_Goat_1111
Go to Hulu
"That book you love is being adapted by Netflix." ~ Rik78
"I don't know, they're adapting Redwall, and I loved that as a kid. Kinda excited to see what they do with it. Really though books I love don't get adapted. Though I would love to see some madman try to adapt Atrocity Exhibition." ~ johnnysnoozes
Due Date
Pregnancy Test Im Pregnant GIF by Shay MitchellGiphy"I'm pregnant. Not to be confused with, 'I'm pregnant!'" ~ Ramen_Beef_Baby
Q & A
"'Can I ask you a question?' Don't ask me a question if you want to ask me a question. Just ask the question. Though, usually when this happens I know I am in trouble" ~ Mean_Map
"I do this sometimes because a friend of mine has an awful habit of just forgetting to reply, or outright ignoring messages for a long time, so when they reply I know I have them engaged." ~ ceo_of_dumbassery
Titus
"Hark, villains, I will grind your bones to dust, and with your blood and it I’ll make a paste, and of the paste a coffin I will rear, and make two pastries of your shameful heads, and bid that strumpet, your unhallowed dam, like to the earth swallow her own increase. -William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus." ~ intercerebellar
POZ
"My covid test was positive.""
"I have a LOT of underlying conditions that could have made that deadly. Overweight, diabetes, mental health issues, 4 foot long blood clot, and asthma. By that metric I shouldn't have survived, but here I am. Most stressful runny nose of my life." ~ that_one_guy133
The bad news is coming, eventually. Things we don't want to hear are always around the corner. So relish the good when you hear it.
Want to "know" more?
Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.
Never miss another big, odd, funny or heartbreaking moment again.
I can't tell you how many times I've sat back and chose not to speak up when medical professionals just started rambling. How dare I speak up. What do I know? I flunked chemistry and got through Geometry with a "D". But a few times there were issues left not discussed and there were problems. Just listen up to some alarming experiences.
Grandma Wins
Old Lady Wine GIF by MattielGiphyNot a doctor, but my grandmother saved my father's eyesight because she didn't listen to their doctor.
As a child, my father had really large eyes, too large. My grandmother was concerned, but the doctor kept brushing it off as normal. That anxiety-ridden woman got her herself and my infant father on a train to SF to get to an eye specialist, against all others advice. My dad was diagnosed with primary congenital* glaucoma and his eyesight was saved. Go grandma!
The Mummy Appendage
When I was a resident, an 80yo female was admitted from the nursing home for confusion. Workup showed some mild UTI and we were giving her antibiotics. The nurse mentioned that her toe looked dark and asked me to look at it. The toe wasn't just dark, it was mummified. It looked like dry beef jerky. I touched it and pieces flaked off. So the patient from a nursing home, had a mummified toe, probably for months, that no one knew about.
The CT Save
Here's my story:
A guy came in to our ICU and was very septic but still talking. He had visited his primary care MD with complaints of a sore throat for a couple of days. Dismissed without any intervention since he didn't appear to have strep throat or the flu. At this point he was having pretty severe abdominal discomfort, so we sent him for a CT scan. As the scan was finishing, he coded and had to be intubated, multi-organ failure, etc.
The CT scan was horrible - he had all kinds of stuff all over his peritoneal cavity.
His wife told us that he had choked on an ice cube the day before he saw his primary care MD. Evidently he swallowed a whole double half-moon shaped ice cube that perforated his esophagus with a HUGE linear 4.25 inch tear, allowing a significant portion of his swallowed food and drinks to get in to his peritoneal cavity instead of his stomach.
To make things worse, he had some reflux that allowed stomach acid to get in there as well (likely while he was sleeping).
Once we realized what was going on, he went for extensive washout and exploratory surgeries to repair the damage to his esophagus and other organs. Thankfully, he made a full recovery, but he was very close to not making it.
Patches
When I was an ER nurse we got an elderly lady in for altered mental status from a nursing home, when we undressed her to put her in a gown and hook her up to the monitor, I noticed no less than 5 fentanyl patches on her, guess I discovered the cause of the AMS.
Use your Words
Communication GIF by memecandyGiphyNeurologist sent patient to our ED without informing her that imaging showed a glioblastoma assuring her impending death. He didn't overlook the disease, he overlooked the communication.
Lord healthcare is a minefield. If you want to keep living, survival requires communication, and if you can't do it... get an advocate. Clearly I'm not the only one going through this miasma. Wait until to hear the rest...
Mad Cow Realty
During my residency we had this lady in her 60s who was getting progressively more forgetful, just overall declining and getting less and less able to take care of herself. She had been seeing her pcp who diagnosed her with dementia. And she saw a neurologist who agreed. She was not really able to provide an accurate history.
After talking to her family and friends it became apparent that her symptoms were progressing unusually quickly. I remember seeing the point where her new hair growth met her bright red dye and also her grown out nails with hot pink polish thinking, wow, it really wasn't too long ago that she was not only taking care of herself but like, going to get her hair and nails done. The lady in front of me was so far from that.
The neurologist I was training with recognized this, had her admitted and did every test including lumbar puncture. Workup eventually showed Creutzfeld Jakob disease ("mad cow") which there is unfortunately no treatment for. She died a few months later but at least we were able to prepare her family that she would only continue to decline so they could make arrangements. Really sad situation.
After Birth...
I used to work in maternal-fetal medicine, and every single week, we would have women referred to us "because the doctor couldn't see something clearly with the baby and wanted to double check." Nope, they just didn't want to have to be the ones to tell you that your baby had a complex cardiac defect or multiple anomalies indicative of a genetic syndrome or any other of a large number of horrible things that can happen during fetal development. Still pisses me off when I think about how many women waited weeks for more information because their doctors were cowards who couldn't tell them, "There's something seriously wrong here."
"I can't see it quite clearly," didn't sound serious, so the appointment wasn't made with any urgency, and now you're 24 weeks pregnant with a fetus that will not survive infancy, and have no options but to carry to term and hope for a quick and painless death shortly after birth.
bad doctors
I'm not a doctor, but a RN. This happened to me, but isn't nearly as bad as most of the stories on here.
When I was in college, I got to where I couldn't swallow. It started with difficulty swallowing, progressed to me having to swallow bites of food multiple times/regurgitating it, and then got to where all I could swallow was broths and mashed potatoes with no chunks. I went to the doctor multiple times, and was told every time it was acid reflux and part of my anxiety disorder.
I lost 30 pounds (was only 120 when this started) and was just generally miserable.
Finally my grandma was tired of watching me be sick all the time, so she called the GI doctor herself. They said we needed a referral, but she explained the situation and they got me in the next day. Did an endoscopy and my esophagus was 95% occluded at the gastroesophageal sphincter.
For some reason, some of my primary doctors notes ended up in my discharge paperwork (I guess they had to contact her to get my information) and she had told them it was acid reflux and basically I was being over dramatic. She stated she did not recommend them to do the procedure.
Needless to say, I switched doctors. Awful. Was not a fun year.
The Valve...
He put the pacemaker lead in the subclavian artery (and across the aortic valve into the left ventricle). The proper approach is: subclavian vein to right ventricle). And then he didn't notice it for over a year. I saw the patient (a 25 yo woman who didn't need the pacemaker in the first place) when she was in congestive heart failure.
The pacemaker lead had destroyed the valve! A surgeon and I had to do surgery to remove the pacemaker and lead. Then replace the aortic valve! Totally inexcusable. Well, 50% of doctors are below average, but everybody thinks theirs is in the top 10%.
Bitten
Rattlesnake bite. On a 2 year old. Patient and dad out in the fields near a small town that is several hours away from the nearest big city, where I work.
Dad takes the child to the ER in the small town with an obvious snake bite, doctor there says "eh it's ok she probably didn't get envenomated." Doesn't give the patient antivenin, which they had at that hospital, and instead of electing to send the child to us by helicopter, he sent her by ambulance. Several hours later patient shows up to our hospital coding, and ended up dying.
Probably didn't get envenomated?!? What the hell kind of stupid fool idea is that. If a tiny child gets bitten by a rattlesnake, you assume they've been envenomated and you treat them as though that had been. That means antivenin, physiological support, etc. completely absurd.
So what have we learned? Medicine is a collaborative effort. We don't have to know everything, but we have to be vocal. More than one opinion = saving lives. More often than not... YOURS!
Want to "know" more? Never miss another big, odd, funny, or heartbreaking moment again. Sign up for the Knowable newsletter here.