Reddit user, SnooSuggestions5585, wanted to hear about the craziest things happening in hospitals when they asked:
"Redditors who work at the ER, what's the funniest/absurd reason someone was brought in?"
You would expect most of the injuries obtained in the E.R. to come from kids, right?
Sigh, Teenagers Gonna Teenager
"Over the course of an evening 9 teenagers were brought in by their parents for hallucinations."
"None of them were able to tell us what was going on and they trickled in over about 4 hours."
"The drug screens were negative but they were all pretty badly out of it."
"Finally one of the siblings was able to tell us they had all been at the same party."
"One of the teens had talked the others into trying mushrooms except they were mildly poisonous ones instead of the ones you take for 'shrooms'."
"They were all tripping like crazy for the night and they had to stay in the ER until they were sobering up."
"It was amusing for the staff but the parents were quite irate."- Liz4984
Revenge!
"I’m a cop and was posted at the ER on night shift once and a woman came in because she got bit by a snake in her yard."
"She was panicking because of it."
"Her hand was really swollen."
"One of the nurses asked if she saw what kind of snake it was and she said no."
"A couple of minutes later, these two boys, maybe 12-13, came running in holding a decapitated snake in pieces inside of a ziploc bag."
"They had rode their bikes from their house to the hospital to show the doctors the snake that bit this lady."
"Like these kids heard about what happened and went on her yard to kill the snake just to do this."
"It was funny and oddly heartwarming." - Amy-Paradise
bag snakes GIFGiphyYou really need to question the sanity of some of these people before they visited the hospital. Ask questions like, "Why weren't you brought in sooner for just being alive?"
Seemed Like The Right Call To Make At The Time
"When asking what brought him in today he said he was arguing with his sister about the car and how much this costs and carrying on, had to stop and ask him again why is he here."
"His reasoning was he was tired of arguing with his sister and would rather be admitted to the hospital."- Lil-one
Wait Until All Of It Is Good And Out
"A woman came in after she cut her hand pretty bad making dinner."
"Instead of putting any pressure on the cut to stop the bleeding, she was just letting herself bleed into a large kitchen bowl."- Virtual-Cupcake-1510
With Friends Like These?
"Had a guy come in after smoking weed with his friends and then he also did PCP."
"His friends got very paranoid and he became aggressive towards them, so naturally they attacked him… with a samurai sword."- Current_Recording_64
Mean Lets Go GIF by Arrow VideoGiphyAnd then there's these.
The ones you were all waiting for with delightful, Schadenfreudian glee.
The sex ones.
Wait, This Happens So Often There's A Nickname For It???
"As a kid, my Mom's EMT stories seemed hilarious, but as an adult I don't think I'd have the patience to tolerate so many people's bullsh-t."
"That being said, here goes the story."
"They get a call that a guy has a sever nosebleed, is already feeling dizzy, losing a lot of blood and can't stop it."
"Needless to say they floor it, thinking the guy might bleed out, get there in very short time."
"They ring the doorbell, a guy answers."
"They ask him to take them to the victim, he says they're talking to him."
"Not one drop of blood on the guy's face or clothes or anywhere, cheeks all rosy, doesn't look like he's lost a lot of blood so they ask what the deal is."
"He says it's hard to explain but he was worried they wouldn't send him an ambulance if he was honest about his symptoms and he's in a lot of pain."
"My mom tells him to sit down and tell them about the symptoms while they take his blood pressure."
"Guy says he'll do all of that, except for the sitting down part."
"Now, I bet you all know where this is going."
"Turns out he'd been trying to convince his girlfriend to experiment sexually with him."
"She wasn't into it, was afraid it would hurt."
"So the guy says 'if I show you on myself, will you do it?'".
"She reluctantly said yes."
"So the guy lubes up a thin aluminum flashlight, 2 cm thick, 15 cm long, bends over and jams it up where the sun don't shine"
"So they put him on a stretcher and the driver says into the radio 'ambulance 98 returning, 28 year-old male with severe constipation and foreign object in his rectum'."
"'Uhm... it's a flashlight, in case it matters'."
"'So, uhm... Yup, you heard that right: we're bringin' you a firefly, stand by'."- Corvus_Manufaktura
flashlight GIFGiphyDon't Pick Him Up And Shake Him!
"My Mom worked in the OR and said there were soo many guys who ended up there because of things they 'slipped and fell' on."
"The craziest one for her was the guy who 'slipped and fell" on a snow globe'."- craponapoopstick
He'll Follow You Until The Afterlife Fades Away
"I got admitted to the ED after a heavy leather bound photo album fell off the top of a free standing wardrobe during sex and hit me on the head."
"I ended up with 12 stitches and a multi layer closure and luckily missed out on a skull fracture."
"The album in question? The woman’s wedding day with her dead husband."
"We joked later that it was his ghost disapproving of our random horny moments."- W2ttsy
Wait For The Twist Ending...
"Girl came in saying she had a lump in her vagina."
"Very worried about it."
"Examination revealed nil abnormalities."
"On further questioning her new boyfriend said he felt it during sex'."
"It was her cervix."- craycraxy
A visit to the ER shouldn't be a laughing matter.
Unless it's the only possible treatment for the scenario.
I've got a burning desire... or I'm just burning...
"Last night a guy came in with a fever."
"CORRECTION: His PENIS had a fever."
"Yeah, you read that right, his Penis, only, was warmer than usual, and it freaked him out."- Dont-Lick-the-Cat
GiphyShe's a woman now
"I’m not an ER nurse, but my dad used to be and I’ll always remember this story."
"This mom brings her 13 year old daughter in and swears up and down that her daughter was bit by a bug and has a nasty infection."
"She says the daughter was bit by mosquitoes while they were outside, and her chest was swelling abnormally because of it."
"So they do some kind of physical exam, and my dad had to explain that the daughter wasn’t bit by mosquitoes, she just hit puberty and was developing breasts."- katelikesmilk
What are you trying to hide?
"One I was working at the ER a young guy 18-19 years old, who was at a party, came piss drunk and unconcious."
"In order to get a urine tox screening we decided to take a urine sample through a catheter."
"When the nurse pulled down his pants we discovered that he had put a thick white sports sock in his underwear."
"After the test was taken we decided to put the sock back where we found it so he wouldn’t die of shame when he woke up!"- alexfrommalmoe
"I've decided that if I ever have a sex-toy-related injury that requires medical care, I'm just going to own it."
"In fact I'll go one better."
" if I have an innocuous boring injury that sends me to the ER, I'm going to claim it was an athletic sex injury instead."-triggur
The Lengths some people will go to
"I don’t work in the ER, but did my preceptorship in the ER my final semester of nursing school."
"Had a lady come in via EMS because her partner 'threw a red solo cup at my back and I’m having terrible pain now!'"
"It was the most dramatic show I’ve ever witnessed watching that poor EMS crew roll her into a tiny room as she’s flailing and fake-sobbing."
"ER doctor looked at me, the student, and said 'take her this script for Ibuprofen'."
"She’s discharged'."
"He spent maybe 2 minutes in her room."
"I took the script in, gave her the discharge paperwork, and she threw it in my face and told me to 'get f*cked'.”
"No joke, she came back 2 hours later, walked into the ER herself, with a bloody towel wrapped around her hand."
"She told me to hold out my hand."
"I already had gloves on."
" She placed her thumb in my hand and said 'can I get some pain medicine now?'"
"'Calm as could be and very manipulative-like."
"This lady legit went home and cut her thumb off to get pain meds."
"She didn’t get any pain meds, she got an immediate air lift to a major hospital to have emergency hand surgery."-deadheadramblinrose
Read the instructions carefully
"Directly from a family member who’s an ICU rn."
"Patient was brought in to the ER after making a homemade dart gun with a needle and straw but blowing IN, instead of out."
"He swallowed both."
"Thought he could just poop out both but ended up with massive GI bleeds and losing most of his blood."
"Needed surgery and a ton of blood product transfusions."- Responsible_Rent7970
It goes both ways
"I don't work there, but I personally went to ER and asked them to fake a report for me so I can skip a test I had the following day."
"They agreed."- MarwanMero
Maybe we rely a but too much on technology
"A woman came into the ED recently because she couldn't find her pulse on her apple watch so she was worried that her pulse was gone."
""The doctor taught her how to find her pulse via jugular and sent her home."
"lmao."
apple watch connecting GIFGiphyYou don't outgrow fun... or do you?
"Friend of mine in college thought it would be fun to swing in one of those rubber tire bucket like baby swings in the park."
"So she managed to put her feet through the leg holes and climb in."
"Only to get completely stuck in the swing."
"Her circulation was getting cut off by the swing and her legs were swelling like crazy."
"We tried to pull her out but no luck."
"We had to call 911."
"She ended up going to the ER with the swing still on her to get cut out of it."- RainbowUnicorn0228·
Maybe ease up on the self gratification.
"I volunteered at a hospital in HS, and my only time in the ER, a gentleman came in complaining of severe pain in his groin area."
"Come to learn he was a chronic masterbater, and had rubbed considerable patches of skin OFF."
"Not only that, you could hear him yelp randomly, and it was because he was doing it then too!"- notnotasock
As always, all of the salutes and respect to the people we pay to heal us. The things they have to outright not laugh in our faces for must be a mountain impossibly high.
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Reddit user, u/ravrotinez, wanted to know about the most ridiculous things doctors have seen in a human body when they asked:
Doctors/Medical Examiners/Morticians of Reddit, what is the weirdest anomaly you've ever found on/in a body?
A Memory...A Haunting, Haunting Memory...
GiphyA mummified fetus - I was working in Africa and the usually very stoic Congolese surgeons called me in to theatre, gagging - the patient was an elderly woman with a protruding abdominal mass. When they opened it, they found that it was a long, long dead mummified fetus which as a result of an ectopic pregnancy, had somehow managed to both wall off after it died and somehow avoid killing the mother. Her body had encapsulated the alien tissue and over the years, it had slowly eroded her interior abdominal wall to the point where it finally caused her to have enough symptoms to get something done about it.
It was horrific and the smell was worse.
Happily, though, the patient survived the procedure and just left the surgical team with a .. memory.
Pops Always Said To Grow A Spine
One of our cadavers had two spinal cords, aka split spinal cord malformation.
Edit: just a first year med student here folks. Unfortunately it's against our school's policy for me to even take photographs, yet alone share them. One of our groups during our laminectomy (removing the back of your vertebra to expose spinal cord) lab, once they cut into the dura mater (the tissue that wraps around the spinal cord) noticed a spit cord in the in the thoracolumbar region, side-by-side. Our lead anatomist was very excited to see this and had the whole class come see. Apparently it's not the most incredibly rare thing, but it is the weirdest anomaly I've seen thus far.
Edit 2: So a lot of people are mentioning Spina Bifida. From what I understand in my studies, that would be the result of bones in the spine not forming correctly. This was not what we saw. There were no signs of prior surgery or herniation of the meninges.
Was There Also A Motorcycle?
Weirdest thing was in a woman's intestine- a dead mouse.
Tiny little thing.... obviously never got the chance to ask how the mouse got there as this was post mortem. Definitely unexpected though...
When Your Body Confuses Its Own Organs
She isn't dead, but this week i saw a patient with endometriosis in her lungs.
Somehow, womb-lining cells had travelled to her thorax and colonised on the lung. She previously had symptoms of coughing up blood while menstruating, but because the endometriosis was so severe, was on the pill to stop her periods entirely.
Then she came off it to have a baby, and after the birth, with her hormones all over the place, she developed two pulmonary embolisms (blood clots in the lung), and a few weeks after that, three successive pneumothorax (collapsed lung). The womb cells had tried to shed, and made a hole between the airways and the sac surrounding the lung, letting air escape.
She's deciding now whether to let the surgeons cut out the part of her lung with the endometrial cells, to go back on the pill for life, or to have a full hysterectomy and remove her ovaries. Tough choice at 32.
Up Is Down, Black Is White, Left Is Right
GiphyI was a combat medic in the Army.
Not super super uncommon (about 1 in 10,000 people have it), but I had a buddy with situs inversus. All of his major internal organs were reversed (heart on the rights side instead of the left, for example). As soon as he got to the unit, it was the first thing he told me. Wanted to make sure if he got hurt I wasnt curious as to why he had no heart, I guess.
Edit to say: Had to look up the name and how uncommon it is, because it's been a few years since I got out and he's literally the only person I've ever met like that. I was honestly surprised at how common it actually is, I figured it'd be more rare.
That's Not How The Keto Diet Works
My colleague was embalming an autopsied male and found two hairnets, numerous plastic tissue sample slides, a plastic urine container (with another person's name on it) and over twenty seven latex gloves within his abdominal cavity...
Sounds Like A Typical "Good Idea" From A Young Boy
Doctor here, general prac and young, so not many experiences.
I had this kid (8) and his mother come to the ped triage about a cold.
As soon they came in they filled the room with stench, like a wound festering, that humid and rancid smell. Kid had a runny nose, but secretions were comming from a single nostril. Upon examination we found the sinusal cavities filled with cotton.
Apparently the kid had this funny idea of stuffing one nostril with cotton and shoving it up inside with a stick as far as he could. We had to call the specialist to remove a lot of VERY deep cotton that was of course a picnic field for bacteria.
Kid probably isn't going college but he won't be lacking new ideas.
Just In Case You Needed A Reminder:
In my anatomy lab, my groups's cadaver had died from systemic complications of stage 4 lung cancer and when we got to the lungs they were two rock hard, necrotic blackened masses that looked nothing like the other cadaver's pink and spongy lungs.
My anatomy prof took one lung out and wrung it resulting in this putrid black goo flowing out of the lung.
As he was draining the lung, he mentioned...
"This. This is what happens when you smoke"
An Injury That's More Of An Inconvenience
Pretty memorable to me. I'm a doctor was working in OT (anesthesiology)
An emergency came in the afternoon. Apparently the patient is a fisherman and got into a fight with his fisherman friend.
Patient was impaled by a spear gun. The spear entered just lateral to his belly button and came out just above his right hip.
He actually held this 6 ft long spear going through his body and walked into the emergency room by himself. When it was time to put him under he wasn't scared /anxious. He said "just fix me up so I can go find that guy".
Medical History
GiphyGuy came in for an outpatient MRI of his cervical spine. On the form where it asks if he ever had any metal in his body (specifically asks if any injured by a metal object) he selected no. Same with a verbal questionnaire. Also we do a keyword search in the patients hard chart for the term foreign body incase it's documented- nothing came up.
He lays down, and I start taking images while talking to him though the speaker. During one of the image sets- he starts pounding on the inside of the scanner and screaming. Figured he was claustrophobic- so I stop the machine and get him out. Immediately he jumps up and starts talking nonsense and runs into the wall, screaming he needs to get away from the 'ocean'. I call overhead for emergency room staff to come down and security as he's flailing, continues screaming and running into the wall before we restrained him.
The staff rush down, and he's talking a mile a minute and explaining how he is inside of the poster of the beach that covers the entire wall in the room he's in, scared out of his mind and hallucinating. Security restrains him, and he's taken down to get an X-ray of his skull. There was a BB in his frontal lobe. It had just enough ferrous metal left in it to travel a few millimeters in his brain. In the emergency department he kept trying to escape, and was very fast. While unrestrained he got up (somehow convinced the guard he was 'better'). Patient bolted out of his room into the main hallway. A code was called for a lost patient. For over an hour nobody could find him, until a nurse looked into a large storage closet. Poor guy was found in a pool of blood. He crashed into a large mirror that was leaning on the wall, and had severe lacerations of his neck, face and arms. Efforts were made to transfuse him but it was too late. Still haunts me how a simple BB from 40 years earlier could do that. Discovered his brother accidentally shot him with a BB gun when they were kids.
Dude I hope his brother never finds out. I dunno about him, but I'd be so fucking guilt riddled if I found out that my f up from 40 years earlier had gotten my brother killed.
Tiger Stripes Mean "Grrrreat!" Right?
Neurologist here..we don't get as many cool stories as the ER docs. However, when I was a medical student we had a cadaver with a very large and very tiger stripe tattooed penis. This was the only tattoo this man had, and was very unexpected when it came time to genital dissection. Obviously, this was saved by the staff for use on all of our anatomy exams (you walk around the room to different parts/bodies and identify whatever is tagged, and this specimen was always identifiable by the only laughing medical student as they kept rotating around the room).
They say you die twice... Once when you stop breathing and once when someone sees your penis for the last time.
Nail On The Head
ER nurse; man comes in after a car accident, we do a brain scan for safety and find a 3 inch nail imbedded in his brain. Ask man about it, he says he has no idea. Admits he was once shot with a nail gun but HAD NO IDEA A NAIL HAD BEEN LODGED IN HIS HEAD. Had been there for well over 4 years.
You Are What You Eat
Father owns a crematory, we once cremated a man (with no clothes and not in any container) and along with his ashes came a massive belt buckle. I kid you not, we have no idea how it got in him but it was definitely there.
Let's All Say A Prayer For Poor Peter...
I now get to add another one in this thread..... A rabbits foot ( yes, it was a real one) in a 22 year old males rectum. COD was a car accident. I think I've literally seen it all....
That Sound You Hear Is Yourself Fainting Because WOW
GiphyI'm an Emergency Trauma Nurse at a busy hospital. Within the last few weeks, I had a 69 (nice) -year-old man come in with a full size screwdriver up his butt, handle first. He informed me that his "girlfriend puts it up there for funsies, but he normally can poop it out." X-ray available if the public demands it. Also, last Halloween, a woman came in with a whole, intact apple in her bum. We politely informed her she was incorrectly bobbing for apples. Finally, I spent over an hour with a middle-aged man who discovered "a big lump in my throat that moves when I swallow." The man stared at me is disbelief as we had a discussion on Adam's Apples.
Emergency Departments are never boring!
A Mass of...What?
Newbie doctor here! This is one of the more interesting cases I've seen so far... 27 year old woman came in to the ER with a complaint of a nonproductive cough, night sweats and unintentional weight loss. I automatically thought TB as its still endemic here despite vaccination and free meds.
So this woman is definitely on the thin side, but what didn't match up was her pot belly. I asked if she was pregnant, she said no her last period was 3 weeks ago, preg test confirmed not pregnant. And she did have exposure to TB, her dad had it before he died recently but apparently completed the 6 month treatment regimen. His death was not tb related.
Did a physical, lungs sounded clear, heart was good, a bit pale so probably anemic secondary to infection, abdomen globular, soft and nontender with no masses felt.
My consultant wanted to get an abdominal ultrasound to find the cause of the abdominal distention in addition to a chest xray. But her sister actually wanted to skip the ultrasound and go straight for a ct scan and are willing to pay for it. Ok, sure!
So she was admitted, chest xray confirmed tb so meds were started. CT scan also done, and the scans showed a gray, well defined homogenous cystic mass in her pelvis. Refer to ob-gyne!
So with gyne on board, they decide to investigate the mass, monitoring her abodominal girth - that fluctuated daily- and weight, and also getting that ultrasound. So yes, definitely a mass, but its NOT coming from her ovaries, bladder or uterus. Got a build up of ascites (fluid) in ther abdomen too.
So time for an abdominocentesis! Cytology, gram stain, and culture and sensitivity done. Cytology comes back with the answer to what the mass is. It's genitourinary tuberculosis. So she got her meds, and needs to have a follow up every couple of weeks for the next 6 months, but should be fine.
I wish there was more done for TB here in the Philippines, people are so blasè about a TB diagnosis, or being exposed. So many people die from this everyday without realising the tb meds are free from the department of health. Its an awful way to die, wasting away, struggling for each breathe, bleeding out into their own lungs followed by death. I can't believe this still happens in this day and age.
Do NOT Google This.
I've just remenbered a horrible story happened when I was a student and practiced in the ENT ( ear, nose and throat) department of a national hospital.
A young girl came to us bacause she vomited a round worm. She told us that she had used a pill of 500mg mebendazole the day before to regularly deworm, after that she had a good night's sleep. But the worst part is that she had found a round worm on her pillow when she had woken up. It hadn't stopped. She had felt something wrong in her throat and immidiately had vomited again - a round worm which had been still alive. She had became panic and had gone to the hospital.
The doctor decided to do a larynx endoscopy, then we found and carried out another one in her larynx. The doctor said that the amount of worms in her intestine had been so much so that drug couldn't work effectively. Some of them was still alive and they moved around to find another suitable enviroment - in this case it was stomatch and mouth. Sometimes they could move out through nose or fundament, sometimes they could move to liver or gallbladder... But rarely it had appreared in larynx or mouth. We introduced her to the parasitology department and I 've never heard about her again.
The worst things with me that was we had rice noodles for lunch in the canteen.
It was 'ascaris lumbricoides' if you want to google.
Not The Hole In One He May Have Wanted
Here's another weird one... 3 golf balls in a mans stomach. His cause of death was lung cancer. Still trying to figure out how he ate golfballs/how long they were in there considering he was on life support for 2 weeks before he died.
Apparently there's a new type of golf ball that rolls into the hole if you get it within 4 inches of the hole. He probably just tried to keep them in his back pocket.
"Oh Yeah, This One Time, I Got Shot."
GiphyYoung man comes in complaining of headache. I work in radiology.
We ask for history. Nothing to report, he says.
We scan his head. CT shows a bullet rattling loose inside his sphenoid sinus (kind of between the nasal cavity and the brain).
I asked the guy: "Have you ever been shot in the face?"
"Oh, yeah, I guess I forgot to mention that."
Edit: Okay this blew up. To clarify, the guy had been shot in the face a few years earlier, never sought treatment for it. The bullet had somehow missed all the vital structures.
H/T: Reddit
