This Medical Student Witnessed Doctors Neglecting A Dying Patient. This Is Horrible.
We put our faith in medical professionals, but at the end of the day they're human too. Doctors were asked on Reddit: "What is the most unethical thing you have done or you have heard of a fellow doctor doing involving a patient?" And one user, Doctor__Throwaway, had a heartbreaking story to tell.
This happened a few years ago and began when I was a 3rd year medical student during my general surgery clerkship.
Just to get my bias out of the way, I should say I really did not like the surgeons charged with running the clerkship, I thought they were incredibly unprofessional egocentric pricks who only cared about how much a student would kiss their ass. And this went far beyond the stereotype of the "typical surgeon", I shadowed surgeons in highschool and college, and always wanted to be one. But this department was dysfunctional on a level I had never encountered before or since. I could write a book of the insanity I witnessed there.
So anyway, this particular incident starts about a month into the clerkship. By now us med students had settled into our roles there, learned the daily ins and outs. Get there around 5:30 AM, have morning conference and rounds, spend the remainder of the day in the OR or in clinic hours, and get done anywhere between 4-6 PM on a good day. Once or twice a week we would also do call, where after the regular hours concluded we would report to the ER and work there till around 11-midnight.
So as per usual I get through the day and arrive at the ER around the usual time. When I get there the attending covering the ER greets me and gives me a run down of the patients currently there. Most of them are the usual bullshit type stuff we see at the ER - abscesses, a laceration that needs stitches, nothing serious. But he says they have an interesting patient that was just brought in, a woman in her early 70s was just brought in by an ambulance, or actually a second ambulance.
She had gone to her GP complaining of dizziness, and the GP sent her on to the hospital. The GP was concerned about her driving in her state, so they called an ambulance to drive her to the hospital. On the way to the hospital the ambulance got into a car accident and flipped on its side, so the woman was then picked up by a second ambulance and brought to the hospital. Now in addition to getting a workup for the dizziness, there was concern of internal injuries stemming from the car accident.
So she gets a CT, and afterwards gets parked in the "urgent" room of the ER. The ER is divided into surgical and internal sections, and on the surgical side there is a bay room where the more urgent cases get brought for triage care: stabbings, gun shots, serious car accidents. The room has a couple of dedicated nurses - whereas the other 3 surgical ER bays share a group of nurses. The patient is hooked up to every monitor and then some, but she is awake and seemingly in good spirits.
I apologize for the detail here but I want to paint a vivid picture of just how incredibly f*cked up what happened really was.
So at this point I go over and introduce myself, let her know I'm the student doctor on the floor for the evening, and if she needs anything my name is ____ and to just ask. I'll call her Mrs. X at this point for sake of ease.
A little bit later on we get the CT with the radiologists report, says there is no internal injuries noted and no bleeding. The attending reviews the CT and report, as does the resident, and things seem to be fine.
The night goes on, I follow around the resident doing the shit work for the night, mainly cleaning up after he drained a couple of anorectal abscesses (like clockwork every time it was my night in the ER it was as if the moon and stars aligned to obstruct the anal sinuses of many a citizen and send them to my doorstep, but that is not part of this story).
Ok, so I get through the night, periodically checking up on Mrs. X in between my other tasks, and at around 11 PM the attending says its pretty slow so I can call it a night. I say goodbye to the staff, say goodnight to Mrs. X and that I will see her in the morning.
So I go home, crash. Get up the next day and head in around 5:30 for the regular morning meeting that comes before rounds. When I arrive I could immediately sense that something was off in the room. Everyone was visibly on edge and quiet, not even whispering among themselves. They were waiting for the department head to arrive and kick off the meeting.
So the department head arrives and he looks very unhappy. You should note that this many always looks unhappy. He was a German Jewish fellow in his late 60s, and he was tough as nails. Always serious, never a smile, never a compliment. You know in those WWII movies where they portray the Nazi villain as just some caricature of stern seriousness that is incapable of emotion? That was this man. Some of the residents even had a couple of Nazi inspired nicknames for him - which me being Jewish I found incredibly funny. But again not the point, gotta focus and not go on anymore tangents...
He walked into the room without saying a word and sits at the head of the table. There are now 30+ people in the room, mostly attending physicians, residents and med students. About 30 seconds passes without him saying a word, and then he just lets loose. In the span of a few seconds it was just a torrent of hate and vitriol pouring out of his mouth. His face turned so bright red I thought it was going to ignite his hair. And he was talking really fast and was so angry it took a couple of moments to piece together exactly what happened.
At around 1-2 in the morning Mrs. X start having trouble staying conscious. She was rushed to the ICU, and at the time of the meeting she was in a coma with a very low likelihood of recovering.
Apparently the radiologist, attending and resident all missed what was (allegedly - at the time I was not particularly skilled at reading CTs) a very obvious lacerated spleen. And to make matters much, much worse the resident on call wrote in her chart ordering "24 hour observation".
To the uninitiated that may seem normal, or at the very least not problematic. However in this setting when you want someone observed you need to give clear instructions on exactly what you want observed, and at one time intervals. Writing to have the urine output checked every 15 minutes, or blood pressure, or oxygen saturation, or any number of other parameters to assess the status of the patient. These things need to be very clearly enumerated to ensure the patient doesn't get overlooked.
And unfortunately that is what happened to Mrs. X in this case. Without instructions for what to do, the medical staff (attending, resident, nurses) all just sort of passed by her assuming that someone else was on it, or assuming that since there were not clear instructions everything was "alright".
So the verbal ass-reaming continued for what felt like hours. The resident that wrote "24 hour observation" got told several times by the department head that she would be thrown out of the program during his scream session, and this was in front of the entire department staff. The attending on call got it just as bad if not worse - unprofessional, lazy, not worthy of being a doctor. Pretty much anything you can imagine. During his tongue lashing it was implied he should start sending out resumes to other hospitals.
Finally, herr doctor decides to end his scream session by rhetorically asking the doctors involved what they plan to tell the family of Mrs. X, to which they all sat silently. After a moment of awkward silence everyone starts to shuffle out of the room and continue on with their day.
So now fast forward a couple of months. At this point I have finished my surgical clerkship, and a couple of clerkships that followed it. Now I'm rotating through a family medicine clinic in the suburbs about a half hour from the hospital. And on this particular day we get and elderly gentleman coming in complaining of a cough or a cold, I can't quite remember what his original complaint was.
Anyway the doctor I'm working under, lets call him Mike, says that this patient Mr. X is an interesting story. Dr. Mike says that a couple months earlier Mr. X's wife came in complaining of dizziness, and he sent her to the hospital to get a more thorough work-up. Mr. X then tells me what happened to his wife, as he was told by her doctors at the hospital (a surgeon from the department I clerked at).
That on her way to the hospital the first ambulance ran a red light, and in the ensuing accident she suffered an internal injury. After she passed they told him that there was nothing they did everything they could and that she ultimately succumbed to her injuries. When he was telling me this he was getting a bit irate, because he said when he was with her late that night in the ER (this would be prior to being rushed to the ICU) he had been trying to get the attention of a doctor or nurse to no avail for a couple hours because he thought she was worsening.
So with little recourse left and being told that it was the ambulance drivers at fault, he was currently pursuing legal action against them.
I remember him telling me his story so vividly, because I was so overcome with anger during the whole thing. First being reminded of such a stupid f*ck-up by so many people that ultimately led to Mrs. X's untimely death, and then infinitely more angry when it became clear how much he had been lied to or intentionally mislead concerning his wife.
And I vividly remember how not at all conflicted I felt when I told him everything I knew about the situation regarding his wife: that I was on call when she arrived to the ER, that I spoke with her throughout the early evening, that multiple doctors missed the lacerated spleen in her imaging, about the resident's f*ck-up in the chart that escaped notice of the attending and led to his wife being basically ignored until she was comatose, and about the conference the following morning where it was clear that everyone in the department knew what ultimately caused Mrs. X to die, and that he was clearly being lied to by whomever he spoke with.
I remember the look on Doctor Mike's face, almost a look of shock and happiness. Doctor Mike and I had really hit it off from the start of my Family Medicine rotation. Even though I didn't go into Family Med, I really loved the community work. Also Dr. Mike and I had very similar philosophies about medicine and life in general, so we got along really well. And I could see he was happy that I decided to speak up and tell the truth about what happened, instead of just keeping quiet to protect a fellow doctor.
It was at that point of course that I remembered, "shit, I'm still a 3rd year medical student. And I just outed what could be at the minimum a serious lawsuit and at worse a scandal at the primary hospital of the medical school I attend. And I could face very serious retaliation over this."
I don't want you to think I'm exaggerating, there was a fellow student (who admittedly was a real asshole that no one liked) that spoke up about some shady stuff the administration was doing a year earlier, and he got expelled from the program over it. Fortunately for me Mr. X was extremely mindful of my situation, and he and Doctor Mike told me that they would keep my name out of anything that happened going forward.
To this day I still keep in touch with Doctor Mike periodically to see how things are going. Last I had heard about Mr. X was a couple years ago. He had his lawyer go after the doctors responsible and the department of surgery. Knowing this was a case of egregious medical error the hospital offered to settle, and because they were now aware that the doctors actually lied to them and tried to cover up their error, Mr X got a settlement almost an order of magnitude larger then he would have had it been just an egregious error, minus the lying.
I know of course that this does not make up for Mrs. X, and frankly I wish he hadn't settled but taken them to court and try to have the medical licences of all those involved stripped, but Mr. X did what he needed to for him and his family to move on from their tragedy. I am only glad I could play a part in making sure those scumbags that give my profession a bad name paid for their callous disregard of their moral, ethical and legal obligations.
And that is my story of the most unethical thing I have ever seen another doctor do involving a patient.
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Perhaps the best thing about our friends is that we can always rely on them.
To help us out, to give us words of comfort and wisdom when we need them, or to just be a willing pair of ears.
Even so, our friends still have a way of surprising us, as well as disappointing us from time to time.
Sometimes they'll do things that just make us groan and roll our eyes but are easily forgiven over time.
Other times, however, they might do or say something which can only be described as "f*cked up."
Potentially putting an effective end to your friendship.
"What is the most f**ked up thing you've seen a friend do?"
Those Poor Cats...
"A guy I worked with was about to take his wife on a trip back to their mutual hometown in another state."
"They had a pair of delightful kittens and they asked me if I would watch them while they were gone."
"I had little experience with cats but these 2 were just wonderfully playful."
"I gave him a call when he got back to arrange returning the kittens but he said they had picked up a non-cat friendly dog on the journey and he would just drop off the kittens in the woods."
"Needless to say, I kept them and they were wonderful furry friends for me and eventually to my wife and kids."
"I still think what would have happened to them if I had not been in the right place at the right time."- PoloGrounder
"I went on holiday for a week and asked my 'best friend' to pop in and feed my cat (he lived a few doors away)."
"When I got back, my cat was laying by the back door of my house, went inside and his bowl was empty, I called him and asked when the last time he fed him, he said 'oh yeah, I forgot'."
"My cat had been outside for a week with no food or water. "
"I haven't spoken to him in 12 years."- Reddit
Always Listen To Your Doctor
"Convinced his girlfriend she was suffering from gluten intolerance instead of schizophrenia, and got her to stop taking medication."- lightningandmadness
But Was It A Point Worth Proving?
"Deliberately get knocked down by a car, in order to prove that when drunk (and we were very drunk), his bones were flexible."
"Fortunately, the car had been slowing to turn."
"There followed a couple of minutes trying to reassure the driver he was ok, whilst calling him an idiot."
"Meanwhile, he was laying flat on his back, maintaining he'd proved his point."- anothercynicaloldgit
It Is Never Attractive To Gloat
"Best friend was excited for me to meet his new gf."
"The whole evening he bragged about how she was still married and he was going to be the reason she got divorced."
"Haven't spoken to him since."
"Did hear she broke up with him and sorted out the issues with her husband."- hmfiddlesworth
Karma Is Pretty Unforgiving...
"Brought my friend to watch my boyfriend practice his drumming."
"She kept spreading her legs wide wearing a skirt with no underwear."
"She slept with him and he left me thinking he would be with her."
"Needless to say she didn’t date him because she already had a boyfriend."- Final_Objective_6204Kar
Shameless
"We were working in an old lady's attic and he kicked the sh*t out of a pipe on purpose then went and told her it needed to be replaced."
"I never worked with him again after that."- FriendlyDifference72
Oh, Honey...
"Brag about a then—boyfriend not leaving her despite constant cheating."
"Then cry when he left her."
"I don’t know either."- Snapesnape716
In With The Wrong Crowd
"They were arguing and he made fun of the friend for being an orphan."
"Tried to stab the other friend cuz his ex was crushing on him."- we_are_ghetto
Not Worth A Second Thought
"Throw McDonald’s fries and burger as hard as he could at a homeless lady asking for food."
"I called him a piece of sh*t and never spoke to him again."- Mundane_Tour_3215
You Don't Mess With Family...
"My best friend had just broken up with my brother—who had moved over a thousand miles and changed jobs to be with her—citing personal differences."
"My brother was devastated, but I tried to respect her decision and be a source of support for both of them, especially because they truly weren’t the best fit."
"But then she shared with me, because she knew that I loved her and would be happy for her so long as she was happy, that she’d been cheating on my brother for the past month and had found her soulmate."
"The depth of my brother’s heartbreak, already immense, was further compounded by the infidelity."
"To my bewilderment, she truly couldn’t understand why I was ending the friendship, seemed so distraught that I would end a years long relationship over something so 'small'."
"And I still can’t comprehend why she thought telling me would result in anything other than a complete door slam."
"Hannah, you still suck."
"And I’m still angry."
"I had also asked her to be the maid of 'honor' in my upcoming wedding."
"Ironic."- bitetime
Some friendships can withstand fundamental differences of opinion.
But no friendship is worth hanging onto when people (and kittens) are physically or emotionally harmed.
When you gotta go, you go.
That should be a mantra for getting rid of the toxic people in our lives.
Not every relationship is meant to last forever.
Some people don't know how to be friends.
They are awfully good at pretending though.
Be vigilant of the signs and red flags.
Toxic people are crafty.
And once you're free, never look back.
Redditor _ReDd1T_UsEr wanted to discuss the reasons why many of us decided to cut some people out of our lives, so they asked:
"What was the reason why your friendship ended with someone?"
Sometimes a person just has to go.
Planning Stages
"I stopped being the first to always initiate plans, and that was that."
Witty-Surround-6541
"I once asked a friend to plan our next breakfast + walk outing, since I always did that. He wrote me a letter ending the friendship. Stunning!"
fermat9996
Pants on Fire
"Habitual lying became too annoying and disruptive to tolerate."
Hosscatticus_Dad523
"When you constantly are thinking... this math ain't matching lol. People that lie all the time make me sick. I've told multiple friends that you don't have to lie to me."
"I feel so much better when someone can trust me and feel comfortable telling me a hard truth than an easy lie."
"Even if the truth made me feel some type of way, I'm still glad it was honest. I've even said thank you to people in the past that have been honest with me, good or bad! Some people just can not help lying about things. I wouldn't be able to ever keep a story straight if I did that."
__eden_
Bad Behavior
"He kept having kids with different girls and bailing on them. Coming from a 'went out for a pack of smokes' Dad myself, I just couldn't watch it anymore. Bailed after the third one. Think he's up to 6 now."
KingGuy420
"Reminds me of one of my ex-friends. She kept having kids with MULTIPLE guys (all of them were one-night stands), I don't think she even knows who the baby daddies are."
"She also kept begging me and people for money for pot, and she also bragged about having OnlyFans. She'd also make up stories about being in an abusive relationship with her boyfriend (she'd also cheat on him/tell people her and him they broke up, which they weren't)."
wisconsinking
Reasons
"I was a bad person and they ended it for perfectly sensible reasons. I would have done the same. I've changed, but I don't blame them for not reconsidering contact."
tabletopsidekick
"I’ve been there. I was a bad person and lost friendships and family relationships. I tried to apologize to everyone I hurt."
PDXGalMeow
"I also accepted that they don’t want me in their lives anymore. I learned that I made my mistakes, I learned from them, and I accept their choices. I don’t self-hate anymore and I try to be a better person in general. I hope you are doing well and practicing self-love and forgiveness."
PDXGalMeow
Money Issues
"I lent them $20 and then they avoided me so they didn’t have to pay me back. Worth the $20."
BuickAssault
"I don't ever expect prompt returns of small amounts of money between my friends... we all buy each other rounds or buy the food for the BBQ or whatever. It ends up evening out over time I think we'd notice though if someone was always taking and never giving and then they'd probably get cut off too."
Badloss
In the immortal words of Cyndi Lauper... "Money Changes Everything."
Lack of Support
"She joined a pyramid scheme selling butt-ugly leggings and it took over her whole life. When I finally told her it was negatively affecting our friendship, she accused me of not supporting her 'business.'"
LeftandLeaving9006
Oh Driver
"I was basically a taxi for my friends so I dumped them all."
Bullfrog_Little
"This one I can understand but depends on the situation. Not all of my friends had cars in high school, so our group needed to have me and my sh*tty '94 Plymouth Sundance come, or they couldn't do anything. I didn't mind at all then, but I definitely would these days."
Hoopajoops
"I remember I used to drive around with my buddies all the time before they had licenses. When one of my friends got his and a car I said sweet now you can drive me around for a bit, he replied that he wasn't gonna waste his money on gas like that. See ya, haven't really spoken to him since."
DontcallmeShirley_82
2063
"How's this for oddly specific: Friend since 1980, was hanging out at a bar in 1992 and there was a dispute of over a $15.00 bar tab. I was in the right, but whatever - he held a grudge for years."
"Ran into him in 2017 and we were both too old to care. Started to see each other now and then. 2023 and we're at this local bar for a show and got into a fight about $15.00 a ticket."
"Maybe he'll call me in 2063."
The68Guns
Exhausting
"She was a taker, constantly. When I needed something she made it about her yet again. Exhausting to be around."
LordyIHopeThereIsPie
"I'm going through this right now. Can't tell you how many texts I have from her in the past few days telling me that I need to get over myself, need to stop making myself the victim, have been a terrible friend, have never been there for her."
"She's the most narcissistic person I know and everyone does everything for her. She has one of the easiest lives ever and anytime anything bad happens to her she believes that everyone is against her and she's the victim here. It's pure insanity. There is no talking sense to people like this."
cheeseburgerwaffles
Life Changes
"I've lost like all but two of my 'friends' because I stopped drinking and doing hard drugs."
ConcertTerrible8877
"Same here dude. My circle is small but hey at least it's a circle I know I can go to."
Miss_mayonnaise
Oh, how things change when the booze dries up.
How much fun were you really having?
Do you have any stories about cutting off a friend? Let us know in the comments below.
People Who've Attended A Wedding Where Someone Actually Objected Share Their Experiences
There's nothing quite like the drama that can arise at a wedding or in the days leading up to it.
But the moment people don't necessarily think about is the moment when the audience can choose to object if they so choose, and surprisingly, some people take advantage of this opportunity. It often doesn't go well.
Redditor AustinMakesStuff asked:
"Has anyone ever been to a wedding where someone actually objected, and if so, how did that go?"
Objection: Avoided
"I went to a wedding where they skipped that part because the bride's adult daughter was planning to object."
- mynameizgary
"How was this known? Had she pre-announced her intention, or was she just that kind of person and people had accurately predicted it?"
- UpsetMarsupial
"She told somebody, and they told the bride and groom."
- mynameizgary
Uncovering the Con Artist
"I feel like about half of weddings these days don't have that part, and not because of feared objections, just because it is outdated and weird. Premarital sex is a thing. Divorce is a thing."
"Weddings cost like over $10k; if you know reasons to stop a marriage (outside of movies), you need to intervene at the engagement or earlier, not during the ceremony."
"That said, one of my wife's college roommates canceled a wedding like a day or two days beforehand, right after graduating college, after being in a long-distance relationship with some guy for a year or so. Her family was quite well-off and she was dating a guy who lavished gifts and expensive dates on her whenever they were together, said he ran his own company, just bought them a fancy house, etc."
"It turns out he was just super in debt, working a near minimum wage job, and maxing out credit cards taken out fraudulently. He had a fake web page with other employees for his company that he set up for the sole purpose of keeping up the front. The house was only bought from grossly lying about income (pre-2007 housing crisis) on the mortgage application, and he was drowning in debt."
"The almost-bride's father got bad vibes about the guy (a few things didn't add up, like he had this fancy house but couldn't afford any furniture), and he hired a PI (Personal Investigator) who quickly uncovered the deception."
"(And she didn't break up with him because he wasn't rich, she broke up because he spent tons of effort to lie about everything and was completely conning her and just trying to get her roped into joint ownership of his debt via marriage that he expected the family to pay off.)"
- NoveltyAccountHater
Chosen Family
"My husband's first marriage. The brother of the bride stood up and said to my husband, 'Say no, you can still be happy!'"
"They went through with the marriage and wound up divorcing with a messy breakup."
"Brother-in-law is still best friends with my husband (as far as he's concerned, he gained a brother and lost a sister, and is better off for it), and he never lets him forget the fact that he was right and he should have bailed, lol (laughing out loud)."
- Amaevise
Marriage 2.0
"My auntie's fiance was already married (a lady stood up waving the marriage certificate), so the wedding didn't go ahead. The reception was on a long boat so we still went to that."
"The fiance went back to his home country to sort it out and never came back."
- Chiquita4eyes
The Mother-in-Law
"I worked a wedding where one of the moms objected, but I think the groom knew that the parent was going to say something, so they just responded with, 'Oh sit down, (parents name), we knew you didn't like this a year ago and clearly we're not going to change our minds today."'
"The wedding continued like nothing happened, but the mom was lowkey shunned and people avoided her at the reception."
- peeweekiwis
Going Separate Ways
"This was in America, and the wedding was in a Buddhist temple. The parents of the groom stood up and objected because they didn’t believe the bride was of the same class. They spoke in another language so most of the English-speaking guests didn’t know they were objecting."
"My husband was the best man and those closest to the couple knew this might happen. The Buddhist priest said he would handle it if the parents tried anything."
"After the parents spoke for a while, the priest said to the groom, 'You’ve heard what your parents had to say, what do you want to do?'"
"The groom replied, 'I want to marry my bride.'"
"So the priest asked the parents to leave."
"At this point, the rest of the guests are clueing in that this was not a nice part of the ceremony, and that the parents were actually objecting, so, as the parents walked out, some of the guests were berating them saying things like, 'You should be ashamed of yourself,' and 'How could you do that?' Even though the groom was not happy with his parents, that was very hard for him to hear."
"That was 30 years ago. The couple is still married. They have two beautiful, successful children. After the groom’s mom passed away, the groom’s father came around and was involved in their lives until he died."
- Bayou_Mama
Not Meant to Be
"A woman, in her twenties at the time, objected to her mom marrying my uncle. So she started yelling, 'Mom, don’t marry him!' during the ceremony."
"The ceremony proceeded, and some family on the mom’s side lead the daughter away to quit interrupting."
"I don’t blame her. My uncle was a lying, lazy bast**d. The marriage didn’t last."
- Rabies182
The Best Man Swap
"I went to a wedding where the best man was replaced a week before because he banged the bride. But the wedding still went ahead just with a different best man. They are divorced now."
- Tobias---Funke
Joke Gone Wrong
"I went to a Catholic wedding where, when the priest asked this question, one of the groomsmen did a VERY loud, long, throat clearing, which got everyone laughing."
"Everyone except for the bride's elderly Italian Grandmother, who marched out of her seat and angrily hit the groomsman with her handbag and shouted at him in Italian!"
- hundreddollar
Giving Away the Bride
"I objected. I took giving my sister away literally."
"I wasn't the brightest three-year-old."
- dookieshoes88
Wedding Invitation Revenge
"At my cousin's wedding, her friend said, 'I object,' because she was not invited to the wedding. She was kicked out of the wedding."
- SuvenPan
Hilarity Ensues
"Not quite the question as asked, but too funny to not share:"
"Priest: 'Any objections?'"
"Father of the bride: lets out the hardest, loudest, most complex-sounding sneeze I've ever heard in my life, completely with involuntarily saying, 'ACHOOOOOO!'"
"Mother of the bride, hammered on champagne: 'For f**k's sake, Jerry!'"
"It took a good five minutes for everyone to regain their composure."
- ibiacmbyww
The Bride Who Got Away
"I had a friend who was a minister, and the subject came up if he asked the question during ceremonies he officiated."
"He laughed and said no way. He basically tells the couple not to include it because it only invites a moment of anxiety at best, misery at worst."
"His best story (and one of the reasons he stopped including the question) was about a couple where in the lead-up to the wedding, the couple was obviously in love. The bride-to-be was very smiley and happy."
"But the day of the wedding, she was stone-faced. He (my minister friend) knew something is up because he’d never seen her like this and he asked if she was okay. She just said, 'I’m fine.'"
"Right before the service, he asked again, and 'I’m fine.'"
"He got to the question, 'Does anyone object to this union?'"
"The bride reached over, grabbed the Maid of Honor's hand, shoved her into the bride’s spot, and said, 'You’re screwing him, you marry him.'"
"Then she stormed out of the church."
- FDS_MTG
An Unforgettable Toast
"At his rehearsal dinner, a coworker's mother's toast included that his soon-to-be wife was a 'd**n dirty w**re who wasn't good enough' for her son. Folks were not happy. (The video ended so didn't see the whole thing.)"
"At the wedding which I attended, his mom started to say something at the 'speak now or' part but was silenced by her daughter. Mom left and didn't see the rest of the ceremony."
"Everything about that poor guy was drama."
- nebelhund
Period.
"Attended a wedding where the minister said something along the lines of, 'If anyone here objects to this marriage, you can keep your mouth shut. Today is not about you.'"
- Jinjoz
Bonus: Funeral Shenanigans
"Not a wedding, but at a funeral someone objected to the death."
"At my uncle’s funeral, his ex-wife and a local church [cult] leader tried to raise him from the dead. We were all sitting there like normal people at a normal funeral and she walks up to the casket and starts yelling, 'James Lester, raise up!'"
"I didn’t know she was there or I would’ve prepared myself for shenanigans. Also, I didn’t know my uncle’s middle name was Lester, so please imagine the confusion. So she and the cult leader are literally yelling at my uncle’s body."
"Not surprisingly, my uncle refused to resurrect himself. They were escorted out."
"I’ve actually never told this story because it makes my family look insane."
- HughSteele
The last thing a person wants is for their to be drama on their wedding day, but like any other major event, sometimes something will come up. But having someone try to put a stop to the wedding, in front of everyone, certainly will add a terrible note to the wedding day.
Financially speaking, most of us could benefit greatly from having extra money each month.
But where someone might assume that the extra money would just be wasted, most people would apply these funds to very practical purposes and expenditures.
Redditor dothepingu asked:
"What would you do if you had an extra $1,000 every month?"
Dental Care
"A couple of weeks ago, I went to the dentist and overheard a heartbreaking situation."
"The office had a very open floor plan with privacy screens rather than individual rooms. But you could still hear every single conversation."
"This teenage kid comes in and says that he has a broken crown that needs to be fixed."
"The dentist says that it will cost $700. Kid says he has to call his mom first."
"So the kid calls the mom, and the mom says, 'No way in h**l can we afford that. Just tell the dentist to stick the old one back on.'"
"The dentist is like, 'Are you sure? That's not really a thing. It's just gonna break off again.'"
"The mom says too bad, he has to live with it."
"If I had an extra $1000, I would have picked up that tab for that kid."
- taleofbenji
Practical Choices
"Pay off debts and save."
- luciliddream
"Exactly my thoughts, start actually being able to plan things and save money rather than being on the back foot all the time."
- thebeardeddrongo
Financial Pressure
"Worry less."
- Cool_Ranch_Dodrio
"Absolutely. Money just helps so much for lowering stress!"
- appleparkfive
Quality Time
"I'd ask my husband to take more time off work. We don't need the extra money, I'd rather have his company."
- Eve-3
Health Care
"Save more money and continue with my current lifestyle, except maybe also be able to get eye surgery for my worsening vision."
- Morbidhanson
A Little Self-Care
"I'd start actually getting my hair cut and colored by someone that's not me at 3:00 AM feeling brave."
- digitalisdaydream
"I feel attacked by this comment, it feels personally directed at me."
- friendlyghost_casper
Mental Healthcare
"Be able to take care of my and my wife's mental health a h**l of a lot better."
"Her therapy is important but expensive. I would love to make sure she had more appointments and the best care."
- onionleekdude
Time to Retire
"Retire. 1000 USD per month is LIFE CHANGING in the Philippines."
- Eleazarosaurus
Home Upgrade
"Probably move out of my uncle's shed."
- chunky_chumpkin
Mortgage Payment
"Make an extra mortgage payment; pay off this house twice as fast."
- HawaiianShirtsOR
Regular Meals
"I'd try out that three meals per day trend that people talk about."
- BeginningCap2333
"I'd settle for one meal a day and not living in my car."
- Desalvo23
"Dude. Been there for six months. One day we'll make it big. We'll sleep on a mattress and eat TWO meals a day."
"Like kings."
- CaptainFunktastic
Break Time
"I'd work fewer hours. I've been here for 32 years and haven't been able to take a vacation in over four years."
- The_Safe_For_Work
Providing for Family
"My mom recently became single, with three kids and a grandkid at home. She and two of the kids who live with her are unable to work because of severe health problems."
"I know she is constantly terrified about how she's going to pay the bills. I'd give her the $1,000 each month in a heartbeat."
- GiskardRayke
Man's Best Friend
"I'd finally be able to afford a dog."
- stoleyourspoon
...Ouch.
"Live instead of survive."
- Keanu_Christ
While there are millionaires in the world, or even just people who live very comfortably, most people are currently living paycheck-to-paycheck, give or take a few hundred dollars. And that $1,000 extra each month would make all the difference.