Jamie Hayes

1. Her Own Worst Enemy

I work as a wedding server. As soon as someone says “Bridezilla". I think of this one story where the manager of our hotel had to shut down the wedding halfway through. This was the Bridezilla of all the Bridezillas I've ever seen. There were a lot of little things leading up that were casual Bridezilla—until the wedding took a dark turn.

At one point, she accused the wedding server staff of taking her veil...then the manager found it in her room and also showed her the card swipes to her room proving only she had been in the room that day. About 20 minutes later, she was screaming at some poor front desk employee accusing her of taking her wedding boots.

The manager intervened again, and after a long talk the photographer told them he had a photo of the boots on the staircase of the church, and asked if she had worn them since...When she said no, she told our place it was our job to have picked them up and made sure she had them, even though the church was not related to our place at all.

THEN shortly after she started opening the wedding gifts frantically inside the ballroom and screaming at anyone and everyone, guests included, saying someone took her wedding certificate. After that, our manager gathered the wedding staff and told us to take off our uniform jackets, empty them in front of him, then to clock out and go home.

Which we all did. None of us took anything. We heard next day that the maid of honor had the certificate and after we left the wedding was shut down completely.

CaptainMyCaptain

2. Mother Knows Best

I worked at David’s Bridal and I have to say that as far as Bridezillas, it was always the moms, grandmas, sisters, and friends that were terrible. Either they hated what the bride would pick out for them to wear or they would hate what she was picking out for herself to wear. At David’s Bridal, we have kind of strict appointment guidelines when it comes to time.

A lot of brides who would bring entourages wouldn’t find a dress because everyone would bombard her with their opinions and overwhelm them. The worst thing I’ve ever witnessed was when one bride who always struggled with her weight came in. She was overweight and had been working extremely hard on it over the last year.

It was a slower day and we all loved her story and wanted to make that day special so we all decided to help. She finally found a dress that she loved and she started crying along with most of us. Then she looked at her mom and asked for her opinion. Her mom’s response was brutal. She looked at her and said, “You look fat in it".

We all stood there in silence and the bride lost her happiness. She asked to be assisted in taking it off and they left. It was one of the saddest days that I had experienced there.

Adnarim_Rekanoh

3. Maid Of Dishonor

Management here at a bridal shop. You have no idea the sense of entitlement that walks into my store. I would consider us the Wal-Mart of weddings: We cater to everyone from poorer people to rich nobodies who think they’re somebody. I’ve seen it all. “These dresses are cheap,” to “These dresses are too expensive". I’m a rational person and being part of management means I’m trusted to make important decisions and enforce policy.

All sales are final, depending of course, but you have to have one great excuse to get a penny out of me. The best (by best I mean craziest) excuse yet was a spouse who had her wedding coordinator go in to refund the items because she was in a psych ward. Why? Because she tried to hurt her sister…after the sister announced she was pregnant with the groom’s baby…at the bridal shower.

We refunded everyone but the sister, who was ironically the maid of honor.

SmokWin

4. Right In The Face

I was a bridesmaid for a family member’s wedding. We hired a super talented makeup artist to come in and make her look really good for her big day. This makeup artist, who was the quietest, shortest lady I’ve ever met in my whole life, starts doing her makeup. Once she finished it looked REALLY GOOD. I was just like “diddly dang, she’ll love this". BOY was I wrong.

The bridezilla looked in the mirror and went absolutely BONKERS. She screeched, “It looks awful! YOU KNOW WHAT I WANTED!” She was crying, and her eye makeup was streaming down her face. We all rushed to calm her down. This poor makeup artist looks like she’s about to pee. So the makeup artist fixes her up despite her outburst and does basically the same thing but adds a little more eyeliner.

Suddenly the bridezilla LOVES IT.

camrynsi

5. Frame It Up

While the photographer was waiting for the extended family to gather for formal photos, he photographed couples and families already present. The bride bristled that he wasn't taking photos of her and that these were not the photos the bride had requested. This was after the photographer had already finished photos of the bride and groom in several locations.

Because the bride was upset, she didn't ask the photographer to take photos of her and her special friends during the following reception. So, when she finally saw the photos a few weeks later, she regretted that she had taken out her (unwarranted) anger, and she was missing dozens of photos she would have wanted. Karma’s a witch.

Dancer1977

6. Shut It All Down

A local wedding shop that had been in operation for years in my area had to close down. This place was very well known and a lot of people I knew went there for wedding dresses, prom dresses, etc. In 2014, however, there were a few US cases of Ebola, if you remember. One of the ladies who came down with it was a nurse and caught it from a patient who had Ebola.

She, for some reason, got the OK to travel, then came to the area where I live and went to this particular bridal shop. When it was confirmed she had Ebola, the shop closed down for three weeks to be professionally cleaned and de-toxed. After the shop opened back up from the three-week shutdown, they were never able to recover.

Months later, they announced that they couldn't afford to stay open and were struggling. The stigma of the lady with Ebola being in the shop drove people away. Oh, and the lady with Ebola tried suing the bridal shop when they wouldn't refund her and her bridal party’s deposits when she canceled her orders. Just a total mess.

Karkee8807

7. Money Can’t Buy Class

Strap in, folks. This is going to be a bumpy ride. I work in a relatively high-end country club in the American South. We had a doozy last season. It was not only the bride who was crazy, but the whole wedding party. The "Happy Couple" were not members of the club, but had convinced our coordinator to sign off on it.

However, this coordinator quit shortly after booking, and a new girl had to deal with the fallout. First off, they had been extremely rude to our new coordinator and managers through the whole planning process. They had a private coordinator as well, but she was pretty well useless. Ours didn't even know she existed until the rehearsal.

The bride had demanded all kinds of free stuff during the planning. Now, I have no problem doing a wine tasting to go with the food tasting. However, if you come back three times to try the same free samples, I'm not playing ball anymore. You're paying for it at that point. You and the five people with you. Fast forward to the rehearsal.

We have regular dinner service going on in our dining room for our (rather exclusive) members. Renting the ballroom for a day does not entitle you to take over the entire clubhouse. The bridal party are drinking, yelling, cursing, and being generally ugly all over the grounds. Nothing was right, according to the private coordinator who had never seen the space before this.

Everything had to be moved. "What do you mean your covered terrace can't accommodate 250 people for the ceremony without an extra tent?" "I was told the dance floor would be by THOSE windows, not these". "We absolutely cannot let anyone into the ballroom until after the ceremony, so I don't care that the terrace is only accessible through it, make them all walk around the building through the wet grass".

This whole time, the bridal party is getting louder and drinking more. The little old ladies trying to eat poached salmon in peace are obviously annoyed. Father of the bride has set up a provisional account to pay for the wedding, since we don't accept cash or cards, only accounts. The bridal party knows the account number, and we've been told to put everything on it by our managers, as long as the person ordering knows the number.

You can see where this is going. He didn't see it that night, but he argued every single drink when the bill came. Even the 18-year-old scotch that he alone was drinking. Okay, enough of the day before. On to the main event. Most of this day I was on the periphery, since I was working on the other end of the building. This is the end they weren't supposed to be on, except the bride and bridesmaids, since their dressing room was on that side.

I could still hear pretty much everything that was happening, and saw way more than I should have. As guests arrived, they were directed around the outside, as per the request. The mother of the bride freaks out because OF COURSE they didn't want HER side of the family to have to go that way. They need to be allowed to walk through the active dining room and around the other side where the golf course is.

At this point, the groom and groomsmen are getting positively sloshed in the men's locker room, which our members are still using as well. Bridesmaids have moved out of the ladies' locker room and are rampaging through the members' bar. And by that I mean that we caught them multiple times pouring drinks behind the bar while the bartenders were getting their bar ready in the ballroom.

They had the same move every time of, "Oh, gosh, how did this bottle get in my hand and why is it suddenly half empty? Haha, silly me!" The ceremony goes well enough, considering basically everyone standing up front could barely stand. You may be asking how we let it get to that point. Well, they had snuck in a lot of drinks. I mean, a lot...

Highlights of the reception: The bride is cursing. A lot. I don't think one sentence came out of her mouth without a variant of a swear word. During hors d'oeuvres, the maid of honor comes out of the locker room and informs me that it "needs attention". You know, the room where only they had been for the last three hours because they had scared off all the members already.

It shouldn't have been my job, but the attendant had gone home early due to an emergency, so I figured I would take a look. I was horrified at what I saw. I came right back out to get every manager I could find. I even cleared the coast so our chef could come look after he saw my reaction. It was, quite simply, disgusting.

The small wastebasket was overflowing because they had put a bunch of stuff on top of the nice big covered one and then forgot about it. Part of the overflow was a used tampon. There are separate baskets in the stalls for those. Dirty panties, about 10 empty champagne bottles, everything a normal person would put aside or throw away just sat wherever it had fallen.

I removed the trash (with gloves on) and didn't touch one thing that was personal. I should have thrown out a lot more. About 1.5 hours in, the bride asks the bartender what Black people drink, so she can get something to give to the band. When she is told we don't serve the band drinks due to liability, she flips out. More cursing.

How dare we not do exactly what she wants? Do we know how much she is paying for this? Not nearly as much as a lot of our members pay for theirs, I can tell you. Her new husband manages to somewhat calm her down eventually. By this point, all of the guests are so loud and obnoxious and not staying on their end of things that we call in extra security just to stand at all access points and wrangle them.

Remember all those "hidden” drinks? About two hours into the reception, the security guard nearest to the men's restroom hears an awful noise from inside. Goes to investigate and finds a broken urinal and an empty handle of Jack Daniels. Time for cake! This can't go wrong can it? Oh, it does go wrong. Wifey smears cake on the lower half of Hubby's face.

Haha! So cute! Hubby puts tiny dollop of icing on end of Wifey's nose. "OH MY GAWD!! HOW DARE YOU DO THAT?! YOU'RE RUINING EVERYTHING!!" (Paraphrased. It went on waaay longer than that). She proceeds to go literally running through the entire clubhouse and most of the surrounding grounds screaming at the top of her lungs.

As it was a nice night, many of our members were enjoying the patio off the dining room. One member in particular had been listening to the hubbub, and asked me the names of the couple. I had to laugh when I remembered that he's a prominent divorce lawyer. I, jokingly, asked if he wanted me to pass out his card. He, very seriously, said yes.

The party was shut down two hours early. Officers were informed of potential drivers (who shouldn't be driving) leaving the property. The bridal party were staying in rental houses on club grounds, so our security escorted them back. You'd think that would be the end. But, alas, no. I did not witness the next day's meeting, but I gather it involved a lot of apologies from the groom, and a lot more angry words for everyone from the bride.

Plus debates about the bar bill from dear old dad, because they could not possibly have had three kegs in that short of a time. He was right, sorry for the mistake, we should have charged for the fourth tapped keg. About a week later, we were informed of an investigation claiming that one of our staff had taken the bride's laptop.

For maybe two weeks, we were randomly called by the local authorities with updates on the case. Then she found it in the trunk of her car, where it had been the entire time, because they used a club-owned laptop to play their slideshow. Which she had tried to walk out with. I think that's the whole story. I probably blocked some stuff out. Except there’s one last twist.

We think the original coordinator did this to us on purpose. She didn't leave under the best terms, and confirming the booking was one of the last things she did. She must have known it would go like this.

EdsteveTheGreater

8. Be Careful What You Wish For

Retired Master Seamstress checking in. This wasn’t a Bridezilla but a Momzilla. I was making her daughter a custom bias-cut gown and had limited fitting time because the bride lived one state over. Now, bias-cut gowns are the devil to begin with. We (mom and I) would work on details between fittings. I would say our working relationship got very frosty.

Each time the bride came for a fitting, she lost weight. Tape measures don't lie. And she was not a big girl to begin with. Mom would scream that her daughter did not lose any weight. After the third fitting, third fight, and the third rebuild of a very complicated gown, I finished it and told them to take the gown and do what they wanted with it.

It was gorgeous but hung loose. The girl lost over 3" over the course of 7-8 weeks. I lost hours of my life, and the $ for the work.

Spydrchick

9. Music To My Ears

I was at the wedding of an ex-boyfriend several years ago and he had planned and practiced singing a Frank Sinatra song to his new wife. He went up and took the mic and, with the band backing him up, began singing the song. His new wife suddenly stomped across the dance floor and up on the stage, grabbed the mic from him, and said, "I HATE that song and I don't want to hear it". They were divorced about a year later.

AverageJoe5555

10. Every Rose Has Its Thorn

I’m a florist. We had this psycho bridezilla and her mother show up at 9 am. They wanted to order a bridal bouquet, a mother of the bride orchid corsage, a boutonniere for the groom, and six smaller ones for the groomsmen. But there was just one thing. The wedding was scheduled for noon. Yep, three hours from then, and they wanted them ready by the time they were done with their makeup appointment at the beauty parlor a few doors down.

The bride was flipping through the sample book and pointing out the style and flowers she wanted. Think garden roses with long sweeping trails of stephanotis and variegated ivy, all three of which would require at least a week's advanced order with our suppliers. She was absolutely gobsmacked that we didn't carry extremely expensive and highly perishable flowers at all times.

Same with the orchid for the mom's corsage. My boss told them that since they didn't place an order beforehand they would be limited to what we had in stock, and simple styles that could be assembled quickly. The bride and her mom kept pointing at the book and arguing that we should have those specific flowers in stock.

My boss eventually took the book off the desk and tossed it behind the counter. The bride vacillated between tears and petulant whining that we were going to ruin her big day. My boss, who had a bone-deep loathing for brides in general, told her she had ruined her own day by not ordering her flowers before her actual wedding day.

The mom tried chewing out my boss for her lack of customer service skills. My boss told her that she was welcome to go down the street to Vons and ask their flower department to make their order with whatever they had in stock. The mom said she'd do just that, and reassured the bride that she'd have her flowers done by the time her appointment was over.

Both women stormed out. I figured that was that, but I was so wrong. My boss told me and the other girl to start on six simple corsages. Meanwhile, she threw together a ribbon-wrapped bridal bouquet with some white roses that were nearly past their prime and some. Sure enough, 20 minutes later the mother slunk back in and meekly asked if we were still able to assemble what they needed.

We did. We also charged her a very large rush fee.

Haceldama

11. All For Naught

I worked for a wedding photographer. This one wedding had this wonderful couple, and they seemed made in heaven. Their wedding album WITHOUT pictures cost two thousand dollars. This thing was made from mirrored glass, and weighed a ton. It was my job to order a bunch of 8x10s that the bride wanted to use in the album. This was actually a nightmare.

This album had no protective sleeves, so every single picture had to be sprayed with a chemical coating and left to dry, in a dust-free area. If it did not dry with a smooth, dust-free finish, I had to remove the chemical coating and try again. I spent most of that week in a tiny closet-sized room, in full respirator mask and protective gloves, spraying those pictures.

But my God, I have to say, it was the best job I’ve ever done. When done, this couple spent over $5,000 on that one album. It was GORGEOUS!....and they divorced before the year was up.

Permalink

12. Ring Her Up

I used to be a "Bridal Consultant" at a retail store, which basically means I helped couples scan things onto their registry, although the training for it just meant I knew how to use the scanner and the computer, and my actual job had nothing to do with bridal shopping. This one couple came in to start a new registry, which quickly turned into only things the bride wanted.

Anything the groom wanted to put down on the registry was deemed as "childish, stupid, ugly, unpractical, never-going-to-be-used". I was cringing during the entire appointment. She also kept asking for my input or opinion on everything, and I felt so bad for this guy. His bride-to-be seemed so selfish and entitled, and I couldn't believe the fact that he was soon to be married to this woman.

The poor man just wanted a waffle maker, who doesn't want waffles?!

_marjaz_

13. Not My First Rodeo

I used to work at a jewelry store. This young guy, about college age, came in one day to look at engagement rings. He was very polite and asking good questions. You could tell he’d been considering this for some time. As I’m helping him and showing him some rings in his budget, she walks in. She’s wearing a t-shirt from the high school senior class from the previous year, and she comes over by him.

“Oh my God, were you seriously considering that ring??? Ugh. It’s so ugly. Besides, it looks just like my LAST engagement ring". How I wish I could have told him to dump her, run for the hills, and don’t look back.

rubywolf27

14. Don’t Judge A Cake By Its Cover

I’m a baker here. I wasn't present for the freakout, but it was my fault so...A few months back, I had a bride who wanted a navy to white ombre cake made with white sponge. Now, dark, rich colors like that in white cake SUCK. They always taste terrible because they have so much gel coloring in them to get them just the right color.

However, you can do it OK if they're willing to have the dark layers be chocolate. Navy is especially easy, thanks to blue velvet. I tell her this when we're planning. "But I want white cake!" She says. I tell her I'll do all but the last few in white sponge. She agrees, and I make the darn thing and drop it off. I come back to pick up the staging stuff the next day, and make an awful discovery.

I find my whole freaking cake sitting there. Apparently, when they cut into the thing and fed it to each other, she freaked out over it being chocolate, and refused to let any of the cake be served. Apparently, she forgot that she had agreed to have the bottom tier have two layers of blue velvet, so she threw a massive temper tantrum over “the cake being wrong".

Apparently, she kept talking about how I ruined her wedding, then locked herself in the bridal suite. If she wouldn't have been a little psychopath and let the staff cut the cake like they should have, she would've seen that 90% of the cake was white sponge like she wanted.

notasugarbabybutok

15. Sibling Rivalry

I worked at a high-end bridal shop in my early 20s. One day, I had a bride-to-be shopping for a gown. She had brought her mom, aunt, and sister (who had just become a new mom) with her to her appointment. The sister was obviously a little jealous that attention was no longer being lavished on her and her new baby, and instead the bride was the new the center of attention.

As I was fitting the bride in a $2,000 gown, the sister decided to change her newborn’s diaper in the dressing room and proceeded to hold the poop-filled diaper up to the gold-hued gown and exclaim, “Look, the colors almost match!” I excused myself from the room for fresh air and to regain my composure. In my experience, the brides were rarely the problem—the family was!

jackerick84

16. The Polish Princess

I worked at a mom and pop bridal shop. We had a bride who was Polish, leading my boss to call her “the Polish princess". She wasn't my bride, but they picked a very bad consultant for her. This was made worse by the fact that this girl wanted stuff added to her dress that wasn’t done by the manufacturer, so we had to do it all in-house.

To give you an example, she wanted lights all around the bottom half of a dress that we had already spliced with two different dresses. Side note: my boss loved anything that meant money. Anyway, we spent months fixing and refitting this dress because she not only lost 45 pounds from her first time being measured, she also got plastic surgery on her chest.

Well, after finally fitting her into her gown, on the last week she decided the lights that took our poor 70-year-old seamstress two months to sew in looked tacky. She was crying and throwing herself at her mother in a tantrum, screaming in Polish. She then ripped the bottom of the dress and ultimately had to buy a dress from David's Bridal because my boss finally got smart and kicked her out.

Just a mess. She made our seamstress cry!!!!! The witch.

Doves_inthe_wind

17. It’s Not What It Looks Like

Not 30 minutes ago, I had someone accuse our deaf tailor of recording her on his phone as she tried on dresses and walked around in them...Uh, no. He was Facetiming his wife as he walked through the store. When she found out the truth, she was very embarrassed, but not enough to apologize to any of us for screaming through the store.

AllTheExsInTexas

18. A Modern Romeo And Juliet

I work at a hotel that does a huge amount of wedding business, and we had an engagement shower, with the plan being that the couple would be having the wedding with us as well. This involved the bride-to-be and, to an extent, her mother. We knew there were going to be issues because neither the bride or groom ever smiled.

The bride was always complaining about how the groom was "wishy-washy" with picking a date, while he was always silent. The mother of the bride was your stereotypical Brooklyn Jewish Mother and had her hand in EVERYTHING to make sure things were perfect for her little princess. Well, the engagement party starts, and everyone except for the couple seem to be having a great time.

Then, halfway through the party, we suddenly heard the girl scream at her fiancé "WE WILL NEVER HAVE A CHRISTMAS TREE IN MY HOUSE, SO YOU CAN GET OVER IT!!!!" And from there it devolved into a shouting match between the couple, who moved from the banquet room to the lobby so their "guests" couldn't hear the argument. (Didn't work. They heard everything).

Apparently, she was Jewish and he was Protestant and not once in their relationship had they discussed religion. They went at it on and off for two hours. She was screaming at the top of her lungs about how their (non-existent) children would be raised Jewish, and how his traditions didn't matter. Her mother was standing at her side, nodding in agreement, and interjecting occasionally with a "that's right" or "you tell him".

The groom was pleading for her to at least compromise to let him at least invite his pastor from his hometown for the wedding, and said that their (non-existent) children could possibly do things with his parents for Christmas, even if they didn't celebrate. The guests just kept partying, pretending nothing was happening, but you could see on all of their faces that they wanted to leave.

Only, well, they couldn't since they would have to pass by the couple to get to the only exit. Only after two hours and the argument eventually devolving into her INSISTING her children would never see a Christmas tree in their whole lives, the groom finally dejectedly said, "Well then maybe this isn't going to work".

She threw her ring at him and said, I swear to god, "THEN WHY DID YOU LET ME MAKE YOU PROPOSE?!?!?!?!?!?!" She then changed her mind, picked up the ring, and said, "Whatever. I'm keeping this". Then she stormed off. Her mother looked at her ex-potential-son-in-law, told him he was an idiot for letting her baby go, and went after her.

I've NEVER seen a banquet room clear out so fast. Within 15 minutes, everyone was gone and it was a ghost town. From the looks of it, everyone took their "gifts" with them, too. Worse still, it was the former bride's family who had hosted and were staying at the hotel, so we spent the next two days "commiserating" with them about how awful the groom was as they moved their daughter out of his apartment.

Dude dodged a bullet.

sig863

19. The Mask Comes Off

Not a wedding shop worker, but I was at the wedding when it happened. As the bride was walking up the aisle in her dress, she tripped over her gown. And instead of just getting up and moving on, she let loose an absolute huge tantrum and started screaming at everyone. And then it got worse. When her dad tried to console her, she just slugged her dad in the face.

Then she started just throwing stuff everywhere, screaming about this wreck of a day and screaming about hurting the tailor for making the dress too long. She just lost it and proceeded to rip up her own dress and run out of the church half-dressed into the rain. I mean, I know the stress is high but oh my god, she lost her freaking mind.

elipsionnation

20. Too Much Of A Good Thing

Bridal consultant here! My most memorable appointment was a party that showed up completely sheets-to-the-wind. It wasn't unusual for bridal parties to have a little "tailgate" style party in our parking lot before coming into our store. Often they'd have mimosas or a shot or two to loosen up before the scary gown search.

This party, however, must have finished a full bottle between the five of them. They didn't appear too sloppy when we first got started, but about half an hour into the appointment it was pretty obvious that they were way too gone to be in the setting they were in. I had to prop the bride up with her nose in the corner of her fitting room to lace her corsets because she couldn't stand.

Each time we stepped out onto the stage, the bridesmaids would scream, Beatlemania style, until they were red in the face. Eventually, my manager came to me and said, very sternly, "Sell to this girl and get. them. out of here". The appointment ended when she fell for a gown $700 over budget, her most tipsy bridesmaid swiped her own credit card to cover it, and then one of them sprayed a brown bodily fluid of some kind over our ENTIRE toilet.

kimmycat88

21. My Plate’s Full

I’m a restaurant manager. The wedding dinner was on a Sunday, so instead of the usual one manager on, we had the banquet coordinator come on for a few hours to make sure everyone was happy. They were a rich couple and we wanted more of their business. Their menu was $119 a person and they had $80 bottles of red on the table.

So guests start to arrive and obviously start ordering drinks. At this point, the bride and mother see this and approach the head server. They tell her that everyone except the head table are to get separate bills, and that they are not planning on paying for anything but what's at the head table. Server finds us, tells us what's happening, and the banquet manager heads over to figure out what's going on.

It seems that the bride and her mother decided that their guests should have to pay, but they didn't want to be the bad guys so they expected us to have to tell the guests. We tell the people who have already arrived. Half of them laugh, thinking it's a joke. Once we told them it really was the truth, they laughed and left. My job became to stay at the front and tell all the people arriving for the dinner that they are going to be responsible for their whole bill, and what the costs were.

The final guest count was 20 people, and we ended up threatening court action against the family since they signed the banquet sheet stating that they agreed on 60 dinners. So the best part of this all was that they paid for the full 60 dinners, plus gratuity, and only had 20 people actually there, all because they wanted to save some money.

disgruntledrep

22. If The Shoe Fits

My experience with a Bridezilla happened at my great aunt's house. She has a private lake and a lovely setup for a small, country-style outdoor wedding. The mother of the groom was a close friend of hers, so my aunt was happy to open up her home for the event. I got the feeling leading up to the wedding that the groom's family didn't care much for the bride, and after witnessing her throwing a temper tantrum over the placement of the food table because it started to rain, I kind of started to see why.

Listening to the way she talked to everyone around her appalled me. She was a complete spoiled brat, and really was lucky that everyone didn't just leave the wedding completely...I wouldn't have blamed them a bit. However, the worst was the fact that she decided that she wanted her bridesmaids to walk barefoot...in the muddy, wet grass.

See, she had them buy new boots to wear specifically with their dresses. Anyone who has ever bought cowboy boots knows that they are upwards of $100, and she picked out pink ones to match their pink dresses. All five of the bridesmaids had to buy these boots on top of whatever they had to pay for the dress. But she decides 10 minutes before the wedding starts that she doesn't want them to wear them.

Of course, everyone complies with her and pacifies her and the wedding goes well. Although it got pretty tense during the "speak now or forever hold your peace" part. Not surprised to hear that the marriage didn't make it to six months. She was the most selfish person I've ever met, and I'm convinced that she didn't want to get married at all, she just wanted all the attention on her.

Permalink

23. Daddy’s Little Girl

I worked as a banquet server at a ritzy, riverfront hotel. People come from all over to have expensive overpriced weddings. So needless to say, many of our brides were Bridezillas to some extreme. Our summer season is very expensive. Usually, our local brides only get married there in the off-season to save some of their cash.

One local bride that I will forever remember, however, went absolutely crazy. Before the wedding even started, one groomsman left because he couldn’t stand her demands. We were all in the ballroom setting up as we normally do. At this particular wedding, the bride had a wedding planner who set the centerpieces, which were a pretty general country theme.

The bride storms in, literally has a temper tantrum that they are not right because the candle was supposed to be on the left and not the right. We fix it no problem even though it was not us but her wedding planner who set them. Now, you’d think that would be all…but no. One of her bridesmaids lost her bouquet right before the ceremony.

Instead of troubleshooting, she completely berates and humiliates her bridesmaid. Then starts stomping her feet and saying, “Dadddddyyyyy” like a two-year-old. This was over and over again. To her, every little detail was wrong in some way, shape, or form. Needless to say, I was so glad I wasn’t responsible for the bride and groom’s table that day.

RedWomanRamblings

24. Picture Imperfect

As someone who has done a fair amount of wedding photography, one particular Bridezilla stands out for me. She abhorred the engagement photos and insisted that I must have used a warped lens or something that made her look fat. She readily admitted that her fiancé, who was standing right next to her in the photos, looked fine and normal, but there absolutely had to be lens distortion or something else that made her look significantly heavier than she really was.

That was awesome. I waived the fee for the engagement shoot and scheduled another at no cost to see if I could placate her. I recommended colors for her to wear that would “compliment her skin tone” and scheduled the second shoot for the golden hour where the light would be most complimentary, since she had insisted on the first shoot being at noon.

Two days after the second shoot, I delivered the photos and she was content enough to agree that I could be honored enough to be their wedding photographer. We (my assistant and I) get to the wedding location an hour early. We took literally hundreds of shots of pre-wedding preparations, all of the family shots that could be done with the family who actually showed up on time, and everything else that was agreed upon.

We shot the wedding as discussed. After the formal ceremony, we continued to shoot more casual shots, cake cutting, first dance, the reception, and everything else that was agreed upon. At that point, the dinner was being served. Again, as previously agreed upon, I wasn't going to shoot a bunch of people jamming food into their faces and it was time for a break anyway.

Her mother, who was actually the one paying me, invited myself and my assistant to discreetly grab a plate of food and sit at the back of the reception area and relax for a few minutes. The bridezilla came completely unglued at that point. She stood up and literally shrieked that “the photographer isn't here to eat, he's here to take photos and make me look good!"

The entire clubhouse went silent and all eyes turned to me. I set my fork down, glanced at the Bridezilla's mother, and then back at the entire ballroom and mumbled through an apology that wasn't warranted but somehow seemed necessary. Then I got my revenge. I proceeded to aim my camera directly at the fat witch while she chewed every last bite of her meal and jammed seemingly endless desserts into her maw.

Shortly thereafter, her mother and brand new regretful husband approached me and suggested that despite our contract to shoot through the duration of the reception, it might be better if I go ahead and call it a night. So I left. Very happily, I might add. The next day, as I was starting to do post-production edits on the photos, the psycho called me.

She screamed about how there was no way they were paying for the photos (that she hadn't even seen yet) and that she was going to call the local TV station to make sure I never got work again. "Ok," I said, "I understand you're upset. Please enjoy your honeymoon and we can discuss this later". And I guess I kind of hung up on her.

Half an hour later, her mother called me. She assured me that the bill would be paid in full and apologized profusely for how her daughter acted. I got paid in full. EVERYONE in the family was perfectly happy with the wedding photos except the Bridezilla. Her mother thanked me for my patience. Her husband thanked me for my tolerance.

And I thanked the powers-that-be that I'd never have to see or deal with the atrocious with again.

m-e-g-a-i-n

25. Dance Like Everyone’s Watching

I was the DJ for a wedding where the bride, who was from a very wealthy family, was not expected to live past childhood. Imagine, if you will, a girl who was raised having never heard the word "no". Her entire childhood was one big Make-a-Wish. She had a zest for life. She loved to dance, so much so that her parents were building her a giant lake house with a disco club; like a room just for dancing.

She was marrying a man several years her senior who she met at a dance class. He was just like a character out of a movie who charms older women and then takes their fortunes, except this was a much younger woman. The request list for the wedding reception was a lot of early 90s high-energy dance music. After dinner, and I've done this hundreds of times, dancing starts.

I decided to kick off dancing with the bride's favorite song, which was Technotronic’s “Pump up the Jam". Until this moment, I had nothing but pleasant interactions with this woman, who genuinely seemed to appreciate life for how precious it truly is. Before the beat could even drop, however, she was running over to me screaming, tearing into me for ruining her wedding.

It was a spectacle and the guests watched in horror as she berated me. Apparently, she wasn't ready to dance yet, and I was playing the song that she was most looking forward to dancing to on her wedding day. I was forced to stop the song cold and the only sound was her screaming as I fumbled to find some cocktail music to throw on until she was ready to dance.

At the end of the night, most brides come up and hug me and thank me for a wonderful night. I didn't get so much as an icy stare; it was as if I didn't even exist to her anymore. Her father came up and gave me a $400 gratuity. His words offered a simple apology, but you could tell they carried the weight of the monster he'd created.

JesusSavesAtWalmart

26. A Match Made In Heaven

I use to be a photographer’s assistant back in high school. I remember this one bride before the wedding kept yelling at my boss about me helping with photos as she didn’t want some “stupid kid” to ruin her wedding photos. She also kept calling her soon-to-be husband, berating him. I ended up getting sent to do the groom’s photos while my boss handled the bridezilla.

As soon as I walked into the room where the groom and his friends were getting ready, I almost puked because it smelled like a distillery. The guy was on the phone with the bridezilla on speaker while drinking and shaking his head. I could barely walk through the room with all the bottles on the floor and suitcases everywhere. Yeah, I don’t think they’re gonna make it.

AllThatSpaz

27. When It Rains, It Pours

Photographer here. The couple opted for an outdoor wedding with no weather backup option and, lo and behold, it started pouring literally five minutes before the ceremony. The guests and groom ran for cover under the reception tent. After it didn't let up, the groom made a mad dash to the door of the RV the bride was getting ready in, because she nor any of the bridesmaids were answering their phones.

She made the poor guy stand outside in the pouring rain while she screamed and cussed that she was NOT getting married under the tent and everyone would just have to wait until it stopped raining. This was the middle of July, so even the rain was hot and sticky, and there were a lot of elderly family members with health issues in attendance sitting in 80-degree heat for over an hour.

The cake had also started melting. I honestly wasn't sure if the wedding was going to happen at one point, but it eventually stopped raining and the bride married her soaked groom and ate wedding cake soup.

distractivated

28. Tailor-Made For Each Other

I work at David's Bridal. Most of the times...it's not the bride. It's a mother of the bride or maid of honor. I work in alterations, and believe me, it takes more than one appointment to get things perfect. So one day, this bride comes in for her second appointment for us to do any adjustments. Predictably, she needed a couple of things adjusted.

Her mother told me I ruined her daughter's marriage. Not wedding...but marriage. All I could think was that if needing to adjust something on your dress and having to come back for one more appointment makes you think someone ruined your perfect life with someone...well...good luck to her groom. I don’t want to be near those two.

Jadenlost

29. Hey Mr. DJ

I’m a photographer. During more than a dozen years in this business, I've had almost nothing but fantastic clients, real sweethearts, and consider myself lucky. Almost. The exception was a New York bride who was so angry because it rained cats and dogs on her wedding day. I’m not sure if she understood I wasn't in charge of making the weather.

She had wanted to take golf carts to the beach with the wedding party to do fun photos there, but that clearly didn't happen. Her foul mood spoiled a bit of the wedding. Good thing everyone else still appeared to be having a good time regardless. She managed to stay (barely) polite to her vendors, but weeks later she unleashed on me.

I had delivered, among I don't know how many hundreds of photos, two shots of the DJ. She calculated that those photos, based on my fee, had cost her $14, and was almost comically displeased about that. She also flipped her wig because, she told me angrily, she'd observed me eating a few canapés during the reception—and at three dollars apiece, how did I not understand those were not intended for the hired help!

I offered to refund her $23 and inquired where she wanted me to send the check. At that point, she calmed down a bit, possibly realizing how ridiculous she was being, and then volunteered that maybe she was being a bit irrational at the moment...because she was pregnant. Of course, I offered my congratulations. She grudgingly told me to keep the check.

I did put a baby gift (a silver rattle) in the mail to her a few weeks later. I hope she and her husband and the baby lived happily ever after!

DaytonaDemon

30. If The Shoe Fits

I’m not a bridal worker, but I stood up in a friend's wedding. Less than 48 hours before the wedding, the bride suddenly decided that the shoes that came with our tuxes weren't to her liking. She wanted me and the groom to go to various stores and get some “better” shoes for the big day. My friend, the groom-to-be, was totally stressed out with all the various loose ends he had to tie up before the wedding.

Including, apparently, trying to find different shoes. Fortunately, I was able to talk some sense into him. I told him first that there just wasn't enough time to go shoe shopping and second, there are only four basic types of dress shoes for guys: shiny or not shiny, with laces or without. Finally, I said that no one cares what kind of shoes the groom and groomsmen wear.

He came to his senses and was able to persuade his now-wife that new shoes were unnecessary.

LurkerKurt

31. It’s A Doggone Shame

I work for a wedding venue, and the couple wanted to bring their dogs for the ceremony. The day of the wedding, everyone working has a list of jobs to do to get ready for the big day. All of my fellow employees are setting up everything, so the couple's families can get ready and relax. We set out the chairs, decorations, flowers, tables, silverware, the dining room, the Arbor, EVERYTHING!!

The only thing they had to do was hold onto the dogs. Spoiler: They didn't. We finished everything on the inside in the morning, and we were almost done finishing everything outside, when we all hear a massive crash on the inside of our massive event room. It was the dogs. One had started with the wedding cake and accompanying artsy cupcakes.

The other moved into (on top of) the beverages tables where they broke around 80 flutes, 60 stemless glasses, and around 120ish glasses, along with four crystal punch bowls and all the accompanying liquids. And they did it all within a few seconds. Needless to say, the bride and groom’s "handler" was their 15-year-old nephew.

This boy, in his eternal wisdom, thought that he would let them run around a bit before the wedding. When the bride walked out of the changing rooms and down the hall to see the noise, she was not happy at the sight of the horrors that took place. She lost her mind, blaming us for everything, screaming, “Why did you let the dogs into the room?” etc etc.

She said she didn't care how, but to get this all ready before the reception or she would sue us for all we were worth. We took the "I don't care how" to heart. We called every business within a 10-mile radius and bought, borrowed, bartered, and did everything we could. All the glasses, all the wine, the drinks. I was in charge of driving the boss’s car to the nearest bakery and forcing the bakery to make a serviceable wedding cake with everything they had.

I was a little late on bringing the cake back, but everything else had been cleaned, reset, and back to its former glory before the wedding ceremony was over. After the night was over and the bride and groom left, we gave everything back we borrowed, boxed up what we bought, and started shelling out the favors. We tallied up all the damages the dogs had caused and what the wedding cost.

It was in the five-digit range. The couple was understandably angry at the bill, so they did indeed sue…they lost. And to my knowledge, they are still leaving 1-star reviews on every rating website out there for us.

Puffin_slayer

32. Get A Room

I worked management at a resort in a popular tourist town. When weddings are booked at our venue with the event coordinator, we can hold a certain number of rooms for guests attending. A manager was always required to check in the bridal couple, and I had been given a heads up by the coordinator that this particular bride was a Bridezilla.

First, they wanted a room on the highest floor and closer to the beach. Thing is, they were already booked into the Honeymoon Suite, which was on the third floor with ocean views. Nope, she wanted higher and closer. Had an absolute meltdown at the front desk when I explained there was nothing higher...or closer. I mean, really.

A colleague of mine ran for the event coordinator when the bride started screaming at me and her husband-to-be. The husband was very apologetic and trying to calm her down. Eventually, she was placated and sent off with keys, but fewer than 30 minutes later she was back and demanding we empty the rooms next to and below her.

Honey, those rooms cost $640 a night and we are fully booked! I was lucky enough to not be working the night of the wedding, but I heard all about her screaming at the wait staff, kicking the band out for playing a song she didn’t like, and the screaming match she got into with her mother-in-law. What a peach! All counted up, the wedding was about $40,000 and she made everyone miserable.

The groom left our front desk staff a big tip to apologize for her behavior.

MissyMack

33. The Water Works

I own a gift shop and I also sell flowers. It's in a small hospital so we don't do too many flowers. Usually, it’s just small arrangements because our customers generally don't want to spend over 20 bucks. One day, one of the women who works at the hospital asked us if we would make a bridal bouquet for her future daughter-in-law.

We decided we would do it just for her. We made this beautiful bouquet exactly how she wanted it, and even added some extra embellishments. She picked it up the day before the wedding and I told her to just gently spray water from a spray bottle on it to keep it hydrated. I even demonstrated how to do it. The mother-in-law came in the next Monday and told me something awful.

Apparently, the night before the wedding the bride had literally sat the bouquet in the sink and drenched it with water which obviously ruined it. The bride wanted to demand a refund but the mother-in-law told her no because it was her own fault. So yeah, after that one I probably won't work with brides again. Too high strung.

makeasmore

34. The Mother Of All Insults

Not a wedding shop, but we sold kitchenware. Think china, cookware, etc. It was like a Williams Sonoma store. The bride, mother of the bride, and mother of the groom were all shopping and filling out the wedding registry list. The groom’s mom was pointing to an item and said something to the bride. The mother of the bride turned to the other mother and snapped, “Your job is to shut up and wear blue".

We placed bets on if that marriage would last.

ShamusNC

35. A Wandering Eye

I worked at a church that had weddings in the DC area. The worst bride I dealt with was part of an insanely rich couple. They showed up in a Lamborghini, I think, and the groom kept asking if it was safe to park the car out front. I think he was just trying to show off the car, and he also wondered if his father's Bentley would be safe in the alley behind the church.

We were in DC, so he was lucky we had any parking at all. Then the bride was walking around talking about all the extravagant things she was wanting for the wedding, and pointing to things saying, "This will never do". The worst thing was that every time the bride turned her back, the groom kept on staring at my chest.

It was strange. His bride looked like a supermodel, and he was very good-looking himself; I don't know why he had to sleaze on church workers. After that and other demanding people, I told the church I don't want to do weddings, so now volunteers for the church do it.

ghoulishgirl

36. A Bull In A China Shop

Do Groomzillas count? I used to work as a bridal registry consultant for a big department store. I had several nightmare couples and family members, but I always think of this one guy. The bride was pleasant enough and very polite. She expressed great excitement when discussing the plans for the wedding, while the groom just seemed bored.

She was very excited to pick out fine china—and that’s when the groom snapped. He yelled at her and called her an idiot, then told her that there was no need for expensive things like that. He said they would never use them, while she insisted that she would find reasons to use them so they wouldn’t go to waste. She also said that her family insisted on her picking a pattern and they would all chip in to get the set.

She was nice enough and patient enough with this jerk that she even kept asking him what he liked. Well, the groom didn't like anything and kept yelling at her, telling her that she was "wasting his time" and that she was stupid. It was getting really uncomfortable at that point. I tried to intervene as much as I could, but this groom was complete scum.

Eventually, he stormed off and I tried to keep everything light-hearted and happy for the bride. I hope she didn't go through with that wedding.

Hamdurrgur

37. Horsing Around

I worked for a small regional newspaper. It must have been a quiet week for stories, so my editor sends me off to cover the wedding of the son of one of our biggest advertisers. I make contact with the family to get details, and get told to meet them at a carpark behind the community hall, as the bride would be riding a horse up the main street to the quaint little stone Anglican church (how romantic! swoon).

So I get there and here's the bride in a massive, poofy, white fairy princess dress. The bride had to hoist the dress up to her armpits to get on the horse and ride with it bunched around her hips with her legs from the knee down poking out beneath. Apparently the decision to ride was a rather last-minute one. But what's this? There are two horses!

It seems the mother-of-the-bride wanted some of the attention cough I mean, she wanted to be part of her daughter's special day. So the mother is in a lovely lilac jacket, white blouse...and a very tight knee-length skirt. The sort of skirt that makes walking hard, let alone stepping up to a stirrup or swinging your leg over a saddle.

Oh, and huge stiletto heels that she refused to take off, even to get on the horse. The mother ended up having to roll her skirt up to her belt and get two hefty blokes to hoist her onto the horse. Then roll her skirt back down enough so she could tuck it under her butt and not be flashing her knickers up the main street. And away they went.

It was early afternoon in a pretty touristy town, so the echo of clip-clopping hooves brought everyone out of cafes and shops for a look. Took some very creative photography to cover that disaster discretely!

the_frog_queen

38. Don’t Bug Me

My brother and sister-in-law used to own a bakery, and wedding cakes were their primary moneymaker. If a couple had an outdoor wedding, we would always warn them that the cake needed a net around it to protect it from bugs. Most couples understood it and usually had a net around it, or else didn’t care. So anyway, this one bride wanted an extravagant wedding cake.

The middle section was a four-tier cake—two tiers on the bottom pillars with columns and two tiers on the top. Then she wanted four other sets of a four-tier cake that had stairs connecting the middle section. On the stairs were small dolls that were supposed to resemble the bridesmaids and groomsmen. Each cake was also a different flavor as well.

Oh but we’re not done yet. Then on the bottom, a waterfall. In short, this cake was ugly. The reception was also close to a creek, so that means lots of bugs. We strongly urged her to use a net around it. She declined. We also made her sign a waiver excluding us from any liability after the cake was dropped off. We have this wedding as our last drop-off as it was hot and we didn’t want the frosting to melt by sitting in the hot sun all day.

We also freeze the cakes a day or two before so by the time it’s ready to cut, the cake is de-thawed but the frosting is still intact. This is how it went downhill. We arrive to start assembling the cake and I noticed little tiny gnats already in the cake. We did a quick fix to eliminate the problem but alert the people there (again) that they needed something to protect the cake.

Again, by time it’s ready to serve, it will be covered in bugs. We show them the problem, but they didn’t seem to care. So whatever, she signed the waiver, we finished and left. Well, my sister-in-law gets a phone call around 8 pm that night with an angry bride. She wanted us to make and redecorate the exact cake and bring it to her within an hour.

There is no way in heck we would or could do that. Since I am better at customer service than my brother and his wife, she handed me the phone and I explained to the bride, “I feel your frustration in the matter, however, you were informed of the dangers of setting up a cake outside, in the country, with no protection".

I asked her if she had any more questions. She threw a big humph and hung up on me.

ginniejo

39. Won’t Somebody Think Of The Children?

I worked at a wedding venue in college. This isn't so much a Bridezilla story as it is just a bizarre...bizarre wedding. It was a 70-top, pretty small for our venue and banquet style, but this was actually less pressure on the servers. We basically just had to keep things running smoothly from ceremony to reception to send-off. It was an easy night for us…not for them.

First, they got married in our vineyard. One of the little kids was the ring-bearer and he dropped the ring. A few staff members were out for two hours searching through the brush for it, to no avail. We think one of the geese ate it. Next, the reception. It was closer to a daycare because more than half of that 70 headcount was children under 10.

The groom was super great with them, like maybe he was a teacher or something. The bride didn't interact with them at all, and overall seemed to have a lot of disdain for them. At one point, the groom even procured a guitar from somewhere and was having a sing-along on the floor with the kids. Meanwhile, the bride was just off eating her dinner alone at the little sweethearts' table.

Last, the cake. How it works: The bride and groom cut the cake out on the floor so everyone can get pictures and people cheer, then two servers bring the rest of the cake back to my station where we cut and dish out the rest of the slices for the guests. We separate the top of the cake and pack it for the bride and groom to take with them.

The intent is they share it on their first anniversary, as you guys probably know. Well, this cake went fast, because kids probably. So as we were finishing up the station and packing the top, groom comes back and tells us to cut the top. We double-check that is ok…turns out he went behind the bride's back because the kids wanted more cake.

She didn't look all too thrilled with her wedding day, or with the groom. I didn't see them interact all night, and sometimes I wonder if they are still together.

CodeShrike

40. Family Feud

Wedding Officiant here. The bride was a wonderful young woman, albeit short, chubby, and slightly “frumpy". But a sweet girl and very happy, and very in love. The mom was just the opposite: tall, willowy, blonde, and overly made up. After the wedding, the mom showed up at the reception. Everyone looked at her and gasped all together.

She came in an extra-tight off-white dress. It was backless and with a thigh slit up to her waistline. She had stiletto heels that would have been more at home on the pole, not at a wedding. Once the wedding itself was over, the mom made it all about her. She was the first person on the dance floor, worked the room at the reception, and did table-to-table flirting with every man in the room (including me).

It was sad watching the bride slowly slip back into her shell, eclipsed by her mother. On her wedding day.

Outlander56

41. A Little To The Left

I used to cater wedding receptions in college. This momzilla shows up to the reception hall about 30 minutes before everyone is due to arrive. She thinks that one of the tables is too close to another table, and asks that we move it about five inches. Okay. But then of course all the OTHER tables are now too close, and she insists that we move every single table in the venue over five inches.

All 16 of them. We manage to scurry and move them, but you know what happens when you move 16 tables? Every single chair doesn't match the place setting now. We manage to move every single chair (over 160) right before the first guests arrive, never mind that it's taken up time we should have been prepping for guests by filling water pitchers, etc. and we're now behind.

Crazy mom THEN insists that every fork is slightly too close to every plate. We now politely tell her we won't be moving 160 forks—and she has a fit. Luckily, we stood our ground, and that mother did not get what she wanted that day.

Sapphire1166

42. The Writing’s On The Wall

So, I do Henna tattoos. Usually, I work a booth at either a theme park or fair, and occasionally I work at this little shop in the downtown area of where I live. I’m finishing up my shift at a local theme park when the lady at the shop calls me in a complete panic. A bridal party has come in with no warning, and not only does the bride want the full traditional wedding henna done, but she wants henna on her bridesmaids as well.

A total of 20 people who need hands and feet done, and the bride who wants hands, feet, and her back done in henna. I get to the shop and there are now two of us who can do the designs the bride has asked for. The bride takes one look at me and says she won’t let me do the henna for her or any of her party. I’m white. I currently have rainbow hair done up in a pixie cut. I also tend to give people the impression that I am gay.

So, after hearing this witch of a bride spout off about how a white girl can’t possibly do henna right, I point to the pictures in the example book—because they were all done by me. Then I took my happy butt home, turned my phone off, and had a nice nap before going to my other job. I later found out that the bride ended up storming out of the shop when she found out there simply was no way to do it.

I still wonder if she found someone to do it. The best part was, a lot of her wedding party were white girls as well, so I guess it’s okay for them to wear it but not for a white girl to know how to apply it.

Storytellingchick

43. Runaway Bride

I’m not a wedding shop worker, but I do have a pretty incredible Bridezilla story. My sister and I were asked to be bridesmaids by a mutual acquaintance. We both thought it was odd that she asked both of us and not someone closer to her, but either way, we planned a wonderful weekend in a resort town three hours away for her bachelorette party with the other two bridesmaids, who were her friends.

She started the weekend pouty and on her phone for most of the time. All in all, she seemed totally ungrateful for the good time we were trying to give her. Things got better when we broke out the hard stuff in our hotel room later. Then we saw a band at a bar, and there were other bridal parties there. She was fine for a while, dancing and having fun, until one of the other bridal parties sat down near us and started getting more attention.

They were all young cute girls and the band was flirting with them, guys were asking the bride to dance...and all of a sudden my bride sat down and began furiously texting on her phone. We asked what was wrong, and she would only say that she wasn’t having fun anymore and wanted to go home. We were all like, “Okay, let’s call a cab and go back to the hotel".

And she was like, “No, I want to go HOME". Which was three hours away. We were all drinking, so no one could drive her home. She storms out of the bar and begins calling people who none of us know to come and pick up her in the middle of the night because her fiancé isn’t answering his phone. She steadfastly refuses to get a cab; she says she’s going to stand in the parking lot for hours until someone picks her up.

She even made us miss a bus that could have driven us to the hotel for free because she simply refused to move. That was what made me snap. I screamed at her. I’ve never in my adult life screamed at another adult like that. I told her that she was going to get in a car and go back to the hotel, because we weren’t going to leave her out here all alone and we certainly weren’t going to stand in a bar parking lot for hours while she waited for someone to pick her up.

And she finally relented. We got into a cab and got back to the hotel. Bride is still texting, not speaking to any of us now because I yelled at her. When we got to the hotel, she refused to come inside. She stood in that awkward space between the two double doors and refused to move again. Myself and one of her friends went up to the room to pack her stuff, while my sister and the other friend stayed downstairs to make sure she didn’t bolt on us or something.

She finally got a hold of her fiancé, who agreed to drive down and fetch her. My sister said that when Bridezilla finally decided to talk, she witched about how she was mad at US because “we hadn’t helped her enough". I was livid. We’d gone to wedding expos with her, helped her pick out her dress, picked out our dresses, and we’d planned an entire weekend for her bachelorette party.

We spent hundreds of dollars to make her happy, but that wasn’t good enough for her. And while I was up in the hotel room gathering her stuff with her other friend, I learned the whole truth. She’s been previously married, had multiple foreclosures and court dates because of unpaid debts, and had two children she no longer had custody of—all things I had no idea about even though I’d known her for years.

I’m not sure if her fiancé knew it either! When her fiancé did arrive, she didn’t even greet or thank him. She just blew right past him and sat in his car. Her behavior was like a petulant teenager, and this woman was in her late 30s. It was unbelievable. But in the end, my sister and I bonded with the other two bridesmaids over the tumultuous situation, and now we’re friends. And the wedding was astoundingly uneventful. So I guess I’m happy with that!

thefangirlfiles

44. Straight And Narrow

I’ve been DJing weddings for about 10 years. Most brides relax by the time I really get to work, and most of the time the groom is in charge of the music. So I don’t have too many stories—however, one bride was really, really into her wedding being symmetrical. She measured the entire room and wanted everything placed at the exact places she requested.

I had to measure the distance my table was from the wall and the other tables, I had to measure the distance my speakers were from each other and the dance floor. On the day, she was upset at me because I failed to inform her that I had lighting for the dance floor and she wished that she had time to determine where to place them.

djfivenine11

45. Doomed From The Start

I am a florist, and I serviced a Bridezilla and groom without a hitch on my end. On their end? They had to go out of state to get married because they had protective orders against each other!

trishamingotrish

46. A Cake Walk

I once worked in a bakery, and we had this bride freak out that her cake wasn't right, and she proceeded to smash it to bits with her fist. Well, she smashed the wrong cake. Like what the heck. Anyways, the authorities allowed her to wash her hands before placing her in handcuffs. I felt bad for the future husband and the couple that ordered said cake. People are cray cray.

foxlust

47. Photo Finish

Wedding band member here. I had a bride flip out at me and my bandmates because our instruments weren't white or salmon-colored to fit in with the decorations. She was saying we would ruin the photographs…even though I was playing during the reception and all the photos were already taken. A sunburst jazz bass, blue Stratocaster and a red drum set aren't going to ruin your pictures, darling.

orbital_cheese

48. This One Takes The Cake

I worked as a wedding planner and coordinator, and one bride stands out to me because she was so inconsistent with all the vendors. She was a complete sweetheart to me during the planning phase and I never saw any of the crazy until the day of the wedding. It was honestly like a Jekyll/Hyde moment. She wanted a big wedding, around 300 people, and spent a lot of money on the venue and food and wanted the best for everything.

No complaints about paying for it either, never asked for discounts or anything like that. And since she wanted the best and seemed to have a really large budget, I referred her to a popular baker for the cake. I let her handle the logistics for the cake since I've worked with this baker before and never had any problems. I figured they would do the standard cake tasting, pick a design with the baker, and I would see a gorgeous masterpiece on the day of the wedding.

Well, that didn't really work out. For some reason, she didn't want to tell the baker that it was for a wedding. I'm guessing she read that you can save money by ordering a regular cake because some vendors will automatically add an extra charge if it's for a wedding. By the way, this is true to some extent, but the extra charge truly is there for a reason.

Whenever something is for a wedding, the vendor puts in much more care, stresses about the timing, execution, etc. way more than usual, and often times will go all out and use premium materials or add upgrades. Not all of us are just adding extra charges for no reason. Anyways, she decided she didn't want to pay for a wedding cake so she told the baker it was for a birthday party.

The baker asked how many people the cake would need to serve and she said "around 50". She also didn't want to pay the delivery fee, so she had her sister pick up the cake on the morning of the wedding and bring it to the event. At this point, it's important to mention one huge thing. We live in Texas and this is a summer wedding.

So by the time the cake got to the venue—about six hours after it was picked up from the bakery—it didn't look all that great anymore. Some of the decorations had melted, the cake got a little banged up in the car ride, there was icing on the inside of the box, and the entire cake was sagging on one side. It was also way too small for a wedding of her size.

I saw it and it looked like a complete disaster. But at this point, we're about an hour away from the start of the wedding and there's no possible way to fix this. The bride comes into the reception room with her makeup all done When she sees it, she unravels. Screaming, crying, throwing things, collapsing on the floor. Complete meltdown.

She threatens to cancel the whole wedding if we can't fix it. We try to calm her down as much as we can and grab the makeup artist before she leaves and ask if she can help fix the bride's makeup, which is a mess now. The bride sees herself in the mirror and has another meltdown because she ruined her hair and makeup and now wants to have the whole thing re-done.

After she gets everything done to perfection again, we're about an hour behind schedule. I let the guests come inside the reception room to wait because it seemed cruel to force everyone to sit outside in 100-degree heat, but when the bride saw that everyone was inside she had another meltdown. She spent the entire wedding sulking with a scowl on her face, and refused to take any pictures with people.

Her new husband kept coming over to hug her and try to cheer her up, and she would either yell at him or give him the silent treatment. Most of the guests left very early because the atmosphere felt so uncomfortable. So, pretty much a waste of the $200,000 budget for a lavish wedding, all because she wanted to save a couple hundred bucks on the cake.

girlwithdog

49. Thirsting For More

Wedding coordinator here! I've found the moms are usually worse than the brides. I worked a wedding this past summer with a ridiculous Momzilla. During the rehearsal, she handed me the box of decorations and said, "Don't you dare make this look tacky". On the day of the wedding, she arrived and came up to ask me where the wedding programs were.

I told her there weren't any programs in any of the boxes and she proceeded scream at me for losing them and then decided that I took them. She also asked that we build a water station for the guests, but instructed us that she didn't want the guests to have access to it until after the ceremony. It was 90 degrees that day and the ceremony was outside, so that did not go over well.

And when the guests complained that they were thirsty and we weren't letting them go to the water station, she told them how horrible we were and made a big deal of opening the water station early, like she was the hero. Thank God they only booked the venue for the ceremony, so she was only my problem for about an hour. But that wasn’t the end of the story.

The next day, my boss handed me an email the Momzilla sent her. She wrote about how I lost the programs, but then in the same sentence said she found the programs in her hotel room later that night and made a comment about how I should've gone to her hotel and gotten them. She also complained about how I wouldn't give her guests water and how the photographer was the worst person she's ever worked with.

She actually wrote, "Don't bother remembering her name, she'll never work in his town again" about the photographer, like she was a Hollywood producer. Her letter ended with her complimenting the venue space—and then came the line I’ll never forget. "I think I would be a great addition to your team of event coordinators! Let me know when I can start!"

Yep, this witch was blatantly trying to take my job. The worst part, though, is that my boss actually hired her. Needless to say, I quit working at that venue.

QueenoftheBunnies

50. Comeuppance Bought And Paid For

My mom and I saw a great Bridezilla freak out while shopping for my wedding dress a few years back. We were in a small, local shop when another mother-daughter duo came in. The attendant who had been helping us went up to greet them. The mother said they were here to pick up her daughter's dress, so the attendant looks her name up in the computer, frowns, and says, "Ma'am, you never bought the dress".

"What are you talking about?" The attendant shows the lady the notes on her computer screen. "You said you wanted to think about it, and asked if we could hold the dress. We held it for two weeks, but when we didn't hear back from you, we assumed you didn't want it". "Well, we want it now". "It's been over eight months", the attendant explained, "We sold the dress a long time ago. But I can order you another one, and have it expedited here in a few weeks".

And like a Mt. St. Helens of entitlement, the eruption began. "This is unacceptable!" The mother shrieked. "We have her alterations scheduled in two hours! The wedding is a week away! I can't believe you sold her dress!" The bride, meanwhile, is slumped against the desk and sobbing like someone kicked her dog. My mom and I are just open-mouthed staring at this point.

The attendant was trying to be diplomatic, but is clearly as baffled as we are. "Ma'am, we had no way to know you wanted it. You never called. You never put down a deposit. The dress isn't yours until you pay for it". After some more screaming from the mother and wailing from the bride, they left. The shop attendant came back over to us and I asked her, "Does that kind of thing happen a lot?"

The poor lady just deflated. "All the time". It baffles me to this day. How do you schedule alterations on a dress that you never purchased? Why would you wait until a week before the wedding to pick up your dress? How do you make it to adulthood without knowing how basic buying and selling transactions work?

atomic_tango

1. Hypothesis: They Won’t Make It

I got married and went on a honeymoon in China. We were both PhD students at the time. I was working class, while her family was middle class. Accordingly, her father gave her $10,000 for the honeymoon.

So we go to China to celebrate, but she wants to do some light pre-dissertation research while we are there for a month or two. Fine. It turned depressing fast. I spent the entire two months alone in tiny hostels while she did research.

I only spoke a few words of Mandarin and I was a broke graduate student, so I didn’t have the means to easily get to an airport to fly back home. I also had zero family support back home, even if I did manage to make it home. I felt trapped.

So I talked to her about how the trip felt like a research trip and not at all like a honeymoon, how I was alone almost every day. We were sharing a laptop while on the trip (I was too poor to own a laptop, despite being in grad school).

I open the laptop one morning before she leaves to go survey a field site without me. Her email is open. She left a message open on the laptop. The contents broke my heart. It’s to her father, stating that she wishes I wasn’t there on the trip—our honeymoon.

Again, I was told this would be a honeymoon with only maybe a slight detour for research. It turned out to be a research trip where I was a burden. She apologized. We stayed together for a few more years after she got sick and I became a caretaker.

I wish, in hindsight, I had left China after reading that email.

Mtt76812

2. I Scream For Ice Cream

On the wedding day. She spent a fortune on unnecessary things, and I knew I’d be the one fitting the bill on the credit card she ran up. So I told her no more. She said she wanted an ice cream vendor there (we already had two dessert bars) and I told her it was not needed.

She fought me on it but finally agreed. The wedding day comes, I’m standing with my groomsmen, and in comes the ice cream truck. Knew right then, sadly.

StrangeJitsu

3. Get Over It

A woman I was dating told me she divorced her husband because after his father passed in his arms, so he was very depressed and she didn't want to be around depressed people.

Imagine your father passed and a few months later your wife leaves you because you have not recovered from that.

Tor277

4. Life’s Not A Beach

It was actually almost immediately after getting married. Our relationship had taken a nosedive as soon as we moved in together. But after we got married, while we were in Greece on our honeymoon, it hit a terrible climax. He absolutely lost his mind on me in public.

I had wanted to go see a beach on the island that is supposed to be one of the most beautiful in the world, so we tried to catch the bus, but it never came. He screamed at me, telling me he hated traveling with me and how could I ruin his vacation like this.

Then we walked to the beach nearby and he went swimming with his two friends who he insisted come with us on the trip. I was too stunned and humiliated to do anything except sit on a beach chair and cry.

gridironbuffalo

5. Run Away From This One

When she sat me down and, with a straight face, said, “I’ve thought about this and you’re not going to exercise anymore”. I was jogging a few miles a day and would usually bring the kids with me in a running stroller.

She said, “You’re a father and it’s too time consuming”. That’s when I realized I made a terrible mistake. Catching her with another man in my car didn’t help the case to stay married.

JD054

6. Dishing It Out

We were engaged but not quite married yet. I had been on mandatory bedrest and caring for our infant son, after having emergency surgery for nearly bleeding out during a miscarriage. He came home from work and looked me in the face and said, "Why aren't the dishes done?"

I called my mom the next morning and told her I was leaving. Hightailed it out of there twp weeks later.

Neverinfocus

7. Mommie Dearest

It was death of a thousand cuts. One of the first was when I realized she didn't trust me. We had been together around 10 years at this point. But I had a moment of clarity and literally said to her, "You don't trust me, do you?"

Before she could answer I said, "You don't trust anybody”. She agreed. She would routinely throw the kids out of the tub and the bathroom, with not even a towel on, because they splashed her while getting a bath.

And not just that, she would yell at the top of her lungs about how bad they were. The kids were around 2-4 at the time. God forbid the toddler splashes the water in the tub. Another time I don't even remember the cause, but I tried to play mediator.

As in "Ok daughter you did something wrong, let's apologize to mommy". And she would. Then I'd ask mommy to apologize to our daughter for her role. Her reply chilled my core. This adult woman, this mother, absolutely refused to apologize.

I’ve known this lady more than 20 years and I’ve never heard her apologize. Literally never. The final straw was when one of our kids wanted a hug goodnight before bedtime. She locked herself in our bedroom and refused the hug because she had hugged them earlier in the day.

The kids were crying. They didn't understand. I was devastated watching this unfold. Why doesn't mom want to hug me? I try my best to not let it impact me. But we share custody now and I have to watch how she interacts with our kids. It’s hard.

The best consolation is the kids are getting older and they're starting to figure it out.

overarmur

8. For Better Or For Worse

On my wedding day. We were married at her parents’ house, a beautiful place on a private country club. The entire day was all about her, and she spent more time hanging out with her friend and drinking than hanging out with me.

I stayed busy visiting with all the guests during the day. After all the guests left and it was down to her parents and me, I find her passed out upstairs in a bedroom. I picked her up and carried her to our car to take her home.

Needless to say, our wedding night consisted of her sleeping it off. Five years later, she went into in-patient treatment and after she sobered up and was released, she told me that she didn't love me and wanted a divorce.

metrology84

9. See You Later

When I lost twins and he dropped me off at the hospital to get an operation to have them removed. He dropped me off at the hospital bleeding and went to a party with his friends.

I left this man years ago. I'm doing well now.

5ftGrinch

10. A Pregnant Pause

My brother just went through a divorce, and I asked him what his “moment” was. He laughed—then he told me something that made my jaw drop. "It was when she got pregnant and a week later, I found out from the doctors I can't even produce the goodies to have kids”. Ouch.

Permalink

11. Good News Is Bad News

I realized that I was hiding good news from her because I knew she would make me feel bad about it. I hoped she was going to grow up and stop being selfish and childish. She never did.

Dash_Harber

12. You’re On Your Own

When she was getting ready to go to the pub and I called her to say the car had broken down and I was stuck seven miles from home. She said she couldn't help. We had two cars. We split two months later.

gaz8600

13. In Sickness And In Health

We weren’t married but were together for years. I got diagnosed with cancer and she kind of shut off. She then decided to leave several months later.

At an appointment I was officially one year clear, which is a milestone. I realized I was alone through a lot of it. She never wanted anything to do with it. It was a revelation to myself that the relationship breakdown wasn't all because of me.

I got my three-year tests this weekend, blood tests and scans. My current girlfriend is driving me and then taking me out to lunch afterwards. Heck of an upgrade.

HarrargnNarg

14. Don’t Do Me Like That

When she slept with a high-school flame for a year while hiding it and staying home on my single income. We weren’t working as a couple, I knew that. I was trying to improve things, and we’d talked about it, but she somehow neglected to give me that detail.

I’m not angry that she didn’t love me. But heck, just tell me. Don’t do me dirty like that after thirteen years.

Winsdaddy

15. Kissing And Telling

Six months after our wedding, when I found out about the emotional (he says "only emotional" but I’m pretty sure it was physical too) affair through text messages. Somehow, that wasn’t the worst part. He had sent his affair partner screenshots of my texts to him in which I was begging him to talk to me and tell me what was wrong.

They both proceeded to make fun of my desperation to fix my marriage, and his affair partner said something along the lines of “Poor girl, she doesn’t know anything and keeps begging you for attention and affection”.

The moment I read those words I realized how big of a mistake I had made.

Valiantlycaustic

16. Home Wrecker

When I came home from the ER after being diagnosed with a severe lung disorder, and she immediately left me with the kids so she could go out drinking with friends. Her exact words were, "I need you to make them dinner, I'm running late to meet up with everyone".

No_Nectarine6007

17. Cruelty Of The Highest Degree

About a year and a half into our marriage ,she got an internship with Disney and had to move to the other side of the county for seven months. Six months into the internship, she tells me that she met someone else.

She continued to string me along for another six months, saying she doesn't want to get a divorce but she's just been really confused. Then I found out the awful truth. It turns out she just wanted to keep using me to pay all the bills while she finished her degree.

Once she was a month away from finishing school, she admitted that she never really wanted a relationship with me. She only started dating me to make her ex jealous, had been cheating on me for about ninety percent of our ten-year-long relationship, and only stuck around because her ex didn't want to get back together and she didn't want to take care of herself.

She told me she knew this most recent guy she was cheating with was "the love of her life" after three weeks. They had a kid together less than a year after we got divorced and split up within two years.

zimbacca

18. Out On A Technicality

There were A LOT of red flags prior to this, but this was the catalyst. We'd been dating four years, slated to be married in eight months. I noticed he was making lots of likes and comments on a “Brittney’s" MySpace. Nothing huge or obvious.

Then not long after, he locked his phone, but I managed to see he was also getting messages regularly from someone also named Brittney. I had suspected this, but still had no proof. I worked swing and nights at the time.

I came home early one night to him in our bed, with you know who! BRITTNEY. FIRST THING THIS MAN SAYS WHEN I WALK IN ON THEM IS...get this..."THERE WAS NO EXCHANGE OF FLUIDS, I PROMISE BABE".

Later, Brittney got a hold of me on MySpace, and we met up. She had no idea I was even in the picture. We're still friends. Brittney let me read all over their correspondence via MySpace and text. She was very upfront about not realizing he was with someone.

I will admit Brittney was not exceptionally bright, but he had this thing all worked out. He stuffed all my stuff in a closet, even removed photos of us from the walls. I don't wear makeup, and at the time didn't own much stuff.

We were poor, and I was the only one working. He kept getting fired for harassment. Red flag, I know, but at the time I didn’t know WHY he kept getting fired. He also kept the house dark while they watched a movie, then moved to the bed. Said it made it "romantic".

There were a lot of signs I should have noticed. First and foremost, how he actually met me. We worked in the same retail store, and he made a lot of advances and borderline lewd comments to get my attention. I didn't pay attention to the fact that he ALSO did/said these things to other women I worked with.

I was 18 when we met, not used to getting any attention from men, and had pretty bad self-esteem. In the four years we were together I was honestly miserable, so miserable I even committed myself once. I also thought he was the best I was getting. It was really messed up four years of my life.

After all this, I kicked him and his "fluids" out of my house.

angelfishfan87

19. An Addict’s An Addict

When I realized that my wife loved playing Final Fantasy to the neglect of our own relationship. She had had a problem with obsessively playing World of Warcraft in the past, and we broke up over it. But she quit the game cold turkey and got a job, so we made up.

Then we got married. Except not long after the marriage, she was back into the gaming (but now it was Final Fantasy. We never had any quality time as a couple to just talk; all she ever wanted to do in her free time was drink and play her game.

My wife was a drinker. She passed recently. I just found out the horrible reason why. Her iPad message history revealed that she had had a whole string of in-game boyfriends the whole time we were together (12 years). Lots of flirty messages. The night she passed, she was excited and happy because she just married her current boyfriend (in-game).

But she partied a little too hard that night and drank herself to death. Truly. I messaged one of her guild mates to find out what happened. Turns out, no one ever knew she was married in real life; she never talked about me. But she sure did flirt with a lot of guys in-game.

The guy she married in-game was, himself, married in real life. We live in the US, but she liked to play on European servers and meet European guys. I had been on a business trip to Germany for a week the night she passed. She was so angry at me for not taking her with me, but it was a business trip and not a vacation.

I realize now that what she really wanted was an opportunity to sleep with her Italian boyfriend while I was at work. She had the Duolingo app on her phone to learn Italian, and her browser history showed that she had been looking up Italian cooking recipes. My wife NEVER cooked, so she was clearly thinking about an in-person meetup at some point.

I was grieving the loss of my wife when I found all of this out, and now I'm dealing with a lot of anger, too. If she hadn’t passed and somehow I found this out, I'd be divorcing her right now.

HaiKarate

20. He Earned This Divorce

I realized like five years into our 19-year marriage that I’d made a mistake, but what made me leave was when my ex said that our children hadn't EARNED his love when I asked why he never said “I love you” to them. That shook my whole foundation.

I was literally speechless for two days and then I started thinking, wondering if I had EARNED his love yet. I couldn't stop those kind of thoughts...you don't earn love, it is freely given, especially to children. I asked for the separation and divorce shortly after that.

Far-Phone8791

21. Over And Done With

When my aunt—who I loved dearly—passed, she was only 54 and I was devastated by her loss, which my husband knew.

As soon as we got home, though, my husband said: “Well, that’s that. We can move on now”. She was just cold in the ground and he was saying this so seriously while turning on his PS4 to play games. I was speechless and went to bed by myself, feeling so utterly lonely. But there was one last straw.

Two days later he forgot my birthday. We’ve been divorced for seven years now.

Tahity1986

22. What Have You Done For Me Lately?

I waited on her hand and foot. Every night I brought her a tea. I checked every room to make sure there were no intruders, went to the store for her if she wanted a snack, etc. One day I was really sick with the flu and asked if she'd get me a Gatorade from the store.

She was shocked that I asked and said, "Absolutely not”. Then I thought about it and realized that she had never complimented me, supported me, nurtured me, consoled me, or showed any level of emotional care for me.

I knew at that moment that she never would. All she did was complain that I didn't do enough for her. It took me a while, but I realized I was in a dysfunctional relationship. The worst part is I tried to make it work, still, after all that and it was her who pushed me away because she wanted to move to Portland.

incredibleninja

23. Not Kidding Around

After cheating on me the second time, I realized he cared very little about my feelings or the relationship in general. I dealt with that, though, as we had a child and I could put the hurt away for the kid. I finally left, though when I realized he had been neglecting our son while I was away at work.

He was out of a job and had been for months. The quote from our child that really made me decide to leave my ex was: "Mommy, can I always go to work with you? Daddy just sleeps and sometimes I get hungry and can't reach the bread”.

We did talk about this, and my ex always denied it. I tested the jerk next day. What I discovered made my blood boil. I woke the ex up, told him I was leaving for work and he needed to wake up to be with our son—I went to work at 2:30 pm almost every day.

However, I took the kid to work with me. I didn't hear from the ex until 8 pm, and that's only because I texted him and asked how our kid was. "He's fine. He is playing video games in the room”. I informed him the child was with me. Good times.

Permalink

24. Don’t Bring Me Down

We were in the bathroom getting showered and dressed for a friend’s wedding. I was in the best shape of my life at the time, feeling good about myself, and I thought I looked good in my bathing suit.

She was finishing her makeup and I remarked at how beautiful she looked. I waited for her to say something nice in reply, but she didn’t. And it just hit me. I couldn’t remember a single time that she complimented me on my appearance.

So I said that to her, “You know, I always tell you how beautiful you are, and how attracted to you I am, but I never recall you ever saying that I look good or that I look handsome”. She stopped applying her mascara long enough to dismissively roll her eyes at me.

So I made the mistake of asking her, “Do you even find me attractive?”

And she flatly said, “No”.

I asked, “Why did you marry me then?”

And she said, “I didn’t think it was important at the time”.

I never felt so ugly and unloved. And it hurt even more when I had been feeling so good about myself for once in my life 30 seconds earlier.

Seandouglasmcardle

25. Go On, Give Me Nothing

I had no idea how he felt about me. Almost nine years together. He didn't propose, I did. He didn't tell his family when we married, they found out online. He never shared his energy or emotions with me.

I ultimately had a realization that I didn't even know what he thought of me, other than that I was pretty. I didn't know if he thought I was cool or funny or interesting or smart. I would share myself with him. My thoughts, interests, humor. I'd get nothing in return.

I realized it had always been this way. I felt unseen, unheard. I felt like I was boring and uninteresting. I didn't feel special. I just wanted to feel some sort of connection. I wanted our souls to meet. He seemed incapable.

Secure_Orange2855

26. Too Good To Be True

With my first wife, I had inklings that I might not have married the right person when I was working full time (making very good pay) and she decided to quit her job and just sat at home. We had a maid come every week to clean the house top to bottom, do the laundry and all the dishes—and the house still looked like trash six days a week.

If dinner was made at all when I got home from work, it was hamburger helper or a microwaved hot dog wiener and blue box macaroni and cheese. It really became clear when I caught her cheating. Her exact words to a friend: "My husband's an angel, but I'm bored”.

The second wife, I realized multiple times, over and over, that I married exactly the right person for me.

Grizzledart

27. All Business No Pleasure

When I “booked” a business meeting to discuss how our future would change as our teenagers transitioned to university, assured him it was all positive, and just wanted space to talk. It’s always been very difficult to find time to talk to him, so I figured I’d be all business like since work has always been priority number one…that didn’t go well.

I had barely opened my mouth and he spewed all over me about my ever-changing hobbies. Those “ever-changing” hobbies have been guitar and oil painting for the last eight years…I mentally checked out that day.

AliCracker

28. Hoping For The Worst

We had just moved out from my parents’ place with our daughter. We had been living there for about six months because of financial difficulties. I was the only one working, he was not because of a bad back…which ended up being a fake injury.

We were not getting along at all while living there and for some reason I thought things would get better now that we had our own place. I’ve never been so wrong. The opposite happened; the yelling and swearing got worse.

His controlling behavior just got worse and worse, to the point where if I had a shower without his permission he would bang on the door while screaming at me. I don't know the exact moment, but it was sometime during that month that it all finally clicked in that it was never getting better.

I knew he worked with some attractive women, and I started hoping that he would have an affair with one of them and either leave me for her or it would give me the guts to leave. I still felt sorry for him because of his (fake) back injury.

I stayed with him for another year and a half, and in that time he forced me and our daughter to move far away from my parents because they were beginning to figure out that he was faking his injury. He ended our marriage two months after the move because I ran out of money for the first time in our relationship.

Permalink

29. Rotten On The Inside

He threw a surprise birthday for me, and towards the end I was inside near the food table and everyone had already gone outside. I affectionately called him over as he was passing by to have a moment.

He rolled his eyes and walked on, saying he was hanging out with so and so. Anyone, even a stranger on the road, was always more important, he just didn't care about me. He only did things for how he would appear to others.

100thusername

30. Sorry, Not Sorry

We weren’t married, but this was a long-term relationship. She heard a doorbell and asked me to get it. I never heard it and no one was there when I answered. She said, “I’m sorry, it was the television”.

After more than two years with her, I realized that was the first time she ever apologized about anything. That answered all my questions about why the relationship was struggling. I broke up with her soon after.

Newplasticactionhero

31. Say Goodbye To Puppy Love

I came home from a long day of work to find burn marks all over the carpet and linoleum. The whole story disgusted me. My then husband had spent the entire day playing games on his PC. While doing so, he had been ignoring our puppy, who had managed to somehow get a hold of a phone battery, bite through it, and cause a small fire.

Thankfully, the dog wasn't injured. This event, on top of finding out shortly before he had been lying about going to community college for almost a year, was the turning point where my feelings stopped.

ttthelovewitchhh

32. It’s The Little Things

Thankfully not married, but we were living together. It happened when he called me incompetent for taking literally less than 15 seconds to turn off subtitles in Netflix. In that moment, I realized that I had been living in fear and pain for so many years.

In the meantime, the things he was willing to put me down and call me names over were becoming smaller and smaller. I was already walking on eggshells, and I couldn’t take any more.

a-girl-named-kat

33. Here’s To You

It happened when he didn’t mention me in his speech at our wedding. He thanked everyone else, commented on the bridesmaids, talked about our daughters. I may as well not have even been there.

First night of our honeymoon, I got horrendously sick, and he left me alone in our room to go watch something on the big screen on the beach. So much for sickness and health!

LBelle0101

34. Me First

It was actually such a small thing that made me click into the fact I married the wrong person. Looking back, our whole relationship was horrible but it was this event that made it all come into focus.

As a bit of back story, I was ridiculously depressed so I had gained a fair bit of weight. He knew I was extremely insecure about this. My husband and I also have birthdays one after the other. His was first and mine was second.

I had expressed that I felt every time our birthdays come around, I feel forgotten as we'd have a party or an event on his birthday and make a big deal about it, and he'd only turn the attention on me after midnight and bring out his now half-eaten cake with mostly burnt-out candles and sing me happy birthday.

That was only if we had a party, mind you. If we had an event we'd do his birthday events and then on my birthday he'd just give me an unwrapped gift. That was that despite me making an effort on his birthday every single year.

He knew how I felt, so we decided to go away to a historical city in my county one year. We were both massive history buffs, so it was right up our alley. We had a lot of fun and spent the first few days looking around to decide what we wanted to do on our birthdays and agreed to arrange something for each of our birthdays.

The city has a lot going on and I pointed out a few things that I'd like as a "surprise" for my birthday. I ultimately wanted to go see the local church, which was quite famous, as well as an exhibition of Richard III—literally a stone’s throw from our hotel room.

He agreed with this and set out where he wanted to go on his birthday. His birthday was a success and I know he still talks about his birthday to this day. We went out to all the places he wanted, I took him to his favorite restaurant and even brought his presents with us so he'd have something opened on his birthday.

Plus, as a surprise, they had a ghost tour around the city on an old hearse bus. This was something he loved and it ended up being his favorite part. We went to be happy and I was optimistic this was going to be a good birthday for me too. I was so wrong.

As soon as we woke up on my birthday, he decided he was in a bad mood and grumbling about every place I wanted to go. I wanted to just have a bit of a lie in as I hadn't slept great the night before, but he was getting antsy about wanting to go down for breakfast.

I said I wasn't hungry and wanted to just stay in the room a little longer. He then pushes me out of the bed, and I just flop onto the floor as I wasn't being rushed today. Yes, this was a bit bratty but I just wanted to enjoy having a bit of autonomy on my birthday.

He then proceeded to grab me by the arm and pulled me up. He said, "Get up you fat lazy lump”. His expression instantly gave away that he knew what he said would hurt me. It instantly spiraled into me getting upset, because not only did he say that to me when he knew it was a sensitive point, but he did it on my birthday.

When he eventually calmed me down, he said, "I'm sorry I made you cry. I only said it because I thought it would make you get up faster”. So after that, we went about my birthday—but instead of doing what I wanted, we went around to every location he wanted to.

We were there a week and never got to see the church or the exhibit, which after the event, he admitted he didn't want to go. He gets worse. He actually admitted he started the fight knowing I’d be too upset to do anything or really celebrate.

This kind of made it click that my happiness and life were never a priority for him. Sadly, it still took me another year and a bit before we actually broke up.

TheEmbodimentOfSock

35. Friends With No Benefits

This will be a different answer. My wife is definitely my soulmate and best friend. I'll never find anyone that I can share my true thoughts and soul with. She's everything I want in a mental partner. We complete each other in that regard.

Bedroom-wise, though, it's not the best match. Did I marry my best friend? Definitely. Was that a mistake? I don't know.

-Yuri-

36. Shoot The Messenger

When I stumbled across an email where she told a friend of ours that she was going to divorce me soon and that she wanted to sleep with him.

jaxxon

37. Man Child Alert

We'd been married several years, and the marriage had gotten increasingly worse. He only ate out of those stackable plastic plates with the dividers. His reason was ridiculous. It was because they reminded him of being a kid and eating with his parents. Yep.

Anyway, he saw them in the cabinet one day and was outraged because I hadn't stacked them inside one another. I stacked them, but at alternating angles, to ensure they were properly dry and wouldn't be wet between plates.

He started lecturing me on how they fit inside each other in an infantilizing way. I'd known for a long time I didn't want to be married to him anymore, but in that moment, I stared at him with hatred. I'm happy to say I'm out of that marriage, and engaged to my best friend from college.

miranda_alexis

38. What A Pill

When he took the pain medication the hospital sent me home with. You know…for pain. Not a nice feeling to find out the person who’s supposed to care about you the most will watch you suffer and feel no guilt over being the cause of it.

kbabykk

39. The Long Goodbye

I was engaged, not married. It was a three-year international relationship. I was completely ready for the battle with the US immigration system. She had to leave after a normal month-long visit, which was totally normal and what we’d been doing for years.

We PDA’ed all to heck at the airport and she said herself that she couldn’t wait to come back… Then she went completely silent, zero contact, the second she got home to Europe. It took three days to get a phone call saying she was done. December 21, 2019.

I knew driving to work that morning that something horrible was going to happen that day, I could feel it, and I wish I could forget that feeling. Still ain’t over it, don’t plan to ever be.

MrLanesLament

40. Do It Yourself

When our child was three months old, I had the absolute worst case of mastitis. I was so weak I couldn’t even pick up the baby. I asked him to please stay home from work and help me. His response still haunts me. He told me to call my mom, then left for work.

I stuck it out for another four years, through various other scenarios similar to this one, but finally found the courage to leave. The moment I asked for a divorce I felt the weight of the world lift off my shoulders.

the_serpent_queen

41. The Young And The Restless

When I found that he was texting and calling his 18-year-old student—I think he was 33 at the time. More than that, he gaslit me about it for years and I made myself believe it was fine, even when he met with her in a field at 1 am and even when he would stay out until 3 in the morning with her because she needed “support”.

I knew it was wrong but I was too embarrassed and weak to do anything and wanted my marriage to work. We have been divorced since 2019 and he is now living with her. He really shouldn't work with kids ever again.

wilease

42. Out With The Old

When he left me with a really bad fever to go play cards with his friends. When he accused me of cheating on him while I was pulling all nighters to finish my degree. When he said our kid wasn’t HIS.

When he never complimented me because he said it would get to my head. When he took anyone’s word over mine…and I literally mean anyone. When his way of flirting with me was putting me down.

When I had to keep the stupidest secrets just to keep peace in the house. When the counsellor I confided in told me he was jealous of my accomplishments instead of being proud of me.

Good riddance!

ozraf

43. Too Much Too Soon

It happened about two years after marrying. I was 29. We had been together for eight years total. We were arguing constantly and I’d never considered or really paused for a second to consider if we were actually right for each other.

I’d never been great with girls, but we clicked and we went from dating to moving in to being engaged in about 3-4 years. Then you get swept along wedding planning, and when you pause for thought you realize it was wrong, but you were on an escalator that kept going from checkpoint to checkpoint so fast, you didn’t pause to think, "Is this what I want?"

So we’re laying in bed one night and she was ill. I’m such a soft and considerate person (to my detriment) but I glanced at her asleep and the thought “I don’t love you” popped in my head from nowhere. Terrifying, and also embarrassing, when you’ve had a 150+ strong wedding two summers ago.

GrandDuty3792

44. Daddy Issues

When he let our few-months-old baby roll off the bed because he couldn’t get to a save spot on his video game. Oh, also when I brought the baby home an outfit and he was jealous I didn’t pick out something for him too.

Don’t worry, as soon as the baby turned a year old, he moved out and we got a divorce. That baby is now 18 and surprise surprise, no relationship.

teppiecola

45. Seeing The Light

We had been engaged for just over a year and together for around a decade. Then I realized I didn’t actually want to be with her, I just was too invested and I didn’t want to make her upset. I knew we would end up getting divorced at some point down the road, so I decided to end it before then.

I went to therapy and realized I had spent my whole childhood trying to make my parents happy, and then I immediately got into a relationship and spent all of my adulthood trying to make her happy. I was miserable because of it, but I just didn’t know.

PM_ME_GARFIELD_

46. Second-hand Embarrassment

When I realized that every time we were in a public or social situation, I ended up either cringing at what he said or did, or apologizing for it. He would do and say things for shock value and would be deliberately antagonistic.

That kind of opened my eyes to the fact that while I could overlook other issues we had, I was going to spend my life being embarrassed by him. We got married young, and grew up into different people.

CrosswordGirl

47. The Heart Wants What It Wants

I figured it out after the 5th guy she slept with over seven years of marriage. At least five I knew about anyway. Every time I thought it was me. That I could be a better husband, more caring, more supportive, more anything she needed.

If I could just be a better spouse, she would love me and then everything would be alright and we would be fine. Then it hit me. She doesn’t love me. I was just never going to be someone she loved no matter how good of a husband I was.

So I told her I wanted a divorce and why. She didn’t even cry. I moved out that week, filed for divorce, got an apartment, and moved on. It worked out for me, though. I found a wonderful woman who does love me, we are happy and thriving together.

We have been together for 15 years now. I’m just so happy.

jimillett

48. Look What I Can Do, Mommy

Back when my son was two, he woke up early and snuck downstairs to do something nice for his mom and me. He had seen me make pancakes and he decided he wanted to do that and be nice. Of course, a two-year-old has no concept of what he's doing, so he made a complete mess of everything.

Flour everywhere. Eggs broken on the floor. He destroyed the kitchen with his mess. When his mom and I made it downstairs, he had this huge smile on his face because he was sure he had made us the perfect surprise. It was very heart-warming. Until she went absolutely crazy, yelling at him for the mess.

I thought he was sweet, she thought he was a little monster. She just couldn't get past the mess to see he was doing something out of love. A mess is easy to clean-up. A kid is only making breakfast in bed for you for so long before they grow up.

jaxmagicman

49. Liar, Liar

There were a lot of red flags. Things like him telling me I was low on the attractiveness scale, and embarrassing to him because I was intellectual, highly educated, yet extremely shy, so I came across as a stuck-up snob to everyone.

Spoiler: Only he and his friends thought this, and maybe not even his friends. He also did other stuff, like spending money on toys for himself that we had allocated for remodeling our house. Pretty necessary stuff like getting rid of a 25-year-old disgusting carpet in a new-to-us house.

The kicker for me was when it came time to have kids. He swore he was all in, but when we weren’t getting pregnant we both got tested. Turned out he had borderline low testosterone and some other issues that were solved with a simple over-the-counter daily medication that had zero side effects.

We tried and tried and I increasingly went through more painful and invasive testing and procedures. The whole time with him saying how he was in 100%, because I checked in with him often to make sure.

Turned out he had been sabotaging the process the whole time. Intentionally not taking the daily medications and doing some other stuff to ensure we would fail.

tossitintheroundfile

50. X This Ex

It was a day after the wedding. She didn’t have to hide anymore, and I was stuck. So the love-bombing girl I had happily married turned from nice to pure narcissistic sociopath, just like taking her mask off.

Since we had a daughter, I tried for two years to survive it in an effort to try and fix things. Funny thing is, narcissists are never wrong, so everything was naturally 100% my fault in all aspects. By the end, I was so broken down I didn’t have the power anymore to break free.

You accidentally made a mistake, you got heck. You did something good, you got heck. Ends up with you doing apathetically nothing, since that way it takes them a while to accumulate enough on you to get angry at you for.

I just accepted that I was indeed worthless and pathetic in every and all aspects in life. Then she made a mistake. She started using my daughter as a weapon, scaring the living heck out of her in the process.

I couldn’t save myself, there wasn’t even a shadow left of the ghost of the man I used to be…but I could save her, with powers I still have no idea where they came from. So here I am, 11 years later, with custody of my happy daughter who no longer wakes up screaming in the night “No mommy! No!”

Pro-life tip, don’t get an ex-wife. Those things are absolutely horrible.

Nisseliten

1. Papering Over The Crack

I was working as a surgical junior when my team was called down to A&E to see a patient who had come in with a complication from a recent hernia operation. When we came down, we saw that the patient was holding a plastic bag over their abdomen.

When this was removed, we found that their wound had opened, and their intestine was visible to the air. But that wasn't the worst part. It transpired that this was not something that had happened overnight; it had taken several days.

The patient had started using plastic bags and newspaper to dress the wound when they ran out of dressings.

Permalink

2. She Had A Bone To Pick With Him

This middle-aged married couple in rural Alabama had presented to the ER after they had been drinking for almost the entirety of the evening and got into a heated argument. Things got intense, and the woman eventually fell off the porch of their trailer into the shrubs a few feet below.

The husband, in his plastered state, suddenly dropped the argument and came to his wife's aid. She didn't suffer anything too serious, just a couple of scratches here and there, except for what the man said looked like a piece of glass, pipe, or something that became lodged in the woman's arm when she hit the ground.

He decided not to come to the hospital because he could remove this object himself. He got his largest pair of pliers and gripped onto this glass/pipe-looking thing lodged in his helpless wife's arm. He clamped down and pulled and pulled, cranked and cranked, trying to remove this object, and it wouldn't budge.

After his masculinity was defeated and the booze wore off on both of them, they decided it sensible to come to the ER finally. Upon arriving at the ER, the doctor immediately made the most disturbing discovery. He realized this poor woman had a compound fracture of her humerus.

This "pipe or piece of glass thing" was her bone sticking through her skin that her husband was trying to pry out with a pair of pliers.

kaduceus

3. On The Fence About His Care

I was a nurse and worked in a very rural hospital. We had a patient population that seemed to avoid the hospital at all costs. My favorite was an elderly farmer who came in with chest pain that, “Wouldn't go away”, as he put it. When we asked him if he had it before, he said that he had been having chest pain on and off for years, but it would typically go away after he grabbed his electric fence.

Apparently, the first time he had the pain, he was standing out near an electric fence on his farm. He reached out to steady himself and accidentally grabbed the electric fence, which shocked him, and made the pain go away. So after that, whenever he would have the pain, he just went and grabbed the fence and it made him feel better.

He had literally been cardioverting himself for years.

FlaviusArrianus

4. An Unwelcomed Vacation Souvenir

A friend, who is a family doctor, was treating a pre-teen girl who was complaining about pain in the back of her neck. He did a preliminary examination and found a lump, and thought that it was likely a cyst that had become infected. The parents agreed that he should remove it. That's when he noticed it move.

It was a large botfly larva that the girl had picked up while vacationing with the family in South America and was the size of a nickel.

Permalink

5. Scraping At The Stink

A woman about 35 years old came in for a Pap smear. I saw something dark brown in the right lateral fornix. My first thought was cancer. I tried to gently scrape at this dark brown area to get a feel of what it was when the smell hit me. My medical assistant scooted away to the edge of the room.

I stopped breathing through my nose and started to breathe only a couple of times a minute from my mouth, turning my head away from the source of the smell to take a breath. Maneuvering the speculum a bit more and scraping a bit at the brown area some more revealed an answer to the mystery.

It was a thick cylindrical clump of something—an old tampon! The patient had no idea that it was there, and her period had ended over a week ago. So this thing had been there for over a week and the lady was walking around living life as usual. Thankfully she did not get TSS.

Retrieval of the tampon was uneventful and the lady was sent home with advice on being more careful with remembering to take out tampons, or perhaps consider switching to pads instead.

BetelguesePDX

6. Freed By A Falling Flap

My mom is a nurse and has seen some pretty messed-up things. The one story that sticks in my mind involved an elderly man who came into the hospital three times a week to have a growth on his face washed and redressed. The growth had slowly taken over the left-hand side of his face, so much so that his left eye—his only working eye—had closed over. He was effectively blind.

This meant that his wife—whom he had been looking after for years due to her frailty—was now tasked with looking after him instead. Furthermore, this bloke was old enough that the hospital didn’t want to operate on him. So the hospital visits stopped.

He could no longer get there, so instead, a nurse would visit him three times a week. The growth was unsightly, wept constantly, and smelled bad—really bad. The whole house stank of it. During one of these visits by my mom, she was cleaning his face over the sink and noticed a flap of loose skin.

She went to clean it with the sponge and the unthinkable happened. “SQQUELPCH”! The growth fell off into the sink, and it was CRAWLING with maggots. The sink was now filled with necrotic flesh and maggots. It turned out a fly had laid some eggs on it at some point.

They had hatched and started eating all the necrotic flesh in the growth until it fell off. The man was fine. There was new, pink skin where the growth had been, and he could see again out of his left eye. It gave him a new lease on life.

Permalink

7. Totally Tongue-Tied

I noticed a small lump in the middle of my tongue and thought, "Oh, I must have burned it, whatever". The next morning, however, it had grown by a lot. It was freaky-looking, so I told my mom. She flipped out and took me to the doctor right away. Near tears along with my mother in the ER, we waited for hours as she bothered the attending nurse to no end.

Finally, they called my name and brought me to a room. It started as a normal visit until the doctor said, "I've never seen anything like that". My mom was crying, and my heart was pounding. Growing up in a medical community, my 10-year-old brain was conditioned to think that doctors knew everything. They brought in another doctor and another.

Then, they put me on a dentist-style chair with huge, bright lights shining on me. Before long, there were five doctors and the chief of staff staring at my tongue. My mom was sitting silent in the corner absolutely horrified. So what did this brain trust of brilliant medical minds come up with? "We're going to try poking it". Even at 10, I was thinking, "Can I get a second opinion?"

I could not, however, talk because they were literally holding my tongue. They sprayed me with a local anesthetic that tasted like mustard, and the chief surgeon washed up, and put on goggles and a mask. He slowly moved a shining metal prod into my mouth; I could feel the pressure on my tongue. He pulled back, looked at me, and asked me possibly the grandest non-sequitur I've heard in my entire life.

"When was the last time you ate popcorn"? I was completely caught off guard and said, "A couple of days ago". I remembered because I was trying to eat it quietly as we watched The X-Files. So the doctor sets on my bib a perfect half of a kernel husk. It had, apparently, suctioned itself to my tongue, and because tongue tissue is so quick to generate, it was essentially absorbed by my body.

Lots of doctors were laughing, my mom was crying for joy now, and I was totally stunned. I even wound up in a big medical journal because of it.

Permalink

8. The Endless Gaping Wound

I was the tissue viability nurse for my ward which basically meant I went around checking people are not developing ulcers from being stuck in bed too long. I was doing a normal round and I came to a 19-year-old who had just had a lung procedure. "This will be quick," I thought to myself, as younger people are generally at a lower risk for these things.

I had been looking after this guy for a few days post-op. We were both pretty young and I got to build up a good rapport with him. So, I approached him and explained how I need to check his sacral area (aka the rear) and apologized, saying it should only take a glance.

He laughed it off and said, "Actually, there is something there. I didn't really want anyone to see, so I have not mentioned it before but for the last YEAR it is always painful when I go to the toilet and wipe after". At that point, alarm bells rang, and I went full-nurse mode and decided that something was not quite right.

So, I put on my protective gear, drew his curtains, and dove on in. However, I was NOT prepared for what was there. As I pulled his cheeks apart to inspect the skin, it literally just kept going, right down to muscle and bone. The worst part, though, was it was full of infection.

The smell was so powerful, it literally hit me in the face. Not only was there a bacterial infection, but a fungal one too. It was as if Jackson Pollock had gone up in there and created a masterpiece. I did not dare part the wound open all the way because I could not see how deep it went.

I turned to the poor guy and explained he had a serious wound there, and I needed to get the doctor to look at it. He was amazing about it. While I was fetching the doc, he got his friend to take a picture on his phone so he could see it. I will never forget the words he said when I came back around the curtain.

He said, "Oh my God. MY [REAR] GOES ON FOREVER. No wonder it hurt". At that point, I nearly keeled over laughing. He made a full recovery.

sillyegg

9. Her Vile Vapor Filled The Vents

I was working in a smallish hospital in a rural town in Australia. We were asked by the medical team to see a patient who had been admitted under their care by the emergency department overnight with a CT demonstrating a very distended bladder. They apparently had trouble with a catheter, so they called me to have a look.

With much hesitation, I went up to see her in the ward. I managed to put the catheter in with a lot of trouble. A little bit of urine drained out, and I just kept thinking something was not right. I went back and looked at the CT scan and the IDC placed in the emergency department looked like it was appropriately positioned and subsequently pulled out.

Behind it, was one big uterus, absolutely full of what appeared to be a fluid density. The report read that there was a very distended bladder, the catheter balloon was situated in the PROSTATIC URETHRA, and moderate to severe hydronephrosis was noted. I spoke to the consultant, and we got her to the theater.

With great difficulty, we managed to dissect our way around this HUGE uterus, and we called the O&G guys to come and help get it out. Unfortunately, during this process, the uterus burst and there was a boatload of pus that just streamed out. It smelled horrible.

There were people gagging around us at this yellow-green, sulfuric-smelling goo. The scrub nurse could no longer take it and vomited in her mask. We finished this case; I went home and kept thinking I could still smell this awful thing. The morning came, and I couldn’t have breakfast because I could still smell it.

I got to the hospital, and EVERYONE was wearing masks. Apparently, the smell was so horrible, and the extraction in our theater was so outdated that it had somehow pumped the smell into the vents around the hospital. All night, small amounts were leaking out into the atmosphere, causing this horrendous smell.

The lady lived for another three years.

draydz

10. The Ugly Tooth

I was a children’s nurse. On my first week in the pediatric ED, we had a young girl, about six or seven, come in with a really swollen jaw and face. The poor girl was unable to move her jaw without intense pain and hadn’t been able to eat for several days.

It turned out she had only just started cleaning her teeth for the first time ever, and managed to develop several abscesses and rotten teeth in the process. To make it worse, her mom told us she was recovering from the same procedures to remove most of her teeth because of almost the same thing.

They didn’t want to bother going to the GP, as they thought she was just messing about to get out of school.

MontanaT13

11. Cooked To A Crisp

I am a med student, and I've seen some pretty nasty stuff, but the best stories come courtesy of my parents, who are both doctors. My dad's story occurred while we were living in Scotland in the early 90s. It was a particularly sunny day by Scottish standards and one of the rare days you might be able to get a tan. The Scots are not known for their ability to tan, and the typical Celtic Scots less so.

However, one such Celt was rather overzealous and decided he would really go for it on this day in question. He cracked out several sheets of tin foil and basted himself in cooking oil. Probably the biggest mistake of his life. Needless to say, he pitched up to the ED a few hours later with third-degree burns all over his body.

ladotelli

12. Bag It Up!

There was a patient who came in with a well-known history of diabetes. When I saw him, the worst of it was already over, but he still had legs like sausages, and the smell in the room was like a garbage dump. There were these strange bands around his ankles that were indented to over a centimeter deep. Apparently, he had developed an ulcer on his foot.

Instead of cleaning it and bandaging it, he decided to just put a sock over it. Eventually, the ulcer developed into gangrene, and the pus began to soak through the sock. The smell became overwhelming, even for him, so he decided to seek medical attention as a responsible adult would do. Just kidding—he put a plastic bag over it.

Eventually, the pus seeped around the edges of the bag and started leaking again, giving rise to the horrific smell. Now things were getting out of control, so he decided to get it properly looked at. Got you again! He put another plastic bag over it. This process was repeated about 9–10 times.

In the ER, they had been peeling off this giant mass of plastic and necrotic tissue glued together with pus and held on with elastic bands around the ankles. It was like his foot turned into a giant onion with each layer smelling worse than the previous one.

Two or three nurses apparently threw up and they had to rotate people in to do the next layer. He wasn't even in much pain because he had long-standing neuropathy in his feet, which was why he was able to ignore the problem for so long.

clessa

13. Bladder Leakage

I have seen a lot of things, but the one thing that really sticks out is something I saw as a medical student. I was on a general medicine rotation and was seeing an elderly lady for urinary problems. Specifically, she was having trouble holding her urine. She mentioned in passing that she had something coming out of her, like a mass, but she couldn't see what it was.

My resident and I decided that we ought to take a look. Upon examining her pelvic region, we were unable to use a speculum to visualize the interior of her parts because there was a firm mass protruding from her. That's when we made a chilling realization. The mass was her bladder. It had prolapsed.

ktthemighty

14. An Out Of This World Excuse

I was a med student and have a few stories. This one isn't gross, it’s just sort of a Twilight Zone moment. I was explaining to a woman that we needed to do an MRI and she calmly informed me that she couldn't get an MRI because she had a metal tracking device in her body that had been implanted 10 years previously when she was abducted by aliens.

Previous to that, I had been speaking with her for an hour, and she had given every indication of being a perfectly sane and normal person with intact mental faculties. I just replied, without skipping a beat, that we could safely CT her instead. Virtually nothing shocks me anymore.

screenmagnet

15. Blind To The Truth

I had a patient come in saying he couldn’t see. When we asked how long it had been going on, they said five days. The man had been blind for five days and didn’t come in because he thought it might be “like a cold or something”. During the exam, when I asked him to move his legs he said, “Oh, I can’t do that”. My jaw DROPPED.

I asked how long he’d been unable to move his legs or walk and his wife chimed in, “About two years”. He never saw a doctor about it. They just borrowed a friend’s wheelchair and kept it rolling. It turned out he’d had multiple strokes with multiple risk factors he never addressed.

Given how little insight he appeared to have into the condition, I honestly felt sorry for him.

DOctermom

16. Some Crazy Monkey Business

A good friend of mine is a nurse and by nature has the best stories. She was working the med-surg floor in the hospital and had a female patient who was so obese, she needed a service animal to help her. It was not a dog, as most people would think, but a monkey.

This lady had a service monkey that would get her glasses for her, grab the remote for the TV—all kinds of things. It was odd, but not really a crazy moment...until she walked into the room to take the woman’s vitals and found her with the monkey sucking on her bosom feeding it.

octopencilpus

17. Stash Bang

I was working in the ER one night when a woman came in with a "retained foreign body". When I went in to see her, she told me she had been doing the deed, and the man told her that something had slipped off inside her. She tried to retrieve it but was unable to, but she could feel that something was in there.

I grabbed a nurse, a speculum, and some forceps and took a look. There was certainly something in there, but not what I was expecting. I pulled it out, and it was a $20 bill. I asked her if she had put it in there, and she said she hadn't. She was clearly as confused as I was.

I asked her if she wanted it, and she declined. Needless to say, it went in the trash. I could never come up with an adequate explanation of why this woman had a $20 bill in her, nor why her partner would have put it there.

Permalink

18. The Discovery Of A Tasty Treat

My dad is a nurse. I have asked him this question before and most of the stories are about people who come in with deodorant cans up their rears and try to claim that they were climbing in a window and fell on the can or something. However, there is one story that he has told me that really stands out.

When my dad was in his mid-20s, he worked in the emergency department of a hospital. One day, this overweight lady came in complaining of abdominal pain. They started to look her over. Everything was going fine until they decided to look in the folds of her gigantic stomach when they smelled this horrible smell.

They found a decomposed chicken wing covered in maggots, which had started eating at part of her skin. Yum.

Bonjizz

19. A Bundle Of Joy

I was on OB/GYN rotations, delivering my first baby. It was an older lady from the rural side of town. When I asked her to push as the baby had fully crowned, a bundle of worms exited her rear. I'm talking at least 60 live worms. I gagged so hard but managed to keep a straight face throughout and deliver the baby.

I realized then and there that OB/GYN was not for me.

svinch

20. What’s In The Bag?

I was an ER nurse. We brought in a code trauma off the helicopter; a lady who was a passenger in a really bad wreck. Her husband was driving and lost his life at the scene. Once we got her stable, the OR staff came to take her to surgery. I gathered up the clothes we had cut off of her and grabbed her purse that the EMTs had removed from the car.

There was a lot of blood on it, so I thought I should just grab her wallet instead. What happened next still haunts me. I reached in and grabbed what I thought was her wallet and pulled it out—it had hair. It was a chunk of her husband's scalp.

canigooutside

21. Quaking In His Shoes

My friend worked as a paramedic in Hamburg for some time. They were called to an unconscious person who was slumped down on a park bench close to the train station. They approached the guy and tried to wake him up, checked his vital signs, etc, then put him on the ground. He had no shoes on but had wrapped up his legs in plastic bags.

If you have ever been around addicts, you know most of them don't smell too good. After a while, they just give up on personal hygiene, which, incidentally, is actually more dangerous than the substance itself since they tend not to treat their scabs, etc. This guy reeked to high heaven, and once they proceeded to check his plastic bag shoes, they discovered the heartbreaking reason why.

His legs up to his knees were completely black and full of maggots. He had an infection in both legs due to using needles and never treated them. Once they lifted the plastic bags up a little, which were melted into his decaying flesh, little mountains of maggots would fill around his feet.

It was hands down, one of the most disgusting things he had seen.

Permalink

22. The Crusty Old Man

When I was working in the ER one evening, I had my worst experience so far. I was called to one of the examination rooms that were designated for infectious patients. This was already a bad sign as it usually involved some sort of abscess that needed to be drained. However, this time it was far worse.

I was told by the nurse that it involved a man who had bilateral venous ulcers on his legs and that they were now infected. I looked through his journal and saw that he last saw a doctor about ten months earlier, and no note of any check-ups after, not by a nurse or a GP.

Therefore, I asked my nurse when someone last took a look at his legs. They replied, "Not since his last journal entry". Then I asked when was the last time he changed his dressings on the legs. They said, "He hasn't". The patient was an old man who lived by himself in his trailer that was parked in the middle of the forest.

He had no running water. He was a bit of a drinker and had a general "I don't care” mentality. I suited up and went into the room. The room smelled like an odd combination of stale brew, mold, and disease. Certain infections smell different, and this one was very pungent, almost sulphuric.

I introduced myself to the patient who didn't understand what he was doing there. All he wanted was some antibiotics for the flu, and then he was sent here. He asked, "Why do you want to look at my legs for? They were already taken care of last year". We started unfolding the dressing.

They were crusty and crackled as we unwrapped the first leg. As we got deeper, it changed color to some sickly yellow and the stench became worse and worse. One of my nurses left the room to throw up. Then I saw it. It was very small but inside a fold, there was a little maggot who squirmed.

When we finally got to the wound, we saw all the little maggots feasting on this man. There must have been 50 of them. The stench was absurd, I was focusing a lot on breathing through my mouth, but then it felt like I could taste them, which made it even worse.

My nurse came back and promptly went out again. I unwrapped his other leg and, same story there, but the infection was much deeper and I could see a few tendons on the base of the ulcer. We had to clean off the maggots and place them in a bowl, but they were squirming, and went on the floor and crawled all over the place. I had to watch my feet so I didn't step on them.

After that, we took the patient to hose him down to at least try to get rid of some of the smell. Then, we booked to the OR for debridement and a fresh vacuum dressing. He was discharged a few days later with strict instructions, and we booked him in to return for re-dressings and check-ups. Then, we never heard from him again.

lazilymotivated

23. Dancing With Doom

There used to be a well-known patient who would present to the emergency department with frequent urinary tract infections. Urinary tract infections are much less common in men than in women and don't occur sporadically that often. This gentleman was a male exotic dancer, and his party trick would be what he called a "ruby shower".

In essence, he would empty his bladder, and replace its contents, via a catheter, with red wine. He would then empty his bladder during his performances. Unfortunately, fate caught up with him. One infection became too severe and he did not survive.

drlittmann

24. Guess What Was Bugging Him

When attending a urology conference, you get to hear quite a few stories. My favorite even had a video along with the question, "Guess what we're looking at?" My guess was what was being shown was the inside of a bladder—got that part right—and two small corn cobs floating around inside of it.

Two small corn cobs would have been weird enough as it is, but we were looking at two slugs. Apparently, the patient walked into the hospital claiming that something did not feel right when peeing. After being confronted with the contents of his bladder, he claimed that he had taken a nap in the grass the day before, and the slugs "must have crawled inside by themselves" without him noticing.

berlinerbolle

25. Intestical Distress

I recently spent some time working in the operating department and one day we had a "giant inguinal hernia". At this point, in my experience in the hospital, I thought nothing could surprise me, but dear Lord, was I wrong! The patient had mental health issues, and we got him on the table, knocked out with anesthetics, and pulled off his gown to take a look.

We did an open surgery through his abdomen and spent hours pulling his INTESTINES out of his family jewels. Basically, the guy’s abdominal wall broke through and allowed his intestines to slowly fill them up, but this had been going on for years before he got it checked.

Bendersas

26. Two Gut-Busting Dilemmas

My father-in-law, Dr J, was an ER doctor for 20 years. Twice he's been really surprised. The first time was a patient that came in holding his stomach, with the front of his jacket bloody. He looked very out of it, and it was obvious he was under the influence of something. Dr J asked him what the problem was, and the guy calmly said, "My stomach hurts".

He went to have a look. As he pulled the guy's coat away, the worst happened. His intestines spilled onto the floor! It turned out he and a friend were getting high when the friend accidentally blasted him in the stomach. He explained it very matter-of-factly, "Oh man, I need to go to the hospital".

The other incident was when a male patient came in complaining of abdominal pain. Dr J decided after an examination that they needed to do a scope. So there he is, minding his own business, navigating through this guy’s bowels with a camera when suddenly a light facing the opposite way blinded the camera.

It was a flashlight. I can imagine why it was there, but I h have no idea why it was on. Dr J had told the man he had to consult with another physician, then left the room and collapsed from laughing so hard. He said it was like watching a cartoon where somebody runs down a tunnel and meets a train head-on, except the tunnel was a rear end, and the train was a flashlight.

Sideshow87

27. How To Free Willy

While working in the ER one night, we had a guy come in complaining of groin pain. So we brought him back and it turned out he had a Master Lock—the kind with the spinning dial that you use to secure your locker at school—locked around his member. Essentially, blood could flow in but could not flow back out, so this thing was hugely swollen.

He had panicked after he realized he could not remember the combination and he took a screwdriver to the dial and snapped it off. So, we consulted with urology and the urologist wanted to take him to surgery, cut him length-wise, slide the top out then the bottom, and then suture it back up. Needless to say, the patient wasn't thrilled with option A.

So, option B was for this big nurse, Tom, to go in with bolt cutters and cut it off. Option B was selected. The curtain closed and Tom gave a “one, two, three”. There was a loud scream at “three” and a popping noise. Tom exited with a broken lock and the man was sent to the floor to recover.

Plays_in_traffic

28. Fountain Of Goo

I was working in the emergency department one afternoon, and we had an elderly lady just calling out, “Help me, help me," repeatedly all afternoon. She was brought in by her nursing home for “agitation," which is normally code for they can't handle them anymore.

So the patient was placed with a care assistant to try and calm her down and make sure she didn't wander around the ward. The carer was helping to feed the patient and I walked past when, suddenly, the lady just breathed in her liquid diet and collapsed backward.

I, of course, instantly pushed the medical emergency button and everyone came running from all over. We assessed her airway and it was deemed clear, but not self-supporting. There was no food in there, which was strange. She wasn't breathing and no heartbeat was present, so one of the male nurses started compressing her chest, while another nurse tried to insert an airway.

As he compressed on her chest, a nightmare ensued. A literal fountain of murky green goo spurted from her mouth, all over the walls, ceiling, and medical staff. The poor male nurse had to keep compressing the chest while the other nurse kept trying to suction the patient's airway to clear it enough to insert an airway.

After five or six minutes, the nurse finally got the airway in after suctioning over six liters of this goo, and after some defib, the doctor declared the patient deceased. The bay and the surrounding area was just drenched in this slimy, murky brown-green mess. It was absolutely breathtakingly disgusting.

Eventually, we found out the poor old lady had a massive bowel obstruction. Her heart stopped while eating, and the goo was days and days of liquid poo. Safe to say I scrubbed myself raw in the shower that night.

Nursekate15

29. Stuff A Sock In It

When my professor was an ER nurse, an elderly 80-something-year-old woman came into the ER. As he assessed her, he noticed her oral temperature was normal despite her neck being extremely hot to the touch. He decided to take her temperature through the rear, which ended up being around 103 or something crazy.

While he was down there, he noticed something peeking out and proceeded to remove it. It was an old sock. She said her uterus had prolapsed months before, and she was using the sock to keep it in. They began treating her for toxic shock syndrome immediately, but sadly she went septic and lost her life later that day.

pinkawapuhi

30. Trying To Absorb What We Saw

So this young female came in complaining of acute abdominal pain and a fever. We ran through all the normal procedures and came up with nothing. So, we pushed ahead and gave her a quick pelvic exam. As soon as she spread her legs, I almost threw up. I've been around some stinky folks and some smelly wounds, but this was horrendous.

We wound up evacuating half the clinic because the smell that emanated from her was causing people to gag in the hallways and waiting room. She had left a tampon in, forgot it was there, and shoved another one in, burying the first one. That tampon sat for what we guessed was at least two months, decaying.

Then, of course, the area around was extremely infected. When she came to us, she was in the early stages of septic shock.

ArrowInTheMyst

31. She Sprung A Leak

As an imaging tech, we once had a patient who was close to 400 pounds who was fairly well bedbound. To assist with hygiene, the patient had a tube that drained their poo away, but it had fallen out probably a day earlier. As a result, there was a pool of horrible substances trapped beneath her, brewing.

This was discovered when we rolled her to position her for X-rays. The smell cleared the room and lingered there for hours. Meanwhile, people went and showered and changed their clothes from the pervasive creeping miasma that was the worst thing I have ever smelt in 15 years working in hospitals.

MacroDacro

32. Poor Little Kitty

I just recently caught up with an old friend who is now an OR nurse. She told me she was preparing a morbidly obese woman for surgery, scrubbing her down and cleaning the areas up underneath the fat rolls that hadn't seen the light of day in God knows how many years. When she picked up one particularly hefty roll around the side of this lady near the lower back, she stopped suddenly.

She discovered what looked like a bone. She mustered her courage and continued to investigate. A moment later she uncovered the skeleton of a small kitten. The bones were fused with the still-rotting flesh of the sad little creature. Holding back tears and vomit, she walked around to face the large woman and said, "Ma'am, I don't want to alarm you, but I've just found the remains of a small cat in one of your fat rolls".

The lady's response, seemingly unfazed, was, "Oh! I've been looking for him!" Apparently, people that are huge develop rather thick calluses in their rolls from all the friction. This cat could have been clawing for life in there and she might not have felt a thing. Poor little guy.

_meetmeinmontauk_

33. As White As Snow

My dad is an internal medicine physician. A young man in his late teens came into the hospital with a question about a condition he was having. He said his groin region was itchy and uncomfortable, so my dad asked him to remove his pants, so he could try to identify the problem.

The guy was African American, so my dad was shocked when the man pulled down his pants, and the hair down there was white. It turned out the guy had gotten crabs from his lover, and the little bugs had laid microscopic eggs in his groin hair, making it look white. The mental image still gives me the chills.

jaugust13

34. Not A Leg To Stand On

My wife is a surgeon. I get about an hour every night where she unloads the horrible stuff she sees. One that sticks out is the girl and her boyfriend, who were on a motorcycle. They were taking an underground turn from one highway to the next, and he was going way too fast.

He started to get close to the wall, so the girlfriend on the back made a disastrous decision. She decided to go ahead and put her foot up on the wall of the tunnel. Her foot caught the wall, she flew off, her leg broke at the femur, and the broken bottom half of her leg drove straight into her groin.

Permalink

35. Getting Busy After Baby

This has happened a few times, but I had a gal come in on a Monday after being discharged from the hospital the Friday after giving birth. So, basically, we tell ladies to avoid intimacy until a doctor clears them. Well, her spouse kept insisting and insisting and insisting, so on Friday night, she caved in and let him go to town.

He wound up tearing some stitches that were placed and she was bleeding badly all weekend long. She came into our clinic, blue in the lips and fingers, and her hemoglobin was a four when the normal should be 12–15. She didn't want to be a bother, so she waited until she started feeling dizzy all the time before she came in.

She got another trip to the hospital for a transfusion and repair for that.

Ssutuanjoe

36. Clear Out!

I was a nurse working in emergency for the first five years of my career. An old guy about 80 presented with a foreign body in his rear end. It turns out he was a Veteran and had a live shell about the size of a slim Coke can up his behind, probably about nine inches long. He was very stoic.

However, we had to call Australia's version of the bomb squad to assist in the removal.

Permalink

37. Picking His Brain

A group of guys were plastered and driving around town. The passenger was leaning far out of the window vomiting when the car took a sharp turn around a corner and began to tip over. The top of the passenger’s skull was literally rubbed off along the asphalt during the wreck, leaving his brain showing. But it doesn't end there.

My friend, who was an EMT, had to PICK GRAVEL AND DEBRIS OUT OF HIS BRAIN. The guy was still conscious too. He said that human brains have a very distinct smell he will never forget. The story still makes me cringe, and I wasn't even there.

rtofirefly

38. Someone Did A Hatchet Job On Her

My mother was an ICU nurse for over 10 years, so never a dull moment. On her first day, she was taking a break when a woman walked into the hospital with her head wrapped in a towel. The woman was speaking quietly and calmly and explained that her husband had a vicious outburst and threw a hatchet into her skull.

Lucky for her, he hit her in the forehead, the thickest part of her skull, so, she was able to wrap herself up and drive herself to the hospital. The woman was fine overall, and the authorities took the husband into custody.

weiers08

39. The Face Of Self-Destruction

I am an ear/nose/throat doc, and while I mostly take care of sinus diseases and ear infections now, I had a hard-nosed residency, and we took a lot of facial injury calls. One day, we got a call down to the ER for a self-inflicted wound to the face. Those are never good, but I wasn't prepared for what I saw.

A guy had filled his face with buckshot. He completely blew off his face, and some hero EMT somehow got an oral airway in the field. We converted the orotracheal airway to a breathing tube in the throat and closed the tissue as best we could.

A couple of days later, he had a 14-hour operation in which we used part of his abdominal wall and part of his leg to rebuild his face and mandible. We actually were able to make him a mouth in a subsequent operation so that he could eat some things, but without a tongue, it's pretty tough.

bryantuga

40. Crab Nauseum

When I was a paramedic student, we used to do rotations in the ED. A guy was brought in from what I assume must have been a horrendous nursing home. He looked fine at first, but once they took his pants off, the issue became apparent. His balls were about the size of a football and necrotic. It’s called Fournier gangrene.

He must have had it for quite some time as well, judging by the size, color, and smell. He had a stroke in the past and was now much less alert than his normal. It looked painful, but the worst part was the smell. It smelled like rotten crab meat. One of the residents that came in to evaluate him looked as if he was going to vomit and left the room within 20 seconds.

I felt terrible for the guy, he had no clue what was going on, and he clearly must have become used to the smell. When I went home that night, my roommates and friends decided to make appetizers. One of them brought mini crab cakes. The smell gave me an image of that guy's situation immediately. It was the most bitter irony I could think of.

BrotherSporter

41. A Hernia As High As The Heavens

I had a 95-year-old patient with an inguinal hernia. They had it for the last 25 years or so, and it was getting bigger. As a student, I knew I was going in to examine a "lump," and prior to the examination, I was warned by my assessor to refrain from showing any expression.

I went in, uncovered the patient appropriately, and was literally like, “Oh my GOD," but obviously in my head. I clenched my teeth so hard that I felt all my facial muscles tense up like never before and proceeded to examine this "lump!"

This "lump" was, basically, this patient's intestines that were protruding entirely through this defect. It was a HUGE hernia that was reaching their knees, and that's with them laying flat! As soon as I walked out, I needed to vent. I couldn't do that with the assessor, so my placement partner and I had a good long chat about it in the pub straight after.

The patient sadly passed.

rugby_14

42. The Worst Split

My mom's an RN. One night, a dude walked into the ER holding a bag under his crotch. He had been drinking with a bunch of his friends. The designated driver drove a pickup, and this dude and his buddies sat in the flatbed, speeding down the parkway. The dude, in his infinite wisdom, decided to stand up when the driver hit a bump. He went flying. Then I found out why they call it a "split".

He was carrying his insides—including his lower GI tract—in the bag. The guy was rushed to surgery and had his full reproductive capabilities restored.

UtMan88

43. Pull My Finger

I had a guy show up in my clinic one day with a complaint of finger swelling. So as the story went, his finger got swollen and painful about a week prior. It just got worse and worse, and about three days prior to coming in, a hole opened up in the tip of his finger.

So, when the day of his visit came, he said, “By the way, I pulled something out of the hole in my finger yesterday with a pair of tweezers; no idea what it is”. I asked him if he had taken a picture or kept it, and he produced a tissue from his shirt pocket. I couldn't believe my eyes.

It was his distal phalanx—the last bone in the finger. The bone had become infected, and the body did its thing and basically tried to eject what was now a hot foreign body. The guy pulled his fingertip out of his fingertip. A better magic trick I have not since seen.

AN-I-MAL

44. His Beard Was All Buggy

My ex-husband was a cardiovascular tech and did echocardiograms. One day, a patient came in with a scruffy, unkempt beard. He started doing the test and kept noticing something moving in it. Upon closer inspection, he had roaches in his beard. He called in a nurse, and they discovered that he also had a massive case of body lice.

My ex had to go get sanitized and had to wear scrubs for the rest of the day.

Lovekats29

45. That’s A Wrap

I’m an EMT. One day my partner and I got called to a house for someone who was “unable to be ambulated”. This is a common thing we get dispatched to, and it usually means someone is too weak to get out of a recliner or out of bed. We expected to go and help this person to their feet and maybe get a refusal or transport them to the hospital based on an assessment.

When we arrived on the scene, an officer was there, along with a neighbor who told us it was really bad in there. The second I walked through the door of the house, the smell hit me. I have smelled many decaying bodies that were not this pungent. We walked into the living room to find a man lying on the floor, saying he could not get up.

His legs were wrapped in what appeared to be plastic wrap and plastic bags. You could see the wrappings filled and dripping with brown liquid. The guy said he had started getting sores on his feet, and rather than go to a doctor, he elected to just wrap them up in plastic wrap. I don’t know how long he had been doing this, but it had reached a point where he could no longer gather the strength to get up, and he was extremely septic.

It was HORRIBLE. We carried him out of the house, and I was down at the legs, and the gangrene juice was dripping all over me. The back of the ambulance smelled horrific for days. We dropped him off at the hospital, and I went outside and puked. I see nasty stuff every day, but this was by far the nastiest.

When they took the wrappings off in the ED, the nurses told me both his legs were completely black and rotten up to the knees. They had to amputate both legs up to the hip, and they found the gangrene had gone up into his pelvis, so they had to transfer him out for more surgery.

bored-but-happy

46. Hoping For A Miracle

My father was a plastic surgeon in the emergency room of a major southern city. A family of four was driving on an urban highway that passed right by the hospital. The parents were in the front seats and their two young children—boy and girl, 3–5 years old—were in the back seat, apparently unrestrained by child seats or seat belts.

Coming from the opposite direction was a speeding and swerving woman driver in the throes of a psychotic episode. As the two cars approached from opposite directions, she swerved into the median and hit a barrier that launched her into the air upside down. Her car landed on the roof of the family's car, bending the roof of the rear portion of the passenger compartment downward and backward.

It was bent in such a way that left the mother and father unscathed. But tragically, the children met truly terrible ends. The parents carried them into the emergency room. It was an unspeakable sight—and obviously, nothing could be done.

embryophagous

47. Making Its Way Out

I’m a CNA at the moment, and this was the strangest thing I have ever seen. At work, we had a payroll woman who in a previous marriage had been blasted in the back of the head. When it came to removing the slug, the surgeons decided it was too risky to remove.

It hadn’t caused any major damage to the brain, and she would be able to function normally as long as it healed properly. One day, I was in her office, picking up my paycheck. We were chatting as usual when suddenly she started coughing sporadically.

I patted her on the back to help, and the next thing I knew, she coughed up the round into her hand! I was in shock; the slug over the years had slowly moved its way out of the body. She was fine after and kept the metal item as memorabilia.

Permalink

48. Nothing Upstairs

In college, I took part in some psychological experiments. Most of them were surveys and games, but one researcher had me do a few MRIs. They mostly looked at the occipital lobe and left parietal lobe, which is the back left side of the brain. I did this stuff throughout all four years and became familiar with the research team's findings.

In February of my third year, I hadn't seen them in a while since they were still between their main experiments. Out of the blue, I got an email from the graduate department’s head of neuroscience. I got it at around 6:00 PM. He was polite but essentially said, "We saw something on an MRI, and you need to come see me tomorrow".

He gave me his office location and said to email him so he could meet me at that time. I didn't quite register the significance until the next day when I was walking to meet him. The HEAD of a graduate school department put himself on call to meet with me, a lowly undergrad taking part in their studies, within 24 hours. I was pretty nervous.

I met with him, we introduced ourselves, and he asked me to sit down. He got out this piece of paper and gave a short speech that they found something on one of my MRIs. They couldn't make any diagnoses because of the quality of the ones done, and I needed to schedule a medical-grade MRI and a consult with a neurologist right away. He then handed me the print.

There was this empty, round space about the size of a ping pong ball on the top right center of my brain. There wasn't a mass or disfigurement; there was just nothing.

The rest of my brain was somewhat smushed out of the way for this invisible ball. I was in shock for the rest of the meeting, pretty much. He asked my permission and then did a brief neurological exam to test my senses, reactions, and motor movements, but oddly enough, they were normal.

He was VERY weirded out that everything seemed normal, and he seemed more concerned. He actually took my planner, called the student medical center, and scheduled an appointment for me so I could get the referral with minimum wasted time. I basically made an entire research team and their department head say, "Oh my God, what is that?"

Namtara

49. Snakes Alive!

While my wife was in medical school, she helped treat a patient who was having difficulty urinating. She and the doc asked all the preliminary questions, but they still weren't sure what the problem might be. So, the doc ordered an X-ray. She noticed a tangle of dark lines in the patient's bladder. The doctor then went in to show the patient the results, as she was thoroughly stumped.

After the patient saw the X-ray, he freely offered up the jaw-dropping reason. Apparently, he liked to take baby snakes and let them slither up his urethra where they ultimately perished in his bladder. His reason for doing this was that it gave him a "funny feeling".

beardjeezy

50. A Real Jaw-Dropper

One day, my friend who was a nurse, was working in the emergency room and it was just one of those bloody days. She had seen more nosebleeds that wouldn't stop on that fateful day to the point where a person freaking out and getting woozy from the blood pouring out of their nostrils with no end in sight had become routine. Then this guy walked in.

He entered the room holding a bloody rag tightly to his face. She took one look at him and thought to herself, “Oh, another nosebleed”. She said to him, "Lower the rag sir," so that she could take a look at how bad it was. The man lowered the rag and his jaw just dropped. It literally dropped from his face and swung about, dangling.

Shocked and unsure how to respond to the sudden surprise, she could only say, "Please, put the rag back sir," which he did. Then, he was taken to the trauma center for help. She looked into the guy's case, curious as to what had happened to him. She found out that he was cleaning a piece upstairs in his house.

Then, when he was done, he was walking downstairs with it to put it away when he tripped. He discovered, in the most unfortunate way possible, that it was still loaded when he accidentally set it off in his fall and nailed himself in the face at close range.

HoochCow