Health

The Strangest Things Medical Professionals Ever Saw

11. Something terrible happens everyday. “I have multiple stories, but I will share the one that shook me up the most. So, I was a radiographer… Trista - June 7, 2021

11. Something terrible happens everyday.

“I have multiple stories, but I will share the one that shook me up the most. So, I was a radiographer at a trauma center for a few years. I had to report to the trauma bay whenever a trauma alert was called. Each trauma alert would have a short description of what we were getting. TRAUMA ALERT: PEDIATRIC BURN. This was the second burn that I was going to see. The first one I had seen was a man that had mildly burned himself with a turkey fryer. This burn was terrifying. It was a 14-year-old girl that had gotten into a fight with three other girls over a boy.

The three girls had gotten upset at the 14-year-old girl, held her down in the middle of the road, and set her on fire. Meanwhile, I’m waiting for this patient with a trauma doctor and several nurses. I had no idea what to say. I had only been doing this kind of work for a year or so. She passed away a few minutes later. That night, when I got home from work, I went into my one-year-old’s room and woke him up to hug him and love him. My wife came in asking what was going on, and I just told her that I needed this.’ – Redacted name of user

<< Previous

NEXT >>

10. Veterinary has to deliver stillborn.

“Does veterinary medicine count? While on my large animal rotation, we had a cow come in that hadn’t normally been acting. About a week ago, they pulled a calf from her and thought that was the end of it. It wasn’t. They hadn’t checked, and a dead calf remained in her, which had been macerating and autolyzing in the uterus. When she came to the hospital, we put her on the tilt table and adjusted it so that she was on her back. I clipped her abdomen, and as I was scrubbing it, the foulest smelling fluid would squirt out of her v******.

The surgeon exteriorized the uterus (which was enormous), and as he cut into it, a huge wave of fluid, bones, and clumps of hair poured out of it towards us. The smell was so bad it took all I could not vomit. I then had to run over and collect the bones and hair clumps so they wouldn’t get stuck in the machinery and damage it. The entire hospital (which is huge, mind you) stunk afterward. It was by far the most disgusting experience of my life. I see some crazy things daily, but this was the worst.” – elapsedecho

<< Previous

NEXT >>

9. The tragedy of gun violence for medical professionals.

“By now, I’ve become accustomed to the sight/sound/smell of almost anything. So, the things that get to me are the emotionally difficult cases. My worst: One of the first few times I was in the ER, there was a large gang-related shooting. Among the people to come in was a 7-month pregnant woman who had been standing in the crowd that got sprayed with bullets. She was shot in the back and side of her abdomen. She was bleeding internally on a massive scale. After liters and liters of saline and lots of blood, the decision was made to take the child out.

So, the OBs rushed down to the ER from upstairs. As they were doing their thing, the massive hemorrhage became overwhelming, and emergency procedures were initiated. These are brutal. In this case, it involved cracking open the thoracic cavity in an attempt to manually beat the heart by hand. A few minutes later, she was gone. Later, I found out that the baby was affected by sickle cell anemia and that there was no one else to take custody of the child, so it went to foster care. I rarely cry, but this was one of those times. Compartilization is important in this line of work.” – The_Literal_Doctor

<< Previous

NEXT >>

8. A guy, a girl, and a one-legged man walk into a bar… but they end up at the ER.

“I don’t like telling the worst on my category of ‘f***** up.’ I’ll stick to ‘f***** up but funny.’ I was suturing the arm of a guy who said his Bi*ch bit him. Then a female patient was brought in (her head was cut), and the guy points and yells: ‘THAT bi*ch!’ Also, a one-legged man (bruises) and a woman (shot in the leg) were brought to the ER. When I asked the usual ‘how did you get hurt?’ the woman begins: We were in a bar, and I said, ‘hey one-legged guy, pass me the salt. So the one-legged guy got angry because I called him one-legged, and he shot me!.’

Then the guy continues:’Who the f*ck shoots a woman? Right? You just don’t shoot a woman!’ My colleague and I looked at each other, completely puzzled, trying to figure out: 1) why the heck did the guy shoot if he thinks that way? 2) Why did the woman come to the ER with him? And more importantly, 3) is he still armed? We were about to call security when we finally understood. There was another one-legged man at the bar, who shot the woman after being called one-legged; then the present one-legged man, who happens to be the woman’s significant other, shot the guy to teach him not to shoot women.” – DocInternetz

<< Previous

NEXT >>

7. A strange noise baffles medical students.

“I’m a medicine resident. As a med student, I was working on Trauma surgery, and a guy comes in with a gunshot wound to his buttock. He came in through the side entrance with a bloody wound, but it looked pretty superficial. So after cleaning it up, we decide to use a VAC dressing to help it heal. VACs are sponges covered in plastic, which you put over the wound, then hook up to suction to help the healing. It only works with a good seal. We spend forever sealing up the sponge, then turn on the suction, but it doesn’t work.

All we heard was this weird whistling noise. We start checking the seal and the tubing, trying to find the leak. Finally, one of my colleagues says, ‘Guys, I figured it out.’ He sticks his finger in the patient’s bum, and the whistling stops. The bullet must have nicked the rectum, which we hadn’t seen until then. As an internal injury, the poor guy ended up with a much bigger surgery to repair his rectum. I’m sure there are other stories I could tell, but this is the one that I’ll remember forever compared to everything else I see every day.” – TheBear83

<< Previous

NEXT >>

6. What are those burns?

“I thought of another one! This teenage boy came in with a split philtrum up to his nose. The philtrum is the indent above the upper lip. He was in a lot of pain, and we were waiting to hear how this happened. As it turns out, he was riding a four-wheeler without a helmet and smacked into a tree. We noticed he had on a hospital gown from another hospital and asked what happened. So, it turns out he was at another hospital, got mad at the wait time, then his Dad drove him here where he thought the wait time would be shorter.

Now here is the funny part. The gown he was wearing had four or five little holes in it. We decided not to ask but were able to figure out what happened. They were cigarette burns. He put a cigarette in his mouth while they drove to our hospital. You can normally hold a cigarette in your mouth, but since his philtrum was split, it couldn’t support it. The cigarette fell out of his mouth and burned his gown each time he tried to put it back in his mouth. The situation got a good chuckle out of everyone, including the patient and his Dad.” – Redacted name of user

<< Previous

NEXT >>

5. Freak accidents always lead to the ER and medical attention.

“My mother is an RN and has a high tolerance for all things nasty, so she would always end up treating the patients that no one else wanted. Here are a few of the stories she told me. A man was driving behind a truck with glass panels strapped to the back of it. Somehow, one of the glass panels managed to fall off the truck and shoot straight through the guy’s windshield, slicing a huge part of his face off. The saddest part was that he was engaged to be married in a couple of weeks. He suffered from pretty severe brain damage and was never the same. They still got married, though.

Here’s another one. A woman was changing a tire on the side of a road when a truck passed her. She was wearing a scarf, and it got stuck in the wheel of the truck. She was dragged 60 feet on her back before she was able to free herself. There was no skin on her back, only muscle. My mom was the only one who could change her dressings without getting nauseous. Also, she was pregnant at the time. She made a full recovery, though, and her baby was fine. My Mother was happy to help this woman recover and meet her baby after she was born.” – mxeyr

<< Previous

NEXT >>

4. A tough dad with a crazy scar.

“I have a story along the same lines, but it’s not medically oriented. My father is an old school hard a**. He is Hard-drinking, hard-hitting, strong as a bull type. If you imagine Clint Eastwood in one of his movies, that’s my Dad. A year or so before I was born, he was out back chainsawing a tree when the tree broke, and the chainsaw slipped off and gored his thigh deeply. My father wasted no time, and instead of going to the hospital, he asked my mother for a sewing needle, hydrogen peroxide, whiskey, and thread.

Taking a few shots to numb the pain, he disinfected the wound and needle then proceeded to sew himself back up. Afterward, he went back out and finished chopping up the tree. My mother told me this story once I was old enough to hear it, probably around 14 years old. I couldn’t believe my Dad went back out there and finished up his work while in that much pain. He showed me the scar, and it was pretty gnarly. I later learned he missed his femoral artery by inches and had that happened. I would most likely not be here.” – Mr_Incredible_PhD

<< Previous

NEXT >>

3. This medical professional knows puppies for profit is never okay.

“I used to be a veterinary technician working for an emergency clinic. We had a breeder come in with her very ill and pregnant Boston terrier. The dog was in severe dystocia (meaning she was trying but could not give birth). The doctor palpated her and could tell there were four puppies alive and very ready to come out (one even sucked on her finger). However, the puppies were positioned in such a way that would have made natural birth impossible, so the dog needed a c-section. We informed the owner of this, along with providing an estimate for the surgery.

She broke down the math out loud. Figuring out how much money she would make off the puppies if they all survived. She determined it wasn’t worth it for the surgery since she wouldn’t make a profit. Then, she promptly told us to just put the mother down because she’ll just get a new dog and start over. She was willing to essentially kill five animals because it wasn’t profitable enough for her. Don’t worry. We had her surrender the dog. The mother and puppies made it out okay and were all adopted by lovely families. I still can’t believe that woman decided to do such a terrible thing.” – hebossapplesauce

<< Previous

NEXT >>

2. There were ants everywhere!

“My wife is a hospice nurse. She goes to dying people’s houses and pretty much checks vitals and meds. She surprises me every day with stories of how her patients love to see her. I think it’s because she cares about them, and they see her as their little “angel.” I like to joke around and call her an angel of death. Anyway, one day she came home absolutely mortified. She had a husband and wife on service and went to their house to do her thing. The husband had some type of cancer, and the wife had dementia, I believe.

So, the husband had to take care of the wife. On this visit, when my wife walked through the door, she noticed something was wrong. The wife with dementia was doing her thing, off in her world, but my wife couldn’t find the husband. She went into their bedroom, and the poor guy had ants crawling all over him. He wasn’t dead – he was just too weak to be able to do anything about it. He was fully aware of what was happening in his bed with the ants. She helped him out of bed and proceeded to shower him to remove every ant.” – KuriousOne

<< Previous

NEXT >>

1. Stabbings, surgeries, and self-defense for this medical professional … oh my!

“Hmm… I have a few, though I don’t know if I’d be called a professional. I do work in a hospital. We had one patient come into the ICU whose guts were so swollen that they couldn’t close him up. He was wide open for a week and a half in the ICU. Yes, that means his intestines were on glorious display. I couldn’t eat spaghetti that week without thinking about it. Also, I carried a guy who got stabbed into the ER one day as the girl who brought him drove off in a jiffy. The police arrived a bit later, looking for her – she eventually came back, and they talked to her.

It turns out she was his girlfriend, and she was the one who’d stabbed him. He got arrested. It was deemed that she’d done it in self-defense due to the massive amount of bruising and cigarette burns she had. That one was strange. Then, one week in the ICU, they drained a guy’s lungs because they were filled with fluid. While they were doing that, they found this massive blob. I’m not sure how else to describe it. I only saw the thing in a jar. It was a gelatinous blob (literally – opaque red/orange color, consistency of an egg yolk when you first break the egg- that kind of blob) bigger than my two fists put together.” – Celebreth

<< Previous