The human body is an extraordinary thing. Even the most experienced doctors are sometimes surprised by the things it can do. In the U.S., 30 million people (half of them children) have rare diseases, and doctors may not know how to treat them every time.
Then, there are urgent cases where the body undergoes a trauma so severe or distinct that some medical professionals may have never seen before.
One netizen was curious to know what doctors do in such situations, so they asked: "Medical professionals of Reddit, when did you have to tell a patient, 'I've seen it all before' to comfort them, but really you had never seen something so bad or of that nature?"
And healthcare workers delivered: from miracle success stories to cases with not-so-happy endings, some medical professionals have really seen a lot.
#1
I was the patient actually. I was sideswiped by a car, then ran over by the truck behind while cycling to work. I was essentially impaled by my right femur, which shattered my pelvis and shoved bone fragments into my guts.
Last thing I remember before I got knocked out for surgery, was the surgeon telling me everything was going to be fine, and it was all routine.
I didn't wake up for a month. When I did, I was missing the entire left leg, and most of the muscle tissue in the right. I was too weak to move much, couldn't talk because I had a tube through my neck, and I was very uncertain about reality due to what I went through in my coma.
Parades of doctors came to tell me how I should be dead, and it's crazy that I lived. I was told over and over that my survival was very much against all odds.
My surgeon on the other hand, never said anything like that. He always maintained that he was going to get me through. His attitude honestly helped when I had to go back to his table a few more times before I was done.
For 4 years, I kind of blew off the people who made a big deal about my survival. I adopted my orthopedic doctors attitude. Then I met a woman who's in the medical field. I fell in love, and eventually trusted her enough to let her read my medical records. I had never read them, because it's a massive pile of paperwork.
She broke down crying and couldn't read anymore. She told me that the beginning of my time in the hospital was full of the type of write-ups you find in the morgue. She told me that when they opened me up, bits of my pelvis fell out. I asked her to stop there. She won't read anymore, and I don't want to know anymore.
I now know my doctor has one hell of a pokerface.
Image credits: anon
#2
Years ago my then 11 year old shattered both femurs and her hip. At the time, her Orthopaedic specialist was so reassuring and confident that we had no doubts about her recovery.
A year later, we went back for a review and he asked me if I'd like to see her trauma x-rays. Not having any idea of the reality I said yes. What I saw looked like her leg bones had exploded.
After my freaked out reaction I commented on how cool and calm he was, and how certain that she'd be fine. He said he'd actually had to go for a short walk around the hospital to collect his thoughts since he had no idea how he would put this child back together. He also told me had used the films as a teaching aid. He's one of my heroes.
Image credits: MamaBear4485
#3
A dog bit my little sister in the face, ripping through her mouth and cheek. It was at a soccer game, she crawled on top of a big dog called a borzoi, which startled it, it rolled over and bit her in the face. This was the late 80's, smaller town. There were no pediatric surgeons available, no plastic surgeons, she was in the ER with her face ripped open.
Anyways, our general pediatrician (who is now my kids pediatrician, 30 years later), who had only graduated maybe 10 years prior, sewed her face back together. It was 30 stitches on the inside of her mouth, and 30 or so on the outside. She had a massive scar down the whole side of her face.
Anway, fast forward 15 years. She grew normally, her face is fine, her smile is fine, no long term damage. Apparently, a face is full of nerves and muscles, and thats why only plastic surgeons work on faces. Particularly with children, having nerve and muscle damage can make their face grow crooked as they age, it is a highly specialized field. But in this case, there was nobody else, just a general pediatrician, and he managed to save her face, with no long term nerve or muscle damage, or even scarring now that shes an adult.
We found out 25 years later from our pediatrician's wife, that he spent an hour or so crunching his old med school books in the seat of his Plymouth Reliant in the hospital parking lot, studying facial anatomy, nerves and cheek structure, etc. He walked into the hospital and performed a multiple hour surgery, on her face, sewed it back together, perfectly. You would think a plastic surgeon did it.
His wife told us he came home that night, just flopped down on the couch, and sat that there, amazed that he'd done it. Proud, but cautious. A new general pediatrician, sews a toddlers face back together.
And it worked. Now, you would never know it happened.
...and he has never, ever, done another surgery like that again lol
edit: if the tenses seem odd, it is because he was MY pediatrician then, and now that I am old and have a child, he is our daughters' pediatrician again. And he still calls my by my full first name which still drives me nuts. We chose him for his excellent medicine skills, not his personality. Thank you all for the gold and stories, I will share this with my sister and probably not him next time we see him, though I can promise you he doesn't know or care what reddit is. He doesn't even have a computer except the one he is forced to have at his clinic, and he calls it "henry", to spite the man who made all the doctors in his pediatrics group carry tablet pcs.
Image credits: ikilledtupac
#4
Lots of stories, many already covered by others. I will share this particular story with my legs crossed.
Motorcyclist came in after some one left turned without checking. He had gone over the hood, slid and somehow somersaulted landing on his a*s sitting up. He slid across intersection mostly on his a*s, getting serious road rash. Luckily he was only a block from hospital and ambulance. They pack him and bring him to the ER.
We end up cutting off his chaps and jeans and begin the cleanup of gravel and sand embedded in his thighs and a*s when all of a sudden, his testicles fall out of his s*****m. He had basically sandpapered a hole in his s*****m while skidding on his a*s.
The attending pauses, grabs the saline, irrigates s*****m and nuts, fondles them back into place while humming. I handed him some gauze to pack the wound and smiled at the patient who was under a local.
Then I went on break, went fetal and dry heaved.
Image credits: Assaulted_Fish
#5
In 2011 I had a saddle pulmonary embolism two weeks before my scheduled wedding. My quite seasoned heart surgeon seemed pretty confident that I'd be okay, and he even said he'd get me to my wedding on time.
Long story short, I was in the hospital for about a month due to complications. Several weeks later, when I was visiting my heart surgeon for a follow-up, he told me he'd only ever seen two other people as sick as I was. Those two didn't survive.
Image credits: Eruannwen
#6
I had to have my leg rebuilt after a car accident and was eventually sent to Duke university for my surgery. My surgeon was supposed to be like the best orthopedic surgeon in the country, I think he used to work for the Baltimore ravens. Anyway all the doctors from my hospital at home were very unsure if I would even have a functioning leg let alone walk normal again. The first appointment at Duke that dude told me it was really not a big deal and he would have me fixed almost good as new. I honestly thought he was just trying to be nice and optimistic but he was very serious. 5 months later I was walking and learning how to run again. He said I was one of the most complicated surgeries he has had to do and a group of surgeons flew in to observe him do it.
Image credits: burtrenolds
#7
ER Tech here, a few months ago we had an elderly gentleman come in presenting with shortness of breath. As I was getting him into the gown and into hospital socks, I noticed very old, yellowing bandaging around his foot. I inquired to its purpose and he told me it was a large wound on the back of his heel that wasn't getting better.
I asked him if I could unwrap it to inspect it/possibly re-wrap it (basic wound care is one of my duties), and it was a literal hole in his heel about 4cm in diameter, skin necrotic around the edges, with a large flap of skin covering the middle. I wasn't terribly shocked...until I swore I saw the skin flap writhe a little bit. I got the patient's consent to look under the skin flap and sweet galactic Jesus, there were 3 sizeable maggots just chilling. I've read about it before but I have never seen it in person.
My brain went "what in the solar f*ck" and despite my attempt at a poker face, the gentleman read my reaction and asked, "Is it that bad?" I was straight up with him and told him that the wound had maggots and needed immediate treatment and the poor guy started apologizing for "bringing something disgusting." I told him, "I see this more often than you think. Maggots are actually great at cleaning out dead tissue and are used as treatment sometimes." He seemed relieved by that but it was definitely my first time ever seeing a maggot infected wound.
Image credits: lilrei160
#8
As a medical student doing my first placement in the emergency department, I was waiting outside the triage room to ask the nurse something. I was the lowest ranking, most clueless person in the department. I knew a lot about the Kreb cycle, not a whole lot about, you know, medicine.
A young man came up to me and said he was sorry to disturb me, he just wanted to check, it was just, well, not to queue-jump or anything, but he wanted to check, can this definitely wait for triage..?
He then unwrapped a towel from his hand and showed me his thumb, which he had dropped a loaded barbell onto. It was shattered, just flattened, with splinters of bone coming out. I stared at it. He stared at it. I stared at it.
Then I told him oh yes, no problem at all, he'd better take a seat and I'd make sure someone was with him right away.
Image credits: Anytimeisteatime
#9
Young man (18) apparently comes in about something else (trying to work up courage). Right before he should actually be leaving (this can be really annoying if there are people waiting), he says 'I need your advice. `i'm having s*x with my mother.' What do I say? 'Oh my god'? No, I didn't... I said, 'This isn't the first time someone has told me this.' This wasn't true. Turns out that he knew it was wrong, that mother had initiated it, he was trying to extricate himself, and he was desperate for help. But the thought that someone else had been in his position meant to him that he hadn't been judged, that he wasn't doomed or would go to hell, and that there was hope. But he didn't know what to do because the person to whom he should've looked for advice was actually his a****r. But the lie helped defuse the situation.
Image credits: dr_pr
#10
Not the doctor, but the patient. In 6th grade, i contracted so many different forms of dysentery that I was placed into CDC quarantine while they tried to figure out where I got it. I was barely conscious throughout the whole time but all I remember is my doctor in my room with me, having hooked up my Wii and playing Brawl as I recovered. I had no clue that my parents were being investigated for child abuse or that I was in quarantine until a few months later, or that I had passed out and had been covered in vomit and s**t for hours before my mom found me and took me to the hospital.
I ended up getting it from someone not washing their hands after handling a snake and then cooking dinner at my science camp. Wash your d**n hands people!
EDIT: I do work in the medical field, but I'm not a doctor so technically I am a medical professional. Also, I can't believe my top rated comment is about me being covered in various bodily fluids.
#11
As a new nurse, I worked on a nephrology unit, which meant that we dealt with mostly patients who had kidney failure and needed hemodialysis three times a week to clean their blood. A patient was admitted through the emergency room and told me that he hadn't been to dialysis in 4 weeks. He had HIV, kidney failure, had lost custody of his kids after a messy divorce, and had no will to live. He planned to just stay in his home until he died. He probably wasn't far from it, but a neighbor, who hadn't seen him for a few weeks, peeked in the window and saw him sitting, unresponsive on the couch. They called 911 and he was brought to my hospital.
Three weeks is an insanely long time to go without dialysis. Dialysis removes toxins and excess fluid from your blood. Missing a session can leave you feeling sick and swollen. Missing 12 sessions can k**l you. This guy was SO swollen. I've never seen a person who was so full of fluid. He looked like that girl from W***y Wonka that turned into a blueberry. His feet and ankles were particularly massive. I wasn't sure that he'd live. Miraculously, after several dialysis sessions, he'd fully deflated. However, he was left with lots of loose skin afterwards, which had the fragile texture of an old balloon.
One night, he called me to his room and said, "I think my foot is bleeding". He was right. He'd slid down towards the bottom of his bed and used his legs to push himself back up towards the top. In doing so, the fragile skin on the bottoms of his feet and been totally sheared away, leaving only tissue and bone and so much blood.
I had no idea what to do, so I just called a Code Blue. The patient wasn't dead or dying, but no part of nursing school or practice had prepared me for an HIV+ patient who had ripped the soles of his feet off and was currently laying in a 3ft wide, rapidlu expanding, puddle of blood. I just needed to get a whole bunch of people to the room as quickly as possible.
I threw on a waterproof gown and some gloves and held pressure on the bottoms of his feet with a towel until help arrived. They didn't know what to do either. We called in the general surgeon, who seemed to think we might be exaggerating the extent of the damage and blood loss. He told us he'd be there in an hour and just to hold pressure until it stopped bleeding. We soaked towel after towel until, finally, the surgeon shows up.
He breezes into the room, moves my towel away, and says, "hmph". Then he reaches towards the patients foot, and pulls off a a HUGE, softball sized, blood clot. In that moment, time stopped. He held out his hand, holding the huge clot, and I, without really thinking about what I was doing, held my hand out too. He plopped the clot right into my outstretched hand.
In the next moments, several things happened all at once. I realized I was holding a big, coagulated mass of blood. I started dry heaving. I dropped it on the floor. It splattered. The surgeon exclaims, "OH JESUS F**K", not in response to my gags or the fact that he was just splattered by the clot I dropped, but because the patient's foot is now profusely bleeding again. He darts off and tells us to get the patient down to the OR immediately. We get him down there and, on the way back, realize that he'd left a trail of blood down the hallways, into the elevator, and to the operating theater.
I saw the patient during my next shift and he jokes, "I thought you were going to pass out when the doctor handed you that mess!" to which I replied, "Sir, I was positive that you were about to bleed to death".
#12
Not medical professionals, but we were the patients. My daughter, who was 3 at the time, had to have a cavity filled. As we were leaving, the dentist told me just to watch my daughter because sometimes kids chew their gums because it's numb and feels weird. So the drive home took 30 minutes and I had been talking to my daughter the entire time to keep her busy. I park my car in my drive way, opened the passenger seat to get my daughter out, and her entire lower lip on the left side is gone. She had chewed it off down to her chin. She ended up in emergency surgery, but the surgeon kept telling us it would be fine and he sees this stuff all the time. She ended up having multiple surgeries, and when she was finally healed, the surgeon told us that it was the worst injury like that he had ever seen. He wasn't sure how she would heal, but you can hardly tell it happened now.
Image credits: imcloudnine
#13
I had to see an orthopedist oncologist because I had two sarcomas. One in my left thigh in the sciatic nerve and one in my left pelvic.
My surgeon said he would get both out and the most I would get would be a drop foot (where you can’t lift up your foot on your own).
I went back two years later and my doctor told me he thought he would have to remove my leg because of how the sarcomas were enmeshed in my bones, muscle, and nerves. I honestly thought the whole time that it was an easy out. Though the two 10 hour surgeries may have been a clue that it wasn’t so simple.
These days I have a limp as I’m missing half my left pelvic bone and most of my glute and thigh muscle- but I got to keep the leg!
Image credits: Resse811
#14
Posted this before:
4th year med student here. On my ER rotation a couple months back, I walked in to the ED and was immediately asked to help a nurse and resident put a catheter in a patient. Now a catheter placement is usually a one person job so I was pretty confused as to why they needed my help.
I walk into the patient room, and I’m immediately greeted by a disgusting rotting flesh smell. Worst thing I’ve smelled in my life. The patient has to be pushing 400 lbs and has the worst edema (soft tissue swelling) from congestive heart failure I’ve ever seen. His s*****m and p***s f******n are about the size if a small watermelon, and the f******n had swollen completely over the tip of his p***s.
The nurse had a speculum (tool OBGYNs use to look inside vaginas) inserted into the man’s f******n while the resident took the catheter in a hemostat (pliers type thing) and jammed it into the man’s pee hole for 20 minutes. They finally got the catheter in and took the speculum out. It was covered in a thick brown discharge that looked like fermented p**s-s**t. I still don’t know how he let his s*****m and p***s swell that much.
Edit: We comforted the patient the whole time and kept telling him we had done it like this before. Total lie. No one in the ED had ever done or seen anything like it.
Image credits: Trisomy__21
#15
A little late to the party—
Not the worst, but I had a patient once with a stomach bleed and a small bowel obstruction. We had to put in an NG tube (tube that goes in your nose and down to your stomach) to drain/decompress his stomach, which was pretty distended and hard.
I’m inserting the tube and has soon as it hits this guy’s gag reflex he projectile vomits and SPRAYS very dark, half digested blood all over himself, the bed, the wall, and the floor. It’s basically a scene from the exorcist. I had to dive out of the way and somehow was unscathed. He couldn’t stop for almost ten minutes as we’re trying to get this thing down to where it needs to go. Finally finish placement and it immediately suctions out ~3 liters of this black sludge that is old, digested blood. Pt was mortified and we had to play it off like “oh no no it’s fine, it’s really common to vomit during the procedure. We’ll just go get some towels and clean you up!”
My coworker and I left the room and just stared at each other in silent shock.
Image credits: oh_haay
#16
Nurse in corrections here. Had an inmate/patient come in with complaints about severe lower abdominal pain. He told me that he had something stuck in his "prison pocket." Before i could ask him what he stuck up his a**s, he bends over and shows me a cord sticking out. I told him, "Don't trip, I'm sure the doctor can help you out with that. You'll be alright." Come to find out, the prong of the phone charger got caught up into something and it was stuck.
As i was trying to comfort him, I started to hear this vibrating sound. So i asked him if he heard it do. He said, "It's the phone inside me that stuck with the charger." It wasn't just a regular flip phone, it was one of those samsung smart phones.
Image credits: xpo140
#17
When I was a med student on the trauma service, there was a gentleman who decided to attempt s*****e using a shotgun aimed at his heart. Unfortunately, the first thing that comes out of a shotgun when it is fired is a gust of air... which changed where the gun barrel was pointed when the shot came out. The shot pellets ended up hitting everything but his heart - lungs, ribs, spleen, stomach, liver, pancreas, and large and small intestines.
In the OR, the attending surgeon told me to put my hand on his beating heart because that will likely be the only time in my medical career that I would touch a beating heart. I did. It was cool.
He survived. Though, he was on the trauma service for the entire month I was there, and was in the hospital for a long time further.
Image credits: BananaFrappe
#18
Probably too late to the party, but I had a lady come in to the ER listed as “Multiple Medical Problems”. This usually means diabetes and the issues stemming from it or maybe bleeding issues from another disease or maybe odd blood tests results at a clinic. I hadn’t seen the patient yet, but the Dr. came to the nurse’s station asking who had room 15. I jumped up and followed him into the room.
I walked in and saw what I thought was a corpse. Then the patient’s eye swiveled over to look at me. She truly looked like one of the people they found in a concentration camp. I could see every bone and her body was twisted in a decorticate position with her jaw locked open. Then the smell hit me: rotting flesh, death, and body fluids. I struggled to keep a neutral face and not gag.
I tried to place a blood pressure cuff on her arm and her skin just started flaking off in my hands. I gagged. The dr. started removing her clothes to examine her. Her feet were black to the ankles. Her hip bones were poking through her skin and were black. The skin around her ribs was worn away to oozing muscle fibers. Her calves were incredibly swollen and the skin was splitting like ripped pants. I removed her Depends, and there was feces coating her entire genital area. Then the dr. went to remove a large bandage on her lower back. Her entire sacrum was exposed and the bones were BLACK! The skin around it was a black liquified mass. It smelled like nothing I’ve ever smelled. I can’t even describe it. The dr. Told her family I would clean up her ulcers and wounds in preparation for surgery (liar, no surgeon would operate on her).
I had no idea how to clean dead bone tissue and liquified skin (they don’t cover that in nursing school). When I went to clean her sacral area, all the liquified skin separated and oozed all over the bed. I really struggled to keep my s**t together.
Afterwards, I needed a moment in the supply closet to cry it out for a second. I had no idea the human body could breakdown so much without dying. I still think about that woman sometimes and what led to her living like that. It still breaks my heart.
#19
Lady came in with possible stroke symptoms (numbness, weakness, difficulty speaking, gail abnormalities). CT Brain unremarkable. Lab work was really odd. We were thinking cancer so we decided to CT her chest and abdomen as well. Turns out she had a dissection the entire length of her abdominal aorta and going into her right femoral artery. Left femoral had an aneurysm and was beginning to dissect as well. She had formed a massive clot throughout her abdomen that was miraculously keeping her alive. Basically all of her organs were ischemic (dead).
About 5 different teams showed up in the ER to see her. After HOURS of discussion, the consensus was that there wasn't a d**n thing anyone could do. We sent her to hospice.
Image credits: ChaplnGrillSgt
#20
I was the patient in this case. Had pain in the lower right part of my abdomen that grew more serious over a few days. Eventually got so bad I nearly passed out and was on my bathroom floor screaming on the third night. That morning I felt much better and went to work, but felt the pain coming on again that evening. Also decided to go into work the next morning while running a fever that was getting steadily worse. Finally decided to go to the doctor, where they immediately referred me for a CT scan. My appendix had been ruptured for a day and a half at that point, and I had sepsis/gangrene/massive infection. I was in surgery within a few hours, but prior to that the nurse that was with me said, "Yeah, this will be no problem. You'll be fine." Surgery was ok, but was followed up with a bunch of time in the hospital on intravenous antibiotics. My primary care doctor called me while I was recovering and told me the CT scan was one of the worst they had seen. The doctors I saw post recovery all had a *holy s**t* look when they saw scans and read the surgeon's report. Kudos to that nurse who kept me calm before surgery. Don't screw around with lower abdominal pain.
#21
Not a medicalprofessional, but I have impressed a couple.
It's not super weird but just uncommon I guess. I was overweight but active when I was younger and broke my lowest rib while snowboarding, long story short, I did not know it was broken (honestly) so I never got it checked by a doctor. The rib traveled up over the next 2 ribs and has since fused to them. I now have a permanent tilt on my spine where this rib attaches to it and now that I have lost some weight a bump you can see/feel on my chest.
It is kinda weird when you tell a doctor about something on your body and their face lights up like a kid on Christmas and they ask for permission to feel it.
Image credits: ptsfn54a
#22
Years ago (2000) I was playing soccer and noticed a little skin irritation underneath my arm. I thought it would go away but it developed into a weird thing. It was about 2 in in diameter and grew to be a collection of essentially looked like hundreds of skin tags grew together in a little circle. I went to the doctor who didnt have a clue and he sent me to a specialist. While there it seemed like he didnt know either. This was further evidenced when 4 other doctors came in to take a look and were really interested. They took a ton of photos and told me they hadnt seen this before and couldnt really offer any medication and said they would monitor it. About a week later the 'skin tags' developed little circles on the top that turned into scabs within a couple days. Then, the thing just kinda dried up and fell off me. It was f*****g weird and to this day I have no idea what it was.
I was not comforted.
Image credits: negative_space_
#23
I used to do psychiatric evaluations in an emergency room setting. One time, I'm evaluating this 60 year old woman who is lying in the hospital bed. I'm asking her questions, and she stops me and says, "Excuse me, but I need to pass some gas." I let her know that this is a medical setting and that is a completely normal body function and not to be embarrassed. People pass gas all the time.
I was not prepared for what came next. She let it rip, and out came the loudest, wettest, and longest sounding fart I have ever heard. It was bubbly and juicy, hitting all the deep notes while ending on a squeaker. I don't think Satan could have made a noise like that with his a**s. It sounded so relieving, but then the smell hit me. It was bad enough that I started to gag and had to excuse myself from the room. When I came back I politely asked if she needed a nurse for anything in case she needed to be cleaned up after that, but she declined.
Obviously I've witnessed people farting before, but I've never heard or smelled anything like that before. That was something else.
Image credits: AimlessPeacock
#24
Happened to me, not a medical professional. Friend of mine bought a house and I moved in with him to help fix it up, polish it and then maybe sell it. So we are in the backyard pulling weeds and cutting down vines and I see this 4 inch diameter vine with fuzzy roots attached to the brick, climbed all the way up the wall. I'm not a particularly country boy, more urban, but my friend had warned me of poison ivy in back of the house. I called him over and he said "oh don't worry, it doesn't grow that big".
He was wrong.
Less than a week later I'm covered, up and down both arms bad enough I look like a 3rd degree burn victim. It has gotten into my bloodstream and appeared on my legs, back, chest and even my feet (which all had been covered of course). I remember my GP looked at me with my shirt off and said in the most nonchalant voice "oh, that's not quite the WORST I've ever seen" with serious emphasis on the one word. It took me two weeks of steroids to even return to work and another two weeks to lose the last of the boils. I spent that time researching poison ivy and I have to brag, I'm an expert on how to track down and murder that f*****g plant. I hate poison ivy.
Edit - People are asking me for tips on killing the stuff. Go to your local hardware store and they will sell a container of poison ivy killer. The stuff is good but if you use it as directed I can guarantee the stuff will return time and again to haunt you. The vine originates underground, not very deeply though. Dig around (while covered in protective clothing etc) and find the main trunk of the vine. Drill holes through the vine about half the diameter of the stalk and space them about 3-5 feet (1-2 meters) apart. Pour the poison ivy killer directly into the hole. Do not dilute it. Just pour it right in. Soak the vine well, maybe 50-100ml or 1/4 - 1/2 cup, depending on the size of the vine. This should do the trick. Of course it will need to be dug up and out but it ought to be pretty dead within a week. If that doesn't do it, repeat the process a second time. Also, do this when there is no rain forecasted. Good luck and k**l it dead!
Edit 2 - Also, it seems everyone either has a story about getting it all over and hating it (I'm so sorry for you!) or telling how they are immune to it. Fun fact about that, allergies change. You can be immune all your life and then one morning wake up allergic to just about anything. Funny story to illustrate this, I told someone about my poison ivy situation once and she told me about her little brother who was apparently not allergic. He would play pranks by grabbing it and rubbing it all over himself to try to convince other people that it wasn't poison ivy. He pulled the prank one day and had a wedding to attend two days later. He suddenly developed the allergy under the suit. Moral of the story, k**l the plant when you find it. Evil evil little b*****d...
Edit 3 - Last tip I just remembered. If you go out in the woods and suspect you are going to encounter poison ivy etc at all, bring a can of spray deodorant with you. The aluminum chloride (I think that's the chemical) in it will neutralize the oil and prevent allergic attack. Otherwise scrub with soap and water within ten - fifteen minutes after exposure.
Image credits: TheMisterOgre
#25
Had a patient who needed a lower gi study to find/fix a bowel bleed. To get a study done you need to poop clear mucus. Three days we bowel prepped with heavy laxatives and enemas. He barely pooped anything. He puts on the call light at 6:45, 15 minutes before my shift ends. He calmly says, "I kinda want to try and poop." He said it so casually I figured he was going to toot out another gas bubble and walk back.
He stood from the bed, took one step, and the floodgates burst. 3+ days of the most rancid liquid stool I had ever encountered. It just wouldn't stop. He left a river of stool from the bed to the bathroom, coated the walls as he bend to park his butt on the toilet, and continued to dump out 7 people worth of poop.
In my 9 years I have never seen that much come out of a person. He was not a large man.
He was so embarrassed but I just kept my face as solid as possible, grabbed half the linen closet and 3 packages of cavi wipes, and sopped it up. Told him this happens all the time.
Image credits: kitten86er
#26
Paramedic here. Had a homeless guy call saying he stepped on a nail "about a year ago". I could smell it from the door so I expected it to be bad, but when I went to pick up the leg by his heel there was just...nothing there. His foot just evaporated into pus and maggots and his metatarsals clinked through my fingers. While I'm standing there trying to comprehend what happened he just sighed and asked me to pick up his foot (what foot buddy?), put it back on. He said "it falls off a lot these days, but it still hurts so that's good right?" I had no clue what to tell him. The nurses thought it was hilarious that "the baby medic(that's me btw)" got grossed out.
Image credits: Bronzeshadow
#27
Ooh, me, I have a story.
I've been an RN for 12 years now, seen a lot of s**t. I was particularly lucky in nursing school and got to watch open heart surgery, joint replacement, kidney removal, all kinds of neat stuff right over the surgeon's shoulder.
The only one that ever gave me a problem was this kid about 10 years old getting his tonsils removed. The doc had this hooked knife, he's reach into the kids mouth, hook the tonsil, and yank it back to cut it out. Blood flying out of the unconscious kid's mouth. So I'm standing there, I look up and all of a sudden everything's getting sparkly. I just said "I need to leave. Right now."
Surgeon takes his tools out of the kid's mouth and says "OK. Someone please walk him out, thanks."
So I learned that for some reason, I get queasy when it's kids being hurt. Which is funny, because I was a pediatrics nurse for quite a while after school.
Anyway, the actual story. I wasn't even at work, but maybe four years ago, was living with my girlfriend at the time and her three young boys. That day, the youngest (about 7), had been climbing up a big lilac bush in the yard that I'd trimmed the day before. He slipped and fell out. A sharp, cut branch caught him in the face on his way down. I was in the kitchen, and heard this blood-curdling scream and ran outside.
I brought him in, sat him on the kitchen table and took a look. It seemed like he was pretty lucky, there was just a deep cut on the bottom of his nose. Well, it was bleeding pretty decently so his mother and I took him to the emergency room.
We get there, there's only a physician's assistant on duty. He takes a look and thinks maybe it could use a couple of stitches. Or, he says, he could call the on-call ENT surgeon for another opinion. We told him that, all due respect, we would like to have a surgeon take a look, just in case.
Good thing we did.
The boy had nearly taken his entire nose off his face. The stick cut up under the nose, and traveled along under the flesh up to the bridge. The entire nose was hanging by a half inch of skin at the top. We just hadn't moved it much.
As soon as the surgeon came in and pulled this little boy's nose off his face, while he's laying on the exam table screaming absolute bloody murder, suddenly I got really hot, things start getting hazy, I realize I'm about to pass out. So I quickly exited the room and sat down, at the exact same time as my girlfriend, who was also a nurse. Neither of us could take it.
#28
I'm a nurse and I work in a pediatric ER. A young woman brought her baby in to be seen for vomiting. I ask her to put the baby on the scale. While on the scale I notice a strong odor of bug spray so I asked about it.
Mom: "A roach crawled into her mouth so I sprayed a little Raid in there." She said it matter of factually like it was no big deal.
Que up calls to the police, CPS and a 1:1 sitter for the child and the mom.
When all was said and done the baby was fine and turned over to her grandmother so no worries there. I have no idea what happened to the mother.
I don't believe she was intending to hurt the child. I think she was just butt-a*s ignorant.
Image credits: TomTheNurse
#29
I showed up to a house for a possible o******e. Three firefighters and a police officer were on top of a man who was prone and naked from the waist down. They immediately told my partner and I to restrain the patient to the gurney because the patient was combative. It turns out he took something thinking it was weed but turned out to be laced with something else (possibly PCP?). During his trip he attempted to cut his p***s off, but wasn’t successful. As fate would have it, I knew the patient personally and tried to comfort him on the way to the hospital. During the ride he became somewhat cognizant and was ashamed of himself. I tried to comfort him as I held his p***s in place. I would be lying if I said I had seen a severed p***s before.
#30
Not my story but my SO was in training as a Nurse's Aide.
On her first internship, she was assigned to the ER at a trauma center.
The first person, on her first shift, of her first internship (of 3), was an older homeless man, complaining of his foot hurting.
After the medical staff took a quick look at the foot, they didn't initially see anything wrong, so they tried to remove his pants to examine the leg.
The pants didn't move. They were fused to his skin from the middle of the hip all the way down to his calf.
They had to surgically remove his jeans by basically cutting the skin around the point where it was fused, and the moment the scalpel made the first incision, she described it as "As if Slimer from Ghostbusters barfed out of his leg."
Apparently, there was enough gushing, green fluid, filled with maggots, that it covered the floor in the (small) examination room, and the nurse ran out of the room gagging.
After getting over the initial shock, they managed to peel a good amount of the skin off with the pant leg, and revealed that his lower leg had basically rotted all the way to the bone, and was full of maggots.
Apparently that's the moment when she knew she was meant for the job. Even the surgeon was having a pretty hard time keeping his composure, but she was fine. More fascinated than anything, and apparently not affected by bad smells as most people are.
They had to tell him his leg was going to be OK - he was severely mentally ill and might have freaked the hell out - despite knowing he could die from the infection.
Apparently he survived and they managed to save the leg, which is beyond incredible.
#31
I’m an RN who specializes in wound care. We see a lot of crazy things in my clinic. A common occurrence is a pilonidal cyst, which is an abnormal growth in you gluteal cleft (aka butt crack) that contains hair. It usually happens with younger ppl (say 13-20s) and is obviously very embarrassing to the patient. When we get them, they’ve already had the surgery to open and extract the cyst, so there’s a few holes left that we have to heal. One poor soul that came in had the worst post surgical “hole” I’ve ever seen. It was so big, it extended from the top of her crack to the top of her a**s, then our on either side about 12 centimeters. It was like the surgeon carved out most of her butt :( The patient was devastated, and I tried to comfort her by telling her she’s not the worst I’ve ever seen. Poor girl.
Image credits: ldshimek
#32
Medical student here. Had a first-time mother who was having difficulty nursing because her nipples were chafing pretty bad from the baby teething/constant moisture to the area. Before showing me and her Ob/Gyn the problem, she apologized that I had to see it probably because I'm male but I told her I've seen plenty before, especially in the ER.
While not the worst thing I've seen (gunshot to the head takes the cake), I don't think I've seen skin so badly chafed before and it looked like she might have had the beginnings of mastitis on one of her breasts since it was red, warm, and very tender. The nipples themselves just looked raw and extremely painful.
Image credits: PMME_ur_lovely_boobs
#33
I'm a medical secretary for a podiatrist. I obviously didn't treat the patient myself, but I discussed his case with his doctor.
The patient had severe anxiety and therefore hadn't been to a doctor of any kind in approximately twenty years. He ended up in our office because his wife had called the day before and expressed that he needed to be seen due to a foot infection.
When he arrived, he approached the window and told the receptionist that he was sorry because his socks were dirty as he hadn't made it to the laundromat recently, which was a bit weird in and of itself, but we work for a podiatrist--we've seen it all before, as it were. He then sat in the waiting room, and it was mere moments before the smell seeped into the administration office.
The receptionist put him in an exam room as quickly as possible, and upon her return, she informed me that the infection was literally oozing out of his sneaker. All we could do was open the widows and apologize to other patients as they arrived. It was foul, and when I entered the room after his appointment to clean it (the medical assistant was out that day), I immediately began gagging and had to forcefully push my manager out of the way as to avoid vomiting on her on my way to the restroom.
As it turned out, the dude had had the infection for approximately three months, and had been showering with his sock on since he'd discovered it. He literally hadn't removed his sock from his infected foot in three months, and his wife had somehow been living with the overwhelming smell.
The doctor said it was the worst infection he'd ever seen, but the patient was so incredibly anxious that he got the standard, "I've seen it all before," throughout his appointment.
#34
Not a medical profesional...
My husband was born with a pretty insane heart defect that all the doctors were in agreement shouldn't have worked and he certainly shouldn't have lived as long as he did. One called it a ticking time bomb. His heart had 2 chambers instead of the normal 4. He didn't have the big arteries that led from the heart to the lungs but a series of smaller ones.
I will never forget the first time I saw him take his shirt off and you could literally see his heart beating in his skinny chest. Literally, every beat.
At the age of 25, 3 years after we were married, the time bomb blew. 7 years later I very vividly remember his chest moving as his f****d up heart beat.
#35
I worked as a tech in the ER for a while and had a woman in her 40's present with "burning and pain down below, discharge and a bad smell." I got the cart set up for a vaginal exam, got her vitals, blood and urine (she couldnt pee because of the pain she said), all the basic jazz you do when someone comes into the ER. I process my samples and let the nurse know everything is done and she goes to talk to the woman and it essentially goes as this: no, she hasn't had any trauma, no no a*****t, no she doesn't know what's going on, but it started about 3 weeks prior. Long story short, we get the Dr as the woman refused to let the nurse take a look, and we are all in the room when the Dr turns the light on under the drape and immediately asks if she's been using any medication vaginally, there's clearly a lot of irritation and swelling as well as a VERY strong odor and she hadn't even inserted the spec yet. The woman says no, nothing. At this point the nurse goes to get some saline and I'm left to hand off tools and handle any swabs. The first swab handed to me was literally tinged a pale green, clearly infection. I'm capping it and the woman smells the odor slowly filling the room finally and starts apologizing. I had to say while trying not to gag "no no need to apologize, I've seen much crazier things, just relax and we will get you all fixed up." Well, the nurse comes back with saline and the Dr starts essentially flushing this woman's v****a trying to clear out all this discharge and infection so she can see what's going on, and all of the sudden she stops and asks if she's SURE she hasn't been putting anything in her v****a to treat any medical condition, even something not given by a Dr. And that's when we found out for about a month, this woman had been douching with a bleach and water mix to try and cure a yeast infection, because she read that "in hospitals we wash down with diluted bleach to k**l germs and thought it would work." She was riddled with chemical burns and infection and was immediately transported to a bigger hospital. So yeah, that happened.
#36
I'm the patient here and the nurses didn't even try to say they had seen it before but it still fits. When I was getting treated for cancer I got a really bad case of pneumonia and had to be intubated and put into like a semi-coma type deal (I don't remember anything that happened in those six days but I was apparently made sober enough to open my eyes for visitors every day so I don't know if that counts as a coma). It was some pretty serious pneumonia because it was like less than two days between my first cough and them making the call that I would need to be intubated to stop me from drowning in my own fluids, so they didn't mess around and gave me a ton of antibiotics. You know how some hospital beds have a track along the ceiling that they can hang IV bags from? I had enough antibiotics hanging from mine that it broke and fell to the floor (again, no memory of this).
But the thing that was truly unprecedented occurred when they were changing out my butt-bag (I don't fully understand what it was but they had something on or under my butt that collected all my bowel movements, they put it on after I was heavily sedated, and removed it before I was totally awake so I don't really remember it). For anyone who doesn't know, antibiotics can cause a lot of diarrhea. Apparently when they rolled me on my side that day I let loose a fire-hose of liquid s**t that arched through the air across the room and splattered all over the door and window which were about twelve feet away from my bed. I think it's super cool and funny so they didn't have to pretend like it was normal to comfort me.
Image credits: FlutestrapPhil
#37
Crowbar stuck in a patient's head sideways (curved end in brain and bar across his face). Elderly man who was attacked in his home during a robbery. He was "alive" on arrival in ER but died several days later despite an heroic effort by neurosurgery to remove the bar. Too much brain damage. Never encountered any relatives as my only contact was in ER. One of the most vivid and disturbing episodes in my career. This was about 25 yrs ago but the image is burned in my memory.
The assaulter was caught and charged with second degree murder (Canada). Pretty straight forward conviction. F*cker.
#38
We had a patient in the ER who was sick of her visual hallucinations so she scooped her eyeballs out. She looked like something out of Hellraiser and unfortunately did not fix her hallucinations.
Another patient came in with a colostomy and ran out of his equipment so he duct taped a trash bag to it. It had several pounds of feces in it.
#39
My aunt started her nursing career in a county hospital, which means you get all the homeless folks. A guy came in with the whole of the back of his leg and butt utterly and very deeply infested with maggots. He just "hadn't gotten around to" coming in earlier, he said.
The depressing thing is that while it was a first for my aunt, it was by no means the last. Apparently it's more common than you'd think.
Image credits: rowrza
#40
Not a medical professional, but a story about my father.
After years of a blood disease, his spleen had to be removed as it had swollen to a size that made breathing difficult. Apparently the surgeon had a photo taken, post extraction, where he is cradling my dad's ~22.0 lb spleen.
To top it off, one day into recovery, when doing on of those "gentle push on the abdomen" type exams on him, my dad's sutures catastrophically failed and he let loose a spray that coated the doctor, his nurse, and a good portion of the ceiling. Luckily for dad, the hospital staff was on point that day and kept him alive despite his body's best effort.
I heard all of this from the doctor while he was removing the line of staples (that went from c****h to sternum) some weeks later.
Dad didn't like to share, apparently.
#41
I was working as a CNA in a nursing home. There was a lady who had been neglected before she came in so she had stage 4 bed sores (all the way to the bone) and the treatment nurse wanted me because I am calming and really good with the residents that needed a little support. She has me roll her on her side and then carefully peels back the bandage. I'm staring done in half horror/ half fascination as I can clearly see the bone, ligaments, muscle, layers of skin...
I'm gawking hard and the nurse is showing me some neat procedure when I hear a small, frail voice, "Is it getting better?" I turn on my biggest, friendliest smile and reply, "It does! It looks SO much better. Does it feel better?" She smiles and nods; I change the subject to grand kids (she had a picture of them).
I haven't seen anything like it before or since. But she was such a lovely lady and I started looking forward to helping because she was such a nice lady to talk to.
#42
Obligatory not a medical professional, but a first aider. I was doing a duty at the finish line of the London marathon as I have done for many years. I've seen enough chafing, dehydration and blisters galore. Someone always has the worst of the day but it happens so fast that you can hardly mentally tally who's nipples were the most raw....
Until I had a runner come in covered in blood complaining that her nipples had completely gone. She had chafed so bad that her nipples and areolas were rubbed to nothing... And the worst part was that she had her nipples pierced and the piercings had EMBEDDED THEMSELVES IN HER EXPOSED BREAST TISSUE.
I had to talk her through sterilising the wounds while trying to assure her that 'it happens to everyone'. The image of a n****e bar peeking out of red, raw breast tissue will haunt me.
Image credits: mostlyjosie
#43
Not a professional but I do medical research so closely related. One of my patients (alcohol detox clinic) had stored a mickey of whiskey up his a*s. It broke off inside his a*s and cut him deep. Blood absolutely everywhere. Had to tell him it wasn't the first time it has happened. It definitely was the first time it happened.
#44
Had a guy that shot himself under the chin with a shotgun. He had actually done it like 16 hours prior to family finding him. He was still alive, conscious and alert to what was going on.
His jaw looked like predator.
I had family freaking out of course. Had to tell them we see worse often. Which may be true, but they are usually dead.
He lived for almost a day after shooting himself, then died in the back of my ambulance.
Image credits: pokemon-gangbang
#45
I am a surgical tech. I got called in on a Saturday for a lady who had an infection from a component separation. Basically they put a giant piece of mesh in you for hernias. I wasn’t prepared. When we lifted up her gown.... the smell wafted and I have never almost puked before until that moment. About 20 cm circle around her umbillicus was black and necrotic. It was absolutely awful. We basically removed the entirety of the necrotic tissue all the way down to the peritoneum. Just gray and black slimy mass of fat and skin. The worst part is that I had to measure the necrotic tissue and it requires me to lean in a little close to it. The surgeon was laughing because I was green when I got back to the surgical field. Then during that surgery another person who had the same procedure had come to the ER with an infection. AND THEN A THIRD! We stopped using the mesh because that’s what was getting infected.
#46
Yep. Had a patient who was 62 and he had never seen a dentist before (I am a dentist). Had literally everything going on orally (especially the smell OMG, the smell). Me and the assistant were like: don’t worry we see this kind of stuff all the time!” ... not a lie. Just never all at once.
#47
In dental school, I had an emergency patient come in, complaining of sore gums. Upon examination, I found a massive calculus bridge (google it for pictures) behind her lower front teeth. She only had about 3 remaining lower teeth, but they were all connected with a whitish brown mineral deposit that was about the size of a golf ball. She had never had her teeth cleaned and she was probably 55 or so.
I basically performed an emergency cleaning. She could speak so much better afterwords. Of course I had to play it off like it was normal, but in my years of practice I still haven’t seen a case that bad again. Get your teeth cleaned people. Even if you can’t afford every 6 months, once a year, or every other year is a hell of a lot better than never.
#48
Worked in a heart procedure lab that helped try to get rid of bad heart rhythms. A prisoner came in for a last ditch effort to help his failing heart and had developed a condition called Ventricular Tachycardia. Setting the patient up and looking at his rhythm / heart, it looked pretty bad.
Before we got started he grabbed me on the arm and said "I'm scared. Is it going to be okay?"
"We have very talented physicians here sir, and they do this all the time."
The Ventricular Tachycardia was set off during the procedure and deteriorated into Ventricular Fibrillation. We were able to resuscitate him, but he never woke back up.
Comfort your patients folks.
#49
I’m a surgeon.
A couple of years ago they send us this guy (52 yes old) that had shown up in the ER because he allegedly hadn’t pooped in a week or so.
To make a long story short X-ray showed he had SOMETHING lodged in his r****m (and sigma, and descending colon... so way up there) that was a little over a foot long.
He denied having put anything up there. Yeah, right.
We try to go from the bottom up and nothing. We see something but we can’t clamp onto it.
So. What now.
Operating room.
Ended up opening him up, and inside the colon we see a hand. I just about s**t myself, ended up being a mannequin’s arm. Like store mannequin. It was stuck up there up to the elbow.
That was an odd one.
#50
Not even close to a medical professional but my Aunt is a nurse and told me about a guy who came in coughing up blood and maggots and it turned out to be some worms he got from eating something that ate through his stomach lining into his esophogaus and were in his throat.
Image credits: Headbangerfacerip
#51
A patient with rectal cancer with an exposed colon and r****m. I could see her tailbone and and the head of the femur. And whenever she would poop, it could collect inside this open cavity and had to be flushed out.
#52
ER RN here. So, so many:
1) vaginal discharge the color and consistency of guacamole stuck on a speculum post-pelvic exam. The patient’s husband had recently been released from a period of federal incarceration.
2) The first time you smell a really funky, long-term GI bleed (bleeding into the intestines, usually the colon). P*o + blood = murder most foul. And the patient is sometimes a sweet, incredibly sick little granny watching us gag as we clean her up, apologizing for the smell, and we have to just say, from behind the peppermint oil-soaked mask, “oh sweetie, it’s okay, we do this all the time...”
3) Dead, sloughed intestinal lining. Another smell that will haunt your daymares.
But the winner winner chicken dinner in the “No, no... it’s not that bad... I’ve seen worse...” category was the homeless dude who came in complaining of blood in his urine. He wasn’t able to pee more than a few drops at a time, so we used a little ultrasound machine to see how much urine was in his bladder. More than 1000ml... you just bought a catheter sir. I tasked one of our male patient care techs with the job and had barely gotten back to the desk when he came running out yelling, “I need some HELP! Grab gloves!”
I lifted the gown covering this guy’s junk and grab the p***s to help...
MAGGOTS. IN. THE URETHRA.
And he was pissed off that we removed them because, “...in the Corps in ‘Nam, they teach ya to eat yer maggots! That’s free protein, dammit!”.
#53
I was an intern (final year of med school in Germany) at the department of Urology at a huge hospital.
An older man (65 years) came into the ER, I was the intern in charge that day. So basically you could just have a look at him and tell that something was very, very wrong.
He stuttered that his wife was absent so he took some time to watch ''some videos of a certain s**y type online that inspired him''. Internally I started screaming, but on the outside I just nodded and acted like it was something I heard routinely. He proceeded to explain to me he had seen a video of someone putting a metal rod up his urethra and tried the same. But he used too much lube and it slipped inside. I remember stopping breathing for a second. He was just so embarrassed that I told him that this happens sometimes and we had seen it before. Well, no. Stuff up the butt, yeah, we see that. But this was a first. I pulled up the ultrasound machine hoping this was just a training situation by my attending to prank me, but nope, there was a glorious 10 cm long pen inside this man's bladder.
So he had hoped to have it extracted magically at the ER and then to go home. Well, he had to have surgery and stay overnight, his wife eventually found out. I kept the picture of the ultrasound as a souvenir and this memory as a great story to tell friends when they ask how my ''routine life'' is going as a (now) doctor.
#54
A patient had an abscess on his arm about the size of a softball that had burst and was rotting and necrotic, he had also been sitting in a pool of his own s**t p**s and vomit for 3 weeks. The smell was so bad it fogged up my glasses but I told him I'd smelled worse things so he didn't feel uncomfortable, and agreed to go to the hospital with us.
#55
Orthopedic Xray tech here. And literally almost every day. People coming in with gangrene on their feet because they’re diabetic and can’t take care of themselves, so the doctors want to see how deep the tissue damage goes. Or people who have been shot and still have the bullets inside them.
#56
Doc here, currently working with accident victims.
I had a patient once hobble in (walking in is key later) a week after being hit by a car. He'd been to the ER, they discharged him and said just the usual bumps and bruises.
I did my round of X rays, and his femoral heads were broken on both sides. Think of the leg bone as a capital L, with the bottom of the L hooking into the hip- his were cleanly broken through the bottom sections on both sides.
Turns out he'd had occult fractures on both sides the X rays didn't initially see, and walking on them collapsed them. Never seen that before.
Another was a patient with shoulder injury, both sides. Got an MRI, and both shoulders were basically destroyed. Complete failure of the rotator cuff on both sides, with the humerus being drawn up and back on each side. Instant surgery.
#57
Not me, but my dad had serious health issues last year. Alot of pain and so on.
He had back problem 20 years ago and also two surgery back then. So we all and his doc thought it was his back.
His sister then took him to the hospital, where they diagnosed cancer in his blader since around 10 years.
This cancer took all his blood, they said they never seen anybody with that less blood.
It was only 26% blood in him, normal people fall in coma at around 40%...
Its a wonder he is still alive... And a lot better!
Go check yourself regularly!
#58
Whenever I do something for the first few times in my career (only ethical stuff I feel confident with), I will self-deprecate and “jokingly” and playfully say things like “once I finish this procedure, they’ll let me pass med school finally... it’s only been 20 years!” Or I’ll ask them how they are feeling and if I have good rapport I’ll say things like “thank God! Cause I’m freaking out, you’re my first patient!” The laugh usually breaks the ice and keeps me on task. It’s served me well thus far.
I examined a woman’s knee last week and after about 5mins, I said, “Well... you definitely should talk to a doctor about this!” I am aware I will get sued one day...
#59
Had a patient who had a melanoma the size of a cauliflower head on the back of her ankle. Melanoma doesn’t generally grow like that, maybe it was the “ozone injections” she’d gone to another country for?
#60
Not a medical professional but had a nurse tell me she had "never seen anything like that before" when my baby's cannula came out during an overnight stay due to chickenpox and we woke up in a rather large puddle of his blood. Somehow the thing came unscrewed but the tube stayed put keeping his vein open. Nurse was visibly freaked out by it. Pretty unpleasant memory.
#61
Saw a surgeon one time seriously screw up what I can only assume was intended to be a hernia surgery using abdominal mesh. By the time the guy came to clinic his stomach looked like a shuttlecock (not on the inside... he was just walking around like that).
#62
I was the patient. In middle school I somehow coughed so hard it tore a small hole in my lung. Everyone assured me it was more common then you would think, and that it's actually not to hard to fix.
I believed them until they asked if the med students could observe. Well of course!
About 30 of them filed in, lined up, and took turns squeezing my neck (where the escaped air ended up settling), and going "hmmm" "well would you look at that" and "oh my".
After they left I told my doctor "You know, for how common this apparently is, all those students seemed pretty interested in it." He replied with a half guilty grin and a nod, like yeah bud I caught you but can't really blame you for trying to calm me down.
#63
Honestly? It was usually when an alert, oriented person pooped themselves.
Could have filled the bed and be running onto the floor, you still maintain that "No, no, don't worry, we do this every day, now let's just get you clean, all right? :)" facade.
#64
I have a story that is, like, the opposite of this. I used to get really bad ear wax buildup, so occasionally it would get enough that I'd go and get them cleaned out at my local clinic. The poor guy who was stuck doing it for me, really young-looking so probably still a student, at one point says under his breath, "God, this is so gross."
Edit: Less related, but I remembered another story involving this guy. I went in once and they needed to do a strep test. I have a really strong gag reflex, so I warned him about it before he did the test. Dude looks me dead in the eyes and says, "You're not going to gag.".
