Working in a hospital is beyond stressful. One minute you have to pretend to be calm while you're actually freaking out, and the next you're faced with the most bizarre medical case any of your colleagues have ever seen. One in three doctors and nurses in Europe reports experiencing anxiety and depression. In the U.S., 55% of physicians say they felt debilitating levels of stress.
After you've read some of the stories on this list, you might understand why. It's not only aggressive and difficult patients that they have to deal with. Each case presents a different challenge: sometimes medical professionals get overwhelmed by hopelessness; other times they get frightened by some creepy phenomenon that's hard to explain.
So, check out the most interesting stories medical workers shared in the thread where someone asked, "Nurses, Doctors, Hospital Workers: What's your creepiest experience in a hospital?"
#1
I’ve told this story on here before, but it still haunts me. I worked night shift and I had an older lady admitted for abdominal pain/constipation. She was around 75 years old and was a recently retired nurse. She had just stopped working less than a week ago. We had talked a lot the night I took care of her, and she told me all of the future travel plans she made. She was finally going to go to Europe. She told me that she had bowel obstructions before, and thought maybe the stress from retirement triggered another one. She told me she had a CT scan done in the ED, and her doctor would read it in the morning. I looked at the preliminary results, and it showed tumors on the pancreas, liver, and colon. It hit me hard, and I cried a bit that night thinking about this nurse who worked her entire life and won’t live long enough to enjoy her retirement because she has pancreatic cancer.
© Photo: sra_bie
#2
I worked for a rural hospital and we had a patient that came in with a heart attack. We worked on her fruitlessly for 30-40 mins. The doctor declared her and invited the family in. Her body layed in front of the grieving family for almost another half hour. Her family members begged her to come back and say goodbye, she promptly obliged. She sat up hugged one of them and said goodbye. The entire re staff rushed in and ran a full code for the second time. She was pulseless and cold when we started the first time, and worse when we ran the second. She never made it. But she was back to say goodbye. It was one of the most unsettling things I ever saw there.
© Photo: funnygifcollector
#3
A 9 year old girl came in once. Her parents had been finding her dolls hanging around the house with belts or strings tied around their necks. She went into a rage and held a knife to her own throat. They brought her to the hospital and during her psych evaluation she said she heard voices in her head telling her she was stupid and telling her to [end her own life]. She said she didn't want to but she had to listen to the voices. I couldn't sleep for weeks...
© Photo: Medaviation
#4
He was 14 in advanced heart failure. He was the oldest child of 5 and during the six months he lived on our floor, his mother was also a pt in advanced HF. He wasn’t eligible for an LVAD or a heart transplant bc he was “non-compliant”. He lived 2 hours away in a family with complex issues and he often missed clinic appointments. This poor child with no ability to get to doctors appts was denied life-saving care. He was so sweet and had the hugest innocent brown eyes and soft-spoken voice. I just wanted to take him home so bad and rescue him. Life is unfairly cruel at times.
© Photo: HikingAvocado
#5
I had. 17yo pt. He had been out drinking with friends. His friends didn’t take home to his house instead put him on a couch in the garage of their house. He vomited and aspirated his friends found him barely alive the next morning. He came to our hospital brain dead. His parents donated his organs. I took care of him the night before his organ procurement. His mom stayed the night with him we pulled him over as far as we could in the bed and his mom crawled up in bed with and had her head on his chest all night. I told this story to my kids many times and told them I didn’t ever want to be that mom to please call me I would come. And they did.
#6
Covid in NYC in the ED. a woman in the resus area was panicking and begged me for help saying she couldn’t breathe. a patient near her who i was getting to also couldn’t breathe but was starting to slip and we were getting ready to intubate. no one was around to help the panicked woman who wasn’t required for the intubation. i had to decide between helping this panicked woman or going to the intubation where maybe someone’s life could be saved. i said “i am so sorry, but i can’t help you. i have to go.” because it really was like that (these were NOT normal times)
The panicked woman i think [was gone] later that shift and i was one of the last people to speak to her on the last day of her life. i will never forget her. i cry every time i think about her
i know there was nothing else i could’ve done but it’s my job to always remember her.
#7
Maybe more disturbing than creepy, but..I get called into work late one night. I am an RN working in surgery, and late night calls are always a roll of the dice as to what you might get. The hospital operator calling had very little detail as to what we were coming in for, just the surgeon and patient name. I get there and the doctor had booked a transmetatarsal amputation on a diabetic patient, which is not unusual. When I go to talk to the patient, it turns out that due to his diabetic neuropathy, and therefore lack of sensation in his feet, he had a sore on his toes that had gone untreated (again, not unusual).
Well, in this case, he had awoken to crunching noises in the middle of the night...he wakes up and turns on the light to find that underneath the covers, his beloved chihuahua had eaten all 4 of his smaller toes and was working on the great toe. The wound was a pretty ghastly site, and the site of those tiny teeth marks is something I'll never forget.
© Photo: Sirflow
#8
A man with ALS who was a DNR. He coded and his sons overturned it, wanted everything done. The poor soul ended up on ventilator, unable to be weaned off. He ended up in the nursing home I worked at back then; we were one of very few in the state that took long term vent patients. He had no use of his arms and his legs from the advanced stage of ALS, and couldn’t turn his head at all. He begged anyone and everyone who came into the room to take him off the vent. He would cry and beg. He had to mouth the words because of the trach. Many of the staff would just ignore him. Family rarely visited. That was 38 years ago and it haunts me to this day. I sure hope a situation like this wouldn’t happen today.
#9
I work in dispatch in the basement of the hospital. I was working the night shift and I was alone. I had the door closed, and there is a key code needed to unlock the door. I am the only one in my corridor of the basement at this time.
I heard over the intercom that there was a code yellow (missing patient) from the mental health floor. I have no idea how he got out, but now he was roaming the hospital.
About 10 minutes later, the door handle starts shaking and someone is trying to get in. I stayed completely silent until it stopped, then got up and looked through the peephole. There was a man just sitting against the wall wearing a hospital gown.
I went back to my desk and called security, and I spoke as quietly as I could so he wouldn't hear and run away. Security came and I heard them take him away. He was yelling all sorts of stuff that didn't make sense and was clearly resisting them. A guard came in afterwards and asked if I was okay and I told him I was fine thanks to the door lock.
Thank you, keypad.
#10
Daughter and father drowning. 7 year old on floatie went in river and dad went after her. She was my patient in resus bay and dad was in resus bay next door.
She was already long gone when young fire department dovers with still dripping wetsuits brought her in. We tried to start all the code stuff while the physician called it really quickly.
She was cold and I wanted to put a blanket on her. She still had little heart stud earrings in. She looked a lot like my own kid and I thought about how normal her day probably started.
I am still disturbed by the image of the family being brought into a room down the hall to deliver the news. I wasn't involved in that part but felt guilty already knowing what they were about to learn.
Writing this made me realize how much this actually still bothers me.
#11
I was a hospital aide for a year working in a unit that saw its fair share of DNRs.
One night my shift was almost over, and a patient in the next unit passed. That unit only had one aide, so I went over to help her. She'd been there for years, so we get to work without really talking (cleaning the body, removing tubes, changing soiled linens). When it came time to put the deceased into a body bag, she rolled the patient (a large man) towards me, with the intention of sliding the bag underneath his frame. However, she rolled him and a large groan escaped his lips, and we both jumped and nearly dropped him.
It was just air or gas escaping his lungs, but it sounded exactly like a moan someone makes in their sleep. We double checked for a pulse, found none, and by now he was mottling on his underside (a color change when blood pools beneath the skin due to lack of flow from a heart beat) and hadn't had vitals for a few hours. Still it creeped me the [hell] out and gave me the heebie jeebies.
© Photo: anon
#12
I once had a severe malnourish, comatose 18 y.o. (later found out actually 12y.o.) girl in IMCU when I was an aide. Neighbor called the police because they did not see the patient for days and they found her lying unconscious in the bathroom.
"She was just sleeping." according to her family. Stage 2 pressure ulcer on both knees and nose from "sleeping" on the bathroom floor. Covered with various size and healing stage wounds all over the body. One of them is clearly from an iron. Missing one of the eyes from previous "accident". The husband and in-laws that lived in the same house being suspects of possible domestic violence according to the police that came with her.
Risk of elopement because groups of "family" kept trying to pull the tube and carry her out of the hospital. We did 1 on 1, 2 on 1, 1+security on 1. There would always be new group of "family member" after we ban the previous from visiting.
She was announced braindead the same week because these family kept pulling tubes out when they try to carry her away.
#13
Creepy like the patient who kept eating himself, creepy like the patient who had lice to such an extent you could see his scalp moving, creepy like the ghost playing the piano, or creepy like the demented patients we keep alive for no reason?
Patient is covered in sores. They can't strap him down because he is basically lucid and there are rules, so he stayed in the hospital with his mrsa, his distressing numbers of untreated STIs, his various other major medical conditions. And with his talons of fingernails that have... stuff... crusted under them, he scratches himself until he bleeds. Then he eats the skin and scabs he's just peeled off. They coat him in what I assume is medical grade antibiotic ointment so he's covered in this skin/blood/slime slurry, so it all sludges up on your gloves when you try to hold his arm to draw blood. It's... there are no words.
Lice patient, homeless and immunocompromised, with semi dreads that were literally crawling with lice. You put on an isolation gown, shoe covers, a surgical hairnet, a mask because homeless usually means stinky, and try not to gag when his hair moves. Some nurses, bless them forever, shaved the patient and at least the most obvious infestation was taken care of.
The piano ghost... a patient walked into one of the lobby elevators with me and told me she saw the ghost of a young Asian woman playing the piano in the main lobby area. It was 3 am, and nobody was there. As a complete killjoy, though, I want to point out that it's an automatic piano and the patient was probably just confused, heard the piano playing with nobody at it, and thought she saw a ghost. Several co-workers still refuse to walk through there at night.
As to the awful shit we do to demented old people... I wouldn't keep a gerbil alive under the conditions some of these folks are trapped in, and it's shameful that we have to.
© Photo: WishIWereHere
#14
I was an x-ray tech for years. At one point, I worked the night shift and I worked alone. One night I had to x-ray a homeless man who had hurt his shoulder or something. Anyway, I had rolled him into the room and parked him against the door opposite where the control panel was. I got some film and was walking back into the room towards the man and he looked at me and said, "it's like watching an aquarium. You're surrounded." He went on to say I was surrounded by people and animals and that I was also "being watched by" people from some native tribe I had never heard of and told me I should feel honored since they didn't follow just anyone. It was like 5am and this freaked me out. For the only time in my life I actually had that cold icy feeling going down my spine. I know he was probably suffering from some mental issue but isn't that just the type of person who does this?
Weirdly, a year or so later when I was visiting San Francisco, I had a fortune teller stop me on the street and ask to do my reading. She said the same thing, that I was "surrounded.".
#15
I worked in a nursing home as an RNA. While I worked there 7 residents called me into their rooms to tell me thank you and good bye on different nights over the 3 years I was there. All of them [passed] during the night after they told me. They all knew, I don't know how but there is no other way to explain it. One would be a coincidence, maybe even 2 but 7?
#16
On my way to the morgue with a colleague. Pushing a bed with a recently deceased man. My first time going down there, so I was a little bit creeped out, but it was with a kind of cute colleague, so I kept my cool.
We leave the body in the cold storage room, she goes out while I handle the paperwork and I shortly follow and reach to close the door behind me.
After that follows one of the most terrifying screeches I have ever heard from the room behind me. I jump about 2 meters in the air and let out a loud screech.
Turns out the door screeches when closing, but not when opening. My colleague was laughing.
#17
Young guy, 45. 2 young sons, a wife. I was a new ICU nurse. This was during Covid so 2021. He had been transferred to us via ambulance from a small hospital due to being covid positive and respiratory distress. He arrived with o2 sat in the 60s and maxed on bipap. Not intubated. Day shift nurse “stabilized” him- barely satting 85. I come on, help him prone himself, start precedex. Intensivist had gone home. I call her and am like look this dude needs intubated it’s not good. Tube him, prone him, paralyze him. Develops a cardiac dysthymia- flip him supine but we have another code in the room next door and are begging over the intercom for more people to come help us because we literally don’t have enough people. He codes. We coded this poor man for 3 hours. I remember doing CPR as his wife sobbed over him. Security jumped in to help with compressions. My other patient went into SVT and we were short staffed to begin with then add in 2 simultaneous codes and another unstable patient.
I will never forget that awful night. That week my ICU lost every single patient due to Covid. 20. In one week.
#18
(M26) When the 95 year old female patient says if I were a little younger I would have you faster than butter falls of a hot Spoon....
© Photo: redditshroud
#19
I remember a woman in her early 30s diagnosed with breast cancer and she decided not to seek treatment at all. She did not believe in medical treatment and was using “holistic” methods. Her chest was full of sores, cancer, and she was pungent. She had two sons and she went hospice 2 weeks later after being in the hospital. Husband was SO torn up. I don’t blame him.
#20
I used to work as an STNA in a nursing home. Worked third shift throughout university. During the night we turned half the lights off so it was darker for the evening and didn't get a lot of light in the residents' rooms. We had one resident who was younger (70s) and was mostly in for mental reasons. She had long, dark hair and was very thin.
I was sitting at the nurse's station at the top of the hall and heard a call light go off. I stood up, looked down the dark hall, and on all fours - straight out of The Ring - this resident was crawling up the hall toward me. The other STNA had forgotten to put the bed rail up and the resident was VERY good at climbing out of bed.
Needless to say, I needed some new britches and my heart was racing a mile a minute.
© Photo: anon
#21
I got the opportunity to shadow nurses and surgeons for two of my class periods in high school. I never really experienced being in the ICU before. What was creepy for me was seeing how many unconscious people were fighting for their lives. I followed a nurse to a major heart attack patient. This guy was put under an induced coma but his eyes stayed open. The nurse had me help put gel over his eyes. It's been three years and I still have his gaze stuck in my head. I also had to help reposition the guy and it was like trying to move an extremely stiff mannequin. Seeing a human in a not so human state is extremely uncomfortable and creepy.
#22
My mom works as a nurse in the ICU and she always says that the patients know when it is their time. They usually say "nandito na sila" or "they are alreay here" in Filipino.
They also usually ask for a glass of water and just flat line right before it was given to them.
Most patients, days before they say that they can see a black figure in the corner of their room.
Scary. My mom usually experiences not less than 2 [loses] a week, whether her patient or not. I can't imagine the stress she goes through, and I admire her strength for that.
#23
I used to work patient transport. I got a call to take a body from ICU to the morgue. Nothing crazy.
I got to the ICU and because it was shift change, a large group of nurses were circled around the nursing station. There were 2 doctors there as well. I went up to the group to say I was ready. That was when I felt an incredible wave of dread. I saw that they were creeped out, nurses and doctors alike.
One doctor asked, "What was the temperature?"
"101.5," replied a nurse.
"When did he expire?"
"Over 3 hours ago. Family requested additional time."
(Bodies are usually only allowed to stay 2 hours on the floor before going to the morgue.)
The whole group, with me trailing, walked to the patients bedside. The doctor placed his hand on the patients stomach. The immediate shock that came across his face was terrifying. The patient was burning up. After 3 hours, they should be cold.
He said there was no medical explanation. He is an esteemed ICU doctor with years of experience so I trust him.
I took that body down and while in the elevator, I thought of zombies. I have never been so scared. But while waiting, I knew that I had to touch his stomach or else I would never forgive myself. I had to be a tangential part of this medical anomaly. Through a pair of gloves, a body bag, and 2 sheets, I touched his stomach and felt the radiating heat.
#24
This was from when I was a CNA in a nursing home/sub-acute rehab.
My first severe paranoid schizophrenic patient. He was actually only in for rehab after a hip replacement. He was very well behaved, and actually mild mannered, but his eyes had nothing behind them. He was very independent, but needed some help with dressing.
He had a huge flag in his care plan advising to make direct eye contact with him as much as possible during direct care. He had only mild auditory hallucination, but his paranoia was off the charts, and if he noticed you "looking at someone" anywhere else in the room he would fall into a panic. This entailed a lot of screaming, and trying to hide from us. It was very disturbing to see, and honestly heartbreaking. He was horrified of what he thought we would do to him, or about who else was there.
I guess it wasn't any one situation with him, but his demeanor... the staring... the monotone voice. Even if he wasn't in a panic (which only happened 2-3 times over his 6 weeks), everything about it was unnerving.
© Photo: Fister__Mantastic
#25
I created a creepy situation in a hospital once...
One level of the hospital basements hosted only two things: The x-ray archive, which nearly filled the whole level, and the morgue. I was working in the x-ray department, and part of my job was to get old pictures from the archive (and put them back again). After a short time, I knew my way around and didn't need the lights to find the right room off the corridor, which was good, as the corridor lights had issues.
So one day, I was on my way back to the upstairs world, and waited for the elevator, standing in a dark corner. The elevator came, and a young nurse pushed a hospital bed with an ex-customer into the corridor. She tried the lights, but it stayed dark (I said they had issues!), so she pushed the bed towards the morgue in the dark. She passed me without noticing me, and I said "Boo!". I nearly had to scratch her from the ceiling...
Got a stern talk with the head nurse for that, but she could not fire me ;-).
#26
Woman in her 50s got admitted to our cardiac step down for weakness, she had breast cancer. Her nurse was one of our male nurses and he was in there doing her admission and him and the husband were talking and they knew some of the same people. They both loved to hunt and fish so they spoke of that a lot. She had been on the floor maybe 30 minutes. Next thing we know, rapid went off and we all ran in there and she was just staring off into space and not reacting to anything, we checked and there was no pulse. We called a code and started working on her and never ended up getting her back.
The husband was in total shock and asked if he could go tell his kids in person and come back and we said of course. We get her all cleaned up and he comes back and spends some time with her. Then he comes out and thanks us all and puts his hand on that male nurses shoulder and said “thank you man, one day I’ll take you out fishing.” All of us started to tear up because they were such a sweet family and hearing him say that was just gut wrenching.
#27
A lady in the dementia ward told me the lady under my chair didn't have any arms.
© Photo: Mistah-Jay
#28
ICU nurse. Anyone who has performed compressions can attest to this. The first time you break through someone's ribs. I will never forget that grim feeling.
© Photo: doctormurse
#29
Mine was a 24 yo woman pregnant with her first baby. Type I DM. On her way to the OB for the glucose tolerance test, she passes out from hypoglycemia and has an MVA. Arrests in the car, EMS resuscitate, but she is nearly brain dead. Baby still has a heartbeat so her parents and husband agree to keep her alive until baby is viable for delivery. She sits in our ICU for 2 months, gets transferred to a hospital closer to a major children's hospital. At 25 weeks she runs a fever, they do an emergency c section. Baby boy lives 1 week. Her parents change it up and won't let the daughter go. So her parents move her in her vegetative state to LTC and the husband has to file for divorce to be able to start over. Sad all around. Not sure what happened with her after the move, but the pattern is predictable.
#30
When victims of violent crimes are admitted we take certain precautions, at least until the police are confident they "have the guy" and nobody is coming to finish the job.
Anywho, my coworker was taking one of these patients down for a stat head CT. Two sketchy AF dudes came to my unit looking for the patient and tried to get in (locked unit). Our hospitals police/security team is great and they arrived shortly after we called but the guys vanished. Had trouble getting ahold of my friend in CT briefly but she got the message and waited for security to escort them back. Security found the two dudes loitering outside one of the other xray areas... So somehow they knew/figured out there patient wasn't on the unit and down in radiology, but luckily they went to the wrong one...
Never found out anything about it afterwards; but that one stuck with me for some reason.
#31
When I was in nursing school I had a day in the ER. A boy my age (20ish) came in. He had fallen about 25 feet while cleaning gutters. He had likely been picked up from HD or Lowes to work a job that the homeowners were too cheap to pay a real company for. He was paralyzed and scared. No one in his family knew what had happened to him and no one came to check on him for the rest of that shift. The honeowners called 911 and probably went to go find someone else to finish the job. I will forever remember cutting off his jeans and leaves falling all over the floor of the trauma bay. It was just freaky that if I had not gone to college and nursing school it could have been me on that roof cleaningthe gutters.
#32
As a student nurse, I was assigned a patient with peritonitis. His wound was wide open and we had to do wound care TID. He constantly was crying for water. One day I walked in and found him sucking the wet mop from the dirty bucket left by the housekeeper.
#33
Patient comes up to the unit from the ED. ED nurse warns me this is a bad elder [mistreatment] case and the local PD is involved as well as adult protective services. She was found on a mattress covered in urine and stool. The poor woman was horribly demented and her arms and legs were contracted in the fetal position. Her eyes were blood shot and she was covered in wounds and open sores. Even though she couldn't move those blood shot eyes would follow me while I was in her room. She kept trying to talk but her mouth was swollen and full of sores. She ended up [passing] shortly after we changed her code status. Her eyes were open and looking through the door way when I walked in after the monitor showed asystole. I will never forget her face and those eyes will stay with me forever. Creepy as [hell].
#34
Had a patient record a video of me without my permission and post it on YouTube claiming that I was his new radio/webshow cohost.
When he is discharged from the hospital, he then proceeds to stalk me waiting for me in the cafe and by leaving notes on the floor I worked on asking me to call the number he wrote on the paper so we can meet for the show.
Weeks pass and a fellow coworker saw him waiting for me in the cafe, so she reported him and security escorted him away and I had to file a report.
Coworkers looked up the video on YouTube. Still there. Creepy comments from his "supporters" of his web show/radio series comment about me and how they "need to see more" of me.
© Photo: PizzaCatPlz
#35
Final Year Student Nurse here, with a load of [messed] up stories.
Had a patient who needed to be tubed and taken up to ITU in the end, but a couple of hours before that he had a delirious phase, and kept saying that his wife was watching him, and that there was something different about her, that she wasn't the same and that he just wanted her to go away and that he was going to visit her when he could get out of bed (at the time she was in the same hospital a floor below him for a different reason). Turns out she had [passed] about 2 days before that, whilst he was in surgery.
Respiratory - First time I saw a [corpse], no one told me that when you close a person's eyes, they don't stay shut like in the movies, they can spring back open. Cue me, washing this persons chest after having closed the eyes, to turn around to see him staring at me because his eyes have re-opened, I screamed like a little girl, and everyone came rushing in.
#36
I work at a nursing home. I'm not actively involved in the direct care of the residents, but I still interact with them on a daily basis.
There was one woman on my unit who had a son who visited her every day. She was on hospice, so he wanted to be around as much as possible for his mom. She passed away during one of the rare times he wasn't in the building. We called him to let him know, and he got in his car immediately to come be there when the funeral home came.
The aides had finished preparing her body to be taken out, and we were all just waiting on the son to get there to call the funeral home. Her room was empty.
The moment he rounded the corner to the hallway her room was in, her call light went on. The nurse on duty and I looked at it, then at each other, as if confirming that we both saw it. As soon as he went into the room, it went off again.
That's the strangest experience I've had so far.
#37
I work in palliative. One guy was silently screaming through his last few hours of life. Another guy (who up until this point had been unresponsive) reached up and grabbed me when we attempted to lower his bed to turn him.
One time while doing post-mortem care I walked into the room and thought "that's weird, how come nobody has closed his eyes yet?" He had that movie-perfect look, with pale blue staring eyes and slack jaw and greyish, waxy skin. I closed his eyes and started the care, and when I looked again those eyes, still staring at me, were slowly opening, one slightly slower than the other. He groaned when we turned him to wash his back and his hand managed to clamp onto the bed rail and we had to pry it off. When we finally got him onto his back again, there was a foul-smelling, oily black, viscous liquid on the pillow case. I cleaned his mouth again thinking it must have come from there, but his mouth and nose were clean. The best I could figure the stuff had come from his eye. I couldn't wait to get that bag zipped up.
© Photo: draakons_pryde
#38
Guy in his 40s. Liver failure. Long history of alcohol misuse disorder. Found unresponsive on the floor of his apartment. EMS assumed he had been on the ground for more than 24 hours.
Admitted to our unit. Cachexic, but his ascites made him look 9 months pregnant. His skin and eyes were highlighter yellow. He was covered in bruises due to poor coagulation from his liver failure and also from having been lying on a hard surface for so long. Very encephalopathic. His breathing was shallow and laboured, like he could only make these tiny gasps for air. He had constant diarrhea from how much lactose we were administering him. This sounds horrible to say, but his body repulsed me. I felt scared of him.
Changing his brief would almost bring me to tears. He would grip onto the shoulder of my scrub top when I’d turn him and he would just cry out. He was in so much pain. So much suffering. We managed to contact his daughter, but she wanted nothing to do with him. No other family. They changed his goals of care to M1 almost immediately and he passed after a few days.
Sometimes when I drink I think about him— how his breath sounded, the look of terror in his eyes, how he smelt, how his fingers felt when gripping my shirt. I’m so turned off from alcohol now. It feels wrong to drink after caring for a patient like that.
#39
Do long-term care facilities count? If so, I have one.
My mother used to work housekeeping at a nursing home. She would oftentimes take my sister and I to go visit some of her coworkers or the old folks. One of my great aunts also lived there too so we would visit her as well, but she's not involved in this story. I was maybe five or six and my sister was seven or eight. This nursing home was always incredibly dark inside, despite having huge skylights and floor-to-ceiling windows in every wing. Even from a young age I knew this was a place of death, from the decrepit frail bodies gathered around the wood-paneled television showing Lawrence Welk reruns, to the black enamel "tree of life" they hung on the wall in the lobby, where every little bronze leaf was engraved with the name of a patient who died there, and the overwhelming smell of urine and sickness.
Regardless, my mother is an upbeat and chipper person, and loves old people. Even now in her sixties she doesn't consider herself an "old person" and loves to volunteer with the elderly. So in spite of the aura of decay coming from her workplace, she thought it was a wonderful place to show off her children. So we'd visit her along with my dad on her lunch hour during her weekend shifts, and also were forced to go to Mass with her on Sundays, as it was a Catholic facility. Afterward we'd mill around on her break before she went back to work.
Anyways, one day she took us down one of the wings of the facility to greet one of her coworkers. The two of them chatted, my sister hanging with my mother while I just amused myself by wandering. Everything was completely normal, except for the woman in the room next us. I didn't look in the room, but I could hear a woman shouting "I'M IN PAIN", over and over again, her voice echoing like the wail of a cat mixed with the voicebox of a doll who needed its batteries changed.
I asked my mother, "Shouldn't we do something about her?"
My mother replied with something like, "No, she does that all the time, like 24 hours a day". So that was the day I learned that oftentimes, stroke or dementia patients can have verbal perseveration, or the repetition of certain words or phrases, due to their condition.
Cut to about ten years later. I'm working dietary at the sister facility to this nursing home; an independent and assisted living facility. Our two facilities were connected by a wing so staff could travel between the two, as well as patients if they were able. When I worked there I made the trip many times to the other facility's kitchen. It just so happens this was the same wing where the shouting woman used to live, but I didn't remember at the time. I walked through the wing and heard a distant "I'M IN PAIN" repeat a few times before it trailed off.
The facility has a policy that all patients must keep their doors open, so I poked my head into a room where I thought the sound was coming from, but it was empty, no patients currently living in it at the time. Beds were made, no decorations on the wall, nothing. Confused, I walked out and met immediately with a nurse.
"Oh hey, [nurse's name]. I thought I heard someone shouting on this wing while I was walking to the kitchen." I said.
"You did," she replied. She pointed to the lights next to the door and the call light was on. I didn't trip it or anything; I wasn't even near it while I was in the room.
She explained, "Occasionally people will hear a woman shout--"
"I'm in pain," I said.
"Exactly. And the call light will go off so we have to go in and reset it. Happens every couple weeks.".
#40
I'm a nurse in an emergency medical unit and when somebody comes in under section awaiting a mental health bed, if they have acute psychosis 99% of the time they talk about Jesus, 666 and the devil as if they are actually possessed.
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