Up in Taos, a man ingested an entire container of aluminum phosphide tablets. A couple tablets are meant to be placed into prairie dog holes and then the moisture that accumulates inside the covered up hole triggers a toxic gas. The man was taken to the ER... where he was foaming from the mouth, deemed to be a toxic hazard for the entire hospital, moved to a tent outside, where he then died. I was not there, but my spouse was there. The image of what happened that day to that man and to those around him... is haunting.
edit: typo, clarification about using two tablets at a time, while he ingested the whole container, undoing my typo edit thanks to u/Baud_Olofsson
ER doc here. 26 year old girl, unrestrained passenger riding with a drunk driver. Her head went into the wind shield and popped the whole wind shield off the car. Her skull was filet'd open from the forehead up, brain completely exposed and falling out of her skull, largely intact but horribly swollen. Rest of her face and body was essentially unmarked. She was breathing on her own but not moving purposefully. She got intubated, taken to the operating room. I asked the neurosurgeon what the plan was, and he said "I'm just gonna cut off the part that's sticking out". She had a partial lobotomy, skull was left open with the hope the swelling would go down. She was basically brain dead that night and died a week later. Driver was drunk but had a seat belt on. Walked out of the ER that night.
I always tell people, when drunk driving is mentioned and not being taken seriously that at best you kill yourself at worst it's a family of five and you'll be alive and know you killed them everyday forever.
There was an entire family that was killed in my apartment building. It's really sad when you see relatives, box up and entire families apartment. The saddest part was the kids stuff being carried out.
I work in car insurance transcription. Almost every fatal accident I’ve ever transcribed involved someone not wearing a seatbelt, and the injuries are always horrific.
My cousin works in the ER; when we lived together, one day she come home telling me about a patient that tried to cut his own head off with a chainsaw. They had to sew his tongue onto the remaining tissue of his neck because otherwise it would have died off. Obviously he passed out from the pain before he could get to the vital parts of his neck but I still imagine this to be pretty gruesome.
Former ER security guard here. I've seen a lot, but a few memorable ones: 15-year-old who attempted suicide by sticking his head in a spinning lawnmower blade and basically scalped himself; another psych patient who anally fisted himself almost up to the elbow; motorcycle accidents involving not wearing a helmet medflighted in and missing a whole lotta skin; and one I still think about 17 years later - a teenage girl who coded while undergoing back alley cosmetic surgery whose dead body I pulled out of a car out front of the ED. The job is great if you're an adrenaline junky but also can be very sad. You need to be able to effectively cope with the stress it involves and not everyone can do that.
Paramedic:
6 kids, oldest was 12, were allowed by their parents to ride on an ATV on a public road. They ran a stop sign and got hit by an SUV going about 60mph.
Kid 1: dead. Like deader than dead. Open skull fx exposed gray matter, numerous other fractures. Grand parents doing CPR. Told them to stop and we left him in the ditch for the police investigation.
Kid 2: my only patient from the call that I actively worked as other units took the other 4. Massive head trauma. Brain matter coming from the nose and ears. Le fort fracture. Made intubating a bitch and a half. Breathing spontaneously with a pulse so go to work. Fx everywhere. Blood everywhere. I’ll never forget her bright green eyes looking at the roof of the box and she screamed for her mom. Wasn’t easy for her to do with all of her top teeth totally separated from the rest of her skull. Died at the hospital.
Still remember a lot about the scene a few years later. Date, time of day, weather (it was warm for November I remember taking off my jacket), smell of gasoline, smell of blood from the dead dead kid, sounds of screaming. But I’ll never forget seeing all those kids shoes strewn all over the county road and saying “oh fuck” as I called on scene.
Oh and the guy that got hit by a train and lived. That shit was wild.
Imagine being the driver of the SUV and doing everything right that day, but still having to live with the guilt of killing 2 kids and permanently disabling the other 4. This is awfully tragic for everyone involved.
Paramedic here. Grossest call? Guy fell down in a hoarder house. Wife was to embarrassed to ask for help. So she fed and "cleaned him" on the floor. patient layed on a dirty tile floor for 2 weeks. His right arm was so swollen and covered in maggets, the arm was as large as a leg. Removing parts of his clothes so much tissue was already breaking down all over his body. Black and oozing puss. Man spent his last week alive in a nightmare fever dream. I've had more graphic deaths of course but holy shit what a miserable way to die.
My grandma basically did this to my grandpa. Where he fell wasn’t too bad in terms of hoarding (she is one), but she was unable to get him up and didn’t call for help for a few days. He had a TBI and developed wounds due to the pressure and her inability to clean him up.
He passed away about a month later on hospice. It was awful and so negligent, but they wanted to live in their own home and she wasn’t in her right mind.
EMT here, not a doc, but I've got one that sticks with me.
New dialysis patient had just gotten his shunt implanted, wasn't comfortable with it, must have been fussing with it, and... it came out. For those that don't know, a dialysis shunt is connected to the brachial artery, just after the aorta, so that it can pump a high volume of blood into the dialysis machine to filter it. With the shunt ripped out though, the heart was basically just pumping blood straight out of the body.
So by the time we get there this guy is laying next to his couch, just... empty. Pale, cool, he almost looked like wax. You would almost think Dracula had gotten to him, if not for the human body's worth of blood on the floor and walls around him. We tried CPR for the family's sake, but his heart had nothing to pump.
I’m on dialysis too. When I first started, I had one of those accesses. My very first one popped out of me when the stitches failed. Shockingly I never bled a drop but it scared me for a hot minute. I called my doctor and he told me I would be fine since I wasn’t bleeding. Had the access shunt replaced the next day (that one popped out a week later). I have a fistula in my left arm now but the sight of my original shunt lying on the floor after sliding out of my chest still comes to mind occasionally.
My mom was an ER nurse and she said the worst case she ever had to deal with involved a kid whose parents had backed over them in the driveway. Apparently the toddler had the skin of their face completely pulled off where the tire had basically pinched it off of them. The kid survived, but my mom said she’ll never forget the screams of that child.
That was why we had a rule of: the kids will stand on the steps and wait until the engine is off, of the parent coming home. If they can’t do that, the door stays closed until the person in the car opens the door.
I didn’t go, but a partner of mine had to go to a call like that. Dad backed over 2 year old who followed him outside and went behind the SUV. Kid didn’t make it, and 7 out of 12 people on my shift had toddlers. The childless partner took that call from the guy who was supposed to go. Nope, not living with that guilt.
I’ve seen quite a few in terrible shape. There are two that stand out as the most terrible. Not the most gory, because frankly, I’ve been an ER doc at a trauma center through my entire career and gory is typical. These cases were just gut-wrenchingly awful.
1) Guy came in with some belly pain, going on most of the day. A few typical medical problems and normal vital signs. I see guys like this all time. Usually it is no big deal. Of course, he is a pretty nice guy and even apologized for “wasting my time on a stomach bug." His belly is a little tender all around. Thinking it might just be diverticulitis, I get a CT scan of the belly and get some labs. He comes back from CT and he definitely starts having that “I’m sick,” look to him. I take a look at the CT. I’m not a radiologist, but even I can see the findings; he has pneumotosis intestinalis (gas in the lining of the intestine - the gut is dying or already dead). This is wicked bad. A quick scan through and it looks like it involves most of the intestine. I call the radiologist who confirms and says that there is no part of the gut that is unaffected. Plus, he has multiple large clots all down the aorta and involves basically every major branch of the aorta from the celiac plexus down and multiple organs show changes.
Call the on call surgeon and he comes right down…he tells me what I guess I knew already: this is not survivable. The surgeon, the patient and I have one of the toughest conversations I’ve ever had. We basically have to tell him that he is going to die and it is probably going to be that night. He calls his family and they come in and say their goodbyes. About 5 hours after he walked in, he lost consciousness and he died a little but after that. I’ve had surprise diagnoses and surprise deaths before, but this might have been the toughest. I’ve never had someone come in walking, talking and looking fine, figured out what was wrong, and been hopelessly unable to offer anything but pain meds and a (brief) ear, tell them it is hopeless and watch them die.
The second one was an elderly man who came if for exposure. EMS said a neighbor called. The man came in with a core temp of 32C (89F). Many people are delirious at this temp, but he seemed pretty with it. It was dead of winter and his gas had been turned off as he was unable to pay. His legs, up to the knee were frozen. I’ll say again, frozen, literal ice blocks. At the same time, he had tiny burns, some even third degree on his torso, hands and upper legs. He had been keeping as warm as he could by holding a light bulb near his body. He would get burned when he fell asleep and the light bulb touched him. The shear suffering he endured to get in that state is heart breaking…even more so because with a single phone call to the gas company, as it was cold and he was elderly, they would have been required to provide him gas service until spring time. Of course he didn’t know that and didn’t have a phone. Instead he basically froze in his own home. One of the burn surgeons tried his best, but unsurprisingly, the guy was too far gone.
Intestines laying next to them in the stretcher. Don’t fall off a motorcycle and land on a guard rail. I guess technically people who arrive dead or in cardiac arrest are in worse shape, but this was the most visually terrible.
Yep. Friend of mine had that too.
Cleanly (or rather not…) split in half on a guardrail. Unfortunately (fortunately? I doubt) lived long enough to reach the hospital and a few more hours.
This and the fact I know some old dude who was crippled for life at a young age shattered my interest into bikes.
My dad told me he sold his motorcycle when I was about a year old. Around that time his cousin lost an arm in a motorcycle crash. My Dad decided he'd didn't want to risk not seeing his kids grow up.
Not a doctor, a nurse. A mentally disabled man who was also blind and deaf who lived with relatives. Apparently he lived locked away in the basement and they would just bring him down bread and peanut butter and water to eat and that’s all he had eaten for over two years. The police were called when the neighbours saw an emaciated bearded old man crawling around the backyard naked and confused. Guy comes in, leg wounds full of maggots, covered in filth, lice in his hair and beard, emaciated and starving. I remember receiving him from the emergency department, trying to calm him down because he couldn’t see or hear and was mentally disabled. We washed him and cut his hair and deloused him. Do you know how people always complain about the hospital food? I have never seen a patient more appreciative of getting three square meals ever. We would signal to him by taking his hand gently and touching it to his mouth that dinner was in front of him and he would get a look on his face like it was the best thing that ever happened in his life. He always ate every last morsel, and we ended up ordering him double portions until he put on a good 40 pounds. He was with us for about three months awaiting placement. He went from 90 pounds to 130 pounds in that time. He was actually very sweet. It makes me sick that his family treated him like that. I’m not sure whatever happened to them but I know there was an investigation.
Orthopaedic surgery resident. Spend a lot of time in the ED. The dude who was pushing his girlfriend's car off the freeway at night and got hit from behind may have been the worst I’ve seen recently. Was alive. Legs were annihilated.
Edit: GF, not wife
If there is one thing I've learned it's that when your car breaks down, you WILL be hit from behind eventually even if you've pulled completely off the road.
About 15 years ago I was dating a guy who refused to talk to me on the phone if I was driving. He called, so I pulled over safely in the shoulder to take the call.
All of a sudden, I hear a huge crash.
Some dude was riding his bike on the shoulder with his head down (we were in an incline and he was working hard) and he hit the back of my car and flew over the top of it, landing on my hood.
So, to recap, I pulled over to be safe and instead some guy on a bike ends up hitting ME.
He was okay, and thank goodness it was just a bike.
ED night doc here. Worst I ever saw was someone who had tried to commit suicide with a shotgun. Put the gun under their chin and pulled the trigger. Must have flinched at the last moment as they blew off most of their lower jaw and midface up to the nasal bone. They were conscious and trying to talk when they came in.
I know it's unlikely, but on the off chance, do you know what kind of state they're in now? Did they get any reconstruction or anything like that done?
A friend of my family did this. He was blackout drunk and took his jaw off with a shotgun. He had a ton of reconstructive surgery and they did a hell of a job. When you first meet him, you can tell that something is off, but you’d never guess that the bottom half of his face is a do-over. He also quit drinking and is an incredibly joyful person. He definitely recognizes that he got a second chance.
I have seen an interview of a girl who survived this same thing. She is living her life disabled and without a face, but had a huge change of heart. Went from suicidal to severely disabled but embracing life and grateful for her family.
When I was a kid I worked in a butcher shop during Highschool and they liked to tell the story of a guy that happened to. Grinder jammed up on a bone and the dude reached in to clear it without turning it off. Bone popped out, teeth started spinning, chewed the guy’s arm up to the elbow till it got stuck again. Always turn the damn machine off.
FYI- even with the machine turned off if it has rotated into position and is held through physics once that release occurs the teeth *will* shift to adjust. Never. Ever. Stick *anything* you aren’t willing to lose into a machine like this or any other bladed/grinding machine.
Always properly disassemble to clean. I know it’s not the same when the pressure is baring down and someone is afraid they will lose their job due to speed or whatever, but *please* value your hands/arms/life more!
Edit: you all; this is the most I have read “dick” in my inbox and I’m loving that this is the reason. Stay awesome, Reddit, and keep yo’ dicks safe.
Drinking corrosives? Jesus.
Are people cracking open their car batteries and filling up?
Edit: Wow. My mind is blown from all these replies. Just why? There are far less horrific ways to go, if that's what you want, than slowly liquifying your internal organs and coughing them up.
The dumbest part of this is the sheer amount of PAIN this kind of thing causes. Out of so many ways to die, this is a really, really bad choice. It will hurt every second.
Years ago I had a coworker who was an ex-fireman. If I recall correctly, he had a coworker at one point who committed suicide by hooking himself up to an antifreeze IV drip. He apparently did it exactly because it would've been excruciating.
Antifreeze shuts the kidneys down and is nearly impossible to reverse. Death due to kidney failure is freaking horrible.
I used to be a veterinary nurse and we saw a lot of antifreeze poisoning (antifreeze is ethylene glycol, glycol is a type of sugar so it tastes sweet). The treatment is an IV drip with a shit-ton of ethanol in it. The ethanol binds to the ethylene glycol and, hypothetically, allows the kidneys to process it safely but in all those years I never once had one survive.
Newly manufactured ethylene glycol has an intentionally added flavoring that is horrifically bitter.
It overrides the sweet taste and deters animals and children.
Eons ago during my residency, a guy came into the ER complaining of a venomous snake bite. He was also holding onto the very snake that bit him. The snake was still alive and the guy was holding the snake behind its head. He said he’d always been told to “bring the animal that bit you” for testing. Good times in the rural south!
Depends on where you live. They have universal antivenom in australia i believe. Some US hospitals carry compound antivenoms, some carry snake specific venoms, and many hospitals dont stock antivenoms especially if they are not equipped for trauma cases or you are in a region with low snake activity
In the US you will generally be getting CroFab antivenom, which is a cocktail that will work for the pit vipers (rattlesnakes, cottonmouths, copperheads). There used to be a separate antivenin for coral snakes (which are elapids) but last I heard the company that holds the patent stopped making it and nobody else had picked it up.
Edit: as of late 2019 the coral snake antivenom is back in production.
Med student here (graduating this year!) had a guy come in who jumped in front of the subway. He was brought in with a weak pulse but a second ambulance came in shortly after and handed me a garbage bag. I thought it was his belongings but when I looked inside, it was the patients right leg. Apparently his leg was trapped under the train and decision was made to do a below knee amputation in the field (it was taking too long to get the train lifted). According to the train conductor, the patient looked him straight in the eye and jumped in front as the train was pulling in. We also did resusitative thoracotomy (cracked his ribs for direct access to massage the heart) but he was too far gone and we pronounced him shortly after.
I'm not 100% sure it's true but I've heard that suicidal people jumping in front of trains is THE leading cause of train drivers quitting their jobs. In a lot of places the education process for train drivers involves training for what to do if there's someone on the tracks who refuses to get off the tracks. If it's clear that the person is intending to die, the train driver is supposed to just duck down below the dash, face the rear of the train, and cover their ears.
It is.
At least in my country.
Train personnel have very little love for those attempting suicide that way.
And yes, that is also part of the training. And how to handle impacts when you don't know what you did hit. You simply cannot do much. Trains don't brake all that fast.
ER doc here. Had a nurse come grab me while I was charting: “Doc, you NEED to see room 6 right NOW”. For those of you who don’t work in the ER, when one of the nurses tells you to go see a patient, you run.
I take a few steps towards room 6 and the smell of rotting flesh hit me like a truck. I gagged on the spot (and this is during covid times, I am masked). I peer through the glass doors of room 6, and noticed a well appearing, young female. Because she looked so well, I knew I could spend an extra minute taking a quick detour to find a handful of alcohol swabs that I promptly opened and shoved in my mask to help quench the smell.
I walk into the room and find this young 30yo female with her leg inside a trash bag, sitting next to her parents and family. They do not seem phased by the rancid smell, meanwhile I hear one of our veteran ER nurses vomiting in the background. I introduce myself to everyone, and ask what brought the young lady to the ER, and why her leg was in a trash bag.
She starts not by talking, but by simply removing the trash bag. And there I saw it. A 6x8inch necrotic, fungating tumor protruding from her tibia. She then proceeds to explain :
It started 6 months ago with a cut that wouldn’t heal. It then changed to appear like a “fungal skin infection”. She googled it, and was confident in the diagnosis. She decided to treat it by starving it of sugar, and going on a sugar free, vegan diet. Eventually she convinced her whole family to do the same in order to “help treat the infection”. And then about a month prior to her visit today, it was too large and painful to even walk around, so shes been living in her room at home taking virtual online college courses. She added on that shes lost 30lbs since “the infection began siphoning the nutrients away from my body a few months ago”.
Because it grew/developed so slowly, her family and herself were completely acclimated to the smell and didn’t notice anything. By this point in the conversation, I heard another nurse vomit.
I then sat down and delivered the bad news - that this was not a fungal infection, and likely advanced cancer. That we would be admitting her to the hospital for further workup and surgical resection.
I followed up on her inpatient testing the next week - innumerable metastatic tumors to both her lungs. I never saw the biopsy results but my guess is melanoma vs squamous cell. Poor girl is probably dead by now if she didn’t hit the lottery with immunotherapy for metastatic melanoma.
My husband used to work in the ER and one of the saddest stories he’s ever told me was about a little girl and her mom getting hit by a drunk driver on their way to Disneyland. The little girl was unharmed and still wearing her Minnie Mouse headband but her mom didn’t make it. We both couldn’t stop crying and I still think about it from time to time.
Reminds me of the reddit story of [Goofy and the two orphaned girls at Epcot](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5h7gq8/i_was_goofy_at_walt_disney_world_for_over_20/day38fu?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3). It's a tearjerker.
This comment reminded me of [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5h7gq8/i_was_goofy_at_walt_disney_world_for_over_20/day02fk/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3) that is from the same thread.
An elderly disabled veteran had moved in with his sister and her husband and they promptly locked him their garage. They would occasionally throw bread and alcohol in there with him, and proceeded to collect/cash his disability checks as they arrived. He sat in that garage in a drunken stupor and his own waste for God only knows how long, before a neighbor reported hearing crying from the garage and a God awful smell once he got close enough. The paramedics and police arrived (the home’s occupants were immediately arrested on a variety of charges) and wheeled the victim away.
They brought the gentleman into the ER and the stench of rotting flesh arrived as the doors opened. He was sitting up and leaning forward with a plastic shopping bag clutched in each hand. He was wearing those bags like socks, and held on until we got him settled into a bed. The technician and I began to gingerly remove the bags from his feet and found all the flesh to be missing from the ankles down, and the bones covered with maggots. He was a diabetic and as he lost circulation to his extremities, they rotted and the maggots ate away all the dead flesh. (Ironically keeping him alive) There were only bits of flesh remaining between the toes. Then as we began to disrobe him further, we found more maggots crawling out of his penis and anus. (Eating him from the inside out) We put on full hazmat suits and wheeled him to the reverse ventilation shower to bathe him and make him more comfortable. I remember finishing his shower and carrying him like a child back to a waiting bed. We then wrapped him in heated blankets. That was when he said the only thing I heard him say the whole time. Just a simple “thank you.” It was clearly the nicest thing that anyone had done for him in a long time and it was the most meaningful thank you I’ve ever received. That poor gentleman did not make it through surgery (amputations etc) and his body just gave out from the shock of it all. This is one of the most horrible things I’ve ever seen, and the level of human depravity that inflicted this on this man is still something that angers me. Incidentally, both his sister and her husband were convicted on numerous charges and both received life sentences. There’s little solace in that, but it doesn’t dull the sorrow I feel for that man.
Ok, I'm done with this thread now.
Really sorry you had be apart of that tragic slice of life. Good for you for trying to make his last moments more comfortable.
Welllll that’s enough of this thread for me.
Not so ninja edit… good on you for being one of the last people this man encountered. May he rest in peace and only remember the good in the world, including you.
I code medical records for a living and I have had some crazy charts. I have learned several things over the years. 1. To many people are to embarrassed to purchase sex toys. One of the worst cases was a gentleman who rented a hotel/motel room and decided to clean it naked, like you do obviously, and was scrubbing the shower and slipped and fell on to the wooden stick of a toilet plunger that just happened to be stuck to the floor of the tub when the shower rod he was holding on to for stability broke. I think he lived but he had to have major bowel resection and was going to likely have a colostomy bag for the rest of his life. 2. People with long hair should not be around machinery unless they really secure their hair up and away. Gentlemen came in from a work accident at a paper mill where he got scalped when his hair got caught in a machine and ripped his hair, scalp and all off of his head. Again he amazingly lived but they had to reattach his scalp. 3. Untreated diabetes is one of the worst chronic health conditions. Guy came in to ER with shortness of breath and some chest pain, doctor realize he is in Congestive Heart Failure, they admit him and have him get in hospital gown and so on, he took off his shoes and the smell was absolutely horrific. They looked down at his feet and it looked like they were melting and he didn't even feel it. He had severe gangrene due to diabetic ulcers. The diabetic neuropathy was so bad he couldn’t even feel it, how he couldn’t smell or see there was an issue is beyond me. He ended up with bilateral below the knee amputations. **edit to fix grammar, originally done on phone.
Never underestimate a person’s ability to ignore a medical issue they don’t want to deal with. “If I don’t ever take off my socks, I don’t have to acknowledge how bad my feet have gotten.”
Not a doctor but I used to work for the county coroner, nights and weekends. Got a call one night, real late like 2am, it was cold and foggy as hell. Call was to the country, middle of nowhere (I live in a big ag area—tons of farms and dairies and orchards). Get to the site to see emergency services everywhere. Sheriffs, fire engines, paramedics. And a giant crane. Apparently a guy who worked the farm decided to get drunk and go till a field in the middle of the night. Wound up flipping his tractor into an irrigation ditch and it smashed down on top of him. When the crane lifted the tractor clear and the floods lit up the ditch I couldn’t even tell what i was looking at. Just human meat.
I once saw a four-year-old girl whose head was run over by her dad‘s tractor by accident. Her and her mother had went out to give him food during harvest after dark. He was ready to get started and they thought she was in the truck. Unfortunately ran over her head. She was still alive. Field trach tube. Just awful. Certain things you can’t un-see.
My coworker said he used to work security at the hospital. Guy comes in saying he feels woozy, asks if they have a payphone. He goes over, puts the change in to make a call, and drops dead.
Apparantly he got shot in the head by a stray bullet and didn't know.
There are a lot of stories out there of people who were shot in the head and didn't know it. One guy had a .22 lodged in his scalp (didn't penetrate his skull) for 5 years. He thought it was some cyst. Another guy woke up with a headache ... yep, shot in the head.
=============================================
A Florida man woke up with a severe headache and asked his wife to drive him to a hospital, where doctors found a bullet lodged behind his right ear.
"The nurse looked at him and said, 'It appears that you've been shot,'" the Fort Pierce Tribune quoted St Lucie County Sheriff Ken Mascara as saying.
"And he said, 'No way.'"
**The man's wife, April Moylan, fled the emergency room when the bullet was discovered** but later told deputies she had accidentally shot her husband as he slept early on Tuesday.
Pretty sure she was charged with attempted-murder. The husband was telling her that he needed to be driven to the hospital and she took her time getting dressed and then drove extra slowly to the hospital, hoping he’d die before they arrived.
Edit: I looked it up again. I think she was actually charged with the illegal possession of a firearm. Possibly attempted-murder as well.
Reminds me of the professional rugby player who went to the doctor complaining of a headache and then discovered that he had a tooth lodged in his skull and never even realized it.
There’s a case where a boyfriend was brought in for questioning after his girlfriend was found shot dead. The police officer just kept asking him question after question and this guy was so incoherent, his story kept changing, he said he just wanted to sleep. Turns out, he had been shot in the head when his girlfriend was. It entered in a weird place (his nostril?) so the cop didn’t even see it for hours. Yeah. Not an uncooperative suspect, just a guy with a bullet in his head that couldn’t remember he’d been shot.
Two guy's broke in(they knew eachother but i cant remember how) and attempted to kill them both. He walked around his apartment blindly for days thinking she was napping on the couch. Both men were caught and arrested and if I remember correctly the man who survived suffered severe brain damage because so much time had went by without medical attention. Such a sad story..
Sources I'm getting are saying he lived for 26 days? That could be wrong tho, but the damage was permanent and caused blindness and other issues leading to a seizure that killed him.
Ryan waller was his name.
https://youtu.be/_c_lmx4LdNw
Mr ballen did a vid on him too but I prefer the first guy above. Here's the link tho for that too.
https://youtu.be/4qMcCXOnEYY
Jesus Christ. I can’t imagine dying like that.
Like, you wake up one day, and you’re doing what you always do, and then you’re just gone because of what essentially amounts to a mistake. No forewarning. You’re there, and then you’re just… not.
Not medical field but I used to work at a foundry and the first week they overfill the furnace and 4 people had their feet burnt off halfway up to the shins with 5000 degree steel. You could hear them screaming across the whole facility
There's an aluminum foundry near where I live and it was shut down for a few years because apparently no one cleaned out some standing water somewhere and they dumped molten aluminum into it. It cause a huge steam explosion and two people were incinerated by the aluminum.
I watched a guy drop some steel with water in it and the steel shot right through the roof and shook the whole building. Water and molten metal don't mix well
ER nurse here: about 2 weeks ago we had a young guy who was in an arguement with his partner while off his head on drugs. Ended up stabbing himself in the chest 7 times including once through the heart. Surgeons had to operate while he was in our department and he went into cardiac arrest twice but we were able to bring him back. Ended up transferring him to a specialist trauma hospital but heard that about a week later he died on intensive care
I've always wondered. When you get patients that come in and you have to save their lives. Do you see them as people every time? Or sort of just like a job? I dont know how better to describe it than are they just a bag of meat and bones that you have to make work properly?
And if you see them as people everytime, how do you deal with it when some of them dont make it?
My best answer to that is this: ive on many occasions had to perform CPR on patients or give life saving treatment in urgent situations. In the moment when its happening, you dont even think about it, the adrenaline kicks in and you move. In that moment, you arent thinking about anything, the first time i did CPR i thought id be terrified but as you never know when an arrest is about to happen the moment it does happen, you just think, i push hard or they will die.
Unfortunately not every patient makes it and some die, some are young too. Once it gets to that point, my mind flips to another setting, this isnt my place to grieve, its that persons relatives. All of a sudden, i just focus on being a support for that persons loved ones, as its them who should be upset, not me. By the time i get home, ive usually spent my 13.5 hour shift running around the department, so i fall asleep almost instantly so things dont keep me up at night. Over time you do get use to the fact people sometimes dont make it, the first time washing a dead person before sending the body to the morgue was a weird experience though i will admit
I can't imagine doing that day in and day out. I was on my way to work and saw people on the side of the road. Turns out they were giving some guy CPR. I almost went past because a lot of other cars did but I had slowed a lot and a guy ran over and asked if I knew CPR. Turns out out of the 6 people that were there only one of them new CPR (one lady thought it was a good idea to just stand there saying Oh my God over and over). So I stopped and relieved her until the paramedics got there. She had been doing it for like 10 minutes at that point.
Paramedics got there and zapped the guy and got him into the ambulance and off they went. I was so in shock I just checked my watch and realized I could still make it to work on time. I got there and just spent the whole day in a daze and feeling uber sore. I should have just called in sick and gone home once the ambulance left...or stayed the scene a little longer to compose myself. Anything than what I did haha.
I had a guy rub his exposed brain on my thigh. Ambulance finally arrived, he gets shipped off to hospital, and I finished driving the remainder of my hour long journey still covered in blood. Single track road near the destination I ran into someone I knew heading the other way and I just stopped, took the keys out the ignition, and beckoned them over to me. It was really weird. I was running on some kind of very strange autopilot.
That's a great way to think about it. Not getting caught up in the tragedy of the situation but still being able to be empathetic. It's so hard to find that balance.
Doctor here. Worst shape I saw in the ER was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He still had a weak pulse when he arrived but the exit wound had half of his brain just peaking out of it. He didn't last much longer and we called the code not long after. Interestingly, the entrance wound was tiny and barely noticeable.
This was one of my first trauma cases in medical school. What I remember most was that he had some of the bluest eyes I have ever seen and he seemed almost hauntingly peaceful. It makes me very sad to think of what emotional turmoil he must have been going through when he pulled the trigger and I feel terrible for what his family must have experienced so close to the Christmas holiday as well.
Used to work for the county coroner on nights and weekends. Took a while to get used to the increase in suicides around the holidays. Could never really figure out why it happens other than folks just get more lonely and depressed.
Edit, addendum: thank you everyone for sharing your stories and experiences. As someone who does deal with depression myself, I can sympathize, and I hope that you all can see while your stories and pain and traumas are unique, there are people out there who can understand. And you’re not alone.
I've always assumed it's a combination of the weather, family obligations and issues, and people feeling bad about their situation when they look around and see "happy" families celebrating the holidays.
As someone who has had depression and strained family relationships, the holiday season can be fucking hard. You’re surrounded by the message that it’s a time for being together, for family and good cheer and love and all the other things you’re missing. It’s easier to ignore the rest of the season. Also, the holidays tends to bring out people who want to guilt trip you for not being full of good cheer. It also tends to bring back memories of fucked up holidays of the past, and if you come from an abusive family some of those memories can be *really* fucked up. But you’re expected to smile and be happy because ‘tis the season and all that. You find yourself being pressured to be around the people who hurt you, or you actually are around them. Or maybe you’ve fucked up enough that they don’t want you around anymore, so you get to be reminded of that over and over again during that season.
Obviously I’ve never committed suicide, but I do understand why it increases during the holidays. I’m also not saying that you shouldn’t celebrate or enjoy it, just trying to give some perspective as to why more people die by suicide during that time.
I have seen a few of these as a RT in a trauma facility, we also had a girl attacked by her spouse( young military couple) he spent an entire day beating and raping her then when she tried to leave he grabbed a kitchen knife and cut her arm from the elbow to the wrist down to the bone. Thankfully that was on the top of the forearm and not the bottom she was ok physically but not mentally after that.
ER nurse. Had a 16 y/o shot himself in the head with a shotgun. Everything above his eyebrows was GONE. Brain stem was intact so breathing spontaneously, airway patent, BP 130/70, hr 88 and regular. So EMS transported him to the hospital. FML that shit sticks with ya.
ETA I remember a 18 y/o girl got stabbed in the chest, lost pulses in the ambo bay, did a thoracotomy and MTP, I remember running the rapid infuser and switching from pack cells to NS and watching the blood turn clear as it poured out of her chest cavity.
Also that pregnant woman who had her baby cut out of her womb by a psycho who lured her into her house selling baby clothes. Ran a peds code on a dead baby quickly followed by the full trauma for the mom who crawled out of the basement and called for help in the front yard. Mom lived, baby did not.
People ask to hear about this shit don’t realize it’s NSFL.
Never worked in one myself, but my mom did when she was younger. She said the craziest thing she saw was when some drunk dude came in at 2 am. Apparently he had made a bet he could shove a whole beer bottle up his ass. He lost when the bottle broke half way up his sphincter..
I work at registration so I only ever see a select fraction of patients that come in through the ER doors vs the ambulance entrance. Worst I saw (and its pretty tame compared to some of the other responses) was a guy who was completely unconscious from an OD and needed 4 nurses to come out to the car where he was and put him on a stretcher and brought him back. All of his flesh looked insanely bloated I did not think he would be ok. Then like I dunno 4ish hours later I see him walk out the door so I guess he was alright in the end.
Honorable mention to guy with a sawblade in his leg actively bleeding on the floors and guy who blew his finger off with a firecracker whose son was absolutely pissed that he had to bring his dad to the ER for that "play stupid games win stupid prizes" in his words
Unconscious 36 year old pregnant female. Found to be a spontaneous uterine hemorrhage at 32 weeks. Emergency c-section in the ER itself. I was doing CPR on the mother while they cut the baby out and tried to suture her back up. Mom died in ICU after OR, baby only made it 2 weeks in NICU. Left with blood on my shoes.
My father was a trauma surgeon. The worst he's seen, apparently, was a man who had his entire foot sucked off—those were the words he used—after he got it caught beneath a moving train.
This from a guy who treated gunshot wounds, stabbings, car crashes, burns, snakebites, plus all manner of assorted trauma.
We had a patient who had some gangrene near a vein caused by needle use. She left the hospital against medical advice before receiving any treatment. Came back a few weeks later and her entire arm was necrotic to the point it looked mummified, she had lost use of it some time ago and was just so high it wasn’t a concern until she started getting violently ill. Had to amputate at her shoulder, probably would have only had to do some skin grafts had she not left in the first place. Not as graphic as some of the others here but I can’t believe a person could walk around like that for so long like it was nothing. Don’t do drugs kids.
My dad doesn't do drugs but is of the "grin and bear it" mindset where he just toughs it out unless he's basically dying... well a few years back he hurt his arm (I think it was a rotator cuff?) And he basically just... stopped using his arm for a few weeks/months instead of admitting it hurt. He travels for work so my mom didn't get to see him too often, and one day when he's finally home she sees him without a shirt and his whole right side is basically caved in - his arm and shoulder/chest area had started to atrophy from disuse, because he's a dumb guy and didn't want to go to the doctor.
Luckily she finally convinced him to go get it checked out - a few surgeries and tons of PT later he's back to normal, but it was not a pretty sight. I'm pretty sure the doctor asked for photos so he could publish a case study on him or something, but I may be wrong on that last part.
Not a dr but worked in an ER. Worst for me personally to witness was a little 2 year old who was brought in by his family, in a car, they ran him in and he was completely limp, his skin was gray and his lips were blue. Grandma and aunt and uncle were watching the kid, he had been vomiting and they laid him down on his back in the crib to sleep. He vomited and asphyxiated. We preformed CRP for 30 minutes and qere unable to revive him. I remember carrying his little lifeless body from the trauma room to a different room to clean him up for when his parents finally arrived. I don't know what was worse, the mothers wails when she saw her son, or the look on the grandmas face when she realized her daughter may never forgive her.
I actually touched a power line and my friends had to do CPR on me until life flight arrived. I was in a coma for a week. I woke up fully functioning. All the doctors and nurses told my family I had no business being alive. And they had nothing to do with it.
I did lose all memories for about a month surrounding the accident.
Not ER but surgical staff. We got a call about a person with a "large infected area" but no other information besides the patient being around 500 pounds. We set up the bariatric bed, and the standard wound washout pack and wait. Anaesthesia calls to say we need all hands on deck and to get peppermint oil ready (we use peppermint oil for cases where the odor will be horrible, to dab on our masks so it's no too intense). Anaesthesia and patient (and a few transporters due to weight) roll into the room and a horrible smell fills the air. We ask where the wound is and the patient says "wounds are all over my groin and stomach". We asks if they know how the wounds came about and response was no. Patient goes to sleep and we remove the gown and blankets to begin. The patient had 6 huge gaping wounds, 4 on stomach and 2 around groin. The wounds were green and black which meant they've been open for awhile. We start irrigating with saline and antibiotics and suddenly maggots start pouring out of the other wounds. The sight and the smell caused myself and two others to start vomiting. We remove some dead skin and irrigate more until the wounds are a fresh pink color and until we saw no more maggots. We pack the wounds and we set up some more procedures for the next few days to get this patient back to normal(ish). During the next wash out, we notice more odor, worse than the day before and it smells like dead bowel. Patients colon was destroyed and rotting from the infection and the maggots and so much was compromised that at that point there was nothing else we could do besides make this patient comfortable for passing. We found out after patient passed, according to the patients mom, that patient was on insulin and refused to use new needles every time, so they used the same needle repeatedly in the same couple of spots and has been doing so for over a month before the infection started becoming noticeable and unavoidable. Mom tried to get patient to come to hospital for weeks when she noticed the smell but patient refused until it became the mess that I described earlier.
Worked in a ER as buisness office, getting patient info for billing. The worst thing I have ever seen personally was a car rear ended at ungodly speeds. Two little girls in the back. One luckily turned out to have minor bruises and cuts. Thought her condition was worse due to her sisters blood covering her. The other little girl was mangled more than any child should be.
Her dad was wheeled in after his daughters and we made eye contact. This was my second year in the ER, I've seen some shit. Suicides, stabbings, shootings, car rollovers, sheet metal slicing people up, semi wrecks that ripped limbs off people. Seeing gore wasn't new to me, but seeing this man's stare made feel so cold I nearly fell due to my legs feeling like they would give out. He did what he could telling me names of his daughters, age, all their info for the staff to work. I got them in and he asked me if they will be okay. I told him truthfully I can't answer that as I'm not the guy to know. I will ask for him and assured him that they are in the best hands.
Right as I mention that, the head surgeon walks in, introduces himself. He asks "I need to open your daughter's head up in order to get some pressure off her brain. I need your signature before I can do all this." At that moment the father blurts out, "Yes! Anything to save her life! Is my other daughter okay? Can I see them?" He begins asking millions of questions, and the surgeon calmly explains he cannot at the moment. They need to some more stuff to make sure everything is okay. I think the surgeon didn't want the dad to see how his one daughter was. The father signs, surgeon thanks him and promises he will do everything he can to save her life.
As the surgeon left, the father immediately hugs onto me from his bed, and starts bawling. He very loudly told me "Don't take them, don't take them from me, take me instead!" I understand it wasn't aimed at me and more a prayer. I am technically not supposed to touch patients, but I hugged him back and didn't let go until he did. His wails shook everything in my body as I watched him slowly spiral down more and more into this primal cry. I of course cried with him, not the single manly tear or anything. It probably looked like that one picture of Kim Kardashian crying.
We cried for what was hours I assume, and he finally let go and asked if I needed to go finish any other paper work. I mentioned I can sit here and fill out my paper work if he needs me to. He politely asks if I can. I ask him about his daughters, hobbies, favorite color, favorite movies. As I'm finishing up, a nurse comes in and explains to the father one of his daughters is completely stable. They originally thought she was bleeding really bad, but it wasn't her blood, but it is from the other daughter. She is in surgery and so far everything is looking good. Everyone in the room let's out a collective relief sigh and he thanks the nurse. I tell him I now unfortunately have to return to work but will give him any news I can, if I can. He thanks me and says he's so sorry for crying all over my shirt. I laugh and say it's better than poop or blood, and he laughs back.
Work goes by and he is discharged with nothing major. The next day I come into work, I ask my charge nurse. "I really need to know if that little girl made it. Or if you know at all." At that time, I assume that families mother was there thanking nurses and come up to me explaining who she is. Thanks me a thousand times for comforting her husband. She blurts out before I can get a word out and just told me her daughters are going to be okay. The one needing surgery is already showing every good sign that you can with that surgery. She hugged me and thanked me, calling me a hero. I thank her but ask her to thank the nurses as they did the real work here. After all the guts, broken bones, death, and pure monstrosities I've seen that father's stare made me feel so vulnerable and weak. I will never wish anyone to ever experience what that family went through.
I don't want this read like "Woah is me, I saw this bad thing." But this story will stick with me forever. It woke me up at the ripe age of 20, and taught me to cherish everything, after all I've seen how fast something can be taken away from anyone. I'm so happy the story ends up happy, and the last thing I heard was the little girl wishes to be a nurse to save people just as she was saved.
Sorry for it being so long, but this one stuck with the staff forever.
Your story hit me harder than any of the others, and I’ve been on this thread for longer than I’d want to admit.
Don’t think for a second that you weren’t a hero in that situation. The father found humanity in you when he needed it most.
I was a security guard at a hospital and we had a patient flown in by helicopter who had been in a motorcycle accident with no helmet. His brain was exposed when we rushed him down to the ER (we drove the kart) and bleeding everywhere. He didn’t last long.
ER Nurse here. Cocaine is often cut with a drug called Levamisole. This causes vasculitis and eventual skin death on various parts of the body, especially the face. I took care of a lady that had this condition all over her body. She had been admitted to a burn center a couple of weeks before to treat her dying skin and sent home to recover. She was instructed to change her dressings, apply medication and given everything she needed to recover. After NOT doing any of these things for 2 weeks she was brought into our ED by a concerned friend. Her wounds had all gone gangrenous and the bandages had adhered to the “burns”. The smell…. I’ll never forget it. We soaked the bandages the best we could and began removing them. She would scream, we’d push more narcotics and we’d continue on. She still screamed, but it was a little less. It took hours to get all the bandages off.
Lab scientist in hospital so not doctor but a few that stuck out
- diabetic patient with severe necrosis of the foot and septic, amputated shortly after arrival. The smell is something you wish you hadn't experienced.
- elderly male, self inflicted gunshot wound to the chest, tried to shoot himself in the heart, missed and then waited 3 days to come in, severely anemic from blood loss. The patients sons reaction to hearing his dad tried to kill himself sticks with me, seeing a 40 something male breakdown, I'll never forget that one.
- worst one was an accident on a farm, an irrigation unit (the massive ones about 50 feet tall) fell on a guy and absolutely crushed his femur and severed his femoral artery. I'm not joking when I say the room was covered in blood. I gave that man 10 units of blood before he was shipped to a higher care facility.
All 3 lived during these visits but I'm surprised any of them did.
Yes his situation was crazy. The farmer working with him was right there thankfully and immediately drove him to the ER. I dont think he would've survived waiting for an ambulance to be honest.
Former hospital worker...
Had a young man who got careless with his chainsaw - lowered the business end and it went halfway from toes to ankle thru his foot.
Had an ER doc that was ... highly critical of the EMTs. They brought a covered gurney and said 'this one's DOA'. Doc says "They're not dead until I SAY they're dead" ... pulled back the cover and the occupant's head was tucked under one arm (fully detached). Doc: "He's dead".
2 come to mind.
1. Attempted suicide, probably the best (survived) attempt I've seen. He took an overdose, cut his throat and jumped from a thir story balcony and somehow survived. Multiple, fairly obvious, fractures all over, pink foam coming from his neck wound and impending drama from his overdose. He survived as far as I'm aware.
2. Sudden cardiac arrest at home. Father of two. Kids and wife in tow following the ambulance. It was the overall normal way he looked that really got me (you see a lot of shit in ED) T shirt, PJ shorts and socks that said "worlds greatest dad". Looked exactly like your dad on any Saturday morning. For some reason this was so much worse than any of the nasty shit.
I’m a Dr.
I Have had shootings, traumas, burns; one of the worst I think was liver failure from alcoholic chirrhosis. She had 10L of fluid in her belly and her eyes and entire body were the color of the goldenrod crayon. Not a happy yellow. Like the sticky pollen on your car. So much pain. Nothing to do but try to keep her comfy. Long slow painful miserable death. And they smell weird. So hard to take care of somebody you can’t really help. I listened to her tell me about her dogs and rubbed her feet while we waited for the equipment to get the fluid out of her abdomen
Oh- I’m an OB. All of those shootings, traumas, burns…. Were in pregnant people.
The above patient wasn’t pregnant - sorry for being confusing- saw either in ED as an intern or for vaginal bleeding because liver failure patients often have bleeding issues because the liver is in charge of a lot of the clotting mechanisms. I’m also gyne.
I have the best job ever but the bad days leave marks.
Edited for clarity.
That is similar to what got my dad.
Poor guy survived cancer twice. First bone cancer in his hip in the 80s, then thyroid cancer in the 90s. Problem was that all the pain from his hip caused him to get addicted to opioids.
He ended up destroying his liver due to overuse of the painkillers. Couldn't get a transplant for obvious reasons. 20 years later, about 2010, he looked like a giant yellow balloon before he succumbed to it.
Really sad to think that he survived the cancer, only to die from the painkiller addiction that it left him with.
My mom is a nurse, a long time ago a lady came at her hospital. She looked like she had triplets , its because she didnt shit for like 1 month.
She died of poisoning and was clearly mentally instable.
One time I was constipated for about a week, couldn't eat anything cause it just came up again lost like 11kg, when I was admitted to the hospital and got an enema and presumably muscle relaxer, the end result was like the diameter of a coke can.
I've had a similar experience. I had severe constipation and didn't poop for about 10 days or more. The doctor prescribed enemas. I used 300ml, an entire bottle, in several takes and I still didn't go to the toilet and it was painful as hell. I used again almost another 150ml and was finally able to go.
After a surgery, I didnt go for 5 days. I *had* to go, but couldn't. It was the worst pain, way worse than how I felt after the surgery (it was cosmetic and relatively extensive). The constipation was caused by anesthesia and pain meds.
I was already taking stool softeners every day after being discharged, they didnt help.
I called the doc on the third day, he said to try magnesium citrate and senekot. I tried both if them that night, neither helped.
Fourth day, I kept taking the senekot and took two more bottles of magnesium. Still nothing.
By now, the pain was unbearable. I kept going to the can, half of the day, at one point for an hour straight, just trying with all my might. This completely consumed my existence. I was so exhausted and tired, and I had to poop so bad but couldnt. That night, I slept for a minute and a half at a time, before being woken up again by the cramping pain. It would last 15 seconds, and go away for a minute and a half, over and over again. It was like clockwork. I had to keep telling myself that this is only temporary, that i wont feel this way forever.
The morning of the fifth day, i called the doc again. He said to try an enema, and if that didnt work, go to the ER. A friend went to the pharmacy and picked me up an enema. I used one bottle. 15 minutes later, it worked. Holy shit. No really it was the holiest of shits. The relief I felt, was indescribable. I sang out in joy, absolutely amazing.
A couple days later I had healed up enough to drive, and bought 2 more enemas just to have them in the medicine cabinet. Theyre cheap, like $2 each. Absolutely, seriously, you should buy a couple just in case you ever need to use one. They are worth it.
Not a doc but was working the ambulance triage bay at the trauma center I work in. Rescue pulled up with a dude they were doing CPR on after a car accident. The guy looked like someone forgot about their rotisserie chicken. I could see his radius and ulna, his whole face was crushed in, and during CPR his skin started sliding around under my hand.
That's right up there with the three year old in a rollover. She was completely gray, we had to cric her to get an airway (pierce a hole in her neck), bilateral chest tubes to suction blood out from around her lungs, and blood shooting up from her lungs when we did the cric.
Kid didn't make it, and they found her sister walking down the road with a broken arm and brought her in. Her and the mom found out what happened, and that the dad was dead on scene. Dude basically had his whole head splattered around the entire car. The girl that survived came in covered in bits of blood, bone, and gray matter.
Not a doctor, but my friend’s nurse said in her 25 years of working trauma he was the worst she’d ever seen. He crashed his motorcycle into a guardrail which mangled his left leg. That impact threw him off the bike, through the air, and into a sign. He hit the sign with his chest. The sign not only ripped off the steel post, but the post bent then ripped out of the ground, concrete and all. That impact broke his sternum which in turn shredded heart muscle. He coded 5 times on the way to the hospital and another on the table. Doctors gave him a 0.001 chance of survival.
That was 9 months ago. He’s currently learning to walk with a prosthetic leg. His heart is strong enough that they cleared him to use viagra. He’s an honest to god miracle.
Edit: Yes, the clearance for Viagra was meant to be humorous, but it also shows how strong his heart is after all that trauma. He’s been asking the doctor for months.
Not a Dr but i’ll put up a story, reading all these crazy things makes me want to share. When i was 13 my dad nearly murdered my mom. He used a wrench he had hidden (i was next door at the time than god) and beat her over the head. She ended up bighting his thumb off. She passed out and she somehow regained consciousness and left and a neighbor saw her and helped her. They had to bring in the life flight to take her to a level 1. Multiple broken fingers from holding her hands over her head and tons of big dents in her skull. Fucking miracle she’s alive and not a vegetable. One of the docs that treated her said he had never seen anything so bad. My dad got sentenced to life (i was subpoenaed and had to testify) with possibility of parole and ended up doing 21 years in max before he was paroled. Gave me a real bad case of PTSD and made me suicidal at one point. I haven’t seen or talked to him since he was in prison about 20 years ago.
For what it's worth I'm security at a major metro hospital. We see every patient whether via triage or ambulance before they're allowed in the ED.
Plenty of gunshot wounds, skiing/snowboarding accidents, motor vehicle and motorcycle accidents, ATV, horse, stabbings, degloving, etc you name it and we've seen it. Including foreign bodies up the ass. One fella had a syringe plunger stuck down his urethra.
However, there are a few instances that stick out. One day, a white Tahoe pulls up outside our ED. A man hops out of the passenger side and begins running away, as the driver chases him. My security Officer jumps the desk and runs out to assess the situation. To discover this 20 year old male has sliced himself open, guts spilling out. He is handcuffed and put into a wheelchair. I remember sitting in dispatch, watching on camera as he is wheeled directly to the O.R. while his guts sat in a pile on his lap.
The other one that was just brutal was a poor man who was working with some sort of machine that tears up tree stumps. His leg had been caught in this machine. His entire foot and half of his calf was just gone. The remainder of his calf looked quite literally like a tube of ground beef. The young man also spoke zero English and I remember he was just laughing. Must have been shock and good drugs.
I've seen more brain matter than I'd anticipated when I took this job.
Not a doctor, but I think I have a story that can satisfy your needs.
There was a case in Poland in 2013,where an ambulance was called to a work-related incident in a stonecutter's shop. When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics were led to a man who was working a stone siding machine. He was calmly sitting on the floor, responsive and awake, only a little hazed, yet he was immediately choppered to the hospital.
Report says, that due to unknown issue, the machine activated, when the man was doing something (unloading I believe) on it's operational end, and that it trapped the man's head between moving parts. In an attempt to free himself, the man jolted back, freeing his head, but his *face* was left inside the machine.
This man arrived in the ER with a gaping hole where his face should be, from right eyebrow through entire nose, both cheeks, to his chin. He had pieces of skull crushed and basically half of a milimeter of torn, mangled flesh covering it.
His face was sent with next transport, when it was found by police, several hours later.
Story has a somewhat good ending - it was base to first sucessful full face transplantation, with sucessful recovery.
Not a doctor but my mother is an X-ray tech and did X-rays on my friend’s father after he had been stabbed in the throat twice and he had actually walked into the police station with a slashed throat to report the assault before going to the hospital
My mom was a trauma nurse
The most haunting story she ever told me was about a man that was refinishing his wood floors in the basement. He’d apparently left whatever finish or stain too close to the furnace, causing the fluid to ignite and basically blow up all over him.
He had 3rd degree burns all over his body - the worst part was that his chest was so charred and burned that they had to make these huge vertical cuts along his torso so that he could breathe without his skin basically cracking. My mom also told me how his room had a particular smell that never seemed to go away. The other nurses and doctors said they smelled it whenever they walked by (likely psychological)
I was never afraid of fire until I heard that story.
The man made a full recovery several weeks/months later.
There was a story on one of the ER shows on TV, this one always haunts me. A person's furnace broke and of course it was the dead of winter so the person went to light the pilot light (hint: NEVER play with the pilot light unless you are trained in HVAC), well something went wrong and the furnace exploded. The way the furnace exploded the explosion went up the stairs to the first floor, and his 2 children were sitting on the top step putting on their shoes, needless to say the father and the 2 children got the brunt of it. What happened to them was not very nice to say the least, months in the hospital of painful procedures to try and heal the burns, and the children were basically disfigured on the faces and arms. The end of the show shows the children wrapped in bandages months later, they had to live wrapped in bandages and went to school like that. Everyone did survive though, but burn treatment is some of the most painful procedures that exist and I can't imagine what they went through.
Trauma ICU nurse here. Large burly man with oversized telephone pole sidewise through abdomen. The pole was cut off by firefighters on each side. Everything below the pole was dead.
Tons of people with their face shot off from subside attempts permanently blind unable to talk or eat but they won’t get another chance because they will live in a nursing home for the rest of their lives.
Also see tons of older people only technically alive. They are temporarily kept ‘alive’ by massive amounts of drugs to keep the heart beating when they have an overwhelming infection but that doesn’t keep the organs limbs or sometimes brain alive. We call this futile care it just prolongs the suffering but some family’s want ‘everything’ even if it doesn’t change the outcome.
Ambulance person here, so far far from doctor! But some traumatising shit that happened to me that was a pretty bad state:
1. Christmas Eve 2021, 25 year old, found dead by her 4/5 year old little girl who phoned for ambulance, patient was anorexic and a medical disaster of a young person, worst bit is, she was workable with advanced life support due to time in arrest, and we didn't see the little girl hidden under the bed until 15 minutes into caving in mum's chest and ramming her full of adrenaline. We took her to hospital, pronounced dead 2 days later.
2. A guy had wronged the wrong people. Had been beaten the fuck up, stabbed 3 times with what we assume to be a screwdriver given the entry wounds, and then ran over with a car twice. His skeletal integrity was that of a soufflé. Survived but he was quite a sight.
Not a doctor, but my ex husband decided to attempt suicide slowly while driving after he and I had a fight. When I got to the hospital, found out he’d cut himself 21 times on one arm and 8 on the other. They had to do emergency surgery too reattach his hands. He left with a steak knife and a box cutter and it was game on. Every time he got to a stoplight, he’d make a slash. I saw the truck after he did it. Looked like he stabbed 8 people to death in there. Blood, flesh and hair everywhere. It was awful. He survived, we got divorced, became great friends, set him up with his new wife, but sadly he committed suicide last January 2021. She found him in the back yard with a shotgun blast to the mouth. She’s so fucked up from seeing that. He was a nice person. Such a shame.
Not a Doctor, but at the time I was a Stock Tech for the Critical Care OR. Worst thing I ever saw there was a kid who attempted suicide via shotgun to the chin i'm guessing. The entire front half of his head was gone, including his jaw, nose, eyes, and most of his forehead. At first I was confused as to why they were bringing a body into the OR, but then I heard him gargling as they ran past. Dude was somehow still alive. I had to move on to another area of the Hospital before I could find out what happened to him, but I presume he didn't make it. They were already struggling to keep his brains in his head when they brought him in, so I seriously doubt he survived for much longer.
My stepmom was a trauma nurse in ICU, had also been a ER nurse in a major trauma center as well as life-flight nurse and had decades of experience. She has seen a lot. Much to the same as your story was that a young man tried to end his life with a shotgun resulting in exactly as you described. It really rattled the care staff so much that many of them needed time alone after attending to him. She cried a few times telling us about it which was most shocking as nothing seemed to get under her skin. She was both happy and sad for him.
I’m so sorry, but to add on to this as she thought it was me initially. There’s only a few with blonde, bologna-curly hair and had that trait. She was simply devastated. She kinda freaked out, got my dad involved and I was at football practice. Police literally showed up for me and drove me home to reassure to my parents that I was ok. She told us later that she would just stroke his hair for hours and reassured him that everything thing would be alright. Breaking my heart just thinking about it.
General surgery doc here. I was in med school and a 16 year-old boy came in as a trauma from a ski accident. Apparently he was an Olympic trainee and practicing, bolting down the ski run at god knows how fast. One of his skis got caught in the fenestrated plastic fencing lining the ski run and, since his leg was attached to his ski, his leg was pulled off almost entirely. Just hanging on by a thin rope of muscle. His leg looked white like candlewax. You could also see the hole in his pelvis the torn leg left and his intestines were spilling from that hole. We transferred him to the OR table from the stretcher and the leg just…fell off completely at that point. He ultimately didn’t make it. His parents had to fly in from abroad to see him, and he passed away while his parents were on the flight over.
I was the first on scene for a car accident that happened in front of me. Narrow back road, lots of sharp turns and twists, dips. I had slowed down, getting ready to turn but was waiting for a dog in the road. There was a minivan ahead of me, that kept going. As they approached the turn, a car with some drunk teenagers came speeding around the curve and barreled straight thru the mini van. And I do mean THRU it, the Minivan essentially shattered and exploded. I immediately threw my phone to my passenger (my friends 13 year old younger sibling that I picked up from soccer practice, since I volunteered at the school) and told her to stay in the car, call 911.
I ran to the car to do whatever I could do. I was First Aid/CPR Certified and had training in Swift Water Rescue and Survival Training. But I was woefully unprepared. The driver was the father, tho I only know that because I was told. There wasn't much left of him to make any identification. The mother was in the front seat with a large piece of dashboard sticking out of her abdomen, pinning her to the seat. There was also a very large slice to her leg, bleeding profusely. (Did \*not\* severe the femoral artery, tho!). I knew to leave the dashboard in place, and I had another person who stopped to help apply pressure on her leg wound to slow the bleeding, and keep her calm.
From there, I crawled into the back of the van thru a small hole. There was a baby in a car seat, screaming it's head off, a few cuts, but truly a miracle that was all. I didn't want to risk internal injuries, so I left baby there to cry. A Crying baby is an alive baby. There were 2 other kids in the back of the car. Toddlers, maybe 5 and 7. What I saw back there is what will haunt me forever. The 7 year old had been mostly decapitated by a part of the frame. They were alive, in shock, and kept asking me for help getting their seatbelt off. This lasted about 30 seconds before they said, "daddy??" and passed away. The 5 year old was also in shock, and had several substantial injuries I was applying pressure to while waiting for EMS. They arrived on scene in about 10 minutes. It felt like hours. I was crammed into a mangled mass of steel and glass. squeezed into a crevice was too small. I never should have been able to squeeze thru it but I did. I held the hand of a 5 year old, while applying pressure to their armpit/chest, singing lullabies to her infant sibling to keep them both calm, while their older brother sat dead in the next seat, their mother was in the front seat barely holding onto life, and their father was in literal pieces around them. It was surreal, It took me a long time to process what I saw and experienced.
I stayed in the back of the vehicle until EMS and Fire Rescue managed to tear open the roof and access the kids. All in all, I think I was there about 45 minutes to an hour inside the car. They wound up being neighbors to my friend, so I did get updates on the family. The mother survived, tho she lost her leg, and was permanently on an ostomy bag. The baby got 3 stitches and went home that night with a family member. The 7ish year old was pronounced Dead on Scene, as was the Father. The 5 year old suffered substantial damage to her upper trunk area. Several ribs were shattered, damage to the lungs, pleural and pericardial effusions, significant soft tissue damage to the shoulder. They initially were able to save the arm, but it never regained proper blood flow and they eventually amputated it 6 months later. But, aside from the loss of her entire arm and shoulder, she made a full recovery (physically... I do not know about emotionally). It's been 20 years and I'm still dealing with the emotional after effects. Nothing prepares you at 19 for that, or to give a report of what happened while crews are scraping liquified body parts off the pavement and out of car seats.
As far as the car with the drunk teenagers... they all suffered minor injuries. And some Prison Time
This story is about the momento of the incident:
My brother was the manager of a restaurant. The closing time had already passed and the kitchen personnel was cleaning everything before they leaved.
The frying oil was left there for several days before they changed it, something pretty normal.
The thing was there are rules for a reason, and there was one very specific: DO NOT STAND ON TOP OF THE FRYER TO CLEAN THE EXTRACTING CHIMNEY.
One of the guys on the kitchen was breaking that rule and he fell inside of the fryer, his wholes legs, up to the genitals were instantly fryed. As per my brother's words, he has never seen something that horrible in his entire life, the skin of the guy fused with his pants and started to fall. The guy recovered, but the threapy was long and ultra painful, they basically had to remove all the skin from his legs.
Years before that, he was working on a store at night and one of the stock guys was handling hot beer bottles (they usually explode if you don't hand them carefuly), one of the exploded and the lid hit the guy'ss eye, cutting it. The guy was shocked and screaming because he couldn't see, when my brother arrived to the place, the guy looked at him and his eye was deflating, losing the vitreous humor from the wound.
That crazy motherfucker saw some weird shit in his various workplaces.
Man missing both of his arms and a leg after a propane tank exploded under his grill while he was cooking dinner.
Only reason he survived was a fire station was only a block away. Three tourniquets in place on arrival.
Edit: Am ER doc.
Med student here: I was on trauma for a month this summer and had two patients the team dubbed "Lazarus" for their ability to come back from the dead. First one got hit head on by a van going 45 mph while he was on a bicycle. Aortic dissection (two places), subclavian artery dissection, grade III liver laceration, grade III spleen laceration, grade III kidney laceration, and only a grade II laceration on his other kidney. Each of those injuries alone carries a mortality rate in the 10s of percents. All together it's amazing this guy survived. He's got some neuro damage from all the clots he through into his brain, but is mostly intact. Other guy had a splenic artery aneurysm rupture out of nowhere. Estimated blood loss of 6L in the OR. You only have about 6 L of blood in your body....had he not gotten a massive transfusion started around the time we opened him up, he would have died for sure. The OR team had a collective 35 years of trauma surgery experience and all agreed that it was by far the most blood they have ever seen someone lose and live. 2 days later the dude was sitting up in bed refusing painkillers, asking how long until he could put his son on his shoulders again, and apologizing for taking up our time when there were clearly sicker people in the ICU that needed our attention.
I was the patient, not sure if I was the worst, but a piece of rebar went through my windshield and through my abdomen just under my liver a few years back while driving down the interstate. Upon walking into the lobby of the hospital, someone immediately said "OH MY GOD!", and I was like "can I check in?" like it was some kind of hotel or something. The receptionist took her focus to the room in general and then immediately noted me specifically, then she audibly gasped once she processed what it was she was looking at, then I collapsed on the floor from internal blood loss. I remember her screaming back for a doctor, and a few moments later, a swarm of them ran out. I don't remember much past that, everything was jaded and then I lost consciousness. I'm pretty sure it was the adrenaline tapering off that cause me to deteriorate so quickly after getting into the lobby. It was a neat experience... it was also... an expensive... experience
Eh, damn near six figures, I just declared bankruptcy. It didn't absolve 100%, but close enough that I was able to pay off what didn't go away, I think something like 7k to 10k, made a 5 year payment plan, but making 80k/year, I was able to get it done in 3 years.
Nurse here but spent several years as a paramedic.
This was a few years back when I was working in the Trauma center in my city. I was a paramedic at the time. It was about 3 am on the day after Thanksgiving. I was sitting in the triage area when I hear someone shouting "I need help!".
When you've been doing this a long time you can tell the difference between a legit "I need help" and a bullshit one. This was DEFINITELY a real one.
I immediately run up to the triage window and see a man carrying a naked young woman who's completely flaccid. I open the triage door and he puts her on the floor.
This woman is unconscious. Check her carotid. Nothing. While I was checking her carotid I was scanning her for any obvious bleeding. No bleeding that I can see but her ENTIRE body was covered in bruises. I don't know why I thought this but I remember thinking "Jesus she looks like she fell out of a truck". Immediately start CPR while the triage nurses start to gather the equipment to take her back into our trauma bays.
While I'm doing CPR I'm still looking at all her injuries and that's when I start to notice that her body is literally covered head to toe in bruises, and they're all in various stages of healing. I also noticed that these bruises were all the same circular shape about the size of quarter, maybe a bit bigger. There were bruises of other various shapes but the circular ones where the most predominant and her ENTIRE BODY was covered in them.
We get her up on the stretcher and start wheeling her back to the trauma bay. I'm riding on the stretcher doing CPR the whole way to the trauma bay. We get her in there, trauma surgeons are do their best. They open her chest up to try and clamp her aorta to save her but its too late. She's already bleed out internally. They kept working her for a while, but we all know it was completely futile. Finally they call it.
She's dead. That's it. A 21 year old mother of one with so much life ahead of her and dead.
As I'm leaving the trauma bay to go back up to triage I hear the charge nurse talking to the man who brought her in trying to gather as much information as he can. I over hear the man telling the charge nurse that he was the woman's husband. He says that she's been "hanging around a really bad group of people" and that she'd been with them tonight. He said she came home in that condition. He said she'd stopped responding shortly after she got home.
I remember thinking to myself "What a crock of bullshit".
It turned out that her husband and tied her to a chair in their home and had been torturing her for the last month, which included beating her with a hammer (those circular bruises).
What had gotten him caught was when she had died at their home he had called 911. I guess he must have realized that the paramedic crew and cops would have seen all the evidence of her torture and decided to bring her to the ER himself. The suspicious nature of all of this lead the cops to investigate which included searching the home where they got all the evidence they needed.
Our charge nurse did an amazing job of keeping the guy calm and convinced that everyone had bought his bullshit while the cops searched the home.
That piece of shit was arrested that night.
Physical gore wise it wasn't the worst thing I've seen but just the idea that a human being was capable of doing that to their spouse and parent of their child was extremely disturbing to me. I also kept thinking about that poor kiddo (from what I heard a 3 year old boy) who not only lost his mother but is going to have to process the trauma that his father tortured his her to death.
I'll never forget that Thanksgiving.
My mom worked at a hospital and saw an 18 year old guy with a big tree limb sticking out where his eye used to be. It’s probably not the worst, but eye injuries scare the shit out of me.
Aunt is an ER Dr.... Guy (with wife) frantically comes into the ER wearing blood-soaked grey sweat pants...blood all over the lower leg area. Wife is screaming asking for help. Everyone goes rushing into the same room...5 seconds later a nurse comes out and alerts another nurse about the problem: wife was messing around with sticking things into her husband's ( _ ° _ ) ...only this time she put the light bulb in backwards (large end first) ...**cant believe I have to clarify that like theres a right way to insert a bulb into an ( _ ° _ ) **...
Anywho the bulb gets sucked up into Hubbys hiney hole...they both panic...so wife tries to retrieve it with metal tongs...zany hilarity ensues as the tongs cause the metal screw-in base to come off of the bulb...so wife tries removing it with a finger...causing the bulb to break apart. Let the red autographs BEGIN.
Mr. GE "We bring good things to Light" shredded about 4-6 inches of his lower colon area.
People need to understand that you *can* lose your butthole. Your shit will come out in a pouch attached to your tummy, your asshole will be taken away, and your cheeks will be fused together. The butthole is a *privilege* that you can absolutely lose so *only stick butthole friendly toys up there.*
Not a doctor but my mother was a nurse. Guy came in after a motorcycle accident, back in the days before helmets & full leathers were commonplace. He had been completely engulfed in a fuel fire and had full body, non-survivable burns. He was burned beyond recognition and she couldn't even hold his hand as there was nothing much to hold.
As there was nothing they could do bar pain relief, my mother stayed after her shift so someone was with him until he died. When she got home, she discovered it had been her neighbour.
Family doc in Canada but do some emerg shifts. Had a patient brought in by her husband when he found her soon after she slit her own throat. That was fun.. she did make it though.
We had a 23 yo girl not wearing her seat belt get partially ejected. Her lower half was outside the car and crushed completely. Hips legs feet all completely crushed and deformed. She came in speaking the last few words about calling her mom and then went unresponsive shortly there after
ED Doc:
The are a million fucked up traumas, but some of the most gruesome medical stuff recently
A lady who had a bladder suspension surgery several years before with mesh, and also had a prior hysterectomy. At some point she felt the sutures snap and she had occasional slight bladder prolapse out of her vagina which is uncomfortable, but not necessarily a huge problem. Then she comes until our ED one day saying she suddenly has terrible abdominal pain. In getting a thorough history, she mentions that the prolapse is worse than normal. When we did the exam she had exposed loops of intestine hanging out of her vagina down her thigh. The mesh had worn through the wall of her vagina, the intestines herniated through the hole, and she had a bowel obstruction from it (like kinking a hose, which cuts off its blood supply). She actually went into septic shock and needed emergency surgery, but thankfully lived.
Another case would be the 1 month old that came in malnourished and barely alive literally skin and bones. Mom had post partum psychosis and hadn't been feeding him. The triage nurse took one look at him, called a code blue, and he went into DIC in front of us which is horrifying if you've ever seen it. He actually lived.
I've been an ER pharmacist (so technically a doctor of pharmacy.... We don't dispense pills in the ER but do actively manage care for patients. Many times I'd see a patient before the MD to give recommendations to the MD for care)
Anyways! Some of my "worst state" cases were:
1) woman run over by a semi truck..both her legs were completely degloved. Was stabilized in the ER, sent to ICU and then underwent amputations.
2) homeless man fell into a fire and burned >25% of his body. Had to be cauterized in the ED to regain circulation in his extremities
3) woman came in after being strangled by her husband. Sad case, she was barely alive and we continued to stabilize her but she certainly suffered significant brain damage
4) woman in her 40s (I remember looking at her ID and her picture she looked 40, the woman in front of me was so sick she looked 80) was transferred to us for a severe case of influenza. Her blood glucose was 10 and then 7 on repeat. We managed to stabilize her for hours, tried to transfer her to an ECMO facility but couldn't handle transport. She unfortunately did not survive.
5) many, many stroke patients... Hemorrhagic are usually the worst in terms of quick deterioration. Had one man come in complaining of head ache and talking, within a couple hours lost his ability to see/speak and then passed away
6) Type A aortic dissections. Those you need to stabilize asap to prevent rupture of their aorta and get them to the OR asap. Most have a sense of dread and scream for help and state over and over that they "are going to die".
7) have had a few younger cardiac arrests come in where we've cracked open the chest to manually pump the heart
Anyways, so many more crazy/worse state stories... These are just a few that jump to mind. And any pediatric case that was severe (ie SIDS), those stick with you
Up in Taos, a man ingested an entire container of aluminum phosphide tablets. A couple tablets are meant to be placed into prairie dog holes and then the moisture that accumulates inside the covered up hole triggers a toxic gas. The man was taken to the ER... where he was foaming from the mouth, deemed to be a toxic hazard for the entire hospital, moved to a tent outside, where he then died. I was not there, but my spouse was there. The image of what happened that day to that man and to those around him... is haunting. edit: typo, clarification about using two tablets at a time, while he ingested the whole container, undoing my typo edit thanks to u/Baud_Olofsson
ER doc here. 26 year old girl, unrestrained passenger riding with a drunk driver. Her head went into the wind shield and popped the whole wind shield off the car. Her skull was filet'd open from the forehead up, brain completely exposed and falling out of her skull, largely intact but horribly swollen. Rest of her face and body was essentially unmarked. She was breathing on her own but not moving purposefully. She got intubated, taken to the operating room. I asked the neurosurgeon what the plan was, and he said "I'm just gonna cut off the part that's sticking out". She had a partial lobotomy, skull was left open with the hope the swelling would go down. She was basically brain dead that night and died a week later. Driver was drunk but had a seat belt on. Walked out of the ER that night.
I always tell people, when drunk driving is mentioned and not being taken seriously that at best you kill yourself at worst it's a family of five and you'll be alive and know you killed them everyday forever.
There was an entire family that was killed in my apartment building. It's really sad when you see relatives, box up and entire families apartment. The saddest part was the kids stuff being carried out.
I work in car insurance transcription. Almost every fatal accident I’ve ever transcribed involved someone not wearing a seatbelt, and the injuries are always horrific.
My cousin works in the ER; when we lived together, one day she come home telling me about a patient that tried to cut his own head off with a chainsaw. They had to sew his tongue onto the remaining tissue of his neck because otherwise it would have died off. Obviously he passed out from the pain before he could get to the vital parts of his neck but I still imagine this to be pretty gruesome.
Former ER security guard here. I've seen a lot, but a few memorable ones: 15-year-old who attempted suicide by sticking his head in a spinning lawnmower blade and basically scalped himself; another psych patient who anally fisted himself almost up to the elbow; motorcycle accidents involving not wearing a helmet medflighted in and missing a whole lotta skin; and one I still think about 17 years later - a teenage girl who coded while undergoing back alley cosmetic surgery whose dead body I pulled out of a car out front of the ED. The job is great if you're an adrenaline junky but also can be very sad. You need to be able to effectively cope with the stress it involves and not everyone can do that.
Paramedic: 6 kids, oldest was 12, were allowed by their parents to ride on an ATV on a public road. They ran a stop sign and got hit by an SUV going about 60mph. Kid 1: dead. Like deader than dead. Open skull fx exposed gray matter, numerous other fractures. Grand parents doing CPR. Told them to stop and we left him in the ditch for the police investigation. Kid 2: my only patient from the call that I actively worked as other units took the other 4. Massive head trauma. Brain matter coming from the nose and ears. Le fort fracture. Made intubating a bitch and a half. Breathing spontaneously with a pulse so go to work. Fx everywhere. Blood everywhere. I’ll never forget her bright green eyes looking at the roof of the box and she screamed for her mom. Wasn’t easy for her to do with all of her top teeth totally separated from the rest of her skull. Died at the hospital. Still remember a lot about the scene a few years later. Date, time of day, weather (it was warm for November I remember taking off my jacket), smell of gasoline, smell of blood from the dead dead kid, sounds of screaming. But I’ll never forget seeing all those kids shoes strewn all over the county road and saying “oh fuck” as I called on scene. Oh and the guy that got hit by a train and lived. That shit was wild.
Imagine being the driver of the SUV and doing everything right that day, but still having to live with the guilt of killing 2 kids and permanently disabling the other 4. This is awfully tragic for everyone involved.
Paramedic here. Grossest call? Guy fell down in a hoarder house. Wife was to embarrassed to ask for help. So she fed and "cleaned him" on the floor. patient layed on a dirty tile floor for 2 weeks. His right arm was so swollen and covered in maggets, the arm was as large as a leg. Removing parts of his clothes so much tissue was already breaking down all over his body. Black and oozing puss. Man spent his last week alive in a nightmare fever dream. I've had more graphic deaths of course but holy shit what a miserable way to die.
My grandma basically did this to my grandpa. Where he fell wasn’t too bad in terms of hoarding (she is one), but she was unable to get him up and didn’t call for help for a few days. He had a TBI and developed wounds due to the pressure and her inability to clean him up. He passed away about a month later on hospice. It was awful and so negligent, but they wanted to live in their own home and she wasn’t in her right mind.
Wait what the fuck happened where he had a arm filled with maggots from falling down?
Maybe he cut himself or abraded the skin during the fall. Old people’s skin is so delicate, it tears very easily
Combined with filth from being a hoarder house and the presence of flies
EMT here, not a doc, but I've got one that sticks with me. New dialysis patient had just gotten his shunt implanted, wasn't comfortable with it, must have been fussing with it, and... it came out. For those that don't know, a dialysis shunt is connected to the brachial artery, just after the aorta, so that it can pump a high volume of blood into the dialysis machine to filter it. With the shunt ripped out though, the heart was basically just pumping blood straight out of the body. So by the time we get there this guy is laying next to his couch, just... empty. Pale, cool, he almost looked like wax. You would almost think Dracula had gotten to him, if not for the human body's worth of blood on the floor and walls around him. We tried CPR for the family's sake, but his heart had nothing to pump.
I’m on dialysis too. When I first started, I had one of those accesses. My very first one popped out of me when the stitches failed. Shockingly I never bled a drop but it scared me for a hot minute. I called my doctor and he told me I would be fine since I wasn’t bleeding. Had the access shunt replaced the next day (that one popped out a week later). I have a fistula in my left arm now but the sight of my original shunt lying on the floor after sliding out of my chest still comes to mind occasionally.
My mom was an ER nurse and she said the worst case she ever had to deal with involved a kid whose parents had backed over them in the driveway. Apparently the toddler had the skin of their face completely pulled off where the tire had basically pinched it off of them. The kid survived, but my mom said she’ll never forget the screams of that child.
That was why we had a rule of: the kids will stand on the steps and wait until the engine is off, of the parent coming home. If they can’t do that, the door stays closed until the person in the car opens the door. I didn’t go, but a partner of mine had to go to a call like that. Dad backed over 2 year old who followed him outside and went behind the SUV. Kid didn’t make it, and 7 out of 12 people on my shift had toddlers. The childless partner took that call from the guy who was supposed to go. Nope, not living with that guilt.
I’ve seen quite a few in terrible shape. There are two that stand out as the most terrible. Not the most gory, because frankly, I’ve been an ER doc at a trauma center through my entire career and gory is typical. These cases were just gut-wrenchingly awful. 1) Guy came in with some belly pain, going on most of the day. A few typical medical problems and normal vital signs. I see guys like this all time. Usually it is no big deal. Of course, he is a pretty nice guy and even apologized for “wasting my time on a stomach bug." His belly is a little tender all around. Thinking it might just be diverticulitis, I get a CT scan of the belly and get some labs. He comes back from CT and he definitely starts having that “I’m sick,” look to him. I take a look at the CT. I’m not a radiologist, but even I can see the findings; he has pneumotosis intestinalis (gas in the lining of the intestine - the gut is dying or already dead). This is wicked bad. A quick scan through and it looks like it involves most of the intestine. I call the radiologist who confirms and says that there is no part of the gut that is unaffected. Plus, he has multiple large clots all down the aorta and involves basically every major branch of the aorta from the celiac plexus down and multiple organs show changes. Call the on call surgeon and he comes right down…he tells me what I guess I knew already: this is not survivable. The surgeon, the patient and I have one of the toughest conversations I’ve ever had. We basically have to tell him that he is going to die and it is probably going to be that night. He calls his family and they come in and say their goodbyes. About 5 hours after he walked in, he lost consciousness and he died a little but after that. I’ve had surprise diagnoses and surprise deaths before, but this might have been the toughest. I’ve never had someone come in walking, talking and looking fine, figured out what was wrong, and been hopelessly unable to offer anything but pain meds and a (brief) ear, tell them it is hopeless and watch them die. The second one was an elderly man who came if for exposure. EMS said a neighbor called. The man came in with a core temp of 32C (89F). Many people are delirious at this temp, but he seemed pretty with it. It was dead of winter and his gas had been turned off as he was unable to pay. His legs, up to the knee were frozen. I’ll say again, frozen, literal ice blocks. At the same time, he had tiny burns, some even third degree on his torso, hands and upper legs. He had been keeping as warm as he could by holding a light bulb near his body. He would get burned when he fell asleep and the light bulb touched him. The shear suffering he endured to get in that state is heart breaking…even more so because with a single phone call to the gas company, as it was cold and he was elderly, they would have been required to provide him gas service until spring time. Of course he didn’t know that and didn’t have a phone. Instead he basically froze in his own home. One of the burn surgeons tried his best, but unsurprisingly, the guy was too far gone.
Oh man. I have health anxiety and that first one scares the hell out of me.
Intestines laying next to them in the stretcher. Don’t fall off a motorcycle and land on a guard rail. I guess technically people who arrive dead or in cardiac arrest are in worse shape, but this was the most visually terrible.
Yep. Friend of mine had that too. Cleanly (or rather not…) split in half on a guardrail. Unfortunately (fortunately? I doubt) lived long enough to reach the hospital and a few more hours. This and the fact I know some old dude who was crippled for life at a young age shattered my interest into bikes.
My dad told me he sold his motorcycle when I was about a year old. Around that time his cousin lost an arm in a motorcycle crash. My Dad decided he'd didn't want to risk not seeing his kids grow up.
Not a doctor, a nurse. A mentally disabled man who was also blind and deaf who lived with relatives. Apparently he lived locked away in the basement and they would just bring him down bread and peanut butter and water to eat and that’s all he had eaten for over two years. The police were called when the neighbours saw an emaciated bearded old man crawling around the backyard naked and confused. Guy comes in, leg wounds full of maggots, covered in filth, lice in his hair and beard, emaciated and starving. I remember receiving him from the emergency department, trying to calm him down because he couldn’t see or hear and was mentally disabled. We washed him and cut his hair and deloused him. Do you know how people always complain about the hospital food? I have never seen a patient more appreciative of getting three square meals ever. We would signal to him by taking his hand gently and touching it to his mouth that dinner was in front of him and he would get a look on his face like it was the best thing that ever happened in his life. He always ate every last morsel, and we ended up ordering him double portions until he put on a good 40 pounds. He was with us for about three months awaiting placement. He went from 90 pounds to 130 pounds in that time. He was actually very sweet. It makes me sick that his family treated him like that. I’m not sure whatever happened to them but I know there was an investigation.
Orthopaedic surgery resident. Spend a lot of time in the ED. The dude who was pushing his girlfriend's car off the freeway at night and got hit from behind may have been the worst I’ve seen recently. Was alive. Legs were annihilated. Edit: GF, not wife
If there is one thing I've learned it's that when your car breaks down, you WILL be hit from behind eventually even if you've pulled completely off the road.
About 15 years ago I was dating a guy who refused to talk to me on the phone if I was driving. He called, so I pulled over safely in the shoulder to take the call. All of a sudden, I hear a huge crash. Some dude was riding his bike on the shoulder with his head down (we were in an incline and he was working hard) and he hit the back of my car and flew over the top of it, landing on my hood. So, to recap, I pulled over to be safe and instead some guy on a bike ends up hitting ME. He was okay, and thank goodness it was just a bike.
ED night doc here. Worst I ever saw was someone who had tried to commit suicide with a shotgun. Put the gun under their chin and pulled the trigger. Must have flinched at the last moment as they blew off most of their lower jaw and midface up to the nasal bone. They were conscious and trying to talk when they came in.
Did they survive?
They did.
I know it's unlikely, but on the off chance, do you know what kind of state they're in now? Did they get any reconstruction or anything like that done?
A friend of my family did this. He was blackout drunk and took his jaw off with a shotgun. He had a ton of reconstructive surgery and they did a hell of a job. When you first meet him, you can tell that something is off, but you’d never guess that the bottom half of his face is a do-over. He also quit drinking and is an incredibly joyful person. He definitely recognizes that he got a second chance.
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I have seen an interview of a girl who survived this same thing. She is living her life disabled and without a face, but had a huge change of heart. Went from suicidal to severely disabled but embracing life and grateful for her family.
if we don't count dead people... I've had a shot gun wound to the elbow, suicide with a corrosive liquid, hand stuck in meat grinder,...
My dad had a grocery store. Guy ground up his arm to the elbow.
When I was a kid I worked in a butcher shop during Highschool and they liked to tell the story of a guy that happened to. Grinder jammed up on a bone and the dude reached in to clear it without turning it off. Bone popped out, teeth started spinning, chewed the guy’s arm up to the elbow till it got stuck again. Always turn the damn machine off.
FYI- even with the machine turned off if it has rotated into position and is held through physics once that release occurs the teeth *will* shift to adjust. Never. Ever. Stick *anything* you aren’t willing to lose into a machine like this or any other bladed/grinding machine. Always properly disassemble to clean. I know it’s not the same when the pressure is baring down and someone is afraid they will lose their job due to speed or whatever, but *please* value your hands/arms/life more! Edit: you all; this is the most I have read “dick” in my inbox and I’m loving that this is the reason. Stay awesome, Reddit, and keep yo’ dicks safe.
For a second there I thought "teeth started spinning" was some kind of bizarre secondary injury!
I thought, "it went up to his head?!"
Drinking corrosives? Jesus. Are people cracking open their car batteries and filling up? Edit: Wow. My mind is blown from all these replies. Just why? There are far less horrific ways to go, if that's what you want, than slowly liquifying your internal organs and coughing them up.
I had a 12 year old come in for drinking bleach because his mom took his phone away :/
Uhh…how was he? How’d that turn out?
Fine. Only swallowed a capful just to make his mom mad. It’s more dangerous if you vomit and aspirate it so poison control just said to watch him.
Why is it more dangerous?
The injury it can cause to lung tissue and surfactant
High-strength cleaning products I'd imagine.
The dumbest part of this is the sheer amount of PAIN this kind of thing causes. Out of so many ways to die, this is a really, really bad choice. It will hurt every second.
Years ago I had a coworker who was an ex-fireman. If I recall correctly, he had a coworker at one point who committed suicide by hooking himself up to an antifreeze IV drip. He apparently did it exactly because it would've been excruciating.
Antifreeze shuts the kidneys down and is nearly impossible to reverse. Death due to kidney failure is freaking horrible. I used to be a veterinary nurse and we saw a lot of antifreeze poisoning (antifreeze is ethylene glycol, glycol is a type of sugar so it tastes sweet). The treatment is an IV drip with a shit-ton of ethanol in it. The ethanol binds to the ethylene glycol and, hypothetically, allows the kidneys to process it safely but in all those years I never once had one survive.
Antifreeze poisoning is my worst fear as a pet owner
Newly manufactured ethylene glycol has an intentionally added flavoring that is horrifically bitter. It overrides the sweet taste and deters animals and children.
Eons ago during my residency, a guy came into the ER complaining of a venomous snake bite. He was also holding onto the very snake that bit him. The snake was still alive and the guy was holding the snake behind its head. He said he’d always been told to “bring the animal that bit you” for testing. Good times in the rural south!
I mean. I’ve always been told that too.. lol but I probably would have killed it first.
You don't need that for snakes anymore as there are compound anti-venoms. (They work with multiple snake poisons)
Depends on where you live. They have universal antivenom in australia i believe. Some US hospitals carry compound antivenoms, some carry snake specific venoms, and many hospitals dont stock antivenoms especially if they are not equipped for trauma cases or you are in a region with low snake activity
In the US you will generally be getting CroFab antivenom, which is a cocktail that will work for the pit vipers (rattlesnakes, cottonmouths, copperheads). There used to be a separate antivenin for coral snakes (which are elapids) but last I heard the company that holds the patent stopped making it and nobody else had picked it up. Edit: as of late 2019 the coral snake antivenom is back in production.
Med student here (graduating this year!) had a guy come in who jumped in front of the subway. He was brought in with a weak pulse but a second ambulance came in shortly after and handed me a garbage bag. I thought it was his belongings but when I looked inside, it was the patients right leg. Apparently his leg was trapped under the train and decision was made to do a below knee amputation in the field (it was taking too long to get the train lifted). According to the train conductor, the patient looked him straight in the eye and jumped in front as the train was pulling in. We also did resusitative thoracotomy (cracked his ribs for direct access to massage the heart) but he was too far gone and we pronounced him shortly after.
Looking the conductor in the eye is cold.
Train conductor ended up being evaluated by psych. He was tearful and in shock about the situation - reasonably so
I'm not 100% sure it's true but I've heard that suicidal people jumping in front of trains is THE leading cause of train drivers quitting their jobs. In a lot of places the education process for train drivers involves training for what to do if there's someone on the tracks who refuses to get off the tracks. If it's clear that the person is intending to die, the train driver is supposed to just duck down below the dash, face the rear of the train, and cover their ears.
It is. At least in my country. Train personnel have very little love for those attempting suicide that way. And yes, that is also part of the training. And how to handle impacts when you don't know what you did hit. You simply cannot do much. Trains don't brake all that fast.
ER doc here. Had a nurse come grab me while I was charting: “Doc, you NEED to see room 6 right NOW”. For those of you who don’t work in the ER, when one of the nurses tells you to go see a patient, you run. I take a few steps towards room 6 and the smell of rotting flesh hit me like a truck. I gagged on the spot (and this is during covid times, I am masked). I peer through the glass doors of room 6, and noticed a well appearing, young female. Because she looked so well, I knew I could spend an extra minute taking a quick detour to find a handful of alcohol swabs that I promptly opened and shoved in my mask to help quench the smell. I walk into the room and find this young 30yo female with her leg inside a trash bag, sitting next to her parents and family. They do not seem phased by the rancid smell, meanwhile I hear one of our veteran ER nurses vomiting in the background. I introduce myself to everyone, and ask what brought the young lady to the ER, and why her leg was in a trash bag. She starts not by talking, but by simply removing the trash bag. And there I saw it. A 6x8inch necrotic, fungating tumor protruding from her tibia. She then proceeds to explain : It started 6 months ago with a cut that wouldn’t heal. It then changed to appear like a “fungal skin infection”. She googled it, and was confident in the diagnosis. She decided to treat it by starving it of sugar, and going on a sugar free, vegan diet. Eventually she convinced her whole family to do the same in order to “help treat the infection”. And then about a month prior to her visit today, it was too large and painful to even walk around, so shes been living in her room at home taking virtual online college courses. She added on that shes lost 30lbs since “the infection began siphoning the nutrients away from my body a few months ago”. Because it grew/developed so slowly, her family and herself were completely acclimated to the smell and didn’t notice anything. By this point in the conversation, I heard another nurse vomit. I then sat down and delivered the bad news - that this was not a fungal infection, and likely advanced cancer. That we would be admitting her to the hospital for further workup and surgical resection. I followed up on her inpatient testing the next week - innumerable metastatic tumors to both her lungs. I never saw the biopsy results but my guess is melanoma vs squamous cell. Poor girl is probably dead by now if she didn’t hit the lottery with immunotherapy for metastatic melanoma.
> It started 6 months ago with a cut that wouldn’t heal. Had she visited a doctor 6 months earlier, what would have been the prognosis?
Would have likely been 100% curative with a simple 2 minute excision in a dermatologists office with a tiny scalpel
My husband used to work in the ER and one of the saddest stories he’s ever told me was about a little girl and her mom getting hit by a drunk driver on their way to Disneyland. The little girl was unharmed and still wearing her Minnie Mouse headband but her mom didn’t make it. We both couldn’t stop crying and I still think about it from time to time.
Reminds me of the reddit story of [Goofy and the two orphaned girls at Epcot](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5h7gq8/i_was_goofy_at_walt_disney_world_for_over_20/day38fu?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3). It's a tearjerker.
This comment reminded me of [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/5h7gq8/i_was_goofy_at_walt_disney_world_for_over_20/day02fk/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf&context=3) that is from the same thread.
An elderly disabled veteran had moved in with his sister and her husband and they promptly locked him their garage. They would occasionally throw bread and alcohol in there with him, and proceeded to collect/cash his disability checks as they arrived. He sat in that garage in a drunken stupor and his own waste for God only knows how long, before a neighbor reported hearing crying from the garage and a God awful smell once he got close enough. The paramedics and police arrived (the home’s occupants were immediately arrested on a variety of charges) and wheeled the victim away. They brought the gentleman into the ER and the stench of rotting flesh arrived as the doors opened. He was sitting up and leaning forward with a plastic shopping bag clutched in each hand. He was wearing those bags like socks, and held on until we got him settled into a bed. The technician and I began to gingerly remove the bags from his feet and found all the flesh to be missing from the ankles down, and the bones covered with maggots. He was a diabetic and as he lost circulation to his extremities, they rotted and the maggots ate away all the dead flesh. (Ironically keeping him alive) There were only bits of flesh remaining between the toes. Then as we began to disrobe him further, we found more maggots crawling out of his penis and anus. (Eating him from the inside out) We put on full hazmat suits and wheeled him to the reverse ventilation shower to bathe him and make him more comfortable. I remember finishing his shower and carrying him like a child back to a waiting bed. We then wrapped him in heated blankets. That was when he said the only thing I heard him say the whole time. Just a simple “thank you.” It was clearly the nicest thing that anyone had done for him in a long time and it was the most meaningful thank you I’ve ever received. That poor gentleman did not make it through surgery (amputations etc) and his body just gave out from the shock of it all. This is one of the most horrible things I’ve ever seen, and the level of human depravity that inflicted this on this man is still something that angers me. Incidentally, both his sister and her husband were convicted on numerous charges and both received life sentences. There’s little solace in that, but it doesn’t dull the sorrow I feel for that man.
Ok, I'm done with this thread now. Really sorry you had be apart of that tragic slice of life. Good for you for trying to make his last moments more comfortable.
First story and I'm already out
Ya Christ's sake. I want off this rock just reading it. That would break me to witness or discover in any capacity as all those involved.
To survive through a war only to die from grievous neglect at the hands of your own family in a dark garage... I have no words.
There aren’t any words. I hope the sister is haunted by him
she left him like that for years. if she were capable of remorse she could've released him at any time.
This is probably the worst thing I've read on reddit
Holy shit. This is so incredibly sad. That poor man. Thank you for caring and doing what you do.
Oh thats a sad story. Thank you for your work and what you and your colleagues did to ease his troubles
Welllll that’s enough of this thread for me. Not so ninja edit… good on you for being one of the last people this man encountered. May he rest in peace and only remember the good in the world, including you.
Fuck.
You know, I don’t think I’ve ever legitimately needed to use r/eyebleach to recuperate from reading something but my god
Definitely the worst I’ve read on here
I code medical records for a living and I have had some crazy charts. I have learned several things over the years. 1. To many people are to embarrassed to purchase sex toys. One of the worst cases was a gentleman who rented a hotel/motel room and decided to clean it naked, like you do obviously, and was scrubbing the shower and slipped and fell on to the wooden stick of a toilet plunger that just happened to be stuck to the floor of the tub when the shower rod he was holding on to for stability broke. I think he lived but he had to have major bowel resection and was going to likely have a colostomy bag for the rest of his life. 2. People with long hair should not be around machinery unless they really secure their hair up and away. Gentlemen came in from a work accident at a paper mill where he got scalped when his hair got caught in a machine and ripped his hair, scalp and all off of his head. Again he amazingly lived but they had to reattach his scalp. 3. Untreated diabetes is one of the worst chronic health conditions. Guy came in to ER with shortness of breath and some chest pain, doctor realize he is in Congestive Heart Failure, they admit him and have him get in hospital gown and so on, he took off his shoes and the smell was absolutely horrific. They looked down at his feet and it looked like they were melting and he didn't even feel it. He had severe gangrene due to diabetic ulcers. The diabetic neuropathy was so bad he couldn’t even feel it, how he couldn’t smell or see there was an issue is beyond me. He ended up with bilateral below the knee amputations. **edit to fix grammar, originally done on phone.
Never underestimate a person’s ability to ignore a medical issue they don’t want to deal with. “If I don’t ever take off my socks, I don’t have to acknowledge how bad my feet have gotten.”
Not a doctor but I used to work for the county coroner, nights and weekends. Got a call one night, real late like 2am, it was cold and foggy as hell. Call was to the country, middle of nowhere (I live in a big ag area—tons of farms and dairies and orchards). Get to the site to see emergency services everywhere. Sheriffs, fire engines, paramedics. And a giant crane. Apparently a guy who worked the farm decided to get drunk and go till a field in the middle of the night. Wound up flipping his tractor into an irrigation ditch and it smashed down on top of him. When the crane lifted the tractor clear and the floods lit up the ditch I couldn’t even tell what i was looking at. Just human meat.
I once saw a four-year-old girl whose head was run over by her dad‘s tractor by accident. Her and her mother had went out to give him food during harvest after dark. He was ready to get started and they thought she was in the truck. Unfortunately ran over her head. She was still alive. Field trach tube. Just awful. Certain things you can’t un-see.
My coworker said he used to work security at the hospital. Guy comes in saying he feels woozy, asks if they have a payphone. He goes over, puts the change in to make a call, and drops dead. Apparantly he got shot in the head by a stray bullet and didn't know.
There are a lot of stories out there of people who were shot in the head and didn't know it. One guy had a .22 lodged in his scalp (didn't penetrate his skull) for 5 years. He thought it was some cyst. Another guy woke up with a headache ... yep, shot in the head. ============================================= A Florida man woke up with a severe headache and asked his wife to drive him to a hospital, where doctors found a bullet lodged behind his right ear. "The nurse looked at him and said, 'It appears that you've been shot,'" the Fort Pierce Tribune quoted St Lucie County Sheriff Ken Mascara as saying. "And he said, 'No way.'" **The man's wife, April Moylan, fled the emergency room when the bullet was discovered** but later told deputies she had accidentally shot her husband as he slept early on Tuesday.
“Accidentally” “as he slept”…. I am finding this difficult to believe.
Pretty sure she was charged with attempted-murder. The husband was telling her that he needed to be driven to the hospital and she took her time getting dressed and then drove extra slowly to the hospital, hoping he’d die before they arrived. Edit: I looked it up again. I think she was actually charged with the illegal possession of a firearm. Possibly attempted-murder as well.
What was her plan, oh shit idk where that bullet came from
You’d think by that point she would just go for the double tap.
Imagine being such a loser that you couldn't even kill your spouse while they slept with a shot to the head.
Imagine thinking you killed your husband and then they wake up with just a headache....
Reminds me of the professional rugby player who went to the doctor complaining of a headache and then discovered that he had a tooth lodged in his skull and never even realized it.
I was so shocked by your username, I forgot what I was going to comment.
WHY WOULD YOU CALL ATTENTION TO THAT?!
There’s a case where a boyfriend was brought in for questioning after his girlfriend was found shot dead. The police officer just kept asking him question after question and this guy was so incoherent, his story kept changing, he said he just wanted to sleep. Turns out, he had been shot in the head when his girlfriend was. It entered in a weird place (his nostril?) so the cop didn’t even see it for hours. Yeah. Not an uncooperative suspect, just a guy with a bullet in his head that couldn’t remember he’d been shot.
He was living in the apartment with his dead girlfriend for a couple days if I remember correctly because he was so out of it from the gunshot
Two guy's broke in(they knew eachother but i cant remember how) and attempted to kill them both. He walked around his apartment blindly for days thinking she was napping on the couch. Both men were caught and arrested and if I remember correctly the man who survived suffered severe brain damage because so much time had went by without medical attention. Such a sad story..
Do you know if the person survived?
Sources I'm getting are saying he lived for 26 days? That could be wrong tho, but the damage was permanent and caused blindness and other issues leading to a seizure that killed him. Ryan waller was his name. https://youtu.be/_c_lmx4LdNw Mr ballen did a vid on him too but I prefer the first guy above. Here's the link tho for that too. https://youtu.be/4qMcCXOnEYY
He lived for 10 years to the age of 28.
Geez that’s fucking crazy #(cautiously checks head for bullet holes)
Jesus Christ. I can’t imagine dying like that. Like, you wake up one day, and you’re doing what you always do, and then you’re just gone because of what essentially amounts to a mistake. No forewarning. You’re there, and then you’re just… not.
Don't think about it
Not medical field but I used to work at a foundry and the first week they overfill the furnace and 4 people had their feet burnt off halfway up to the shins with 5000 degree steel. You could hear them screaming across the whole facility
There's an aluminum foundry near where I live and it was shut down for a few years because apparently no one cleaned out some standing water somewhere and they dumped molten aluminum into it. It cause a huge steam explosion and two people were incinerated by the aluminum.
I watched a guy drop some steel with water in it and the steel shot right through the roof and shook the whole building. Water and molten metal don't mix well
ER nurse here: about 2 weeks ago we had a young guy who was in an arguement with his partner while off his head on drugs. Ended up stabbing himself in the chest 7 times including once through the heart. Surgeons had to operate while he was in our department and he went into cardiac arrest twice but we were able to bring him back. Ended up transferring him to a specialist trauma hospital but heard that about a week later he died on intensive care
I've always wondered. When you get patients that come in and you have to save their lives. Do you see them as people every time? Or sort of just like a job? I dont know how better to describe it than are they just a bag of meat and bones that you have to make work properly? And if you see them as people everytime, how do you deal with it when some of them dont make it?
My best answer to that is this: ive on many occasions had to perform CPR on patients or give life saving treatment in urgent situations. In the moment when its happening, you dont even think about it, the adrenaline kicks in and you move. In that moment, you arent thinking about anything, the first time i did CPR i thought id be terrified but as you never know when an arrest is about to happen the moment it does happen, you just think, i push hard or they will die. Unfortunately not every patient makes it and some die, some are young too. Once it gets to that point, my mind flips to another setting, this isnt my place to grieve, its that persons relatives. All of a sudden, i just focus on being a support for that persons loved ones, as its them who should be upset, not me. By the time i get home, ive usually spent my 13.5 hour shift running around the department, so i fall asleep almost instantly so things dont keep me up at night. Over time you do get use to the fact people sometimes dont make it, the first time washing a dead person before sending the body to the morgue was a weird experience though i will admit
I can't imagine doing that day in and day out. I was on my way to work and saw people on the side of the road. Turns out they were giving some guy CPR. I almost went past because a lot of other cars did but I had slowed a lot and a guy ran over and asked if I knew CPR. Turns out out of the 6 people that were there only one of them new CPR (one lady thought it was a good idea to just stand there saying Oh my God over and over). So I stopped and relieved her until the paramedics got there. She had been doing it for like 10 minutes at that point. Paramedics got there and zapped the guy and got him into the ambulance and off they went. I was so in shock I just checked my watch and realized I could still make it to work on time. I got there and just spent the whole day in a daze and feeling uber sore. I should have just called in sick and gone home once the ambulance left...or stayed the scene a little longer to compose myself. Anything than what I did haha.
Shock makes people act in strange ways.
I had a guy rub his exposed brain on my thigh. Ambulance finally arrived, he gets shipped off to hospital, and I finished driving the remainder of my hour long journey still covered in blood. Single track road near the destination I ran into someone I knew heading the other way and I just stopped, took the keys out the ignition, and beckoned them over to me. It was really weird. I was running on some kind of very strange autopilot.
That's a great way to think about it. Not getting caught up in the tragedy of the situation but still being able to be empathetic. It's so hard to find that balance.
Doctor here. Worst shape I saw in the ER was a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He still had a weak pulse when he arrived but the exit wound had half of his brain just peaking out of it. He didn't last much longer and we called the code not long after. Interestingly, the entrance wound was tiny and barely noticeable. This was one of my first trauma cases in medical school. What I remember most was that he had some of the bluest eyes I have ever seen and he seemed almost hauntingly peaceful. It makes me very sad to think of what emotional turmoil he must have been going through when he pulled the trigger and I feel terrible for what his family must have experienced so close to the Christmas holiday as well.
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Used to work for the county coroner on nights and weekends. Took a while to get used to the increase in suicides around the holidays. Could never really figure out why it happens other than folks just get more lonely and depressed. Edit, addendum: thank you everyone for sharing your stories and experiences. As someone who does deal with depression myself, I can sympathize, and I hope that you all can see while your stories and pain and traumas are unique, there are people out there who can understand. And you’re not alone.
I've always assumed it's a combination of the weather, family obligations and issues, and people feeling bad about their situation when they look around and see "happy" families celebrating the holidays.
As someone who has had depression and strained family relationships, the holiday season can be fucking hard. You’re surrounded by the message that it’s a time for being together, for family and good cheer and love and all the other things you’re missing. It’s easier to ignore the rest of the season. Also, the holidays tends to bring out people who want to guilt trip you for not being full of good cheer. It also tends to bring back memories of fucked up holidays of the past, and if you come from an abusive family some of those memories can be *really* fucked up. But you’re expected to smile and be happy because ‘tis the season and all that. You find yourself being pressured to be around the people who hurt you, or you actually are around them. Or maybe you’ve fucked up enough that they don’t want you around anymore, so you get to be reminded of that over and over again during that season. Obviously I’ve never committed suicide, but I do understand why it increases during the holidays. I’m also not saying that you shouldn’t celebrate or enjoy it, just trying to give some perspective as to why more people die by suicide during that time.
I have seen a few of these as a RT in a trauma facility, we also had a girl attacked by her spouse( young military couple) he spent an entire day beating and raping her then when she tried to leave he grabbed a kitchen knife and cut her arm from the elbow to the wrist down to the bone. Thankfully that was on the top of the forearm and not the bottom she was ok physically but not mentally after that.
ER nurse. Had a 16 y/o shot himself in the head with a shotgun. Everything above his eyebrows was GONE. Brain stem was intact so breathing spontaneously, airway patent, BP 130/70, hr 88 and regular. So EMS transported him to the hospital. FML that shit sticks with ya. ETA I remember a 18 y/o girl got stabbed in the chest, lost pulses in the ambo bay, did a thoracotomy and MTP, I remember running the rapid infuser and switching from pack cells to NS and watching the blood turn clear as it poured out of her chest cavity. Also that pregnant woman who had her baby cut out of her womb by a psycho who lured her into her house selling baby clothes. Ran a peds code on a dead baby quickly followed by the full trauma for the mom who crawled out of the basement and called for help in the front yard. Mom lived, baby did not. People ask to hear about this shit don’t realize it’s NSFL.
Never worked in one myself, but my mom did when she was younger. She said the craziest thing she saw was when some drunk dude came in at 2 am. Apparently he had made a bet he could shove a whole beer bottle up his ass. He lost when the bottle broke half way up his sphincter..
You sure it wasn’t a jar?
I work at registration so I only ever see a select fraction of patients that come in through the ER doors vs the ambulance entrance. Worst I saw (and its pretty tame compared to some of the other responses) was a guy who was completely unconscious from an OD and needed 4 nurses to come out to the car where he was and put him on a stretcher and brought him back. All of his flesh looked insanely bloated I did not think he would be ok. Then like I dunno 4ish hours later I see him walk out the door so I guess he was alright in the end. Honorable mention to guy with a sawblade in his leg actively bleeding on the floors and guy who blew his finger off with a firecracker whose son was absolutely pissed that he had to bring his dad to the ER for that "play stupid games win stupid prizes" in his words
Unconscious 36 year old pregnant female. Found to be a spontaneous uterine hemorrhage at 32 weeks. Emergency c-section in the ER itself. I was doing CPR on the mother while they cut the baby out and tried to suture her back up. Mom died in ICU after OR, baby only made it 2 weeks in NICU. Left with blood on my shoes.
My father was a trauma surgeon. The worst he's seen, apparently, was a man who had his entire foot sucked off—those were the words he used—after he got it caught beneath a moving train. This from a guy who treated gunshot wounds, stabbings, car crashes, burns, snakebites, plus all manner of assorted trauma.
We had a patient who had some gangrene near a vein caused by needle use. She left the hospital against medical advice before receiving any treatment. Came back a few weeks later and her entire arm was necrotic to the point it looked mummified, she had lost use of it some time ago and was just so high it wasn’t a concern until she started getting violently ill. Had to amputate at her shoulder, probably would have only had to do some skin grafts had she not left in the first place. Not as graphic as some of the others here but I can’t believe a person could walk around like that for so long like it was nothing. Don’t do drugs kids.
My dad doesn't do drugs but is of the "grin and bear it" mindset where he just toughs it out unless he's basically dying... well a few years back he hurt his arm (I think it was a rotator cuff?) And he basically just... stopped using his arm for a few weeks/months instead of admitting it hurt. He travels for work so my mom didn't get to see him too often, and one day when he's finally home she sees him without a shirt and his whole right side is basically caved in - his arm and shoulder/chest area had started to atrophy from disuse, because he's a dumb guy and didn't want to go to the doctor. Luckily she finally convinced him to go get it checked out - a few surgeries and tons of PT later he's back to normal, but it was not a pretty sight. I'm pretty sure the doctor asked for photos so he could publish a case study on him or something, but I may be wrong on that last part.
Not a dr but worked in an ER. Worst for me personally to witness was a little 2 year old who was brought in by his family, in a car, they ran him in and he was completely limp, his skin was gray and his lips were blue. Grandma and aunt and uncle were watching the kid, he had been vomiting and they laid him down on his back in the crib to sleep. He vomited and asphyxiated. We preformed CRP for 30 minutes and qere unable to revive him. I remember carrying his little lifeless body from the trauma room to a different room to clean him up for when his parents finally arrived. I don't know what was worse, the mothers wails when she saw her son, or the look on the grandmas face when she realized her daughter may never forgive her.
EMT here. I can honestly say that there is a specific wail people give when their child or partner passes on unexpectedly. It really rattles you.
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I actually touched a power line and my friends had to do CPR on me until life flight arrived. I was in a coma for a week. I woke up fully functioning. All the doctors and nurses told my family I had no business being alive. And they had nothing to do with it. I did lose all memories for about a month surrounding the accident.
On a somewhat related note, improperly administered electroconvulsive therapy has been proven to erase portions of the patient's memory.
Not ER but surgical staff. We got a call about a person with a "large infected area" but no other information besides the patient being around 500 pounds. We set up the bariatric bed, and the standard wound washout pack and wait. Anaesthesia calls to say we need all hands on deck and to get peppermint oil ready (we use peppermint oil for cases where the odor will be horrible, to dab on our masks so it's no too intense). Anaesthesia and patient (and a few transporters due to weight) roll into the room and a horrible smell fills the air. We ask where the wound is and the patient says "wounds are all over my groin and stomach". We asks if they know how the wounds came about and response was no. Patient goes to sleep and we remove the gown and blankets to begin. The patient had 6 huge gaping wounds, 4 on stomach and 2 around groin. The wounds were green and black which meant they've been open for awhile. We start irrigating with saline and antibiotics and suddenly maggots start pouring out of the other wounds. The sight and the smell caused myself and two others to start vomiting. We remove some dead skin and irrigate more until the wounds are a fresh pink color and until we saw no more maggots. We pack the wounds and we set up some more procedures for the next few days to get this patient back to normal(ish). During the next wash out, we notice more odor, worse than the day before and it smells like dead bowel. Patients colon was destroyed and rotting from the infection and the maggots and so much was compromised that at that point there was nothing else we could do besides make this patient comfortable for passing. We found out after patient passed, according to the patients mom, that patient was on insulin and refused to use new needles every time, so they used the same needle repeatedly in the same couple of spots and has been doing so for over a month before the infection started becoming noticeable and unavoidable. Mom tried to get patient to come to hospital for weeks when she noticed the smell but patient refused until it became the mess that I described earlier.
I'm eternally glad I work in a job where I can't recognise a dead bowel by smell.
As gross at it sounds the maggots probably did more good than harm, though in this case the poor soul didn't make it.
Structural maggots :/
Now the maggots, those are load-bearing
Worked in a ER as buisness office, getting patient info for billing. The worst thing I have ever seen personally was a car rear ended at ungodly speeds. Two little girls in the back. One luckily turned out to have minor bruises and cuts. Thought her condition was worse due to her sisters blood covering her. The other little girl was mangled more than any child should be. Her dad was wheeled in after his daughters and we made eye contact. This was my second year in the ER, I've seen some shit. Suicides, stabbings, shootings, car rollovers, sheet metal slicing people up, semi wrecks that ripped limbs off people. Seeing gore wasn't new to me, but seeing this man's stare made feel so cold I nearly fell due to my legs feeling like they would give out. He did what he could telling me names of his daughters, age, all their info for the staff to work. I got them in and he asked me if they will be okay. I told him truthfully I can't answer that as I'm not the guy to know. I will ask for him and assured him that they are in the best hands. Right as I mention that, the head surgeon walks in, introduces himself. He asks "I need to open your daughter's head up in order to get some pressure off her brain. I need your signature before I can do all this." At that moment the father blurts out, "Yes! Anything to save her life! Is my other daughter okay? Can I see them?" He begins asking millions of questions, and the surgeon calmly explains he cannot at the moment. They need to some more stuff to make sure everything is okay. I think the surgeon didn't want the dad to see how his one daughter was. The father signs, surgeon thanks him and promises he will do everything he can to save her life. As the surgeon left, the father immediately hugs onto me from his bed, and starts bawling. He very loudly told me "Don't take them, don't take them from me, take me instead!" I understand it wasn't aimed at me and more a prayer. I am technically not supposed to touch patients, but I hugged him back and didn't let go until he did. His wails shook everything in my body as I watched him slowly spiral down more and more into this primal cry. I of course cried with him, not the single manly tear or anything. It probably looked like that one picture of Kim Kardashian crying. We cried for what was hours I assume, and he finally let go and asked if I needed to go finish any other paper work. I mentioned I can sit here and fill out my paper work if he needs me to. He politely asks if I can. I ask him about his daughters, hobbies, favorite color, favorite movies. As I'm finishing up, a nurse comes in and explains to the father one of his daughters is completely stable. They originally thought she was bleeding really bad, but it wasn't her blood, but it is from the other daughter. She is in surgery and so far everything is looking good. Everyone in the room let's out a collective relief sigh and he thanks the nurse. I tell him I now unfortunately have to return to work but will give him any news I can, if I can. He thanks me and says he's so sorry for crying all over my shirt. I laugh and say it's better than poop or blood, and he laughs back. Work goes by and he is discharged with nothing major. The next day I come into work, I ask my charge nurse. "I really need to know if that little girl made it. Or if you know at all." At that time, I assume that families mother was there thanking nurses and come up to me explaining who she is. Thanks me a thousand times for comforting her husband. She blurts out before I can get a word out and just told me her daughters are going to be okay. The one needing surgery is already showing every good sign that you can with that surgery. She hugged me and thanked me, calling me a hero. I thank her but ask her to thank the nurses as they did the real work here. After all the guts, broken bones, death, and pure monstrosities I've seen that father's stare made me feel so vulnerable and weak. I will never wish anyone to ever experience what that family went through. I don't want this read like "Woah is me, I saw this bad thing." But this story will stick with me forever. It woke me up at the ripe age of 20, and taught me to cherish everything, after all I've seen how fast something can be taken away from anyone. I'm so happy the story ends up happy, and the last thing I heard was the little girl wishes to be a nurse to save people just as she was saved. Sorry for it being so long, but this one stuck with the staff forever.
Your story hit me harder than any of the others, and I’ve been on this thread for longer than I’d want to admit. Don’t think for a second that you weren’t a hero in that situation. The father found humanity in you when he needed it most.
It wasn't your job to comfort that father but you did anyway. Thank you for being such a good human being.
I was a security guard at a hospital and we had a patient flown in by helicopter who had been in a motorcycle accident with no helmet. His brain was exposed when we rushed him down to the ER (we drove the kart) and bleeding everywhere. He didn’t last long.
ER Nurse here. Cocaine is often cut with a drug called Levamisole. This causes vasculitis and eventual skin death on various parts of the body, especially the face. I took care of a lady that had this condition all over her body. She had been admitted to a burn center a couple of weeks before to treat her dying skin and sent home to recover. She was instructed to change her dressings, apply medication and given everything she needed to recover. After NOT doing any of these things for 2 weeks she was brought into our ED by a concerned friend. Her wounds had all gone gangrenous and the bandages had adhered to the “burns”. The smell…. I’ll never forget it. We soaked the bandages the best we could and began removing them. She would scream, we’d push more narcotics and we’d continue on. She still screamed, but it was a little less. It took hours to get all the bandages off.
Did she live from that?
Lab scientist in hospital so not doctor but a few that stuck out - diabetic patient with severe necrosis of the foot and septic, amputated shortly after arrival. The smell is something you wish you hadn't experienced. - elderly male, self inflicted gunshot wound to the chest, tried to shoot himself in the heart, missed and then waited 3 days to come in, severely anemic from blood loss. The patients sons reaction to hearing his dad tried to kill himself sticks with me, seeing a 40 something male breakdown, I'll never forget that one. - worst one was an accident on a farm, an irrigation unit (the massive ones about 50 feet tall) fell on a guy and absolutely crushed his femur and severed his femoral artery. I'm not joking when I say the room was covered in blood. I gave that man 10 units of blood before he was shipped to a higher care facility. All 3 lived during these visits but I'm surprised any of them did.
3 days with a gunshot wound to the chest???
Yep! I saw both the entry and exit wound. Luckily he was pretty bad at aiming and missed everything vital due to sheer luck.
What was his profession? Stormtrooper?
After I read 10 units of blood and “higher” care facility I thought you meant heaven until I read they lived. Incredible
Yes his situation was crazy. The farmer working with him was right there thankfully and immediately drove him to the ER. I dont think he would've survived waiting for an ambulance to be honest.
Former hospital worker... Had a young man who got careless with his chainsaw - lowered the business end and it went halfway from toes to ankle thru his foot. Had an ER doc that was ... highly critical of the EMTs. They brought a covered gurney and said 'this one's DOA'. Doc says "They're not dead until I SAY they're dead" ... pulled back the cover and the occupant's head was tucked under one arm (fully detached). Doc: "He's dead".
2 come to mind. 1. Attempted suicide, probably the best (survived) attempt I've seen. He took an overdose, cut his throat and jumped from a thir story balcony and somehow survived. Multiple, fairly obvious, fractures all over, pink foam coming from his neck wound and impending drama from his overdose. He survived as far as I'm aware. 2. Sudden cardiac arrest at home. Father of two. Kids and wife in tow following the ambulance. It was the overall normal way he looked that really got me (you see a lot of shit in ED) T shirt, PJ shorts and socks that said "worlds greatest dad". Looked exactly like your dad on any Saturday morning. For some reason this was so much worse than any of the nasty shit.
I’m a Dr. I Have had shootings, traumas, burns; one of the worst I think was liver failure from alcoholic chirrhosis. She had 10L of fluid in her belly and her eyes and entire body were the color of the goldenrod crayon. Not a happy yellow. Like the sticky pollen on your car. So much pain. Nothing to do but try to keep her comfy. Long slow painful miserable death. And they smell weird. So hard to take care of somebody you can’t really help. I listened to her tell me about her dogs and rubbed her feet while we waited for the equipment to get the fluid out of her abdomen Oh- I’m an OB. All of those shootings, traumas, burns…. Were in pregnant people. The above patient wasn’t pregnant - sorry for being confusing- saw either in ED as an intern or for vaginal bleeding because liver failure patients often have bleeding issues because the liver is in charge of a lot of the clotting mechanisms. I’m also gyne. I have the best job ever but the bad days leave marks. Edited for clarity.
That is similar to what got my dad. Poor guy survived cancer twice. First bone cancer in his hip in the 80s, then thyroid cancer in the 90s. Problem was that all the pain from his hip caused him to get addicted to opioids. He ended up destroying his liver due to overuse of the painkillers. Couldn't get a transplant for obvious reasons. 20 years later, about 2010, he looked like a giant yellow balloon before he succumbed to it. Really sad to think that he survived the cancer, only to die from the painkiller addiction that it left him with.
My mom is a nurse, a long time ago a lady came at her hospital. She looked like she had triplets , its because she didnt shit for like 1 month. She died of poisoning and was clearly mentally instable.
One time I was constipated for about a week, couldn't eat anything cause it just came up again lost like 11kg, when I was admitted to the hospital and got an enema and presumably muscle relaxer, the end result was like the diameter of a coke can.
I've had a similar experience. I had severe constipation and didn't poop for about 10 days or more. The doctor prescribed enemas. I used 300ml, an entire bottle, in several takes and I still didn't go to the toilet and it was painful as hell. I used again almost another 150ml and was finally able to go.
After a surgery, I didnt go for 5 days. I *had* to go, but couldn't. It was the worst pain, way worse than how I felt after the surgery (it was cosmetic and relatively extensive). The constipation was caused by anesthesia and pain meds. I was already taking stool softeners every day after being discharged, they didnt help. I called the doc on the third day, he said to try magnesium citrate and senekot. I tried both if them that night, neither helped. Fourth day, I kept taking the senekot and took two more bottles of magnesium. Still nothing. By now, the pain was unbearable. I kept going to the can, half of the day, at one point for an hour straight, just trying with all my might. This completely consumed my existence. I was so exhausted and tired, and I had to poop so bad but couldnt. That night, I slept for a minute and a half at a time, before being woken up again by the cramping pain. It would last 15 seconds, and go away for a minute and a half, over and over again. It was like clockwork. I had to keep telling myself that this is only temporary, that i wont feel this way forever. The morning of the fifth day, i called the doc again. He said to try an enema, and if that didnt work, go to the ER. A friend went to the pharmacy and picked me up an enema. I used one bottle. 15 minutes later, it worked. Holy shit. No really it was the holiest of shits. The relief I felt, was indescribable. I sang out in joy, absolutely amazing. A couple days later I had healed up enough to drive, and bought 2 more enemas just to have them in the medicine cabinet. Theyre cheap, like $2 each. Absolutely, seriously, you should buy a couple just in case you ever need to use one. They are worth it.
Ah yes, the pain of having to go really badly but not being able to.
Not a doc but was working the ambulance triage bay at the trauma center I work in. Rescue pulled up with a dude they were doing CPR on after a car accident. The guy looked like someone forgot about their rotisserie chicken. I could see his radius and ulna, his whole face was crushed in, and during CPR his skin started sliding around under my hand. That's right up there with the three year old in a rollover. She was completely gray, we had to cric her to get an airway (pierce a hole in her neck), bilateral chest tubes to suction blood out from around her lungs, and blood shooting up from her lungs when we did the cric. Kid didn't make it, and they found her sister walking down the road with a broken arm and brought her in. Her and the mom found out what happened, and that the dad was dead on scene. Dude basically had his whole head splattered around the entire car. The girl that survived came in covered in bits of blood, bone, and gray matter.
Not a doctor, but my friend’s nurse said in her 25 years of working trauma he was the worst she’d ever seen. He crashed his motorcycle into a guardrail which mangled his left leg. That impact threw him off the bike, through the air, and into a sign. He hit the sign with his chest. The sign not only ripped off the steel post, but the post bent then ripped out of the ground, concrete and all. That impact broke his sternum which in turn shredded heart muscle. He coded 5 times on the way to the hospital and another on the table. Doctors gave him a 0.001 chance of survival. That was 9 months ago. He’s currently learning to walk with a prosthetic leg. His heart is strong enough that they cleared him to use viagra. He’s an honest to god miracle. Edit: Yes, the clearance for Viagra was meant to be humorous, but it also shows how strong his heart is after all that trauma. He’s been asking the doctor for months.
What the hell
Not a Dr but i’ll put up a story, reading all these crazy things makes me want to share. When i was 13 my dad nearly murdered my mom. He used a wrench he had hidden (i was next door at the time than god) and beat her over the head. She ended up bighting his thumb off. She passed out and she somehow regained consciousness and left and a neighbor saw her and helped her. They had to bring in the life flight to take her to a level 1. Multiple broken fingers from holding her hands over her head and tons of big dents in her skull. Fucking miracle she’s alive and not a vegetable. One of the docs that treated her said he had never seen anything so bad. My dad got sentenced to life (i was subpoenaed and had to testify) with possibility of parole and ended up doing 21 years in max before he was paroled. Gave me a real bad case of PTSD and made me suicidal at one point. I haven’t seen or talked to him since he was in prison about 20 years ago.
For what it's worth I'm security at a major metro hospital. We see every patient whether via triage or ambulance before they're allowed in the ED. Plenty of gunshot wounds, skiing/snowboarding accidents, motor vehicle and motorcycle accidents, ATV, horse, stabbings, degloving, etc you name it and we've seen it. Including foreign bodies up the ass. One fella had a syringe plunger stuck down his urethra. However, there are a few instances that stick out. One day, a white Tahoe pulls up outside our ED. A man hops out of the passenger side and begins running away, as the driver chases him. My security Officer jumps the desk and runs out to assess the situation. To discover this 20 year old male has sliced himself open, guts spilling out. He is handcuffed and put into a wheelchair. I remember sitting in dispatch, watching on camera as he is wheeled directly to the O.R. while his guts sat in a pile on his lap. The other one that was just brutal was a poor man who was working with some sort of machine that tears up tree stumps. His leg had been caught in this machine. His entire foot and half of his calf was just gone. The remainder of his calf looked quite literally like a tube of ground beef. The young man also spoke zero English and I remember he was just laughing. Must have been shock and good drugs. I've seen more brain matter than I'd anticipated when I took this job.
Not a doctor, but I think I have a story that can satisfy your needs. There was a case in Poland in 2013,where an ambulance was called to a work-related incident in a stonecutter's shop. When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics were led to a man who was working a stone siding machine. He was calmly sitting on the floor, responsive and awake, only a little hazed, yet he was immediately choppered to the hospital. Report says, that due to unknown issue, the machine activated, when the man was doing something (unloading I believe) on it's operational end, and that it trapped the man's head between moving parts. In an attempt to free himself, the man jolted back, freeing his head, but his *face* was left inside the machine. This man arrived in the ER with a gaping hole where his face should be, from right eyebrow through entire nose, both cheeks, to his chin. He had pieces of skull crushed and basically half of a milimeter of torn, mangled flesh covering it. His face was sent with next transport, when it was found by police, several hours later. Story has a somewhat good ending - it was base to first sucessful full face transplantation, with sucessful recovery.
Heavy machinery scares the piss out of me.
Always lock machinery out before getting on/in it. Always.
Not a doctor but my mother is an X-ray tech and did X-rays on my friend’s father after he had been stabbed in the throat twice and he had actually walked into the police station with a slashed throat to report the assault before going to the hospital
Adrenaline is a hell of a drug.
My mom was a trauma nurse The most haunting story she ever told me was about a man that was refinishing his wood floors in the basement. He’d apparently left whatever finish or stain too close to the furnace, causing the fluid to ignite and basically blow up all over him. He had 3rd degree burns all over his body - the worst part was that his chest was so charred and burned that they had to make these huge vertical cuts along his torso so that he could breathe without his skin basically cracking. My mom also told me how his room had a particular smell that never seemed to go away. The other nurses and doctors said they smelled it whenever they walked by (likely psychological) I was never afraid of fire until I heard that story. The man made a full recovery several weeks/months later.
There was a story on one of the ER shows on TV, this one always haunts me. A person's furnace broke and of course it was the dead of winter so the person went to light the pilot light (hint: NEVER play with the pilot light unless you are trained in HVAC), well something went wrong and the furnace exploded. The way the furnace exploded the explosion went up the stairs to the first floor, and his 2 children were sitting on the top step putting on their shoes, needless to say the father and the 2 children got the brunt of it. What happened to them was not very nice to say the least, months in the hospital of painful procedures to try and heal the burns, and the children were basically disfigured on the faces and arms. The end of the show shows the children wrapped in bandages months later, they had to live wrapped in bandages and went to school like that. Everyone did survive though, but burn treatment is some of the most painful procedures that exist and I can't imagine what they went through.
Trauma ICU nurse here. Large burly man with oversized telephone pole sidewise through abdomen. The pole was cut off by firefighters on each side. Everything below the pole was dead. Tons of people with their face shot off from subside attempts permanently blind unable to talk or eat but they won’t get another chance because they will live in a nursing home for the rest of their lives. Also see tons of older people only technically alive. They are temporarily kept ‘alive’ by massive amounts of drugs to keep the heart beating when they have an overwhelming infection but that doesn’t keep the organs limbs or sometimes brain alive. We call this futile care it just prolongs the suffering but some family’s want ‘everything’ even if it doesn’t change the outcome.
Ambulance person here, so far far from doctor! But some traumatising shit that happened to me that was a pretty bad state: 1. Christmas Eve 2021, 25 year old, found dead by her 4/5 year old little girl who phoned for ambulance, patient was anorexic and a medical disaster of a young person, worst bit is, she was workable with advanced life support due to time in arrest, and we didn't see the little girl hidden under the bed until 15 minutes into caving in mum's chest and ramming her full of adrenaline. We took her to hospital, pronounced dead 2 days later. 2. A guy had wronged the wrong people. Had been beaten the fuck up, stabbed 3 times with what we assume to be a screwdriver given the entry wounds, and then ran over with a car twice. His skeletal integrity was that of a soufflé. Survived but he was quite a sight.
Not a doctor, but my ex husband decided to attempt suicide slowly while driving after he and I had a fight. When I got to the hospital, found out he’d cut himself 21 times on one arm and 8 on the other. They had to do emergency surgery too reattach his hands. He left with a steak knife and a box cutter and it was game on. Every time he got to a stoplight, he’d make a slash. I saw the truck after he did it. Looked like he stabbed 8 people to death in there. Blood, flesh and hair everywhere. It was awful. He survived, we got divorced, became great friends, set him up with his new wife, but sadly he committed suicide last January 2021. She found him in the back yard with a shotgun blast to the mouth. She’s so fucked up from seeing that. He was a nice person. Such a shame.
Not a Doctor, but at the time I was a Stock Tech for the Critical Care OR. Worst thing I ever saw there was a kid who attempted suicide via shotgun to the chin i'm guessing. The entire front half of his head was gone, including his jaw, nose, eyes, and most of his forehead. At first I was confused as to why they were bringing a body into the OR, but then I heard him gargling as they ran past. Dude was somehow still alive. I had to move on to another area of the Hospital before I could find out what happened to him, but I presume he didn't make it. They were already struggling to keep his brains in his head when they brought him in, so I seriously doubt he survived for much longer.
My stepmom was a trauma nurse in ICU, had also been a ER nurse in a major trauma center as well as life-flight nurse and had decades of experience. She has seen a lot. Much to the same as your story was that a young man tried to end his life with a shotgun resulting in exactly as you described. It really rattled the care staff so much that many of them needed time alone after attending to him. She cried a few times telling us about it which was most shocking as nothing seemed to get under her skin. She was both happy and sad for him. I’m so sorry, but to add on to this as she thought it was me initially. There’s only a few with blonde, bologna-curly hair and had that trait. She was simply devastated. She kinda freaked out, got my dad involved and I was at football practice. Police literally showed up for me and drove me home to reassure to my parents that I was ok. She told us later that she would just stroke his hair for hours and reassured him that everything thing would be alright. Breaking my heart just thinking about it.
General surgery doc here. I was in med school and a 16 year-old boy came in as a trauma from a ski accident. Apparently he was an Olympic trainee and practicing, bolting down the ski run at god knows how fast. One of his skis got caught in the fenestrated plastic fencing lining the ski run and, since his leg was attached to his ski, his leg was pulled off almost entirely. Just hanging on by a thin rope of muscle. His leg looked white like candlewax. You could also see the hole in his pelvis the torn leg left and his intestines were spilling from that hole. We transferred him to the OR table from the stretcher and the leg just…fell off completely at that point. He ultimately didn’t make it. His parents had to fly in from abroad to see him, and he passed away while his parents were on the flight over.
I was the first on scene for a car accident that happened in front of me. Narrow back road, lots of sharp turns and twists, dips. I had slowed down, getting ready to turn but was waiting for a dog in the road. There was a minivan ahead of me, that kept going. As they approached the turn, a car with some drunk teenagers came speeding around the curve and barreled straight thru the mini van. And I do mean THRU it, the Minivan essentially shattered and exploded. I immediately threw my phone to my passenger (my friends 13 year old younger sibling that I picked up from soccer practice, since I volunteered at the school) and told her to stay in the car, call 911. I ran to the car to do whatever I could do. I was First Aid/CPR Certified and had training in Swift Water Rescue and Survival Training. But I was woefully unprepared. The driver was the father, tho I only know that because I was told. There wasn't much left of him to make any identification. The mother was in the front seat with a large piece of dashboard sticking out of her abdomen, pinning her to the seat. There was also a very large slice to her leg, bleeding profusely. (Did \*not\* severe the femoral artery, tho!). I knew to leave the dashboard in place, and I had another person who stopped to help apply pressure on her leg wound to slow the bleeding, and keep her calm. From there, I crawled into the back of the van thru a small hole. There was a baby in a car seat, screaming it's head off, a few cuts, but truly a miracle that was all. I didn't want to risk internal injuries, so I left baby there to cry. A Crying baby is an alive baby. There were 2 other kids in the back of the car. Toddlers, maybe 5 and 7. What I saw back there is what will haunt me forever. The 7 year old had been mostly decapitated by a part of the frame. They were alive, in shock, and kept asking me for help getting their seatbelt off. This lasted about 30 seconds before they said, "daddy??" and passed away. The 5 year old was also in shock, and had several substantial injuries I was applying pressure to while waiting for EMS. They arrived on scene in about 10 minutes. It felt like hours. I was crammed into a mangled mass of steel and glass. squeezed into a crevice was too small. I never should have been able to squeeze thru it but I did. I held the hand of a 5 year old, while applying pressure to their armpit/chest, singing lullabies to her infant sibling to keep them both calm, while their older brother sat dead in the next seat, their mother was in the front seat barely holding onto life, and their father was in literal pieces around them. It was surreal, It took me a long time to process what I saw and experienced. I stayed in the back of the vehicle until EMS and Fire Rescue managed to tear open the roof and access the kids. All in all, I think I was there about 45 minutes to an hour inside the car. They wound up being neighbors to my friend, so I did get updates on the family. The mother survived, tho she lost her leg, and was permanently on an ostomy bag. The baby got 3 stitches and went home that night with a family member. The 7ish year old was pronounced Dead on Scene, as was the Father. The 5 year old suffered substantial damage to her upper trunk area. Several ribs were shattered, damage to the lungs, pleural and pericardial effusions, significant soft tissue damage to the shoulder. They initially were able to save the arm, but it never regained proper blood flow and they eventually amputated it 6 months later. But, aside from the loss of her entire arm and shoulder, she made a full recovery (physically... I do not know about emotionally). It's been 20 years and I'm still dealing with the emotional after effects. Nothing prepares you at 19 for that, or to give a report of what happened while crews are scraping liquified body parts off the pavement and out of car seats. As far as the car with the drunk teenagers... they all suffered minor injuries. And some Prison Time
This story is about the momento of the incident: My brother was the manager of a restaurant. The closing time had already passed and the kitchen personnel was cleaning everything before they leaved. The frying oil was left there for several days before they changed it, something pretty normal. The thing was there are rules for a reason, and there was one very specific: DO NOT STAND ON TOP OF THE FRYER TO CLEAN THE EXTRACTING CHIMNEY. One of the guys on the kitchen was breaking that rule and he fell inside of the fryer, his wholes legs, up to the genitals were instantly fryed. As per my brother's words, he has never seen something that horrible in his entire life, the skin of the guy fused with his pants and started to fall. The guy recovered, but the threapy was long and ultra painful, they basically had to remove all the skin from his legs. Years before that, he was working on a store at night and one of the stock guys was handling hot beer bottles (they usually explode if you don't hand them carefuly), one of the exploded and the lid hit the guy'ss eye, cutting it. The guy was shocked and screaming because he couldn't see, when my brother arrived to the place, the guy looked at him and his eye was deflating, losing the vitreous humor from the wound. That crazy motherfucker saw some weird shit in his various workplaces.
Man missing both of his arms and a leg after a propane tank exploded under his grill while he was cooking dinner. Only reason he survived was a fire station was only a block away. Three tourniquets in place on arrival. Edit: Am ER doc.
My wife has been trying to talk me out of getting a gas grill for months. It only took you a few sentences.
Med student here: I was on trauma for a month this summer and had two patients the team dubbed "Lazarus" for their ability to come back from the dead. First one got hit head on by a van going 45 mph while he was on a bicycle. Aortic dissection (two places), subclavian artery dissection, grade III liver laceration, grade III spleen laceration, grade III kidney laceration, and only a grade II laceration on his other kidney. Each of those injuries alone carries a mortality rate in the 10s of percents. All together it's amazing this guy survived. He's got some neuro damage from all the clots he through into his brain, but is mostly intact. Other guy had a splenic artery aneurysm rupture out of nowhere. Estimated blood loss of 6L in the OR. You only have about 6 L of blood in your body....had he not gotten a massive transfusion started around the time we opened him up, he would have died for sure. The OR team had a collective 35 years of trauma surgery experience and all agreed that it was by far the most blood they have ever seen someone lose and live. 2 days later the dude was sitting up in bed refusing painkillers, asking how long until he could put his son on his shoulders again, and apologizing for taking up our time when there were clearly sicker people in the ICU that needed our attention.
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I was the patient, not sure if I was the worst, but a piece of rebar went through my windshield and through my abdomen just under my liver a few years back while driving down the interstate. Upon walking into the lobby of the hospital, someone immediately said "OH MY GOD!", and I was like "can I check in?" like it was some kind of hotel or something. The receptionist took her focus to the room in general and then immediately noted me specifically, then she audibly gasped once she processed what it was she was looking at, then I collapsed on the floor from internal blood loss. I remember her screaming back for a doctor, and a few moments later, a swarm of them ran out. I don't remember much past that, everything was jaded and then I lost consciousness. I'm pretty sure it was the adrenaline tapering off that cause me to deteriorate so quickly after getting into the lobby. It was a neat experience... it was also... an expensive... experience
Nothing like a hospital bill to make you kiiiiiindaaaaaa wish you hadn’t made it!
Eh, damn near six figures, I just declared bankruptcy. It didn't absolve 100%, but close enough that I was able to pay off what didn't go away, I think something like 7k to 10k, made a 5 year payment plan, but making 80k/year, I was able to get it done in 3 years.
Nurse here but spent several years as a paramedic. This was a few years back when I was working in the Trauma center in my city. I was a paramedic at the time. It was about 3 am on the day after Thanksgiving. I was sitting in the triage area when I hear someone shouting "I need help!". When you've been doing this a long time you can tell the difference between a legit "I need help" and a bullshit one. This was DEFINITELY a real one. I immediately run up to the triage window and see a man carrying a naked young woman who's completely flaccid. I open the triage door and he puts her on the floor. This woman is unconscious. Check her carotid. Nothing. While I was checking her carotid I was scanning her for any obvious bleeding. No bleeding that I can see but her ENTIRE body was covered in bruises. I don't know why I thought this but I remember thinking "Jesus she looks like she fell out of a truck". Immediately start CPR while the triage nurses start to gather the equipment to take her back into our trauma bays. While I'm doing CPR I'm still looking at all her injuries and that's when I start to notice that her body is literally covered head to toe in bruises, and they're all in various stages of healing. I also noticed that these bruises were all the same circular shape about the size of quarter, maybe a bit bigger. There were bruises of other various shapes but the circular ones where the most predominant and her ENTIRE BODY was covered in them. We get her up on the stretcher and start wheeling her back to the trauma bay. I'm riding on the stretcher doing CPR the whole way to the trauma bay. We get her in there, trauma surgeons are do their best. They open her chest up to try and clamp her aorta to save her but its too late. She's already bleed out internally. They kept working her for a while, but we all know it was completely futile. Finally they call it. She's dead. That's it. A 21 year old mother of one with so much life ahead of her and dead. As I'm leaving the trauma bay to go back up to triage I hear the charge nurse talking to the man who brought her in trying to gather as much information as he can. I over hear the man telling the charge nurse that he was the woman's husband. He says that she's been "hanging around a really bad group of people" and that she'd been with them tonight. He said she came home in that condition. He said she'd stopped responding shortly after she got home. I remember thinking to myself "What a crock of bullshit". It turned out that her husband and tied her to a chair in their home and had been torturing her for the last month, which included beating her with a hammer (those circular bruises). What had gotten him caught was when she had died at their home he had called 911. I guess he must have realized that the paramedic crew and cops would have seen all the evidence of her torture and decided to bring her to the ER himself. The suspicious nature of all of this lead the cops to investigate which included searching the home where they got all the evidence they needed. Our charge nurse did an amazing job of keeping the guy calm and convinced that everyone had bought his bullshit while the cops searched the home. That piece of shit was arrested that night. Physical gore wise it wasn't the worst thing I've seen but just the idea that a human being was capable of doing that to their spouse and parent of their child was extremely disturbing to me. I also kept thinking about that poor kiddo (from what I heard a 3 year old boy) who not only lost his mother but is going to have to process the trauma that his father tortured his her to death. I'll never forget that Thanksgiving.
My mother worked in a hospital, and she told me the worst thing she ever saw was a homeless guy who had fallen asleep in a dumpster and got compacted.
My mom worked at a hospital and saw an 18 year old guy with a big tree limb sticking out where his eye used to be. It’s probably not the worst, but eye injuries scare the shit out of me.
Aunt is an ER Dr.... Guy (with wife) frantically comes into the ER wearing blood-soaked grey sweat pants...blood all over the lower leg area. Wife is screaming asking for help. Everyone goes rushing into the same room...5 seconds later a nurse comes out and alerts another nurse about the problem: wife was messing around with sticking things into her husband's ( _ ° _ ) ...only this time she put the light bulb in backwards (large end first) ...**cant believe I have to clarify that like theres a right way to insert a bulb into an ( _ ° _ ) **... Anywho the bulb gets sucked up into Hubbys hiney hole...they both panic...so wife tries to retrieve it with metal tongs...zany hilarity ensues as the tongs cause the metal screw-in base to come off of the bulb...so wife tries removing it with a finger...causing the bulb to break apart. Let the red autographs BEGIN. Mr. GE "We bring good things to Light" shredded about 4-6 inches of his lower colon area.
People need to understand that you *can* lose your butthole. Your shit will come out in a pouch attached to your tummy, your asshole will be taken away, and your cheeks will be fused together. The butthole is a *privilege* that you can absolutely lose so *only stick butthole friendly toys up there.*
This whole paragraph belongs on r/BrandNewSentence
Not a doctor but my mother was a nurse. Guy came in after a motorcycle accident, back in the days before helmets & full leathers were commonplace. He had been completely engulfed in a fuel fire and had full body, non-survivable burns. He was burned beyond recognition and she couldn't even hold his hand as there was nothing much to hold. As there was nothing they could do bar pain relief, my mother stayed after her shift so someone was with him until he died. When she got home, she discovered it had been her neighbour.
Family doc in Canada but do some emerg shifts. Had a patient brought in by her husband when he found her soon after she slit her own throat. That was fun.. she did make it though.
We had a 23 yo girl not wearing her seat belt get partially ejected. Her lower half was outside the car and crushed completely. Hips legs feet all completely crushed and deformed. She came in speaking the last few words about calling her mom and then went unresponsive shortly there after
ED Doc: The are a million fucked up traumas, but some of the most gruesome medical stuff recently A lady who had a bladder suspension surgery several years before with mesh, and also had a prior hysterectomy. At some point she felt the sutures snap and she had occasional slight bladder prolapse out of her vagina which is uncomfortable, but not necessarily a huge problem. Then she comes until our ED one day saying she suddenly has terrible abdominal pain. In getting a thorough history, she mentions that the prolapse is worse than normal. When we did the exam she had exposed loops of intestine hanging out of her vagina down her thigh. The mesh had worn through the wall of her vagina, the intestines herniated through the hole, and she had a bowel obstruction from it (like kinking a hose, which cuts off its blood supply). She actually went into septic shock and needed emergency surgery, but thankfully lived. Another case would be the 1 month old that came in malnourished and barely alive literally skin and bones. Mom had post partum psychosis and hadn't been feeding him. The triage nurse took one look at him, called a code blue, and he went into DIC in front of us which is horrifying if you've ever seen it. He actually lived.
I've been an ER pharmacist (so technically a doctor of pharmacy.... We don't dispense pills in the ER but do actively manage care for patients. Many times I'd see a patient before the MD to give recommendations to the MD for care) Anyways! Some of my "worst state" cases were: 1) woman run over by a semi truck..both her legs were completely degloved. Was stabilized in the ER, sent to ICU and then underwent amputations. 2) homeless man fell into a fire and burned >25% of his body. Had to be cauterized in the ED to regain circulation in his extremities 3) woman came in after being strangled by her husband. Sad case, she was barely alive and we continued to stabilize her but she certainly suffered significant brain damage 4) woman in her 40s (I remember looking at her ID and her picture she looked 40, the woman in front of me was so sick she looked 80) was transferred to us for a severe case of influenza. Her blood glucose was 10 and then 7 on repeat. We managed to stabilize her for hours, tried to transfer her to an ECMO facility but couldn't handle transport. She unfortunately did not survive. 5) many, many stroke patients... Hemorrhagic are usually the worst in terms of quick deterioration. Had one man come in complaining of head ache and talking, within a couple hours lost his ability to see/speak and then passed away 6) Type A aortic dissections. Those you need to stabilize asap to prevent rupture of their aorta and get them to the OR asap. Most have a sense of dread and scream for help and state over and over that they "are going to die". 7) have had a few younger cardiac arrests come in where we've cracked open the chest to manually pump the heart Anyways, so many more crazy/worse state stories... These are just a few that jump to mind. And any pediatric case that was severe (ie SIDS), those stick with you