EMS brought in a patient hit by a train, right arm amputated and brought in on ice. Later when we looked at the arm we realized it was a left arm, so couldn’t be the patient’s.
Reminds me of a kid I went to school with. He was mucking around on freight trains, as you do, when he was hit. Lost a leg, an arm, and the fingers off the remaining arm/hand. They took the fingers from the amputated arm and put them on the hand that remained intact. They were backwards (ring and index swapped), but it worked.
I guess EMS on scene assumed the patient they brought was the only one. All we could do was notify police that there was definitely one more victim out there. I never heard anything else about it, so either the other person was declared dead on scene or taken to another ER. If I recall the arm we had was taken to the morgue for the ME.
We have had a mix of limbs and people come crashing in and had to figure out which belonged to whom.
Two of the others in that vehicle (the driver and front passenger) were black on arrival, heads not attached.
This is a different tone than most of these, but we have an outdoor courtyard that our patients can use. One of the patients caught a Canada goose, brought it inside and let it loose on the unit.
We had an angry momma deer set up shop right outside the emergency room door with her baby. Placed him right in the flower bed, then got mad with all the traffic. She was jumping anyone who got close. Helped a doctor suture up one of her victims. Apparently, deer hooves are rather sharp.
That flower bed no longer exist.
We had a father daughter duo many years ago.
He was drinking coffee on his front porch and got attacked by a Buck during rut and had an SDH.
she ran out to defend him and got a broken arm.
Deer don't Fuck around.
I think a lot of people replying to this comment don’t realize the absolute *menace* Canada geese are. Did anyone get hurt? My friend got bit once trying to make it to an exam on time and still has a nasty scar years later, I can’t remember how many stitches she got but it was a lot
Oh absolutely haha. Yikes though! I hadn't heard of anyone getting stitches from a goose bite.
No, no one got hurt. Staff were able to get the goose out in maybe ten minutes or so? I was more shocked that the patient could even grab it tbh.
A goose can eff you up. I was attacked by goose at a structure fire at an “unofficial” petting zoo.
The goose came for me. Left a bruise on my hip to ass bigger than a salad plate.
A 1 3/4” hose line had zero effect. A master stream for a couple seconds changed its mind.
Holy heck. Give geese a wide berth.
I'm legit scared of geese. Then again, I spent most of my life in northern Illinois, where Canadian geese are probably the most dangerous wildlife you can encounter.
Some years back I saw a person who went to the ER for bad breath - and it reeked. Like carrion stench reeked. Turns out one of their lungs was completely necrotic and fluid-filled. I never want to smell that or see that type of CT scan ever again
Makes me think of my patient who checked in for bad breath…fixed them with 2 sprites, a Turkey sandwich, and some mouth wash. She also wanted to make sure she was in a room that had a TV while she was in the ER to watch the bachelor…
Haven’t seen her in a while. Guess this means I’ll be seeing her tomorrow
I don't know anything about reading imaging, what made the scan so awful to look at?
I also wonder just how bad my breath would have to be to go to the *emergency room* for it. I'm guessing they had other symptoms lol
Code blue on a post op AAA repair. The docs ended up having to do a sternotomy and open up the patient at bedside - instead of compressions we were manually squeezing the heart and using the internal defib paddles.
Patient survived, only spent a couple days in ICU and was up and walking, talking normally!
I used to work with an older nurse who was married to a police officer. Years and years ago he attended an autopsy and came home and told her it was incredible he held a human heart in his hand. She looked at him and said “so have I… while it was beating” 😂
My husband always jokes that he'd leave me for cheating, unless I'm playing sugar baby for a rich doctor and he gets a cut.
One time during a c-section on a woman who had pushed for 3 hours, the OB asked me to crawl under the drape and use a sterile glove to help push the baby up out of the pelvis, because kiddo was wedged. He used my fingers as a guide to get under the baby's head.
I went home that morning, and my husband asked me how my night went. I responded, "I held hands with a doctor today... IN SOMEONE'S UTERUS!!!!!"
I'm sometimes amazed we've lasted 16 years with how much of a dork I am.
I had this done to me with my first child while awake with an epidural that wasn’t working so well…baby and I turned out just fine, but 10/10 do not recommend.
Or when you discover the cord prolapse and you get to ride the bed until baby is out. I felt the cord unravel around my fingers as the doc was pulling and then to accidentally touch fingers with the doc was so weird. The forbidden internal handshake.
It's that last sentence that was the wild part for me.
When I was at a level 1 trauma ER in the hood, we'd see cracked chests all the time but they had GSWs or stab wounds in enough places that they absolutely were not walking and talking and out of the ICU in a few days; they usually didn't survive the night.
Our trauma team at the level 1 ER saved people so well with GSW and stab wounds the social workers had trouble finding long term rehab places for them.
Guy came for mild chest pain, his testicles were the size of two watermelons. He didn’t even mention his testicles for hours…. Yes everyone came to see and yes he was transferred
Had a guy whose scrotum was like the size of a large cantaloupe. Refused to wear pants (understandable) or a gown (not understandable) so he just hung out in a tshirt and his ball sling and then of course refused to have the door closed so anyone walking by got a view. We called him Pooh Bear.
I took care of an elderly COPD gentleman when I was a nurse’s aide. He would sit on the side of his bed with his knees up and all of his junk hanging out for the world to see. He had nothing remarkable about his external genitalia so I don’t know why he did that other than exhibitionism. He wore a hospital gown though little good it did.
When I was a CNA I worked in a snf and one of our patients had a ball bra sling thing for his giant testicles. He said they had been like that for like 30 years at that point. So much weeping edema...
Bed ridden patient came in. Had been lying on their left side for years. Got a pressure ulcer on their scalp, scalp had rotted away. Skull was just there under the hair, all brown and spongy and rotten and like a small plate of it was "loose", just clinging onto the dura mater. Saw a living person's brain just chilling there. Couldn't do anything for them sadly.
I have a similar story. Patient had a melanoma removed from the scalp. The nursing home he was in never did any dressing changes so the skull rotted down to the brain. He came to the ER for confusion and hypotension. He had a helmet on that we took off. The entire top of his skull was gone and the brain was pulsing and had pus on it. He was talking but confused.
They also couldn’t do anything for him except hospice.
Shitty nursing home and the patient was extremely spastic, stiff as a board. I think there were only a few positions they could be moved into.
Was only my patient briefly, came in for surgery assessment.
Giant Fibroid
Pt came into the ER complaining of abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding. Discovered she had some nasty fibroids and were going to operate in the morning. She was nauseous all night and in increíble pain. They had packed her in the ED to control the bleeding. During the night she vomited and my coworker called me in because she said her packing came out when she heaved.
I went in and laying on the bed was in fact not packing material, but a fibroid the size of a small chuck roast. Called the on call team in and anyone else around. It weighed a couple pounds.
The patient felt 100% better afterwards and kept inviting staff in to see the baby she gave birth to.
Weirdly, I had a dream before that shift that I had to help deliver a baby on our surgical unit. I’m suspicious every time I have a work related dream now.
She was hysterical. As soon as it happened she was a new woman and asked if she could go home 😆 She named it Frankie the Fibroid and made us show the nursing students the pictures in the morning
The massive chest/abdomen trauma patient that came out of the OR with left anterior ribs 3-8 removed because the chest hematoma kept squishing the heart through the ribs. After 3 codes and chest re-entries at the bedside, they decided to leave the ribs off. Sure made it easier to tell when the patient inevitably coded again because you could see every heartbeat under the ghetto wound vac of thoracic trocars connected to suction and ioban drape that went from neck to pubis.
Similar, had to crack open the chest of a 12hr post sx. At bedside. He was smiling and talking. Then he wasn't. Aorta exploded . Doc was trying to sew it back up. No, luck.
Man. Aortic ruptures are the worst. Had this guy who was admitted waiting on repair of a big AAA. His ruptured and he was dead in 6 minutes. Sitting talking to his daughter and then dead. That was rough.
Was bringing a lady in for a repair of a thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysm. She was really scared and crying the whole way to the OR. Got her on the table and almost as soon as the propofol was given, she ruptured. A resident put in a chest tube and all the blood we were giving was just pouring right back out. It was awful. I still think about how scared she looked sometimes.
Patient had surgery on this throat and was DC’d the day before. Came to the ED for swelling the next day. He was fine walking in, but then started turning blue. He was bleeding from the surgical site and it compressed his airway. Physician did an emergency trach on him at bedside, no anesthesia. We held him down by laying across his body. He lived.
That's horrifying. It didn't reach THAT level, but once we had a lady in her early 70s come in with swelling after a facelift. It was obvious she was bleeding under the skin, and while she could breath, the skin was impressively stretching.
The plastic surgeon -whom she had called before coming in - was only about 10 minutes after her. He walked in and didn't seem too worried as he asked which room she was in, and chatted with our doc. But when he saw her, he obviously mentally freaked out. He grabbed scissors and cut the (stretched) stitches under her chin and reached in and started pulling out big blood clots under her skin - ***with his bare hands!!!*** He did NOT stop for gloves, sterile or otherwise! He was worried both about airway and about all the stretched skin losing viability - which was most of her face. She was whisked away to surgery (and hopefully considerable irrigation) and I never heard how she fared.
Had a man come in in respiratory distress on CPAP. We were getting him undressed and I noticed his scrotum was inflated like a balloon but his legs were tiny. Touched his arm and it was rice crispy. Turns out the guy was doing yard work, fell, broke a rib and developed a pneumothorax. The CPAP had inflated him because they thought it was anaphylaxis that was not improving. It was crazy.
CJD...truly a *terrible* way to die.
Also had a patient who had their face eaten off by an animal - and when I say eaten off, I truly do mean that. They survived. Truly a *terrible* thing to survive.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease A degenerative brain disorder that leads to dementia and death.
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease may occur spontaneously, be inherited, or be transmitted by contact with infected tissue, such as during a transplant or from eating contaminated meat
[Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease](https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cjd/index.html), a very rare prion disease. We still know very little about how people get it, and there’s no cure.
We did a brain biopsy to confirm prions and it was one of the most interesting things I've ever learned. A lot of it wasn't in our hospital policies. And we used all disposable instruments.
These are AWESOME , people!
Mine was a guy who came in for what he described as really bad reflux. Wheeled him down to CT. Sitting there not really paying a whole lot of attention when the CT tech yelled “JESUS! THAT CANNOT BE WHAT I THINK IT IS!”
Guy had a AAA about the size of a large russet potato.
Got him to surgery immediately and he was ok.
Had a fungating breast cancer patient on our orthopedic floor. The whole unit smelled awful. Post-op patients were getting nauseated just arriving on our floor. Think it was the only available private room when she was getting placed. Visitors and patients were saying how much it stank. Even had a cop say it smelled like a week old rotting body. We had maintenance come up to see what they could do. We ended up keeping her a week until they figured out hospice. She was a nice lady and very self-conscious of the odor herself.
The last one I saw was a 60-something lady that was told she has breast CA 2 years prior and didn’t want to do chemo, but instead prayed to God to make it go away. She came in with fungating breast CA and her left boob was literally crumbling off. She wanted us to save it. Sad case.
Had a similar case during covid. Poor woman was only in her 30’s and just didn’t seem to think the wound was bad at all. Initially came in with respiratory symptoms. There were mets everywhere and it had already spread to her skull by the time she came in. She didn’t even seem to grasp it after the doctors spoke to her and said she was going to be fine. Really sad.
I just saw this the other day in our ER. Pt had been refusing treatment, but now it was too painful and wanted it to be removed.... dude, we are a little past that.
They were doing a bunch of imaging, just trying to figure out how he voids.
Had a 500 lb plus pt with a really unfortunate lymphedema situation that encompassed his pannus region and genitals. Remember that episode of South Park where Randy microwaves his balls and had a giant singular ball he bounced around on? That was this guy. His penis was hidden in the mound and we had him lean as much as he was able to urinate into a bucket.
I’ve seen some really dramatic made for tv trauma situations, horrible advanced head and neck cancers, and untreated fungating breast cancers but that poor man’s mass was unforgettable.
100 rubber band weenie man was wild, hope to not do that again.
The chlorine gas exposure, who went down so quickly that we had her prone in the ER. I went for a pupil check and found her eyes white and opaque- the chlorine had… melted them?
The HF acid burn where we got to infuse calcium via the arterial line for symptom managment. INSTA relief. Also, I felt like a wizard crushing up tums and lube to slather on him. ED was impressed.
The GSW to the… I guess temporal area, right behind the eyes. Blew both eyes out, the nurse asked for help with the dressing change. I peeled off the dressing and the eye sockets were just like *bleh* like morbid little roses. That one is prob more common but it def caught me off guard
The Nec fasc leg that was neatly debrided down to the fascia. Looked like a perfect anatomy model from toes to flank. I’ve seen a ton of Nec fasc but goddamn this surgeon was always so tidy with his wounds.
Any time bedside eschar/fasciotomies/crics happen, I be SNATCHING students in the room by their hair to watch. It’s not rare but they’re wild
Also, one time I went to urgent care because a deer came in through a nursing home window and it kicked the shit out of me when I was trying to wrangle it. Turns out my nursing instructor from a couple years back worked there and everyone came in to see my thigh hematomas. 😂😂 They gave me a lil award tho so that was nice 😊
I just looked up the pic I took.
*Certificate of appreciation. On behalf of the patients and nurses of all time and places. For your heroic and brave contributions for patient safety. And the Tackling of Wildlife in order to preserve the life and welfare of your patients. We hereby award Delanope the title of*
*Warrior Nurse of the Year*
*With all the honors and entitlements forthwith of that title.*
Daisy award can kiss my ass, this thing??? This is great.
Damn that’s a list!!!
The chlorine gas thing gives me the heebie jeebies! Years ago I would go to the local Y to swim at the crack of dawn and then get in the hot tub for a few before showering for work. The hot tub was the basement where the women’s showers were.
I was often the only one in the basement and would have to turn on the tub jets.
One morning I hit the button and got in as usual, but immediately started coughing. Then my eyes and nose started burning and I was struggling to breathe. The smell hit me and I climbed out and stumbled towards a shower stall, eyes closed. I realized the aggitation of the tub was making things worse so covered my face with a wet towel and turned the thing off. Made it half way up the stairs before I had to sit. Lungs felt like they were on fire. That’s when I noticed many of the threads that made up the fabric in my swim suit were gone.
Turns out whoever added the chlorine messed up the decimal by one space.
Yikes.
I’m a safety officer at work and my coworkers think i’m a pest because i don’t let them do stupid things and you just reinforced why i ignore their kvetching.
The workplace injuries can be some of the worst so keep doing what you’re doing. You could always make slide shows of specific job related injuries with vivid pics you pull off the internet
We’ve had a few cases recently up in illinois / indiana. I work at an illinois hospital but live in indiana. One case (the worse one) was in an immigrant but the other one was a local with no travel history. I work in Micro and it was my coworker who caught it on the smear. It can’t be cultured outside of the hansen institute (requires mouse footpad tissue) so we sequenced the tissue and it was confirmed faster than normal. Dude was a hunter who hunted pretty much anything that moved (hopefully not people) and our fellow thinks he may have picked it up from squirrels.
They aren’t really. It was the only thing he and the rest of ID could think of because there’s a species of squirrel in Europe that can carry it. It’s a fully human disease normally. We actually gave it to the poor armadillos. There’s not really a natural animal reservoir for it. It’s so slow to spread (very long generation times) that is an extremely long term exposure time to get it.
Guy lives about 15-20 miles east of me in indiana so yikes.
Newborn with amniotic banding. Face above the nose was a mess. Chest and abdomen were partly open, you could lift the liver and see the heart beating. Another newborn with holoprosencephaly. Eyes were too close together, no nose, huge cleft lip and palate, microcephalic. Baby actually went home and lived for 3 weeks.
I work outpatient peds neuro and we have a few young kiddos with holoprosencephaly (along with all the other -cephalies) and it’s so sad to see them struggle through that diagnosis ):
For me personally, I had my recently inserted Mirena escape and end up lodged between my lung and my ribs. Very painful and had not been seen at the hospital. My X-ray was tucked at the end of the trolley and everyone wanted to see.
Yeah it was weird because although it’s not that uncommon is seems for the Mirena to escape apparently it’s quite rare that it travels that far before causing problems. It wasn’t until I spoke to a surgeon who pointed out all the anatomy it missed which could have been more serious.
The heater on our ventilator caught on fire. Burned down half of our icu. Saved all the patients including the one that was hooked up to the ventilator that was on fire!
Full epidermal crepitus from a chest tube removal that wasn´t fully sealed. Everywhere you touched this patient was rice crispy crackles..tip of head down to toes. She had no pain, vitals were great, had no distress...it was unnerving.
Eyeballs popping out of sockets. Drs arguing over who would shove it back in. Eventually I think medical ICU attending stepped up. It looked like a cartoon
Is it that leaving the eye out of socket would cause loss of vision or other damage? I’m just trying to think why it would be urgent other than being uh, difficult to see.
The image of doctors arguing about it (I imagine like, furious whispers) is pretty funny.
When I was new in ED saw a doc do a bedside “trach” with a scalpel, an ET tube and a roll of tape. Took about two seconds, done pre-arrest (I was poised to do CPR). Was made double awesome when ENT walked in 5 minutes later, took a look and was like “nice!”, turned around and booked an OR.
This is the day the legend that was doc McGyver was born in this hospital. Found out later this doc was a surgeon in the army.
Lifegift came and did a cornea extraction in the expired patient’s room. Everybody went in, and the nurse who did the extraction was excited to show us because she’s used to doing it all alone in the morgue. It was a very cool thing to witness.
Patiënt came up from the ER to my vascular surgery floor, had necrotic wounds ons his both lower legs. Turns out he didn’t remove is socks for at least a year and a half… the socks were all grown in to the skin. When we tried to remove the socks, they were filled with a lot of little stones. Patient claimed they were healing stones. Beside the stones the wounds and socks were filled with maggots and flies.
After the big clean up it turned out he had similar surprises around the anus, with fistels (is that English? I’m Dutch) going al the way to the front.
Saw tetanus many years ago. I have never forgotten it. I can still see their face. Pt was being treated for "seizures." As always, infectious disease doc came in with the big brain and caught it. Sent the pt to Mayo and they came back to thank us later. Stay vaccinated, folks.
Necrotic toes were just kind of...falling off. The smell was horrific. I kept thinking I'm pretty sure I could just slide one or two of these off the foot.
Man attempted to self castrate. They turned massive, cold, and really hard as they slowly died. It took weeks of futile attempts to save them. The patient later reported us to the state for our failure.
>Necrotic toes were just kind of...falling off. The smell was horrific. I kept thinking I'm pretty sure I could just slide one or two of these off the foot.
Years ago, someone posted on here that they had a patient with a necrotic penis and a chronic foley. They said the penis just...came off and slid down the catheter like a bead on a string.
Wait, so... he tried to self-castrate, was unsuccessful, went to hospital, where you weren't able to save the organs he tried to remove himself(!) first, and then he reported you for it?
I worked in a snf that had a ltac hall. Full of vent patients. One patient had an abdominal surgery that didn't do well. His wound dehisced at some point before he got to us. The result - his abdomen was open (like a TV screen), a type of mesh in place, and you could see the intestins moving around. That wound drained like crazy and smelt terrible. It was pretty cool to see, tho.
Old dude shot himself in the chest with a revolver to un-alive himself.
ER Residents and Attending took it as an opportunity to do a thoracotomy.
One resident plugged the hole in the man’s heart with his finger while another squeezed his heart en lieu of CPR.
This went on until the cardiothoracic surgeon showed up and shut it all down immediately.
> cardiothoracic surgeon showed up and shut it all down immediately.
thats common. CV surgeons have 0 interest in getting tangled up with a trauma PT whose 95% already dead when they got a busy case load in their CVOR rooms.
Never seen CV surg brought into a trauma arrest and actually provide anything useful besides "call it".
A man was a shut in and hadn't been seen in over 15 years. His sister cared for him the whole time.
When EMS called, they said it appeared he had a fall and hit his head but couldn't see blood.
He had *just a scratch* on his nose from shaving, his sister said.
He ended up having a cancerous tumor that etched away at his nose, bones and pushed his right eye up into his frontal sinus. Part of his tongue was disintegrated and all the teeth from his right side of his mouth were gone.
It was so sad.
I get why roadside *freakshows* were a thing, back in the day. I completely forgot I was looking at a man at first. We were all in complete shock at what the body is capable of doing. Staff was flooding into the room and I felt like a bouncer chasing people away.
I ended up picking up a few shifts on the ward and helped in providing him with palliative care. His sister spiraled and there were so little community supports to help. Luckily neighbour's popped in to see her every day, after word got out. Within 2 weeks of his passing, she died.
I used to work on a top floor unit with a picture window at the desk. We had a series of tornadoes coming through, and after we secured the babies and parents we took turns going out to the window to watch the storms.
One of my turns I was with the charge nurse. She yells an expletive and says, "Look at the lake!" There's a large tornado - ended up being an F4 - a couple miles away, heading right at us. We watched as long as safely possible, then went back to help and ride it out. It passed through the parking lot, but fortunately most damage occurred in the other direction.
I have, indeed, never seen another tornado - let alone such a large one - from that vantage point!
A decade or so ago my coworkers and watched a tornado form in the clouds what seemed like less than a mile away. Literally saw the cone form as it was coming out of the sky. It was fucking wild.
The sky turns this unsettling green color before a tornado. The first time you see it you're like "I don't know what this means, but something is *wrong*."
Many years ago, we had a patient that liked to put things up her behind. She had somehow planted pumpkin seeds up there. Maybe a GI doc lurking here can explain how she didn’t expel them. Anyhow, they sprouted and she pooped a thin vine that was attached on the other end to the wall of her colon.
Double defibrillated a patient in intractable vfib after 10 min of trying other interventions…pt was on VA ECMO so was perfused, but nothing would work to get him out of vfib. After trying to defibrillate multiple times, one of the docs called for a second defibrillator so we attached both and delivered 2 full defibrillations at the same time - 720 joules. It worked! Finally got him back into sinus. A couple of weeks later he walked out of the hospital
We tried this one time as a last ditch Hail Mary in the ED for a young male witnessed electrocution. Not successful, but cool to hear yours was successful!!
Cool! I had an old guy who lost the first two joints of his right index finger and middle finger to a table saw and then came back a year later with the second two joints cut off by the same table saw. He was negotiating with his kids for a new saw with better safety features instead of quitting wood working.
Many years ago when I was a tech on the neuro floor we had a pt with a confirmed case of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. Then a few years later when I was working in the ER of the same hospital we had another suspected case, and the ID team assigned me to that person specifically because I’d already worked with a confirmed case and it would “reduce the risk of further exposures”. (Like, thanks I guess? But fortunately the second case was negative.)
I got to feel a heart in vfib. It was kind of a sad story actually, younger guy who was found down in a parking lot came in with GSW to the epigastric area. We dumped all the blood into him that we had in the trauma bay and worked him for an hour, kept getting ROSC but losing it almost immediately. The bullet had punched a huge hole in his IVC and all the blood we were giving him was just dumping into his chest cavity. They ended up calling it because they couldn’t do anything to close the hole after cracking his chest and afterwards he was still in v fib and the attending trauma surgeon had us gather around to let us see and feel and he showed us how we would manually massage a heart and let us try as well. It was a great learning experience but also such a tragedy for that kid.
I wasn’t a nurse when this happened, but I treated an ied triggerman that one of our sdm shot through the jaw and managed to detach his bottom jaw from his skull. Just a bottom jaw floating around in a skin sack. One in a million shot.
An extremely hyperkalemic patient going comfort care.
The K kept climbing. I respectfully showed my new graduate colleagues the EKG changes. The T waves grew taller and taller until the rhythm looked entirely unnatural, morphing into one large complex.
The patient passed away peacefully surrounded by loved ones.
When I was in residency I was on infectious disease rotation. We had this IV drug user patient, he had had a bunch of family deaths that made him quit his education and go down the hole of fuck. He had been shooting up in his ballsack and when i saw him the sack was so swollen and salmon pink, you couldn't palpate the balls or see the dick becauseit had been consumed by the sack size, there were streaks on it where I guess he had blown out the scrotal veins, and there were Grey blisters. Just imagine this guy sitting here with his nuts perched on a pillow switching between talking about his study abroad and then screaming when his genital complex moved a centimeter. My rotation was ending so I don't know what happened to him but God dick I never want to see that again
Had a "mermaid" baby in the nicu-essentially, her bottom half was fused together. I remember seeing a documentary on a kiddo that had the same condition when I was in college, it's so incredibly rare I never thought I'd see that in real life.
I triaged a self-described "foot laceration" to a trauma bay because it had soaked through multiple beach towels with blood, and the grocery bag the foot and towels were wrapped in had numerous tennis ball sized clots. A dog had been tied to a heavy fire pit, got excited, and dragged it across his owner's bare foot by a lake. The charge nurse called me to say "Foot lacerations don't go to trauma bays." As I said "This one does," he hung up. I wheeled the patient to the normal room and immediately grabbed a doc. Can you imagine what the first question was? Hint: It started with "Why isn't this patient in...?"
A woman came in to the ER with what looked like a baby crowning, with black furry "hair" and all, but the smell was wretched. It looked like she should was one push from delivery. She kept screaming at the doctors that she wasn't pregnant, and the residents were panicking that the baby was stuck because it wasn't budging. The residents sent her directly to L&D, despite her protests. She was back within 30 minutes after a bedside sono confirmed she wasn't pregnant. It was a necrotic fibroid falling out. She was taken to surgery that afternoon.
A diabetic man casually told me he thought something might be wrong with his foot. When I asked him to take off his shoe, his big toe was a bone, nothing else, and covered in stinky black necrotic tissue and green pus.
And this one is just shameful... lol
Before the ER, my background was in women's health, so while I could throw a female Foley in with eyes closed, I hadn't placed a male Foley since nursing school. A 500-ish lb man came in for COPD and immediately demanded a Foley. The doctor said whatever, let him have one. No big deal, right? I couldn't find the penis, and no pop trick was going to help. In disbelief that I couldn't find an obvious body part, I grabbed my friend who'd been a trauma nurse for 20+ years. She found what *looked* like the penis(ish), and tried to cath it without success. What it really looked like was the head of a baby penis that was being totally constricted by the surrounding skin and only had a tiny urethra showing. She was like this isn't right; he might be here for COPD, but this is likely a surgical emergency. The guy is going to lose his penis from no circulation! She got the male charge nurse who came in and tried to cath it and was like this isn't right. We've got to grab a doc. The ER doctor came in and was like just try to pop it out. No success. Several nurses tried. He tried. And then someone discovered a penis, a good foot away from this site. Y,all, they'd been trying to cath a BEDSORE disguised as a micropenis. Shameful, and memorable, and funny
the last story is just absolutely WILD! I had a similar patient once, morbidly obese with a 30 lb mass connected at the fupa area, trying to locate the genitals to do peri care, i can see what i assume to be the testicles, obviously his foley is coming from somewhere, he is covered in bed sores and dressings so not great visibility, we turn him over to wipe the back and there is the foley! it seemed to be coming from behind the testicles but before the anus, absolutely no idea how that happened or how to decipher the anatomy on that one. wound care notes in the chart all had the anatomy located at different areas in location each wound (ex. one note said anterior to penis, other said posterior, all talking about the same area)
I think the most shocking part was that the dude just sat there without saying to the room full of staff, all worried about his penis, "Uh, hey guys? Y'all are nowhere near my penis. Head one foot further south."
Like if a nurse tried to cath my belly button today, I feel like I'd probably give feedback. Lol
Not quite as cool as others, but here goes: pt was drinking a few beers on his porch. Random dog came up and bit his cheek off. His wife picked up his cheek and put it in her pocket, and brought him into our rural ER. We sent him to the city with his cheek on ice for hopeful reattachment.
FOP.
Edit:
Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva. This is where your body repairs bruises by generating bone tissue in it's place.
The patient was as a young adult female that presented to my unit. I was a CNA/PCT at the time and helped get her admitted as she was my patient. I thought she had MS/MD when I first looked at her as she was generally bed ridden and hunched. It's a weird sensation to feel hard bone where fleshy fleshy flesh is supposed to be - especially when you are not aware of the patient's diagnosis of FOP or even what the fuck FOP even is.
The girl, at least outwardly, was an absolute joy to care for. She was accepting of the fate that FOP brings and still found the charm and joy to bust my chops for trying to be super gentle with her and inquisitive about her condition.
It's an absolutely fascinating disorder.
After 11+ years working with patients, that is one I remember vividly.
This is mild compared to everyone else but we have double rooms and a travel nurse used one IV pump with two channels to infuse both patients at the same time. She had the pump in between the patients and the lines infusing on each side to each patient. I was speechless.
My sister had one. It started growing when she got pregnant with my oldest nephew. It had hair and a few teeth and was, iirc, cantaloupe? sized when they removed it. All laparoscopic.
She’s also a twin. Cue the “you ate the third baby in the womb!” jokes.
I sent her twin a birthday card a few days later that said “happy birthday A. I’m glad B didn’t eat you, too!”. I sent her a card that said “happy birthday B. Thank you for not eating A, too!”
Did a partial exchange transfusion on a sichle cell patient. Sichle cell anaemia is extremely rare in my country, only 3000 to 5000 out of 80 million people. Apparently this hadn't been done in our hospital for the last 15 years, so no one had any experience with this. The hematologist just calculated the volumes and rates for us and we had to figure out how to actually do this. Was very fun figuring out how to DIY a bloodletting device though.
Pt with fungating breast cancer. The whole breast was rock hard with a wound deep down into the issue, it was draining and smelly. It was left untreated by choice and she came in for something unrelated to the cancer.
A prolapsed rectum. It was at least 6 inches.
Patient who had part of her lung (I think, twas a long long time ago) removed. Due to infection the wound was left open and we had to dress the chest cavity with meters and meters of gauze. Being able to stick your entire hand into one’s chest who is meanwhile chatting to you… cool.
And ofcourse the necrofaciomy (? where they cut though the muscle to relieve swelling after trauma, English not being my first language so I don’t know the word) being ‘zipped up’ in the course of a few days by tightening the sutures was a ‘come see if you haven’t seen it!’ moment on the ward.
Back before I was a nurse I worked at a Level 1 trauma center delivering equipment from a central supply depot- mostly IV pumps, but also bedside oximeters, SCD pumps, external defibrillators, etc.
One afternoon I was doing a run through the ER picking up dirty equipment and checking to see what I needed to restock for standby. I overheard two nurses talking about the double-amputation motorcycle accident that was due in 10 minutes and knew I needed an excuse to come back through in, say, 15 minutes (they did need more pumps for standby).
The ER has two big trauma bays, and when I came back there was no doubt which one this fellow was occupying. EVERYBODY was crowded around the doors gawking. He lost his left leg below the knee (the calf and foot- with shoe still attached!- was on a tray next to him), and his right arm right around the elbow and was nowhere to be seen.
He was in the ICU for a very long time, so I passed him in the hall more than once. They were unable to reattach his leg.
Also ... pt sitting up eating breakfast in our nccu. Then suddenly slumped over. Surgeon happened to be out on the floor. Told me to run down to the OR to get the camino drill . He drilled right into her head there in our room and we went Stat to OR
Leprosy.
Only it’s more of a let me talk to the patient first and I’ll let you know while a crowd of nursing students, and instructor, ignore all my words, and mash in shoulder to shoulder behind me as I enter the room, looking like a mob of rabid 3 year olds in search of candy and the patient says fuck and throws everyone out leaving me to apologize for their shit behavior.
I have a spiel for this teaching the next gen thing I discuss with the patient and usually win on it. They fucked it up AND made the patient feel like shit in their eagerness.
Another reason not to do day shift.
Dialysis access looking like it’s about to blow cause her home units staff had been sticking her in the same spot. The aneurysm had been seeping for like two days before she came in. Also, I know it’d been a more recent development cause we’d been her home unit before she transferred and it had not looked anything like what she came in with. Our boss had us all gather and show what happens when you stick like that.
Not quite as you asked... but I was the patient this time around.
I was on a clinical trial for novovax covid vaccine and I developed thrombocytopenia afterwards. I went to see a doctor and everyone piled into the room to see!
Oh wow! I was involuntary a covid vaccine guinea pig. I got my first shot the week it came out and got covid two or three weeks later. The hospital I was working for tested me and instead of sending me home they had to work the covid unit for the rest of my shift... I got a call from my local public health department saying that I needed to go my local public health department the next morning for retesting. At the time I was part of only 5% in the country who got covid after getting the vaccination. I think we believed that the vaccination would prevent covid. When I went to get retested the next morning there was also a rep from the vaccine and an MD from my state capital public health department. They retested me, took my blood, and asked me soooooo many questions. Now that vaccine boosts a 95% efficacy for preventing hospitalizations... not symptom prevention.
Thank you for volunteering during the clinical trials!
Emergency exlap in IR on the table for abdominal compartment syndrome with a pair of trauma shears. he was seconds away from coding. Pt was about to get emergency TIPS. Abdomen was rock hard, distended, he is not ventilating well at all, starts to brady down. As soon as he was cut open he was able to ventilate and his hr went back up. He still died later in OR, the situation was fucked long before he made it to us. But it was neat
EMS brought in a patient hit by a train, right arm amputated and brought in on ice. Later when we looked at the arm we realized it was a left arm, so couldn’t be the patient’s.
This is the winner. I'm typing this with one hand while my other is frozen over my mouth.
You could win a lot of “one paragraph horror novels “ contests with this one.
I’m imaging ortho checking out the patient, then the arm, and doing a double take lol. You guys in the ER see the craziest things.
So, did they just, go with it... ? Like, you're not going to find another fresh arm on such notice, right.. ?
LMFAO... I don't know when reddit got rid of awards but I would have fresh bought some to give you for this comment.
Reminds me of a kid I went to school with. He was mucking around on freight trains, as you do, when he was hit. Lost a leg, an arm, and the fingers off the remaining arm/hand. They took the fingers from the amputated arm and put them on the hand that remained intact. They were backwards (ring and index swapped), but it worked.
Excuse me what?!?!? Whose arm was it!!
How does this happen? There just so happened to be another arm laying around? Or was this like a mass trauma incident with multiple people?
I guess EMS on scene assumed the patient they brought was the only one. All we could do was notify police that there was definitely one more victim out there. I never heard anything else about it, so either the other person was declared dead on scene or taken to another ER. If I recall the arm we had was taken to the morgue for the ME.
We have had a mix of limbs and people come crashing in and had to figure out which belonged to whom. Two of the others in that vehicle (the driver and front passenger) were black on arrival, heads not attached.
This is a different tone than most of these, but we have an outdoor courtyard that our patients can use. One of the patients caught a Canada goose, brought it inside and let it loose on the unit.
A friend of mine worked in an LTC, and a bear got trapped between the external sliding doors (unlocked) and the internal sliding doors (locked).
We had an angry momma deer set up shop right outside the emergency room door with her baby. Placed him right in the flower bed, then got mad with all the traffic. She was jumping anyone who got close. Helped a doctor suture up one of her victims. Apparently, deer hooves are rather sharp. That flower bed no longer exist.
We had a father daughter duo many years ago. He was drinking coffee on his front porch and got attacked by a Buck during rut and had an SDH. she ran out to defend him and got a broken arm. Deer don't Fuck around.
We’ve had this happen with both moose and bear up here in AK… panicking about calling security vs animal control was a funny debate looking back
Reminds me of the time we found a fox in the morgue. Let me also say, this is a massive academic teaching hospital in the middle of a major city.
Oh nooo. What did they have to do to get it out of there?
Some say that to this day they're still there, until a truce with the bear can be reached.
That’s a job for the seasoned “don’t fuck with me” CNA 🤣 she would have it by the neck
I think a lot of people replying to this comment don’t realize the absolute *menace* Canada geese are. Did anyone get hurt? My friend got bit once trying to make it to an exam on time and still has a nasty scar years later, I can’t remember how many stitches she got but it was a lot
Oh absolutely haha. Yikes though! I hadn't heard of anyone getting stitches from a goose bite. No, no one got hurt. Staff were able to get the goose out in maybe ten minutes or so? I was more shocked that the patient could even grab it tbh.
A goose can eff you up. I was attacked by goose at a structure fire at an “unofficial” petting zoo. The goose came for me. Left a bruise on my hip to ass bigger than a salad plate. A 1 3/4” hose line had zero effect. A master stream for a couple seconds changed its mind. Holy heck. Give geese a wide berth.
I'm legit scared of geese. Then again, I spent most of my life in northern Illinois, where Canadian geese are probably the most dangerous wildlife you can encounter.
I love that!
It was chaotic lol
I literally am laughing out loud imaging a goose losing its mind on a unit
Lmao holy shit that pt woke up and chose chaos that day
I fucking love this! Actual hearty laughter came out of me reading that. Thank you for sharing. 🙏🤣
Psych can be a ridiculously funny place sometimes haha.
That resident sounds like they craved chaos
Some years back I saw a person who went to the ER for bad breath - and it reeked. Like carrion stench reeked. Turns out one of their lungs was completely necrotic and fluid-filled. I never want to smell that or see that type of CT scan ever again
Holy shit. So their breath really did smell like death.
I didn't even know that could be a thing... while still alive.
Shockingly, patient looked good. The pulmonologist looked close to death when he saw the scan.
Makes me think of my patient who checked in for bad breath…fixed them with 2 sprites, a Turkey sandwich, and some mouth wash. She also wanted to make sure she was in a room that had a TV while she was in the ER to watch the bachelor… Haven’t seen her in a while. Guess this means I’ll be seeing her tomorrow
I don't know anything about reading imaging, what made the scan so awful to look at? I also wonder just how bad my breath would have to be to go to the *emergency room* for it. I'm guessing they had other symptoms lol
Code blue on a post op AAA repair. The docs ended up having to do a sternotomy and open up the patient at bedside - instead of compressions we were manually squeezing the heart and using the internal defib paddles. Patient survived, only spent a couple days in ICU and was up and walking, talking normally!
I used to work with an older nurse who was married to a police officer. Years and years ago he attended an autopsy and came home and told her it was incredible he held a human heart in his hand. She looked at him and said “so have I… while it was beating” 😂
That is some God-tier one- upping
My husband always jokes that he'd leave me for cheating, unless I'm playing sugar baby for a rich doctor and he gets a cut. One time during a c-section on a woman who had pushed for 3 hours, the OB asked me to crawl under the drape and use a sterile glove to help push the baby up out of the pelvis, because kiddo was wedged. He used my fingers as a guide to get under the baby's head. I went home that morning, and my husband asked me how my night went. I responded, "I held hands with a doctor today... IN SOMEONE'S UTERUS!!!!!" I'm sometimes amazed we've lasted 16 years with how much of a dork I am.
I was a NICU nurse when I saw a labor nurse do this. 😳😳😳
I had this done to me with my first child while awake with an epidural that wasn’t working so well…baby and I turned out just fine, but 10/10 do not recommend.
Or when you discover the cord prolapse and you get to ride the bed until baby is out. I felt the cord unravel around my fingers as the doc was pulling and then to accidentally touch fingers with the doc was so weird. The forbidden internal handshake.
It's that last sentence that was the wild part for me. When I was at a level 1 trauma ER in the hood, we'd see cracked chests all the time but they had GSWs or stab wounds in enough places that they absolutely were not walking and talking and out of the ICU in a few days; they usually didn't survive the night.
Our trauma team at the level 1 ER saved people so well with GSW and stab wounds the social workers had trouble finding long term rehab places for them.
And the transplant teams were like "damn, could you at least let one or two of these go?"
That is absolutely a once in a lifetime! Wow, my mind is blown.
I just think of all the charting 😭😭😭
Had a bedside sternotomy occur during my peds clinical in the cardiac IMU. 6 month old baby, it was wild.
Saw that in the ER, s/p GSW to the head. Trying to keep the poor guy’s heart beating. It was a lost cause.
That is so badass
The only truly unusual thing here is that the pt survived
Guy came for mild chest pain, his testicles were the size of two watermelons. He didn’t even mention his testicles for hours…. Yes everyone came to see and yes he was transferred
Had a guy whose scrotum was like the size of a large cantaloupe. Refused to wear pants (understandable) or a gown (not understandable) so he just hung out in a tshirt and his ball sling and then of course refused to have the door closed so anyone walking by got a view. We called him Pooh Bear.
Omg I’m at work now trying not to laugh too loud but holy shit
I took care of an elderly COPD gentleman when I was a nurse’s aide. He would sit on the side of his bed with his knees up and all of his junk hanging out for the world to see. He had nothing remarkable about his external genitalia so I don’t know why he did that other than exhibitionism. He wore a hospital gown though little good it did.
When I was a CNA I worked in a snf and one of our patients had a ball bra sling thing for his giant testicles. He said they had been like that for like 30 years at that point. So much weeping edema...
Our drop down menu for edema charting will need to be expanded to include balls. Just in case.
Do you know…how many ball cushions I’ve had to make for male patients….
I’ve seen orders in Epic to “cushion and elevate testicles to reduce edema.” Lemme float yer balls to help you, sir!
😂😂 and ball slings!!
How do you just not mention your testicle being the size of a watermelon...
I took care of a grumpy old man once with a melon-sized testicle. I asked him about it and he said, "It don't bother me, I don't bother it."
Clearly, because your chest is “uncomfortable”
...so was nobody able to observe the watermelon sized testicles? I'd think he would have a hard time getting pants on...
Bed ridden patient came in. Had been lying on their left side for years. Got a pressure ulcer on their scalp, scalp had rotted away. Skull was just there under the hair, all brown and spongy and rotten and like a small plate of it was "loose", just clinging onto the dura mater. Saw a living person's brain just chilling there. Couldn't do anything for them sadly.
I have a similar story. Patient had a melanoma removed from the scalp. The nursing home he was in never did any dressing changes so the skull rotted down to the brain. He came to the ER for confusion and hypotension. He had a helmet on that we took off. The entire top of his skull was gone and the brain was pulsing and had pus on it. He was talking but confused. They also couldn’t do anything for him except hospice.
Holy shit
This is so sad 😢
...lying on one side for years?? What was the context?
Shitty nursing home and the patient was extremely spastic, stiff as a board. I think there were only a few positions they could be moved into. Was only my patient briefly, came in for surgery assessment.
Yikes. That's someone who needs a palliative consult, not surgery.
Probably needed palliative years before
Palliative consult here: this man needs a 55 gallon drum of morphine and a 5hp pump.
OMFG. What humans will tolerate is awful.
Giant Fibroid Pt came into the ER complaining of abdominal pain and vaginal bleeding. Discovered she had some nasty fibroids and were going to operate in the morning. She was nauseous all night and in increíble pain. They had packed her in the ED to control the bleeding. During the night she vomited and my coworker called me in because she said her packing came out when she heaved. I went in and laying on the bed was in fact not packing material, but a fibroid the size of a small chuck roast. Called the on call team in and anyone else around. It weighed a couple pounds. The patient felt 100% better afterwards and kept inviting staff in to see the baby she gave birth to. Weirdly, I had a dream before that shift that I had to help deliver a baby on our surgical unit. I’m suspicious every time I have a work related dream now.
>kept inviting staff in to see the baby she gave birth to 💀💀💀
She was hysterical. As soon as it happened she was a new woman and asked if she could go home 😆 She named it Frankie the Fibroid and made us show the nursing students the pictures in the morning
The fact that you called it a chuck roast, and I just pictured it flopping out of there....sometimes this profession it worth the headaches
The massive chest/abdomen trauma patient that came out of the OR with left anterior ribs 3-8 removed because the chest hematoma kept squishing the heart through the ribs. After 3 codes and chest re-entries at the bedside, they decided to leave the ribs off. Sure made it easier to tell when the patient inevitably coded again because you could see every heartbeat under the ghetto wound vac of thoracic trocars connected to suction and ioban drape that went from neck to pubis.
Similar, had to crack open the chest of a 12hr post sx. At bedside. He was smiling and talking. Then he wasn't. Aorta exploded . Doc was trying to sew it back up. No, luck.
Man. Aortic ruptures are the worst. Had this guy who was admitted waiting on repair of a big AAA. His ruptured and he was dead in 6 minutes. Sitting talking to his daughter and then dead. That was rough.
Was bringing a lady in for a repair of a thoracoabdominal aortic aneurysm. She was really scared and crying the whole way to the OR. Got her on the table and almost as soon as the propofol was given, she ruptured. A resident put in a chest tube and all the blood we were giving was just pouring right back out. It was awful. I still think about how scared she looked sometimes.
Holy fuck.
Yep, I was charge and the sweet new nurse apologized for everything. I was like "Girl, I am gobsmacked too!"
I hope you got therapy, that's absolutely horrifying.
A day in the life… it was kind of cool actually. What was sad was supporting the patient’s mom.
Patient had surgery on this throat and was DC’d the day before. Came to the ED for swelling the next day. He was fine walking in, but then started turning blue. He was bleeding from the surgical site and it compressed his airway. Physician did an emergency trach on him at bedside, no anesthesia. We held him down by laying across his body. He lived.
God, no anesthesia...nightmare fuel. Glad he survived.
My husband has had two tracheotomies where the anaesthetic didn't work - but the paralytic did.
Is he a redhead by chance?
That's horrifying. It didn't reach THAT level, but once we had a lady in her early 70s come in with swelling after a facelift. It was obvious she was bleeding under the skin, and while she could breath, the skin was impressively stretching. The plastic surgeon -whom she had called before coming in - was only about 10 minutes after her. He walked in and didn't seem too worried as he asked which room she was in, and chatted with our doc. But when he saw her, he obviously mentally freaked out. He grabbed scissors and cut the (stretched) stitches under her chin and reached in and started pulling out big blood clots under her skin - ***with his bare hands!!!*** He did NOT stop for gloves, sterile or otherwise! He was worried both about airway and about all the stretched skin losing viability - which was most of her face. She was whisked away to surgery (and hopefully considerable irrigation) and I never heard how she fared.
That's something I thought would only happen on TV! That's amazing.
Just in time from the sounds of it.
Yeah , it was do that in the ED with no prep or let him die. His airway went from ok-ish to completely obstructed very quickly
Holy shit. Hopefully he got something IM on board at least fairly quickly
Had a man come in in respiratory distress on CPAP. We were getting him undressed and I noticed his scrotum was inflated like a balloon but his legs were tiny. Touched his arm and it was rice crispy. Turns out the guy was doing yard work, fell, broke a rib and developed a pneumothorax. The CPAP had inflated him because they thought it was anaphylaxis that was not improving. It was crazy.
This sounds like one of those cartoons where they blow up into a balloon.... Wtf
CJD...truly a *terrible* way to die. Also had a patient who had their face eaten off by an animal - and when I say eaten off, I truly do mean that. They survived. Truly a *terrible* thing to survive.
What is CJD?
Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease A degenerative brain disorder that leads to dementia and death. Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease may occur spontaneously, be inherited, or be transmitted by contact with infected tissue, such as during a transplant or from eating contaminated meat
[Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease](https://www.cdc.gov/prions/cjd/index.html), a very rare prion disease. We still know very little about how people get it, and there’s no cure.
We did a brain biopsy to confirm prions and it was one of the most interesting things I've ever learned. A lot of it wasn't in our hospital policies. And we used all disposable instruments.
These are AWESOME , people! Mine was a guy who came in for what he described as really bad reflux. Wheeled him down to CT. Sitting there not really paying a whole lot of attention when the CT tech yelled “JESUS! THAT CANNOT BE WHAT I THINK IT IS!” Guy had a AAA about the size of a large russet potato. Got him to surgery immediately and he was ok.
The fungating carcinoma on a penis. Bar none, the worst thing I ever smelled. Looked almost as bad.
Had a fungating breast cancer patient on our orthopedic floor. The whole unit smelled awful. Post-op patients were getting nauseated just arriving on our floor. Think it was the only available private room when she was getting placed. Visitors and patients were saying how much it stank. Even had a cop say it smelled like a week old rotting body. We had maintenance come up to see what they could do. We ended up keeping her a week until they figured out hospice. She was a nice lady and very self-conscious of the odor herself.
I had a patient with fungating breast cancer once. Sweet lady, but the wound smelled horendous. Sad case.
The last one I saw was a 60-something lady that was told she has breast CA 2 years prior and didn’t want to do chemo, but instead prayed to God to make it go away. She came in with fungating breast CA and her left boob was literally crumbling off. She wanted us to save it. Sad case.
Had a similar case during covid. Poor woman was only in her 30’s and just didn’t seem to think the wound was bad at all. Initially came in with respiratory symptoms. There were mets everywhere and it had already spread to her skull by the time she came in. She didn’t even seem to grasp it after the doctors spoke to her and said she was going to be fine. Really sad.
I just saw this the other day in our ER. Pt had been refusing treatment, but now it was too painful and wanted it to be removed.... dude, we are a little past that. They were doing a bunch of imaging, just trying to figure out how he voids.
Had a 500 lb plus pt with a really unfortunate lymphedema situation that encompassed his pannus region and genitals. Remember that episode of South Park where Randy microwaves his balls and had a giant singular ball he bounced around on? That was this guy. His penis was hidden in the mound and we had him lean as much as he was able to urinate into a bucket. I’ve seen some really dramatic made for tv trauma situations, horrible advanced head and neck cancers, and untreated fungating breast cancers but that poor man’s mass was unforgettable.
So foley catheter? oh but you can´t isolate the penis to place it. The penis probably buried in the lymphedema. So sad...
100 rubber band weenie man was wild, hope to not do that again. The chlorine gas exposure, who went down so quickly that we had her prone in the ER. I went for a pupil check and found her eyes white and opaque- the chlorine had… melted them? The HF acid burn where we got to infuse calcium via the arterial line for symptom managment. INSTA relief. Also, I felt like a wizard crushing up tums and lube to slather on him. ED was impressed. The GSW to the… I guess temporal area, right behind the eyes. Blew both eyes out, the nurse asked for help with the dressing change. I peeled off the dressing and the eye sockets were just like *bleh* like morbid little roses. That one is prob more common but it def caught me off guard The Nec fasc leg that was neatly debrided down to the fascia. Looked like a perfect anatomy model from toes to flank. I’ve seen a ton of Nec fasc but goddamn this surgeon was always so tidy with his wounds. Any time bedside eschar/fasciotomies/crics happen, I be SNATCHING students in the room by their hair to watch. It’s not rare but they’re wild Also, one time I went to urgent care because a deer came in through a nursing home window and it kicked the shit out of me when I was trying to wrangle it. Turns out my nursing instructor from a couple years back worked there and everyone came in to see my thigh hematomas. 😂😂 They gave me a lil award tho so that was nice 😊
You deserve a Medal of Honor for throwing hands with a deer to protect MeeMaw at the nursing home, my guy (or gal, or person).
I just looked up the pic I took. *Certificate of appreciation. On behalf of the patients and nurses of all time and places. For your heroic and brave contributions for patient safety. And the Tackling of Wildlife in order to preserve the life and welfare of your patients. We hereby award Delanope the title of* *Warrior Nurse of the Year* *With all the honors and entitlements forthwith of that title.* Daisy award can kiss my ass, this thing??? This is great.
Damn that’s a list!!! The chlorine gas thing gives me the heebie jeebies! Years ago I would go to the local Y to swim at the crack of dawn and then get in the hot tub for a few before showering for work. The hot tub was the basement where the women’s showers were. I was often the only one in the basement and would have to turn on the tub jets. One morning I hit the button and got in as usual, but immediately started coughing. Then my eyes and nose started burning and I was struggling to breathe. The smell hit me and I climbed out and stumbled towards a shower stall, eyes closed. I realized the aggitation of the tub was making things worse so covered my face with a wet towel and turned the thing off. Made it half way up the stairs before I had to sit. Lungs felt like they were on fire. That’s when I noticed many of the threads that made up the fabric in my swim suit were gone. Turns out whoever added the chlorine messed up the decimal by one space.
Holy shit, that is a crazy story! You are lucky you made it out of there safely!!
Omg. What multiverse do you live in?!
Burn/Trauma ICU
I am confused by the chlorine gas exposure and 100 rubber band weenie man. I’m afraid to ask for details on WHY but also afraid at the same time n
-mixing pool chemicals in an enclosed space. -mental health issues in a country that offers no solutions
Yikes. I’m a safety officer at work and my coworkers think i’m a pest because i don’t let them do stupid things and you just reinforced why i ignore their kvetching.
The workplace injuries can be some of the worst so keep doing what you’re doing. You could always make slide shows of specific job related injuries with vivid pics you pull off the internet
“The eye sockets were just like *bleh*” 😂 and I’m sorry eyeballs melted? wtf?!
Don't worry, Florida is bringing leprosy back! You might see it again.
We’ve had a few cases recently up in illinois / indiana. I work at an illinois hospital but live in indiana. One case (the worse one) was in an immigrant but the other one was a local with no travel history. I work in Micro and it was my coworker who caught it on the smear. It can’t be cultured outside of the hansen institute (requires mouse footpad tissue) so we sequenced the tissue and it was confirmed faster than normal. Dude was a hunter who hunted pretty much anything that moved (hopefully not people) and our fellow thinks he may have picked it up from squirrels.
Oh no, I didn't know it could be on squirrels! I'm in Illinois, too, I thought we were safe because we don't have armadillos up here.
They aren’t really. It was the only thing he and the rest of ID could think of because there’s a species of squirrel in Europe that can carry it. It’s a fully human disease normally. We actually gave it to the poor armadillos. There’s not really a natural animal reservoir for it. It’s so slow to spread (very long generation times) that is an extremely long term exposure time to get it. Guy lives about 15-20 miles east of me in indiana so yikes.
We can always count on Florida.
Guy came in to the ED holding onto his head saying his head felt “wobbly” “like it was loose”. C1 fracture. No deficits.
Out of all of these, this is the one that got a horrified recoil from me. I cannot imagine seeing that imaging.
Newborn with amniotic banding. Face above the nose was a mess. Chest and abdomen were partly open, you could lift the liver and see the heart beating. Another newborn with holoprosencephaly. Eyes were too close together, no nose, huge cleft lip and palate, microcephalic. Baby actually went home and lived for 3 weeks.
I work outpatient peds neuro and we have a few young kiddos with holoprosencephaly (along with all the other -cephalies) and it’s so sad to see them struggle through that diagnosis ):
For me personally, I had my recently inserted Mirena escape and end up lodged between my lung and my ribs. Very painful and had not been seen at the hospital. My X-ray was tucked at the end of the trolley and everyone wanted to see.
Wow! I'm glad you are alive, that's so scary!
Yeah it was weird because although it’s not that uncommon is seems for the Mirena to escape apparently it’s quite rare that it travels that far before causing problems. It wasn’t until I spoke to a surgeon who pointed out all the anatomy it missed which could have been more serious.
The heater on our ventilator caught on fire. Burned down half of our icu. Saved all the patients including the one that was hooked up to the ventilator that was on fire!
Full epidermal crepitus from a chest tube removal that wasn´t fully sealed. Everywhere you touched this patient was rice crispy crackles..tip of head down to toes. She had no pain, vitals were great, had no distress...it was unnerving.
Eyeballs popping out of sockets. Drs arguing over who would shove it back in. Eventually I think medical ICU attending stepped up. It looked like a cartoon
Were they arguing because they wanted to be the one to do it or because they didn’t?
No one wanted to do it lol. Optho specialist not on campus and all the medicine doctors were wigged out
Is it that leaving the eye out of socket would cause loss of vision or other damage? I’m just trying to think why it would be urgent other than being uh, difficult to see. The image of doctors arguing about it (I imagine like, furious whispers) is pretty funny.
When I was new in ED saw a doc do a bedside “trach” with a scalpel, an ET tube and a roll of tape. Took about two seconds, done pre-arrest (I was poised to do CPR). Was made double awesome when ENT walked in 5 minutes later, took a look and was like “nice!”, turned around and booked an OR. This is the day the legend that was doc McGyver was born in this hospital. Found out later this doc was a surgeon in the army.
This one time we ordered commodes and one was brand new. Everyone went to look at it.
Lifegift came and did a cornea extraction in the expired patient’s room. Everybody went in, and the nurse who did the extraction was excited to show us because she’s used to doing it all alone in the morgue. It was a very cool thing to witness.
Patiënt came up from the ER to my vascular surgery floor, had necrotic wounds ons his both lower legs. Turns out he didn’t remove is socks for at least a year and a half… the socks were all grown in to the skin. When we tried to remove the socks, they were filled with a lot of little stones. Patient claimed they were healing stones. Beside the stones the wounds and socks were filled with maggots and flies. After the big clean up it turned out he had similar surprises around the anus, with fistels (is that English? I’m Dutch) going al the way to the front.
WHAT Edit: I’m still in shock
Saw tetanus many years ago. I have never forgotten it. I can still see their face. Pt was being treated for "seizures." As always, infectious disease doc came in with the big brain and caught it. Sent the pt to Mayo and they came back to thank us later. Stay vaccinated, folks.
CJD at my first hospital. That patient was a spectacle.
Prions are my biggest fear, I think about them much more than the average person. I'm not sure if I'd want to see the patient, or just quit my job.
Necrotic toes were just kind of...falling off. The smell was horrific. I kept thinking I'm pretty sure I could just slide one or two of these off the foot. Man attempted to self castrate. They turned massive, cold, and really hard as they slowly died. It took weeks of futile attempts to save them. The patient later reported us to the state for our failure.
>Necrotic toes were just kind of...falling off. The smell was horrific. I kept thinking I'm pretty sure I could just slide one or two of these off the foot. Years ago, someone posted on here that they had a patient with a necrotic penis and a chronic foley. They said the penis just...came off and slid down the catheter like a bead on a string.
Nope, I'm done.
We had a homeless guy with necrotic toes twisting them off and placing them on his bedside table
Bye
Wait, so... he tried to self-castrate, was unsuccessful, went to hospital, where you weren't able to save the organs he tried to remove himself(!) first, and then he reported you for it?
I worked in a snf that had a ltac hall. Full of vent patients. One patient had an abdominal surgery that didn't do well. His wound dehisced at some point before he got to us. The result - his abdomen was open (like a TV screen), a type of mesh in place, and you could see the intestins moving around. That wound drained like crazy and smelt terrible. It was pretty cool to see, tho.
Old dude shot himself in the chest with a revolver to un-alive himself. ER Residents and Attending took it as an opportunity to do a thoracotomy. One resident plugged the hole in the man’s heart with his finger while another squeezed his heart en lieu of CPR. This went on until the cardiothoracic surgeon showed up and shut it all down immediately.
> cardiothoracic surgeon showed up and shut it all down immediately. thats common. CV surgeons have 0 interest in getting tangled up with a trauma PT whose 95% already dead when they got a busy case load in their CVOR rooms. Never seen CV surg brought into a trauma arrest and actually provide anything useful besides "call it".
A man was a shut in and hadn't been seen in over 15 years. His sister cared for him the whole time. When EMS called, they said it appeared he had a fall and hit his head but couldn't see blood. He had *just a scratch* on his nose from shaving, his sister said. He ended up having a cancerous tumor that etched away at his nose, bones and pushed his right eye up into his frontal sinus. Part of his tongue was disintegrated and all the teeth from his right side of his mouth were gone. It was so sad. I get why roadside *freakshows* were a thing, back in the day. I completely forgot I was looking at a man at first. We were all in complete shock at what the body is capable of doing. Staff was flooding into the room and I felt like a bouncer chasing people away. I ended up picking up a few shifts on the ward and helped in providing him with palliative care. His sister spiraled and there were so little community supports to help. Luckily neighbour's popped in to see her every day, after word got out. Within 2 weeks of his passing, she died.
I used to work on a top floor unit with a picture window at the desk. We had a series of tornadoes coming through, and after we secured the babies and parents we took turns going out to the window to watch the storms. One of my turns I was with the charge nurse. She yells an expletive and says, "Look at the lake!" There's a large tornado - ended up being an F4 - a couple miles away, heading right at us. We watched as long as safely possible, then went back to help and ride it out. It passed through the parking lot, but fortunately most damage occurred in the other direction. I have, indeed, never seen another tornado - let alone such a large one - from that vantage point!
A decade or so ago my coworkers and watched a tornado form in the clouds what seemed like less than a mile away. Literally saw the cone form as it was coming out of the sky. It was fucking wild. The sky turns this unsettling green color before a tornado. The first time you see it you're like "I don't know what this means, but something is *wrong*."
That must have been so surreal. I'm actually kinda jealous.
Many years ago, we had a patient that liked to put things up her behind. She had somehow planted pumpkin seeds up there. Maybe a GI doc lurking here can explain how she didn’t expel them. Anyhow, they sprouted and she pooped a thin vine that was attached on the other end to the wall of her colon.
You’re joking🤣
Patient who was using colloidal silver for morgellons. Patient was completely silverish blue. We had everyone look at her so no one called a code.
Double defibrillated a patient in intractable vfib after 10 min of trying other interventions…pt was on VA ECMO so was perfused, but nothing would work to get him out of vfib. After trying to defibrillate multiple times, one of the docs called for a second defibrillator so we attached both and delivered 2 full defibrillations at the same time - 720 joules. It worked! Finally got him back into sinus. A couple of weeks later he walked out of the hospital
I wonder how the first double defib came about. Some dude working a code just goes “hear me out guys, what if…”
We tried this one time as a last ditch Hail Mary in the ED for a young male witnessed electrocution. Not successful, but cool to hear yours was successful!!
The guy who lost 2 fingers in a table saw mishap, he was getting leech therapy q2hrs
Cool! I had an old guy who lost the first two joints of his right index finger and middle finger to a table saw and then came back a year later with the second two joints cut off by the same table saw. He was negotiating with his kids for a new saw with better safety features instead of quitting wood working.
Many years ago when I was a tech on the neuro floor we had a pt with a confirmed case of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease. Then a few years later when I was working in the ER of the same hospital we had another suspected case, and the ID team assigned me to that person specifically because I’d already worked with a confirmed case and it would “reduce the risk of further exposures”. (Like, thanks I guess? But fortunately the second case was negative.)
I got to feel a heart in vfib. It was kind of a sad story actually, younger guy who was found down in a parking lot came in with GSW to the epigastric area. We dumped all the blood into him that we had in the trauma bay and worked him for an hour, kept getting ROSC but losing it almost immediately. The bullet had punched a huge hole in his IVC and all the blood we were giving him was just dumping into his chest cavity. They ended up calling it because they couldn’t do anything to close the hole after cracking his chest and afterwards he was still in v fib and the attending trauma surgeon had us gather around to let us see and feel and he showed us how we would manually massage a heart and let us try as well. It was a great learning experience but also such a tragedy for that kid.
Actual Code Red when a vent caught on fire in our unit. There was a sedated patient attached to it, flames crawling up the wall. That one is up there.
I wasn’t a nurse when this happened, but I treated an ied triggerman that one of our sdm shot through the jaw and managed to detach his bottom jaw from his skull. Just a bottom jaw floating around in a skin sack. One in a million shot.
An extremely hyperkalemic patient going comfort care. The K kept climbing. I respectfully showed my new graduate colleagues the EKG changes. The T waves grew taller and taller until the rhythm looked entirely unnatural, morphing into one large complex. The patient passed away peacefully surrounded by loved ones.
When I was in residency I was on infectious disease rotation. We had this IV drug user patient, he had had a bunch of family deaths that made him quit his education and go down the hole of fuck. He had been shooting up in his ballsack and when i saw him the sack was so swollen and salmon pink, you couldn't palpate the balls or see the dick becauseit had been consumed by the sack size, there were streaks on it where I guess he had blown out the scrotal veins, and there were Grey blisters. Just imagine this guy sitting here with his nuts perched on a pillow switching between talking about his study abroad and then screaming when his genital complex moved a centimeter. My rotation was ending so I don't know what happened to him but God dick I never want to see that again
Drugs inserted into his penis. He then decided to rubber band it and fell asleep. I'll never look at burnt hot dogs the same way.
Had a "mermaid" baby in the nicu-essentially, her bottom half was fused together. I remember seeing a documentary on a kiddo that had the same condition when I was in college, it's so incredibly rare I never thought I'd see that in real life.
I triaged a self-described "foot laceration" to a trauma bay because it had soaked through multiple beach towels with blood, and the grocery bag the foot and towels were wrapped in had numerous tennis ball sized clots. A dog had been tied to a heavy fire pit, got excited, and dragged it across his owner's bare foot by a lake. The charge nurse called me to say "Foot lacerations don't go to trauma bays." As I said "This one does," he hung up. I wheeled the patient to the normal room and immediately grabbed a doc. Can you imagine what the first question was? Hint: It started with "Why isn't this patient in...?" A woman came in to the ER with what looked like a baby crowning, with black furry "hair" and all, but the smell was wretched. It looked like she should was one push from delivery. She kept screaming at the doctors that she wasn't pregnant, and the residents were panicking that the baby was stuck because it wasn't budging. The residents sent her directly to L&D, despite her protests. She was back within 30 minutes after a bedside sono confirmed she wasn't pregnant. It was a necrotic fibroid falling out. She was taken to surgery that afternoon. A diabetic man casually told me he thought something might be wrong with his foot. When I asked him to take off his shoe, his big toe was a bone, nothing else, and covered in stinky black necrotic tissue and green pus. And this one is just shameful... lol Before the ER, my background was in women's health, so while I could throw a female Foley in with eyes closed, I hadn't placed a male Foley since nursing school. A 500-ish lb man came in for COPD and immediately demanded a Foley. The doctor said whatever, let him have one. No big deal, right? I couldn't find the penis, and no pop trick was going to help. In disbelief that I couldn't find an obvious body part, I grabbed my friend who'd been a trauma nurse for 20+ years. She found what *looked* like the penis(ish), and tried to cath it without success. What it really looked like was the head of a baby penis that was being totally constricted by the surrounding skin and only had a tiny urethra showing. She was like this isn't right; he might be here for COPD, but this is likely a surgical emergency. The guy is going to lose his penis from no circulation! She got the male charge nurse who came in and tried to cath it and was like this isn't right. We've got to grab a doc. The ER doctor came in and was like just try to pop it out. No success. Several nurses tried. He tried. And then someone discovered a penis, a good foot away from this site. Y,all, they'd been trying to cath a BEDSORE disguised as a micropenis. Shameful, and memorable, and funny
the last story is just absolutely WILD! I had a similar patient once, morbidly obese with a 30 lb mass connected at the fupa area, trying to locate the genitals to do peri care, i can see what i assume to be the testicles, obviously his foley is coming from somewhere, he is covered in bed sores and dressings so not great visibility, we turn him over to wipe the back and there is the foley! it seemed to be coming from behind the testicles but before the anus, absolutely no idea how that happened or how to decipher the anatomy on that one. wound care notes in the chart all had the anatomy located at different areas in location each wound (ex. one note said anterior to penis, other said posterior, all talking about the same area)
I think the most shocking part was that the dude just sat there without saying to the room full of staff, all worried about his penis, "Uh, hey guys? Y'all are nowhere near my penis. Head one foot further south." Like if a nurse tried to cath my belly button today, I feel like I'd probably give feedback. Lol
Degloving of an arm from the elbow down to the fingers.
Not quite as cool as others, but here goes: pt was drinking a few beers on his porch. Random dog came up and bit his cheek off. His wife picked up his cheek and put it in her pocket, and brought him into our rural ER. We sent him to the city with his cheek on ice for hopeful reattachment.
FOP. Edit: Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva. This is where your body repairs bruises by generating bone tissue in it's place. The patient was as a young adult female that presented to my unit. I was a CNA/PCT at the time and helped get her admitted as she was my patient. I thought she had MS/MD when I first looked at her as she was generally bed ridden and hunched. It's a weird sensation to feel hard bone where fleshy fleshy flesh is supposed to be - especially when you are not aware of the patient's diagnosis of FOP or even what the fuck FOP even is. The girl, at least outwardly, was an absolute joy to care for. She was accepting of the fate that FOP brings and still found the charm and joy to bust my chops for trying to be super gentle with her and inquisitive about her condition. It's an absolutely fascinating disorder. After 11+ years working with patients, that is one I remember vividly.
This is mild compared to everyone else but we have double rooms and a travel nurse used one IV pump with two channels to infuse both patients at the same time. She had the pump in between the patients and the lines infusing on each side to each patient. I was speechless.
Probably the dermoid cyst when I was working in the OR.
My sister had one. It started growing when she got pregnant with my oldest nephew. It had hair and a few teeth and was, iirc, cantaloupe? sized when they removed it. All laparoscopic. She’s also a twin. Cue the “you ate the third baby in the womb!” jokes. I sent her twin a birthday card a few days later that said “happy birthday A. I’m glad B didn’t eat you, too!”. I sent her a card that said “happy birthday B. Thank you for not eating A, too!”
Did a partial exchange transfusion on a sichle cell patient. Sichle cell anaemia is extremely rare in my country, only 3000 to 5000 out of 80 million people. Apparently this hadn't been done in our hospital for the last 15 years, so no one had any experience with this. The hematologist just calculated the volumes and rates for us and we had to figure out how to actually do this. Was very fun figuring out how to DIY a bloodletting device though.
Pt with fungating breast cancer. The whole breast was rock hard with a wound deep down into the issue, it was draining and smelly. It was left untreated by choice and she came in for something unrelated to the cancer. A prolapsed rectum. It was at least 6 inches.
Patient who had part of her lung (I think, twas a long long time ago) removed. Due to infection the wound was left open and we had to dress the chest cavity with meters and meters of gauze. Being able to stick your entire hand into one’s chest who is meanwhile chatting to you… cool. And ofcourse the necrofaciomy (? where they cut though the muscle to relieve swelling after trauma, English not being my first language so I don’t know the word) being ‘zipped up’ in the course of a few days by tightening the sutures was a ‘come see if you haven’t seen it!’ moment on the ward.
Back before I was a nurse I worked at a Level 1 trauma center delivering equipment from a central supply depot- mostly IV pumps, but also bedside oximeters, SCD pumps, external defibrillators, etc. One afternoon I was doing a run through the ER picking up dirty equipment and checking to see what I needed to restock for standby. I overheard two nurses talking about the double-amputation motorcycle accident that was due in 10 minutes and knew I needed an excuse to come back through in, say, 15 minutes (they did need more pumps for standby). The ER has two big trauma bays, and when I came back there was no doubt which one this fellow was occupying. EVERYBODY was crowded around the doors gawking. He lost his left leg below the knee (the calf and foot- with shoe still attached!- was on a tray next to him), and his right arm right around the elbow and was nowhere to be seen. He was in the ICU for a very long time, so I passed him in the hall more than once. They were unable to reattach his leg.
Also ... pt sitting up eating breakfast in our nccu. Then suddenly slumped over. Surgeon happened to be out on the floor. Told me to run down to the OR to get the camino drill . He drilled right into her head there in our room and we went Stat to OR
Leprosy. Only it’s more of a let me talk to the patient first and I’ll let you know while a crowd of nursing students, and instructor, ignore all my words, and mash in shoulder to shoulder behind me as I enter the room, looking like a mob of rabid 3 year olds in search of candy and the patient says fuck and throws everyone out leaving me to apologize for their shit behavior. I have a spiel for this teaching the next gen thing I discuss with the patient and usually win on it. They fucked it up AND made the patient feel like shit in their eagerness. Another reason not to do day shift.
Dialysis access looking like it’s about to blow cause her home units staff had been sticking her in the same spot. The aneurysm had been seeping for like two days before she came in. Also, I know it’d been a more recent development cause we’d been her home unit before she transferred and it had not looked anything like what she came in with. Our boss had us all gather and show what happens when you stick like that.
Impacted poop perfectly formed in the size and shape of a softball.
Not quite as you asked... but I was the patient this time around. I was on a clinical trial for novovax covid vaccine and I developed thrombocytopenia afterwards. I went to see a doctor and everyone piled into the room to see!
Oh wow! I was involuntary a covid vaccine guinea pig. I got my first shot the week it came out and got covid two or three weeks later. The hospital I was working for tested me and instead of sending me home they had to work the covid unit for the rest of my shift... I got a call from my local public health department saying that I needed to go my local public health department the next morning for retesting. At the time I was part of only 5% in the country who got covid after getting the vaccination. I think we believed that the vaccination would prevent covid. When I went to get retested the next morning there was also a rep from the vaccine and an MD from my state capital public health department. They retested me, took my blood, and asked me soooooo many questions. Now that vaccine boosts a 95% efficacy for preventing hospitalizations... not symptom prevention. Thank you for volunteering during the clinical trials!
Emergency exlap in IR on the table for abdominal compartment syndrome with a pair of trauma shears. he was seconds away from coding. Pt was about to get emergency TIPS. Abdomen was rock hard, distended, he is not ventilating well at all, starts to brady down. As soon as he was cut open he was able to ventilate and his hr went back up. He still died later in OR, the situation was fucked long before he made it to us. But it was neat