Medical incidents that were SO BAD, doctors had to lie to patients (r/AskReddit Scary Stories)

medical professionals of Reddit when did you have to tell a patient I've seen it all before to comfort them but really you had never seen something so bad or of that nature probably too late to the party but I had a lady come into the ER listed as multiple medical problems this usually means diabetes and the issues stemming from it or maybe bleeding issues from another disease or maybe odd blood tests results at a clinic I hadn't seen the patient yet but the doctor came to the nurses station asking who at room 15 I jumped up and followed him into the room I walked in and saw what I thought was a corpse then the patient's eye swiveled over to look at me she truly looked like one of the people they found in a concentration camp I could see every bone and her body was twisted in a decorticate position with her jaw locked open then the smell hit me rotting flesh death and body fluids I struggled to keep a neutral face and not gag I tried to place a blood pressure cuff on her arm and her skin just started flaking off in my hands i gagged the doctor started removing her clothes to examine her her feet were black to the ankles her hip bones were poking through her skin and were black the skin around her ribs was worn away - losing muscle fibers her casts were incredibly swollen and the skin was splitting like ripped pants I removed her depends and there was feces coating her entire genital area then the doctor went to remove a large bandage on her lower back her entire sacrum was exposed and the bones were black the skin around it was a black liquefied mass it smelled like nothing I've ever smelled I can't even describe it the doctor told her family I would clean up her ulcers and wounds in preparation for surgery liar no surgeon would operate on her I had no idea how to clean dead bone tissue and liquefied skin they don't cover that in nursing school when I went to clean her sacral area all the liquefied skin separated and used all over the bed I really struggled to keep my crap together afterwards I needed a moment in the supply closet to cry it out for a second I had no idea the human body could break down so much without dying I still think about that woman sometimes and what led to her living like that it still breaks my heart in dental school I had an emergency patient come in complaining of sore gums upon examination I found a massive calculus bridge google it for pictures behind her lower front teeth she only had about three remaining lower teeth but they were all connected with a whitish brown mineral deposit that was about the size of a golf ball she had never had her teeth cleaned and she was probably 55 or so I basically performed an emergency cleaning she could speak so much better afterwards of course I had to play it off like it was normal but in my years of practice I still haven't seen a case that bad again get your teeth cleaned people even if you can't afford every six months once a year or every other year is a hell of a lot better than never a dog bit my little sister in the face ripping through her mouth and cheek it was at a soccer game she crawled on top of a big dog called a borzoi which startled it it rolled over and bit her in the face this was the late 80s smaller town there were no pediatric surgeons available no plastic surgeons she was in the ER with her face ripped open anyways our general pediatrician who is now my kids pediatrician 30 years later who had only graduated maybe ten years prior sewed her face back together it was 30 stitches on the inside of her mouth and 30 or so on the outside she had a massive scar down the whole side of her face anyway fast forward 15 years she grew normally her face is fine her smile is fine no long-term damage apparently a face is full of nerves and muscles and that's why only plastic surgeons work on faces particularly with children having nerve and muscle damage can make their face grow crooked as they age it is a highly specialized field but in this case there was nobody else just a general pediatrician and he managed to save her face with no long-term nerve or muscle damage or even scarring now that she's an adult we found out 25 years later from our pediatricians wife that he spent an hour or so crunching his old med school books in the seat of his Plymouth reliant in the hospital parking lot studying facial anatomy nerves and cheek structure etc he walked into the hospital and performed a multiple hour surgery on her face sewed it back together perfectly you would think a plastic surgeon did it his wife told us he came home that night just flopped down on the couch and sat there amazed that he'd done it proud but cautious a new general pediatrician sews a toddler's face back together and it worked now you would never know it happened and he has never ever done another surgery like that again Lowell had a guy that shot himself under the chin with a shotgun he had actually done it like 16 hours prior to family finding him he was still alive conscious and alert to what was going on his jaw looked like predator I had family freaking out of course had to tell them we see worse often which may be true but they are usually dead he lived for almost a day after shooting himself then died in the back of my ambulance I work in gynecology and I had to chaperone a male doctor for a pelvic exam patient was complaining of pain and discharge her vaginal area was completely red and swollen he then so gently inserted the speculum to get a look and immediately white cottage cheese like substance comes pouring out onto his lap and hits the floor imagine dropping a container of cottage cheese on the floor we stare in disbelief he then had to remove the speculum and use it like a spoon to scoop out more discharge just so he could get a look inside he tells her it's a yeast infection and she'll be good in no time with a prescription medicine that day I learned if you smile while humming it helps in suppressing your gag reflex I was the patient actually I was sideswiped by a car then ran over by the truck behind while cycling to work I was essentially impaled by my right femur which shattered my pelvis and shoved bone fragments into my guts last thing I remember before I got knocked out for surgery was the surgeon telling me everything was going to be fine and it was all routine I didn't wake up for a month when I did I was missing the entire left leg and most of the muscle tissue in the right eye was too weak to move much couldn't talk because I had a tube through my neck and I was very uncertain about reality due to what I went through in my coma parades of doctors came to tell me how I should be dead and it's crazy that I lived I was told over and over that my survival was very much against all odds my surgeon on the other hand never said anything like that he always maintained that he was going to get me through his attitude honestly helped when I had to go back to his table a few more times before I was done for four years I kind of blew off the people who made a big deal about my survival I adopted my orthopedic doctors attitude then I met a woman who's in the medical field I fell in love and eventually trusted her enough to let her read my medical records I had never read them because it's a massive pile of paperwork she broke down crying and couldn't read anymore she told me that the beginning of my time in the hospital was full of the type of write-ups you find in the morgue she told me that when they opened me up bits of my pelvis fell out I asked her to stop there she won't read anymore and I don't want to know anymore I now know my doctor has one hell of a poker face lady came in with possible stroke symptoms numbness weakness difficulty speaking Caleb normalities CT brain unremarkable lab work was really odd we were thinking cancer so we decided to CT her chest and abdomen as well turns out she had a dissection the entire length of her abdominal aorta and going into her right femoral artery left femoral had an aneurysm and was beginning to dissect as well she had formed a massive clot throughout her abdomen that was miraculously keeping her alive basically all of her organs were ischemic dead about five different teams showed up in the ER to see her after hours of discussion the consensus was that there wasn't a darn thing anyone could do we sent her to hospice posted this before fourth year med student here on my er rotation a couple months back I walked into the IDI and was immediately asked to help a nurse and resident put a catheter in a patient now a catheter placement is usually a one-person job so I was pretty confused as to why they needed my help I walk into the patient room and I'm immediately greeted by a disgusting rotting flesh smell worst thing I've smelled in my life the patient has to be pushing 400 pounds and has the worst edema soft tissue swelling from congestive heart failure I've ever seen his scrotum and penis foreskin are about the size of a small watermelon and the foreskin had swollen completely over the tip of his penis the nurse had a speculum tool OB Jin's used to look inside vaginas inserted into the man's foreskin while the resident took the catheter in a hemostat pliers type thing and jammed it into the man's pee hole for 20 minutes they finally got the catheter in and took the speculum out it was covered in a thick brown discharge that looked like fermented pee crap I still don't know how he let his scrotum and penis swell that much edit we comforted the patient the whole time and kept telling him we had done it like this before total lie no one in the IDI had ever done or seen anything like it er tech here a few months ago we had an elderly gentleman come in presenting with shortness of breath as I was getting him into the gown and into hospital socks I noticed very old yellowing bandaging around his foot I inquired to its purpose and he told me it was a large wound on the back of his heel that wasn't getting better I asked him if I could unwrap it to inspect it and possibly rewrap it basic wound care is one of my duties and it was a literal hole in his heel about four centimeters in diameter skin necrotic around the edges with a large flap of skin covering the middle I wasn't terribly shocked until I swore I saw the skin flap arrived a little bit I got the patient's consent to look under the skin flap and sweet galactic Jesus there were three sizable maggots just chilling I've read about it before but I have never seen it in person my brain went one in the solar F and despite my attempt at a poker face the gentleman read my reaction and asked is it that bad I was straight up with him and told him that the wound had maggots and needed immediate treatment and the poor guy started apologizing for bringing something disgusting I told him I see this more often than you think maggots are actually great at cleaning out dead tissue and are used as treatment sometimes he seemed relieved by that but it was definitely my first time ever seeing a maggot infected wound genital warts the size of grapes on the guy's penis quote from him the ladies never complain I'm an RN who specializes in wound care we see a lot of crazy things in my clinic a common occurrence is a pilonidal cyst which is an abnormal growth in your gluteal cleft aka butt crack that contains hair it usually happens with younger people say 13 to 20s and is obviously very embarrassing to the patient when we get them they've already had the surgery to open an extract the cyst so there's a few holes left that we have to heal one poor soul that came and had the worst post surgical hole I've ever seen it was so big it extended from the top of her crack to the top of her anus on either side about 12 centimeters it was like the surgeon carved out most of her but the patient was devastated and I tried to comfort her by telling her she's not the worst I've ever seen poor girl lots of stories many already covered by others I will share this particular story with my legs crossed motorcyclist came in after someone turned left without checking he had gone over the hood slid in somehow somersaulted landing on his butt sitting up he slid across intersection mostly on his butt getting serious road rash luckily he was only a block from hospital and ambulance they pack him and bring him to the ER we end up cutting off his chaps and jeans and begin the cleanup of gravel and sand embedded in his thighs and butt when all of a sudden his testicles fall out of his scrotum he had basically sandpapered a hole in his scrotum while skidding on his butt the attending pauses grabs the Saline irrigate scrotum and nuts fondles them back into place while humming I handed him some gauze to pack the wound and smiled at the patient who was under a local then I went on break went fetal and dry heaved I worked as a tech in the ER for a while and had a woman in her forties present with burning and pain down below discharge in a bad smell I got the cart set up for a vaginal exam got her vitals blood and urine she couldn't pee because of the pain she said all the basic jazz you do when someone comes into the ER I process my samples and let the nurse know everything is done and she goes to talk to the woman and it essentially goes as this no she hasn't had any trauma no assault no she doesn't know what's going on but it started about three weeks prior long story short we get the doctor as the woman refused to let the nurse take a look and we are all in the room when the doctor turns the light on under the drape and immediately asks if she's been using any medication vaginally there's clearly a lot of irritation and swelling as well as a very strong odor and she hadn't even inserted the speck yet the woman says no nothing at this point the nurse goes to get some saline and I'm left to hand off tools and handle any swabs the first swab handed to me was literally tinged to pale green clearly infection I'm capping it and the woman smells the odor slowly filling the room finally and starts apologizing I had to say while trying not to gag no need to apologize I've seen much crazier things just relax and we will get you all fixed up well the nurse comes back with saline and the doctor starts essentially flushing this woman's vagina trying to clear out all this discharge and infection so she can see what's going on and all of the sudden she stops and asks if she sure she hasn't been putting anything in her vagina to treat any medical condition even something not given by a doctor and that's when we found out for about a month this woman had been douching with a bleach and water mixed to try and cure a yeast infection because she read that in hospitals we wash down with diluted bleach to kill germs and thought it would work she was riddled with chemical burns and infection and was immediately transported to a bigger Hospital so yeah that happened paramedic here had a homeless guy call saying he stepped on a nail about a year ago I could smell it from the door so I expected it to be bad but when I went to pick up the leg by his heel there was just nothing there his foot just evaporated into pus and maggots and his metatarsals clinked through my fingers while I'm standing there trying to comprehend what happened he just sighed and asked me to pick up his foot what foot buddy put it back on he said it falls off a lot these days but it still hurts so that's good right I had no clue what to tell him the nurses thought it was hilarious that the baby medic that's me by the way got grossed out had a patient who needed a lower GI study to find slash fix a bowel bleed to get a study done you need to poop clear mucus three days we bowel prep with heavy laxatives and enemas he barely pooped anything he puts on the call light at 6:45 15 minutes before my shift ends he calmly says I kinda want to try and poop he said it so casually I figured he was going to toot out another gas bubble and walk back he stood from the bed took one step and the floodgates burst three plus days of the most rancid liquid stool I had ever encountered it just wouldn't stop he left a river of stool from the bed to the bathroom coated the walls as he been to park his butt on the toilet and continued to dump out seven people worth of poop in my nine years I have never seen that much come out of a person he was not a large man he was so embarrassed but I just kept my face as solid as possible grabbed half the linen closet and three packages of cavy wipes and sopped it up told him this happens all the time nurse and corrections here had an inmate slash patient come in with complaints about severe lower abdominal pain he told me that he had something stuck in his prison pocket before I could ask him what he stuck up his anus he bends over and shows me a cord sticking out I told him don't trip I'm sure the doctor can help you out with that you'll be all right come to find out the prom of the phone charger got caught up into something and it was stuck as I was trying to comfort him I started to hear this vibe rating sound so I asked him if he heard it do he said it's the phone inside me that's stuck with a charger it wasn't just a regular flip phone it was one of those Samsung smart phones when I was a med student on the trauma service there was a gentleman who decided to attempt suicide using a shotgun aimed at his heart unfortunately the first thing that comes out of a shotgun when it is fired as a gust of air which changed where the gun barrel was pointed when the shot came out the shot pellets ended up hitting everything but his heart lungs ribs spleen stomach liver pancreas and large and small intestines in the o.r the attending surgeon told me to put my hand on his beating heart because that will likely be the only time in my medical career that I would touch a beating heart I did it was cool in case anyone reads this in a thread with 1500 plus posts he survived though he was on the trauma service for the entire month I was there and was in the hospital for a long time further a little late to the party not the worst but I had a patient once with a stomach bleed and a small bowel obstruction we had to put in an NG tube tube that goes in your nose and down to your stomach to drain / decompress his stomach which was pretty distended and hard I'm inserting the tube and as soon as it hits this guy's gag reflex he projectile vomits and sprays very dark half digested blood all over himself the bed the wall and the floor it's basically a scene from The Exorcist I had to dive out of the way and somehow was unscathed he couldn't stop for almost 10 minutes as we're trying to get this thing down to where it needs to go finally finished placement and it immediately suctions out around 3 liters of this black sludge that has old digested blood patient was mortified and we had to play it off like oh no no it's fine it's really common to vomit during a procedure we'll just go get some towels and clean you up my coworker and I left the room and just stared at each other in silence shocked I had to have my leg rebuilt after a car accident and was eventually sent to Duke University for my surgery my surgeon was supposed to be like the best orthopedic surgeon in the country I think he used to work for the Baltimore Ravens anyway all the doctors from my Hospital at home were very unsure if I would even have a functioning leg let alone walk normal again the first appointment at Duke that dude told me it was really not a big deal and he would have me fixed almost good as new I honestly thought he was just trying to be nice and optimistic but he was very serious five months later I was walking and learning how to run again he said I was one of the most complicated surgeries he has had to do and a group of surgeons flew in to observe him do it not even close to a medical professional but my aunt is a nurse and told me about a guy who came in coughing up blood and maggots and it turned out to be some worms he got from eating something that ate through his stomach lining into his esophagus and were in his throat I'm a nurse and I work in a pediatric ER a young woman brought her baby and to be seen for vomiting I asked her to put the baby on the scale while on the scale I noticed a strong odor of bug spray so I asked about it mom say a roach crawled into her mouth so I sprayed a little raid in there she said it matter of factually like it was no big deal hue up calls to the police CPS and a one-on-one sitter for the child and the mom when all was said and done the baby was fine and turned over to her grandmother so no worries there I have no idea what happened to the mother I don't believe she was intending to hurt the child I think she was just hella ignorant [Music] [Music] [Music]

Channel: ReddiTV

Views: 479,727

Rating: 4.8500433 out of 5

Keywords: medical horror stories, lying to patients, medical stories reddit, disgusting medical stories, doctors of reddit, askreddit doctor, doctors, medical stories, r/askreddit doctors, medical professionals, hospital, patients, reddit doctor horror stories, askreddit, reddit stories, askreddit horror, reddit, r/askreddit, ask reddit, reddit story, askreddit stories, reddit top posts, best of r/askreddit, best reddit posts, best of reddit, updoot, redditv, reddit tv, reddit nurses

Id: 9eouUOhbKh4

Length: 21min 41sec (1301 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 10 2019