In 2010, a 29-year old British construction
worker was hard at work at the construction site. He had followed all the necessary safety rules
and was wearing a hard hat and a pair of sturdy steel toecap boots. But then he made the bad decision of jumping
six feet from the scaffold to the floor. He looked down and to his horror a six-inch
nail had penetrated his boot and gone right through his foot. The poor guy howled in pain and he was rushed
to the emergency room. It was unbearable and so he was given a pain
reliever. That didn’t do anything to stop the agony,
and the doctors then gave him the strongest pain medication they had: Fentanyl. After this they carefully cut off the man’s
boot. But guess what, the nail had gone between
his toes. What was all that screaming about then? 10. The Nocebo Patients
So, coming in at number ten is one of the strangest things that have happened in the
emergency room. That’s people coming in screaming and shouting
and pleading with the doctors to stop the intense pain. Except, as with the case of that construction
worker, there shouldn’t be any pain. What’s the reason you are wondering, and
the answer is something called the Nocebo effect. You’ve all heard of the placebo effect,
such as when someone is given a pill that is a dud but it seems to work for them. The Nocebo effect is kind of like a negative
version of that. Nothing has happened to them, but the brain
tells them something is wrong. That construction worker just saw a nail that
looked as though it had gone through his foot, so he believed he was in great pain. The pain of course was kind of real, even
though that nail had just gone through a gap in his toes. It was all in his head. The Nocebo effect is actually quite common
when people take certain kinds of drugs. They complain of side effects that just couldn’t
happen. It’s all in their head, and in the world
of healthcare such imaginings cost time and money. We found another case of a young man that
had a fight with his girlfriend and so he took an overdose of pills. He was rushed to hospital and things were
looking bad. His blood pressure was very low and the man
seemed to be about to pass out. It turned out that the drugs he had taken
were actually placebo drugs but the man’s doctor hadn’t told him that. Once that guy was told this he suddenly started
getting a lot better and his blood pressure went back to normal. This is no doubt a weird kind of situation
at the emergency room, but as you’ll see, things can get really messy in there, too. 9. A Man’s Worst Nightmare
We will apologize to you guys in advance for telling you this tale. It’s not something you will easily forget. The story comes from a former United States
Army surgical nurse and she was once asked what the strangest thing she’d seen in regard
to accidents. She said one day she got a visit from a middle-aged
guy who had decided to perform a bit of surgery on himself. You see, this guy had been in terrible pain
due to having kidney stones. In some cases a person might have very small
kidney stones and just pee them out without much discomfort, but if those stones are big,
well, they can cause a lot of pain. This guy had been in extreme pain and for
some reason he thought he could perform a little operation himself to get them out. He basically inserted a glass tube into his
urethra, you know, that bit of your manhood that carries urine. The thing is, his muscle contracted and that
tube got stuck inside. If that wasn’t bad enough, it then shattered
inside him. Removing those tiny shards of glass was quite
the job for doctors who treated him. All we’ll say is, kids, don’t try that
at home. 8. The Desperate Drinker
This was a case of a homeless man who had been taken to hospital after being found a
little bit too drunk. He was in a bad way, and it’s not that uncommon
for people to die from drinking too much. His blood was checked to see just how much
was in his system, and he was then left in the bed. A bit later and another test was performed,
but the results shocked the nurses. The level of alcohol in his blood had spiked. The staff then thoroughly checked the room
and they couldn’t find a source of alcohol, so where was this guy getting his fix from? One of the nurses then went to a computer
to see if anything like this had happened in other hospitals. Indeed it had, and the reason was there had
been other cases when people had drunk the alcohol hand sanitizer in the room. He went back to that man’s room and found
this guy had done the same. He’d drunk the entire contents. We found cases of teenagers doing this, and
in New Zealand prisoners had been doing it while incarnated. It’s really not a good thing to do and can
be dangerous. In 2012, in California, six teens ended up
in ER after deciding they’d try and get drunk on hand sanitizer. After that, a medical toxicology consultant
for the Children’s Hospital in Los Angeles said teens had been looking on the Internet
to find the method to best extract the booze. This is another case of when we can say, kids,
don’t try this at home, or anywhere. 7. The Foreign Object Problem
It’s well-known that a lot of people have been sent to the emergency room to have something
removed from the place that our food waste comes out of. In fact, there are hundreds of stories of
this happening and there’s even a book called “Stuck-Up” which is a collection of X-rays
and stories about people who have got something stuck in their rear-end. The list of weird objects is a long one and
these strange cases were happening a long time before the guys in those Jackass movies
were doing it for fun. So, what’s the weirdest thing doctors have
had to remove? We can’t say what the number one spot is,
but when doctors found a man who had a Buzz Lightyear doll stuffed inside him we guess
even for them it was somewhat unique. The foreign object problem seems to happen
mostly to people aged twenty to forty by the way, so maybe some of you are in danger right
now! 6. The Lego Eaters
So a handful of adults might display some strange behavior and get things stuck in them,
but young kids can hardly be blamed for putting things inside their mouths. Many news reports tell us that the snack of
choice for kids all over the world is Lego. A problem is choking of course, but many times
the small pieces do come out of the other end. We found one account of a kid who ate 60 pieces,
so he really must have liked the stuff. A major problem, though, is the possibility
of harmful substances in the Lego bricks. A British study said that some Lego bricks
they tested contained cadmium and selenium or chromium and antimony. The worst culprits were yellow and red Lego
bricks found in older sets. Since so many kids end up swallowing Lego
a bunch of doctors at the Royal London Hospital in England swallowed some themselves to see
what harm it could cause. Thankfully, all the doctors were fine. They didn’t get sick and just dropped off
their piece at the pool. Now things will get bloodier. 5. The Calmest Patient Ever
When ER staff were asked on one forum to talk about the strangest days they had, one British
nurse said he was once in the department and a man just walked in casually, looking a bit
lost. The staff asked him, “Can we help you?” The man then looked down at his side where
his arm was covered with a blanket. He then told them, “I seem to have lopped
my arm off.” The staff didn’t believe him because the
guy was so calm about it all. They asked him to remove the blanket and to
their shock when he pulled the blanket away a detached arm went with it. He then looked at them and said, “told you”. 4. Life and Death
You can find quite a few cases of when a pregnant woman died but the baby inside her was delivered. One particularly sad story happened in 2019
in London. A pregnant woman was stabbed and rushed to
the emergency room. She was eight months pregnant at the time. Unfortunately the doctors couldn’t save
her, but they did deliver her baby. We found a similar case in the USA which also
happened not too long ago. In this case three people were shot and one
of them was a woman who was 35 weeks pregnant. She was rushed to the hospital but died. The baby survived but was in critical condition. Such a thing must be heartbreaking for the
emergency room workers, but at least they could save one life. That might be sad, but now we have something
wonderful to tell you. 3. Coming Back to Life
You might not have heard about something called, “Lazarus syndrome.” This is when resuscitation efforts on a patient
have failed and the person has been declared dead. That’s it, they did everything they could. Sometimes the machines are turned off and
it’s just another loss of life on another hectic day in the emergency room. But then doctors and nurses are shocked when
the person comes back to life. This happened to a 27-year old man in the
UK. He had overdosed but was given a shot of something
to help bring him out of his unconscious state. They got the man to hospital but he went into
cardiac arrest and died. All efforts to revive him failed and he was
pronounced dead. About a minute later and something unbelievable
happened. His heart started beating again. This time he was revived and the man survived. In 2013, the U.S. media reported a miracle
happening to a man named Anthony Yahle. An ambulance was called for this 37-year old
when his family couldn’t wake him up. They administered CPR and got his heart going
again, but at the emergency room he couldn’t be resuscitated and was declared dead. His son was called and went to the hospital
and didn’t expect to find a living father. One of the doctors then noticed something
strange. The heart monitor seemed to show a tiny sign
of a heartbeat. But that was just like a little blip. That blip happened again and then turned into
a trickle. The doctors were astonished and got to work
on him again. Eventually the man’s heart started working. The doctors later told the media that this
kind of thing in clinical terms just doesn’t happen. One doctor said, “I'm calling it a miracle
because I've never seen anything like it.” The national institutes of health says the
Lazarus syndrome is very rare and often can’t be easily explained. In some cases the bodies weren’t even near
staff when the person came back to life, and in at least one case the person was in the
mortuary. 2. The Survivors
Sometimes in the emergency room people shock the doctors by not succumbing to what look
like fatal injuries. One doctor wrote that he was very surprised
when one man he attended to had been shot three times in the head. The doctor said he looked dead and he could
see that he’d been shot in the temple and twice in the face. He believed the guy’s life was over, but
it turned out all those bullets had exited and somehow not damaged the man’s brain. This is what the doctor wrote on a forum:
“I go to examine him and tilt his head back, and he says ‘Yoooo be gentle!’ I jump back and scream like a little boy,
as did everyone in the room. Literally, the bullets missed his brain in
every single shot.” Stranger things have happened. In 1995, a man in North Carolina named Kenny
Vaughan was shot 20 times and he lived to tell the tale. In 2006, a guy named Joseph Guzman survived
19 gunshot wounds. The rapper you all know named 50 Cents survived
after being shot nine times. A surgeon told the New York Times that being
shot multiple times, especially 20 times, and nothing hitting a vital organ is very
rare indeed. For the finale we’ll tell you a story that
is from the darkest recesses of ER history. 1. Man’s Best Friend
This was posted on a forum where ER workers compared their horror stories. The man said he worked as a surgeon and he
got used to seeing some gory things. So did the nurses, too, and they don’t usually
go pale at the sight of blood since fixing people is their job. But one day the surgeon said he saw some nurses
come out of the emergency room and their expressions were unusual. They seemed in shock. It turned out that the patient was a homeless
man who had been attacked by dogs, but those dogs had basically taken big pieces of this
guy. The surgeon said this is what he saw:
“The arm was totally gone. He still had the interosseous tendon holding
the tibia to the fibula (hard to eat, I guess), but otherwise just intact leg bones completely
free of flesh.” His feet were also mostly gone. The guy actually survived, albeit with bits
of him missing. This just shows how hard it can be to work
in the emergency room, but also what a great job those people do. If you like that video then we know you’ll
love on of these two stories. Choose either “Man Dead For 45 Minutes Comes
Back to Life” or “I Was Trapped In A Canyon For 127 Hours” for more unbelievably insane
stories from The Infographics Show!
