Yahoo Lifestyle Doctors And Nurses Are Sharing Their Wildest Hospital Stories, And These Are Truly Shocking
Recently, we wrote about wild things that happened at hospitals that rival scenes from Grey's Anatomy, and now we're back for more. Here are more doctors and nurses who are willing to share their shocking experiences, sourced from the BuzzFeed Community, and questions like "What's the craziest thing you have seen at a hospital?" on Quora.
NOTE: This post contains descriptions of violence and gore.
1."In the first year of my Medical Oncology training, I was responsible for a very nice 70-something-year-old lady who was on palliative care for her really advanced cancer. Our team was trying to alleviate her symptoms so she could enjoy her last days. She knew her death was imminent. One day, she introduced me to her fiancé, a middle-aged man probably 30 years younger than her, and asked me if I could write a statement of lucidity, so they would be able to get married and he would be her heir when she died."
"Since she had her mental status in perfect condition, I wrote that statement. However, the day they would be getting married, her dyspnea (shortness of breath) started to worsen, so we had to start a continuous morphine IV drip. Not alleviating enough of her dyspnea, we discussed it, and she agreed to have palliative sedation. Now, she would not be woken up to sign the papers.
After a few days, she died, asleep and peacefully, without dyspnea.
A couple of months later, I had already forgotten almost everything about that specific patient; I received a phone call from a nurse: 'Dr, do not leave your room. Ms. __'s fiancé is here with a gun.' I didn't remember who Ms. __ was, so I had to check her medical records to inform the nurse what was possibly happening.
Luckily, he didn't find me before he was caught by the security guards (who later described him as drunk). I wasn't his only target; he was also searching for the nurses who were caring for Ms. __ when she died. He also was targeting the social worker who was involved with the case. No one in the hospital was hurt.
It seems he was upset because he did not become her heir, and because of that, he was in a very bad financial crisis."
—Gustavo M., Quora
2."When I worked in the ER years ago, a patient came in with a snake bite. They thought a rattlesnake had bitten them but weren’t sure, so the friends went and got the snake and brought it to the hospital alive in a barrel."
"Luckily, they had not gotten bit, and yes, it was a rattlesnake."
3."I was working one night, and it was near the end of the shift, so we nurses were at the nursing station giving reports to the oncoming shift. In the patient room next to the nurse's station was an older man whose bed was near the window. The other patient was a young guy who was admitted for gunshot wounds. Well, someone climbed in the window and shot him in the head. We heard the gunfire and were scared beyond anything; we ran and hid in the bathroom and under desks. He was never caught by the police. FBI was everywhere, and it turned out that he apparently had a hit on him and was a known drug dealer; thank God that the older man survived."
—Minnie, Quora
4."One man deliberately amputated his left arm and partially amputated his left leg with a small chainsaw, which he said he did 'for Jesus.' He came flying through the ER door waving his stump of a left arm — literally spewing his blood around the ER like his arm was a fire hose. Some very fine emergency work saved his life."
—Gregory G., Quora
5."As a triage nurse, we ask a lot of questions, including, 'Any thoughts of wanting to hurt yourself?' And if so, 'Do you have a plan?' Same for if the patient has any thoughts of wanting to hurt someone else: 'Do you have a plan?' One night, when I was so alone, tumbleweeds were rolling down the hallway. I called a gentleman to my triage booth. He looked obviously distressed. We get to the aforementioned questions. He denies SI, Suicidal Ideation. He endorses HI, Homicidal Ideation. When I asked if he had a plan, that was when he began unzipping his backpack."
"I snatched his backpack out of his hands, throwing it behind me, desperately hoping that there wasn't a bomb in it. Then I began screaming at my top volume while blocking the sole point of exit and as the only obstacle between him and his backpack. While I am six feet tall, when compared to an actively homicidal gentleman who had at least an extra four inches and 200 pounds of muscle on me, I knew I would lose if it came to hand-to-hand combat.
Thankfully, right about then, security showed up, quickly followed by the charge nurse, and the patient received some injections to calm him down. Once the patient was secured in a safe room and subdued with some potent pharmaceuticals, security opened the backpack. He had a gun with several magazines of ammunition. He also had six knives and four hypodermic needles...the patient was HIV＋.
I shudder to think the kind of carnage he could have inflicted on my work family and friends as well as the other patients in the department with those bullets. And the lasting impacts had he been able to stab anyone with those contaminated needles."
—Paige M., Quora
6."At a major city's public hospital in 1974, a construction worker from nearby came into the ER waiting room to use the pay phone. The worker was wearing bib overalls. He dropped a coin on the floor. When he bent over to pick it up, a small .25 cal automatic pistol fell out of the bib pocket. When the junker pistol hit the concrete floor, it discharged…and the bullet hit the worker. So in effect, he shot himself, and the bad news wasn't over. After the ER patched him up, the police arrested him on a gun charge and took him to jail."
—Lewis M, Quora
7."I once had a patient who came in weekly for chronic pain, and only one medication worked, according to her. She was known to be a local sex worker, but we'd developed something of a rapport, seeing her so often. One evening, I found her 'working' in her hospital room. In no uncertain terms, I sent her customer out of the building. About an hour later, I heard her screaming my name and looked up to see a man dragging her down the corridor, quite literally by the hair of her head. Keep in mind that she was a young girl with addiction issues. She weighed in at about 95 pounds. I'm built more like a bull and weigh quite a lot more than that. Without thinking, I jumped across the nurse's station, pushed off the counter like a diver, and body-tackled him outside of the elevator. By the time security arrived, he was flattened like a pancake, lying spread-eagled and dazed with a nurse in the middle of his chest."
—T.D. A, Quora
8."It was past midnight, and I was in the ER area fixing a malfunctioning machine. There was one drunk patient who came in by ambulance. He had been hacked by a jungle bolo. His entire nose was folded and hanging on his chin, and his mouth was open almost ear to ear. His head (forehead and crown area) was also open, with portions of his brain visible. His back had three deep wounds, and you could see the yellowish fat on each one, as if Wolverine had attacked him from behind. His left arm was cut and dangling on his side — only the skin was holding it — while the other arm had deep cuts in the forearm area. He also had a deep wound on his right thigh, but it was nothing compared to his upper body. The blood was all over his face, arms, leg, and back."
"The victim was lucky since the attacker was also too drunk to finish him. The incident happened because the victim commented on the attacker's wife.
Anyway, I thought this man would die, but two weeks later, he visited the Finance section by himself, looking for someone who could help him with monetary assistance so he could be discharged.
Some of us apologized for laughing because he really looked like a cross between Frankenstein, the Mummy, and the Joker due to stitches on his face and head. He even laughed with us and said it was his fault for telling his drinking buddy that he had an ugly wife. I noticed his left arm was not amputated (maybe the nerves and blood supply were fine). He was discharged two days later with the help and assistance of the media."
—Cyrpus L, Quora
9."The police brought this patient in for medical clearance before going to jail. He was lying on an ER bed with one arm handcuffed to the bed frame. There were two cops on the far side of the bed; that meant there was something concerning about my patient. He was lying there absolutely calm and still. He didn't appear injured in any way. I noticed his feet were covered with dried blood. I asked the patient why he was there, and he just ignored me. So, I turned to the cops. 'Well,' one of them began, 'he attacked his mother with a samurai sword. When we got there, he crouched on the front porch and placed his sword down in front of him, and we just cuffed him.' I asked them why they brought him in, and they said it was because he wouldn't talk."
"I tried talking to him, but he wouldn't respond. He just kept looking straight ahead. I asked the cops about the Mom, and they told me she was taken to the trauma center, but she was pretty hurt.
I then turned to the patient and asked him, 'What made you attack your mother with a sword?' He looked me straight in the eyes and said, 'She was not bushido.' I asked 'what is bushido?' 'The warrior way,' he replied. I thought for a moment and asked him, 'So, is it bushido to attack an unarmed and weak opponent with a sword?'
At this point, the guy leaped cleanly out of the bed and, in one smooth motion, somehow had me pinned against the wall, where he began to deliver a series of knee strikes to my hip and abdomen area. He grabbed me with his free hand. I grabbed his hand and fell purposely to the ground, pulling his cuffed arm over the bed rail and dislocating his shoulder. The bed turned over. The cops were now on top of all of this, but we were tangled on the floor, and he was seriously trying to kill me. It only lasted for a few minutes, but it felt like forever.
Another doctor and a nurse came into the room, and we had to paralyze the guy with medication to get him under control. Then, we had a medical emergency on our hands. He was ultimately placed on a ventilator, restrained, ed, and put in the ICU. He was released in a day or so, and he went to prison. His mother lived. In addition to charges concerning her assault, he was also charged with assault on me and the two officers.
Never underestimate someone's capacity for violence. I also never placed myself in a treatment room where I could get trapped like that again."
—Robert F., Quora
10."I was working for a hospital police department (yes, some hospitals have their own police). It had been a very busy evening, and I was headed to the ER to check the ER ramp and parking. We had received a gunshot victim about 10 minutes earlier. As I turned the corner, I met a woman holding a revolver in her hand, about two feet from me. Without conscious thought, I grabbed the revolver over the top, rotated it, peeling it out of her hand- and then things got interesting. After we got her in handcuffs, it developed that she was the girlfriend of our shooting victim — who had shot him for dallying with another lady and who had decided she was not finished shooting him — and showed up at our ER intending to shoot him some more."
—Curtis C, Quora
11."I was doing my residency in Gujarat approximately 11 years back. A polytrauma patient came in from a traffic accident. I instructed the nurse to measure his BP and vitals along with ruling out head injury, starting IV access, sending blood for blood grouping and crossmatching, controlling the bleeding from the wound, applying traction over the lower limb to stabilize the femur, and splinting the upper limb for the upper limb fractures. The patient was hemodynamically stable when I finished. I then realized that there were too many relatives in the room where I was working and told them to leave, which they did, except for one who looked like his father. He thanked me and politely told me that I did a good job and that any mistake from my side would have been my last. I laughed initially but then realized he was serious, and he actually showed me that he had a pistol gun in his pocket."
"I was shaking, and the room was spinning. I did not know what to do or say. I just said, 'Now that he is stable, he will need surgery, for which my superiors will talk to you.' I left in a hurry, sweating in the December cold. I knew he was not kidding. I still sometimes get nightmares of that day.
Later, I found out that all of the relatives were armed; they were involved in some gang-related violence when the accident occurred.
This guy was the only son of the local gangster and politician, and they were forced to bring him to a government hospital for a police case. After that, they took LAMA (leave against medical advice) and took him to a corporate hospital. And we did not miss him one bit."
—Altaf B., Quora
12."Once, I had to face an angry man with a gun. He was a retired police officer and was permitted to conceal carry his service revolver, which he kept in his briefcase. He went pretty ballistic in the middle of our lab recovery room over the care another physician had given to his father. That physician had told him his father should not have surgery for his heart. The son was livid about this. He began threatening staff members; he had lost it. As the Lab Director, I had to take over. I managed to coax him into my office — out of the way of patients and MD staff — to talk over his father's care. However, in my office, he pulled his weapon out: a typical snub nose .38 revolver. He held the gun on me until I managed to talk him down from his anger. I basically made the point that shooting me was not going to solve his father's problems. He became more rational after being heard."
"I managed to convince him that everything would be done and well — we would call our cardiac surgeon and get his father taken care of properly. I won his confidence, and he put his gun away. I did what I said I would do for his father.
He was not an unhinged criminal; he just wanted to be respected. I could read his emotions easily, and I guess I was lucky I was right. I broke hospital policy, which was to sound a major alarm, but that would have highly escalated a situation, endangering lives. Fortunately, I found an easier solution: give respect."
—Gregory G., Quora
13."It happened on a holiday weekend that was already hectic because of firecracker injuries, ATV accidents, near-drownings, and a host of other nice-weather disasters. It was very late, almost at the end of my 3–11 shift, when a raucous crowd piled in the ambulatory doors. They were tanned, barely dressed, and sloppy drunk. One of them grabbed a transport wheelchair and strolled out to the parking lot, returning with a very drunk man, one leg elevated. They were loud, vulgar, and acted as if it were spring break in the waiting area."
"With great effort, we got the story. A party was in full swing when a frisbee landed on the roof. The gentleman (loosely speaking) in the wheelchair decided to climb a window AC unit to retrieve it. As he was literally fall-down drunk, his balance failed him, and down he went. He believed he had a sprained ankle. Or the fifteen people trying to shout the story to the triage nurse believed he had a sprained ankle. It was getting difficult to handle the party that had moved from the backyard to the ER; they were everywhere, like a mass of tentacles that reeked of coconut rum and randomly shouted obscenities.
The biggest problem was the amorous lady who plastered herself to the patient. She was half-naked, straddling his lap in the wheelchair and making out with the guy like there was no tomorrow. We couldn't even stop them long enough to get a history. Eventually, security had to get involved, and most partygoers were ejected. But the woman continued to prowl the waiting room. She repeatedly requested to see the patient, but she was denied.
When another patient's family member emerged from the locked ER doors, she saw her chance. Security was dealing with the partygoers now in the parking lot, and no one was at the desk. She ducked inside. A few moments later, we heard a startled screech from the nurse who had this guy's room. 'WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?'
Of course, they were having sex in the exam room. On the gurney. Without having bothered even to draw the curtain."
—Amorette K, Quora
14."A woman on drugs was found wandering naked in the street outside the ER, bloody from the waist down. She was brought into one of our rooms and was pacing back and forth, still naked and bloody. Suddenly, she ran full speed towards the nursing station and dove headlong over the counter at one of our administrative guys. She took out his computer and the medical records bin on the way over, and he was struggling to contain her on the floor. We suddenly realized we were all shouting encouraging things to him, but nobody was going over there to help. I guess that's the effect naked, bloody women have on your allies. His knee was injured as a result, and he was unable to work for several weeks."
—William B, Quora
15."The most amazing thing I witnessed while working in a hospital was an earthquake! I had an office on the top floor of an older building. It was warm, so I opened my window to let in a little breeze. I heard what seemed like a convoy of trucks going down the street, just rattling and rattling. I stopped what I was doing and looked out the window, but I couldn't see any trucks. The sound got louder, and then it seemed as if a train were going to run through the building."
"I'd never heard anything like this. I then heard metal hitting metal. I turned around to see my metal file cabinets hitting against one another as they moved and swayed.
Finally, I knew what was happening! I wanted to run out of the office and down two levels of stairs, yet I felt it was more dangerous to run downstairs than stay where I was. I ended up gripping the sides of the doorway and praying that if the building began to collapse, the door frame would afford me some protection.
The strenuous shaking stopped in a minute or two, and the rumbling faded. I was still shaking myself! For the rest of the day, everyone was emailing and calling one another to ask, 'Where were you?' or 'Did anyone get hurt?' It was such a strange event in my town to have an earthquake that everyone was excited. It turned out the quake's epicenter was nearly 120 miles away and affected Washington D.C. (the Washington Monument was damaged)."
—Judith S., Quora
16."I am a Physician Assistant who specializes in Psychiatry. One night, I was sitting in a locked-down unit of a psychiatric ward when we admitted a man who had literally kicked out the rear door of a police cruiser. He had schizophrenia, had refused his meds, and was also wound up on some other substance. He was in his late 50s, but at 6'3", he was built like an ox. We had no choice but to isolate him in a padded room in four-point restraints."
"Allow me to paint a picture. It was 1 a.m. on the third floor of a psychiatric wing of a giant, urban hospital. The only way on or off the Unit was by one of two elevators that needed keys (we had emergency stairs, but they also needed keys). He was halfway down a locked hallway. The Isolation Room was also keyed; he was lying on a metal bed, with ankles and wrists tied down by leather cuffs and straps. He was in 'skivvies' with no other clothing, on a bare, single mattress with NO linens. No other furniture. The walls had pads. One plain window had bars covering them inside and out.
We had administered Thorazine, which is a potent intramuscular tranquilizer given to sedate and counteract the delusions. About 30 minutes after the dosing, we were sitting at the Nurse's station, waiting for him to sedate before we removed the restraints. He was yelling constantly. Suddenly, his screams stopped. It got our attention. But, within a moment, he started screaming with the most blood-curdling, terrified shrieking we had ever heard. It took us less than a minute to get down his empty hallway and into the isolation room, and I will never forget what we witnessed. The room was filled with smoke, and his mattress was on fire! Flames and everything. We had access to an extinguisher, and the poor victim only sustained second-degree burns on about 10% of his right side. I say 'only' because it looked like he was engulfed in flames!
The entire situation was investigated over the next days and weeks. I was so thankful that I was sitting with a Nurse and a Security Guard to corroborate with me about what we witnessed. We never found any reasonable explanation as to how this happened. To this date, after 45 years as a PA-C, I can honestly say that this was the most terrifying…only because there is no explanation that I can understand and accept."
—Alec S., Quora
17."It was Halloween. Some staff got permission to wear silly costumes, as long as certain regulations were held up (no one wants a doctor dressed up as a killer clown to treat them). I was checking on patients waiting in the ER, trying to ensure they had their insurance cards, water, and some medicine if needed. There were many people wearing costumes as well. Then I noticed a man sitting alone by himself. He looked like he was wearing your average butcher accident costume: white apron with fake blood sprayed all over, messy hair, and the obligatory big plastic butcher knife in the head."
"I asked who he was with or what he was waiting on, and he replied. 'I'm waiting for this to be removed.' He pointed to the prop sitting on top of his head. Some of my associates giggled. I smiled, 'Yeah, we will get that removed,' I said as I checked his skull. Then, it slowly dawned on me: it was not plastic. The knife was pure metal, and that was real blood that was on the side of his head. The knife was indeed lodged in the top of his skull.
I reported this to the head nurse, who came to use a metal detector wand, and sure enough, it was real. He was pushed up to the next in line and treated. The blade cut into his skull but not entirely; a millimeter more, and it would have been in the cranium."
—Matthew R, Quora
18."I was working my way through nursing school as the evening shift telephone operator at UF Health Shands Hospital in the early 1980s. The telephone was in the Admissions office, directly across from the front door. The Emergency Room was right down the back hallway from us. The security guard (yes, THE security guard; in those days, there were only 1 or 2 on duty in the evening) stopped by to tell us that there had been a shooting in the Emergency Room. We all freaked out and started to close the sliding wooden shutters that cut off access to our front counter."
"Except a woman came running up, sobbing, and asked to use our phone. She proceeded to call the family of the woman who had been shot in the ER, crying and saying 'My brother just killed your daughter!" It was pretty horrifying."
—Kathleen M, Quora
19."A nurse and I entered the room of a male amputee in his sixties. We didn't knock and then enter; we barged in like we were selling religion because we had an agenda. I immediately knew he didn't appreciate us intruding on him. He reached down, grabbed his prosthetic leg, and began swinging it round and round over his head while sitting upright in bed, hoping to connect it with us. Of course, he got me good in the back with that large leg. Note to self: always knock on a closed door first and wait."
20."The wildest thing I witnessed was a man on a neuro floor being very combative after brain surgery. He was yanking at his IVs and oxygen. Nurses were fighting to keep them in. The final hard yank was his Foley catheter. He yanked it clear out! If you don't know, a Foley catheter is inserted into the bladder and then has a sort of bladder that is filled so it stays. Well, that man experienced childbirth. They had to have urology try and put him back together."
"I didn't see up close. The scene of blood splatter and the sounds of his screaming were plenty. Never saw him again on the floor."
—Nostalgics, Quora
21."A boy was admitted to the medical ward with a very large bowl of frog spawn. Suddenly, he collapsed, and we needed to put equipment on the bedside tabletop where the frog spawn was, so I, being an idiot, took the bowl to the nearest place out of reach of toddlers. The child recovered eventually. But l forgot all about the frogspawn. I'd put it on a shelf in the laundry and storage area in the basement: a room full of racks of clothes, pajamas, and dressing gowns full of lovely, comfortable big pockets just the right size for the big frogs that had been eating their siblings. Do you know how many frogs can grow from one large two-gallon bowl of frogspawn? They kept jumping out everywhere, croaking, and we had to catch every single one of them, and l swear that as soon as we released them into the wild, they kept coming back."
"And that was not the end. We also found two large snakes, and fortunately, l was able to get the porter to remove them. I often wonder if we had left them all alone, would the snakes have eaten those damn frogs? Some child had undoubtedly smuggled in their baby pet snakes a long time ago. Warning: If you don't want strange hospital experiences, never work in a sick children's hospital unless you know that absolutely every child wants only a computer and that the hospital is brand new with nothing slithering around in the shadows! Even then, kids will always keep you on your toes!"
—Sally H, Quora
22."One Sunday morning, I was interrupted in triage by a receptionist. She looked upset and said there was a fight in the waiting room. As I opened the door to the waiting room, I saw the room filled with people, many of them sick patients, pressed against the walls with terrified expressions. Others were standing on chairs for safety, wide-eyed with fear and shock. Before me were two grown women dressed in designer outfits and shoes that screamed affluence. They looked perfectly healthy to me except for their fury. They had ahold of each other’s hair and were pulling each other around in a perpetually circular motion. This knocked anyone over who dared be in their way. As I quickly glanced around the room to make sure these idiots hadn't seriously injured anyone, I made eye contact with a man holding his crying daughter. The second this man's eyes locked onto me, he screamed out: 'My wife and mom, please help.'"
"The two women spilled onto a frightened older man. I had to act. I decided to use a move I learned in my karate training on the woman closest to me. With one swift jerk from behind, I was able to twist the older woman off her furious daughter-in-law. It then took another few seconds for me to get this woman far enough away so she could no longer kick the younger woman. It took every ounce of strength I had to keep what felt like a wild animal from breaking free as she fought against me fiercely. Thankfully, very quickly, security came and held the daughter-in-law back as well, and the two were finally separated.
There was one arrest (with possibly a second occurring later) and two banishments for life from our hospital. Interestingly, it turned out that one of those women was an attorney. Good thing, too, as she was in need of a good attorney after what happened."
—Cheryl B, Quora
23."Back in the day, we had a drip device where a pregnant patient would receive an inhaled anesthesia by the nurse who dripped the liquid drug into a mask device. The woman would inhale the vapor and have a decrease in sensorium, thus making the delivery less painful. A lady came in with a precipitous delivery, meaning there was no time for a doctor to arrive; the child would be delivered by the delivery RN. She screamed for help, and my buddy and I were sent in. The lady was howling and screaming something awful, and the nurse instructed us to break out the mask device and drip a given number of drops. But nothing happened! We were told to keep dripping the medicine. My friend and I got really woozy with blurred vision. We thought it was the situation and that we were panicking with our lack of experience."
"On and on the lady screamed. Finally, the baby was born, and we got the mask off and prepared to clean it...ONLY TO DISCOVER A VALVE. Apparently, after dripping the anesthesia in the device, one was supposed to flip the valve, allowing the patient to inhale the vapors. WE'D DONE NOTHING MORE THAN GAS OURSELVES! Each time the lady exhaled or screamed, the medication was propelled into the surrounding atmosphere...where my friend and I were. I couldn't drive home right after duty and had to nap before heading out. My buddy barely made it to the dorm before she crashed...and thus we learned a great lesson: DON'T WORK MATERNITY ANYMORE."
—Anne T, Quora
24."Now and then, I do rotations back into A+E (or the ER, for those on the other side of the Atlantic). It was about 2.30 a.m. on a Saturday. We had the usual post-copious-quantities-of-alcohol crowd in. Suddenly, a group of about five guys came barging in. One has lacerations across his stomach, clearly made with a small blade or Stanley knife. One has a broken nose. It's pretty clear they've all been in a fight. Five minutes later, three Gardai (Irish police) show up. One has a nasty gash across his forearm. I see the guys from the fight put their heads down, trying not to make eye contact with the Gardai. About two minutes later, another group of guys, tattered and bloody, walks in off the street. I'm looking at them, the Gardai and the first group, and my immediate thought is that these are all linked and involved in the same event. I pick up the phone to request more security. And at that precise moment, it all kicks off."
"Within about 10 seconds, there's a brawl right in the middle of the waiting room. Punches are thrown. A barrage of kicks go in. The Gardai and our security guard are diving in. Everyone else has shifted to the walls, getting out of the way as the two groups of lads get stuck.
Then Nurse McCabe (not her real name) wanders into the scene. McCabe is in her late fifties. A rotund, short woman and the kind of experienced nurse who remembers no-nonsense ward sisters and has seen it all.
She strolls over, inserts herself into the melee, and starts barking orders. 'You, stop. You, get your ass over there. Don't take that tone with me, you little shit. You're in my house now, so you'll feckin do what you're told.' She's grabbing guys by the collar and hauling them off to one side. The whole place is silent, and the fighting stops instantly. It was like watching your mother intervene with bickering siblings. In about 30 seconds, she has the two groups apart.
Nurse McCabe comes strolling back to the station, stopping now and then to glance back at the chastened lads. Looking at me, she rolls her eyes as if it's no big deal and sits there next to me, watching them. She retired a few years later. She was an absolute force of nature."
—Liz O, Quora
25."A man in his thirties was suddenly at the door. He was crunched over like he was having severe abdominal pain. He was scared, and getting any details about what had happened was hard. We examined him, and he had a padlock locked onto his testicles. The man said his girlfriend applied the lock. The time was 3 a.m., and it was a weekend."
"The tools at this small rural hospital were not working to help remove the lock. Soap did not help. Lotion was the same. We tried getting info on where the key was. The man's testicles were about the size of a grapefruit and black. He was obviously in a lot of pain. He clearly did not want others to know or was embarrassed — perhaps he did not want to get the person who applied the lock into trouble. We found out he had been in this situation for three days, and he was hoping the girlfriend would come back. I did not believe his story but wanted to help relieve pain and remove the lock as he could lose his fertility or get an infection. Lots could happen, so he got some pain medication via IV while we tried to figure out if any locksmiths were willing to help. Well, we were denied by four. They were to be paid by voucher, and it was the middle of the night. To a nonhealthcare worker, this story was nearly unbelievable. I was surprised we had no tool to pick that master lock; a ring cutter did not work. The fifth locksmith (they must have needed cash) did agree, and with a bit of time and some more pain meds, the lock was removed. We transported the patient to the Urology unit at a large public hospital in Seattle, WA. The man actually recovered."
—Linda T., Quora
26."The police brought in a man whose girlfriend had found him hiding in the corner of his attic chanting something to himself. She tried to get him to stand up, and he got physically violent every time she wanted to get him to move. When the police got there, they had to get a medic to sedate the heck out of him to get him in the ambulance. When he got to the ER, he woke up and started screaming and swinging his fists at everyone who tried to go near him, including those who were trying to at least get him covered up. He ended up punching a nurse and knocking her unconscious in the process while just saying things that didn't make sense and sounded downright creepy."
"The ER staff ended up restraining his hands and feet, but he was still so aggressive he almost flipped the whole bed over. It was literally as if he was possessed. A friend of his ended up anonymously calling and saying that he did bath salts. As a last resort for the patient's protection, we ended up getting an IV in and putting him in a drug-induced coma for a few days to let the drugs wear off…it was very weird."
—Mandy R, Quora
27."There's a long history of people putting things into their rectum, then the object moving up where the patient can no longer retrieve it. In this case, the patient had a chopstick in his rectum. I don't know how, but half of it had passed partially into the curve of the sigmoid colon. There was a Gastroenterologist who unsuccessfully tried to remove it by a colonoscopy. He then asked a general surgeon to remove it, and the surgery did so successfully."
"These two physicians were competitors. Both served on the elected hospital board of the district hospital and weren't on good terms with each other. The surgeon put the chopstick in a biohazard bag, and after opening the front of the patient's chart, there was the biohazard with the chopstick with a doctor's order: 'Don't remove the bag; it's only to be seen and removed by the Gastroenterology MD.' I was there when the Gastrointestinal MD showed up, and he was beyond upset."
—David H, Quora
28."I have seen many strange things in the ER, but I think the strangest I ever say was a man who came into the department clad in a tight black rubber suit — including Wellington boots. I don't fully know how he did it, and I don't want to know, but he had broken his penis. Although in considerable pain, the man refused to tell me anything, demanding to see a male doctor. How glad I was to be able to refer this strange case to my male urological colleague. Maybe he, being a man, was able to get to the bottom of things. I have to admit that I was baffled."
—Julia M, Quora
29.A businessperson came in dressed like he was in an issue of GQ. He lived about 50 miles from the hospital. He probably didn't want to go to a local hospital, but no one could understand how he sat down to drive there. He had a 12oz. glass bottle (intact) and two dead gerbils...inside him."
—Patty M, Quora
30."Once, a prisoner was brought into the ER in metal handcuffs and a particularly filthy orange prison jumpsuit. He had been hiding in a sewer for four days, having escaped from a local lockup. He spent his 'free time' in a six-foot radius water drainage pipe, surviving on rainwater and eating crawdads, fish, frogs, and snakes. To put it politely, he smelled like a fish market on a hot day. I recalled that some surgeons would use orange oil on the inside of their surgical masks when dealing with particularly smelly tropical wounds, so I availed myself of some of this. He had a very small wound on his lip that had bled profusely but required only a single stitch to close."
"After finishing the repair, a slender, dark, six-inch snake slithered out from under his beard. Because it was so slender, it was able to disappear in a flash down the drain in the emergency room.
I believe the patient was then showered (I know I did) and sent back to prison. Most likely, the food was better, or at least easier to catch."
—Raphael B, Quora
31."It was a busy night on the Labor and Delivery ward. We had a bunch of babies and moms to admit over to postpartum and nursery, and I assisted with getting everybody transferred and settled in. As I ran back and forth, I glanced into one of the delivery rooms. The cleaning lady was on a stool, scrubbing the ceiling (starting at the highest part of the room and working down). The room was trashed way beyond normal. (Bringing a human into the world is always a dynamic event.) It looked like a bomb had gone off. All the walls, equipment, and ceiling were dripping with 'juice.' All the shiny things, the mirrors, everything was covered with a pink ooze. I stopped, made eye contact with her, she smiled, shrugged, and went back to scrubbing. Births are normally a messy process, but something abnormal must've happened there. It was beyond gory."
"I guess everybody was okay. Nobody talked about what happened in that room, but I guess everybody was healthy.
I have a lot of horrible stories, but that snapshot of the smiling cleaning lady on the stool in a delivery room, surrounded by dripping amniotic fluid that was still raining and puddling on the floor, is burned in my brain as something surreal."
—Matthew W, Quora
32."Forty years ago, I was a resident and moonlighting in a psychiatric emergency room. A husband and wife were both brought in by police on 510s (involuntary holds) due to mutual domestic violence and out-of-control behavior. He said she was suicidal, while she said he was paranoid and physically abusive. They were in adjoining rooms in the ER, so I began interviewing one at a time. She denied suicidality, and he denied ever becoming physical with his wife, though he did believe she was having an affair, which she vehemently denied. Since they did not appear to need psychiatric hospitalization, I gave them both outpatient referrals and suggested that one of them could stay with a friend or family member. With the husband, I mistakenly used the phrase 'temporary separation.' Not good. As soon as those words were out of my mouth, he said, 'What are you doing alone in there with my wife? Are you having an affair with her?'"
"Before I could reply, he lept up off of his chair and caught me with a hard left hook right to my ear and temple, knocking me off of my chair and almost unconscious. Still dazed, I found him on top of me, choking me and banging my head against the floor. I instinctually felt I had to fight for my life. I actually momentarily believed I had to kill him or be killed. I was able to get him — a larger, more muscular guy — off of me and get on top of him. The next thing I experienced was a psych tech pulling me off of him while I was banging his head on the floor. Adrenaline is an amazing chemical.
Later, I went to see him while he was in restraints to finish my assessment and to deal with the attack and my response. The only thing he said was, 'It's really unethical for a doctor to curse like that.' I had no recollection of cursing.
It turned out that he had been using cocaine extensively for the past year. Both he and his wife neglected to mention this for fear of criminal charges and because he had 'stopped' several weeks before the incident. His diagnosis was amphetamine psychosis, which I learned can last for weeks even after the cessation of drug use."
—Edward O, Quora
33."I was in the Emergency Room lobby, in the area where patients who have not come in by ambulance check in with a Greet Nurse. Usually, the people who check in there have minor illnesses or less severe injuries. I saw a man walk in wearing an unbuttoned flannel shirt. He walks up to the Greet Nurse and nonchalantly states that he needs to be seen because he has been stabbed in the back. The man proceeds to drop his shirt off of his shoulders, revealing a flap of muscle hanging open from his spine to his shoulder blade."
"I could have easily reached all of my fingers and part of the palm of my hand into this wound! It was deep. And here, this guy is just standing there as though he has a hangnail! I ran for a wheelchair as the Nurse calmly told him to lean on the counter so that he would not fall. I pulled the wheelchair up behind him and helped him sit down. Seconds later, rushing to the Trauma Suites, I heard a Trauma Alert in the ER Lobby go out over the PA. We got him into the Suites, and I moved out of the way so the ER staff could do their thing.
I saw that same patient walk out of the ER with discharge papers eight hours later."
—Rick M, Quora
34."I worked in a rural hospital with a large meth-using and unhoused population nearby. Here are the scenarios I dealt with in that time: three bomb threats that were just angry people, a couple of people found living in a wall in our old hospital, an unhoused woman discharged after warming up just to die at the bus shelter several hours later (that one caused legal issues and policy changes), a kid shoving another kid out of his car by the front door (locked down) who had been shot, plenty of fentanyl-using patients who were insanely violent and strong, and plenty of items stuck up the butt."
"Fun fact: anything that has to be surgically removed has to go to the lab for examination, and it didn't take long to lose the shock factor in my field when dildos and Christmas decorations appear in the lab."
35.I worked in the ER as a tech for close to 10 years. One story that stands out the most is that of a 6'8,"' 300lbs, 16-year-old high school football player who did angel dust. We had the state police, sheriff's office, and town police there, as well as every male in our hospital. There were close to 20 people in all trying to coral this young man. They had him in like 6-point restraints. For unknown reasons, the only restraints were his hands. This kid stood up, the stretcher strapped to his back like it was nothing, and rammed the window and door many times. Needless to say, he was back in full restraints. He must have done a lot of angel dust because he was transferred to a psych hospital."
36.And finally..."In a foreign hospital, I watched a man and a woman bring a fully grown jaguar jungle cat into the emergency room. The doctors and nurses helped them deliver four brand new baby jaguar cubs into the world."
—Denny B, Quora
If you've ever worked in a hospital setting, what's the wildest thing you experienced or saw on the job? Let us know in the comments below or via this anonymous form.
Submissions have been edited for length/clarity.
