Getting checked in a hospital by a medical professional surely gives assurance and relieves some of our worries. But what if you found out that not everything that they say is true? Check out these stories from medical professionals in the reddit community and see how it is convenient not to tell the truth all the time.
1. Nothing New
My daughter, who was 3 at the time, had to have a cavity filled. As we were leaving, the dentist told me just to watch my daughter because sometimes kids chew their gums because it's numb and feels weird.
So, the drive home took 30 minutes and I had been talking to my daughter the entire time to keep her busy. I parked my car in my driveway, opened the passenger seat to get my daughter out, and her entire lower lip on the left side was gone. She had chewed it off down to her chin.
She ended up in emergency surgery, but the surgeon kept telling us it would be fine, and he sees this stuff all the time. She ended up having multiple surgeries, and when she was finally healed, the surgeon told us that it was the worst injury like that he had ever seen. He wasn't sure how she would heal, but you can hardly tell it happened now.
imcloudnine
2. False Hope
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 Dr. came to the nurse’s station asking who had 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 to oozing muscle fibers.
Her calves 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 liquified 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 liquified skin. When I went to clean her sacral area, all the liquified skin separated and oozed all over the bed. I really struggled to keep my cool 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 breakdown so much without dying. I still think about that woman sometimes and what led to her living like that. It still breaks my heart.
userdeleted
3. Too Basic… or Not?
In dental school, I had an emergency patient come in, complaining of sore gums. Upon examination, I found a massive calculus bridge behind her lower front teeth. She only had about 3 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 6 months, once a year, or every other year is a hell of a lot better than never.
deleteduser
4. Unusual Hoarding
I have swallowed a staple. Eh, but whatever, as I’m taking her down to X-ray. I told her about t. I worked as a mental health tech to get through undergrad. A girl aged 15 in the adolescent ward claims to he dime I swallowed when I was a kid. It happens.
Well, turns out she underestimated the number of staples by around a hundred. Every printout given by the therapists had been a swallowed staple. She had gotten staples from the other kids. The x-ray of her abdomen looked as if it were a weird staple-y snow globe. And yet, somehow, she was back to trying to steal psych ward staples a week later. Never did figure out how they removed them all.
UnfairCanary
5. A Bloody Encounter
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 ten minutes as we’re trying to get this thing down to where it needs to go. Finally finish placement and it immediately suctions out 3 liters of this black sludge that is 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 the 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 silent shock.
oh_haay
6. What a Mess
I had a patient who needed a lower gastrointestinal study to find/fix a bowel bleed. To get a study done, you need to poop clear mucus. Three days we bowel prepped 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. 3+ 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 bent to park his butt on the toilet, and continued to dump out 7 people worth of poop.
In my 9 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 3 packages of cavi wipes, and sopped it up. Told him this happens all the time.
kitten86er
7. A Comforting Sound
Motorcyclist came in after someone left-turned without checking. He had gone over the hood, slid and somehow somersaulted landing on his ass sitting up. He slid across the intersection mostly on his butt, getting a serious road rash. Luckily, he was only a block from the hospital and ambulance. They packed him and brought him to the ER.
We ended up cutting off his chaps and jeans and began the cleanup of gravel and sand embedded in his thighs and ass when all of a sudden, his testicles fell out of his scrotum. He had basically sandpapered a hole in his scrotum while skidding on his butt.
The attending pauses, grabs the saline, irrigates 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.
Assaulted_Fish
8. Much Needed Reassurance
I worked in a heart procedure lab that helped try to get rid of bad heart rhythms. A prisoner came in for a last ditch effort to help his failing heart and had developed a condition called Ventricular Tachycardia. Setting the patient up and looking at his rhythm / heart, it looked pretty bad.
Before we got started, he grabbed me on the arm and said "I'm scared. Is it going to be okay?"
"We have very talented physicians here sir, and they do this all the time."
The Ventricular Tachycardia was set off during the procedure and deteriorated into Ventricular Fibrillation. We were able to resuscitate him, but he never woke back up.
Tschartz
9. Confident or Liar, You Choose
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 normally again.
The first appointment at Duke that dude told me it was really not a big deal, and he would have me fixed almost as good as new. I honestly thought he was just trying to be nice and optimistic, but he was very serious. 5 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.
burtrenolds
10. Not a Big Deal
As a medical student doing my first placement in the emergency department, I was waiting outside the triage room to ask the nurse something. I was the lowest ranking, most clueless person in the department. I knew a lot about the Kreb cycle, not a whole lot about, you know, medicine.
A young man came up to me and said he was sorry to disturb me, he just wanted to check, it was just, well, not to queue-jump or anything, but he wanted to check, can this definitely wait for triage?
He then unwrapped a towel from his hand and showed me his thumb, which he had dropped a loaded barbell onto. It was shattered, just flattened, with splinters of bone coming out. I stared at it. He stared at it. I stared at it.
Then I told him, “oh yes, no problem at all.” He'd better take a seat and I'd make sure someone was with him right away.
Anytimeisteatime
11. Third Time’s a Charm
In 2011, I had a saddle pulmonary embolism two weeks before my scheduled wedding. My quite seasoned heart surgeon seemed pretty confident that I'd be okay, and he even said he'd get me to my wedding on time.
Long story short, I was in the hospital for about a month due to complications. Several weeks later, when I was visiting my heart surgeon for a follow-up, he told me he'd only ever seen two other people as sick as I was. Those two didn't survive.
Eruannwen
12. You Can’t Lie to a Doctor
I worked as a tech in the ER for a while and had a woman in her 40's present with "burning and pain down below, discharge and 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 no assault, no she doesn't know what's going on, but it started about 3 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 spec 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 a 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 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's 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 mix 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.
deleteduser
13. Convenient Lie
I'm an oncology nurse. The other day I had a patient who had a nosebleed that just wouldn't stop. I gave him an extra infusion of Platelets, vitamin K, and multiple doses of afrin (nasal spray which vasoconstricts). It would stop for maybe 20 minutes before it would start bleeding like a faucet again through the family's pinching fingers. The whole time I was "nose bleeds are common. It is the dry air from the heater etc."
I ended up personally holding his nose for over an hour straight while we waited for someone from ENT (ears nose throat) to show up to pack it. He lost so much blood he needed a blood transfusion. My arm was so sore, and the patient looked like he had been murdered twice over from all the blood on his clothes.
nutmeg2299
14. Wash Your Hands First
Not a medical professional but my mom is a registered nurse and she has had some stories over the years. Yet, one in particular stands out. She had a male patient come in with an extremely swollen penis. Like...the size of a swollen can of Pringle. She said it was the biggest penis she ever encountered in her decades as a nurse. He claimed he broke it during sex.
She had to put a catheter in. The guy was freaking out and she had to reassure him that this was a walk in the park for her, but she was seriously questioning how to get the catheter in. She called in her coworker to help steady his genitals while she gave him every painkiller she was legally able to give, and stuck the catheter in. Got it in the first try, thankfully. She still doesn't know how she managed to get it in but was thankful she did lol. Eventually it came out that he hadn't broken his genital during sex but actually masturbated after cleaning his fish tank without washing his hands and got an infection from it.
ICanHazWittyName
15. Honesty is Not My Thing Today
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/possibly re-wrap it (basic wound care is one of my duties), and it was a literal hole in his heel about 4cm 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 writhe a little bit.
I got the patient's consent to look under the skin flap and sweet galactic Jesus, there were 3 sizeable maggots just chilling. I've read about it before, but I have never seen it in person.
My brain went "what in the solar heck" 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 infested wound.
lilrei160
16. We’re Bluffing
On my ER rotation a couple months back, I walked into the ED 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 lbs 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 if a small watermelon, and the foreskin had swollen completely over the tip of his penis.
The nurse had a speculum (tool OBs use 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 piss. I still don’t know how he let his scrotum and penis swell that much. We comforted the patient the whole time and kept telling him we had done it like this before. Total lie. No one in the ED had ever done or seen anything like it.
Trisomy__21
17. I Didn’t See It Coming
I used to do psychiatric evaluations in an emergency room setting. One time, I'm evaluating this 60-year-old woman who was lying in the hospital bed. I'm asking her questions, and she stops me and says, "Excuse me, but I need to pass some gas." I let her know that this is a medical setting and that is a completely normal body function and not to be embarrassed. People pass gas all the time.
I was not prepared for what came next. She let it rip, and out came the loudest, wettest, and longest sounding fart I have ever heard.
It was bubbly and juicy, hitting all the deep notes while ending on a squeaker. I don't think Satan could have made a noise like that with his anus. It sounded so relieving, but then the smell hit me. It was bad enough that I started to gag and had to excuse myself from the room. When I came back, I politely asked if she needed a nurse for anything in case she needed to be cleaned up after that, but she declined. Obviously, I've witnessed people farting before, but I've never heard or smelled anything like that before. That was something else.
AimlessPeacock
18. A Popular Line
I'm a medical secretary for a podiatrist. I obviously didn't treat the patient myself, but I discussed his case with his doctor. The patient had severe anxiety and therefore hadn't been to a doctor of any kind in approximately twenty years. He ended up in our office because his wife had called the day before and expressed that he needed to be seen due to a foot infection. When he arrived, he approached the window and told the receptionist that he was sorry because his socks were dirty as he hadn't made it to the laundromat recently, which was a bit weird in and of itself, but we work for a podiatrist--we've seen it all before, as it were. He then sat in the waiting room, and it was mere moments before the smell seeped into the administration office.
The receptionist put him in an exam room as quickly as possible, and upon her return, she informed me that the infection was literally oozing out of his sneaker.
All we could do was open the widows and apologize to other patients as they arrived. It was foul, and when I entered the room after his appointment to clean it (the medical assistant was out that day), I immediately began gagging and had to forcefully push my manager out of the way as to avoid vomiting on her on my way to the restroom.
As it turned out, the dude had had the infection for approximately three months and had been showering with his sock on since he'd discovered it. He literally hadn't removed his sock from his infected foot in three months, and his wife had somehow been living with the overwhelming smell. The doctor said it was the worst infection he'd ever seen, but the patient was so incredibly anxious that he got the standard, "I've seen it all before," throughout his appointment.
MedusaExceptWithCats
19. All It Takes Is Some Kindness
I was working as a CNA in a nursing home. There was a lady who had been neglected before she came in, so she had stage 4 bed sores (all the way to the bone) and the treatment nurse wanted me because I am calming and really good with the residents that needed a little support. She has me roll her on her side and then carefully peels back the bandage. I'm staring done in half horror/ half fascination as I can clearly see the bone, ligaments, muscle, layers of skin.
I'm gawking hard and the nurse is showing me some neat procedure when I hear a small, frail voice, "Is it getting better?" I turn on my biggest, friendliest smile and reply, "It does! It looks so much better. Does it feel better?" She smiles and nods; I change the subject to grand kids (she had a picture of them). I haven't seen anything like it before or since. But she was such a lovely lady and I started looking forward to helping because she was such a nice lady to talk to.
dotchianni
20. This is Courage…. Defined.
Years ago, my then 11-year-old shattered both femurs and her hip. At the time, her Orthopedic specialist was so reassuring and confident that we had no doubts about her recovery.
A year later, we went back for a review, and he asked me if I'd like to see her trauma x-rays. Not having any idea of the reality, I said yes.
What I saw looked like her leg bones had exploded.
After my freaked-out reaction I commented on how cool and calm he was, and how certain that she'd be fine. He said he'd actually had to go for a short walk around the hospital to collect his thoughts since he had no idea how he would put this child back together. He also told me had used the films as a teaching aid. He's one of my heroes.
MamaBear4485