ER Horror Stories

[comicfan]

I was not too sure where to start this thread but figured General Conversations could be a good place to start.

I work in the health care system and have seem some crazy stuff in the ER. Anyone out there has any weird stories you may have seen or experienced in your journey to the hospital.

To start: Last night I had a guy come in who complained of rectal pain. As you can see from my avatar, you can get a pretty good idea why he was in so much pain!

[Poop Sailboat]

isn't your av a violation of the hippocratic oath or something?

[Poop Sailboat]

edit: yep


What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself, holding such things shameful to be spoken about.

[Philip Lombard]

hippocr0wned

[comicfan]

It would be if not for the fact that many schools do not allow their students to take the hippocratic oath. We are allowed to speak about cases (i.e. medical journals are full of them with pictures and examples) as long as there are no names associated with it and we have consent (which I do have). It is one of the reasons why the hippocratic oath is not used anymore in it's originality.

[BIG PIZZLE]

As a doctor, I find this offensive.

[Claydon]

I worked as an orderly when I was 20 on the graveyard at an ER in West Los Angeles, I saw things that kind of scared me.

[PWalk]

On duty one night about two years ago when a woman was wheeled in with her right knee bent in a way that it wasn't meant to be bent. I really wanted to tell her if she was a horse they would have shot her by now.

Trauma units...:rolleyes:

[Claydon]

I saw a man with both of his legs completely crushed as well as his testicles and penis, an SUV rolled over onto his car on the south bound 405.

[chipsahoy]

I saw a man with both of his legs completely crushed as well as his testicles and penis, an SUV rolled over onto his car on the south bound 405.

Did you shoot him I mean he may not be a horse but he is no longer a man either with all that crushed.

[Claydon]

Did you shoot him I mean he may not be a horse but he is no longer a man either with all that crushed.

Last I heard he went to surgery for multiple amputation, and well..basically castration. Doubtful he lived given the severity of the trauma.

[The GWD]

http://www.nyee.edu/images/pain-scale.gif

That's my favorite part of the emergency room. "Rate your pain on this scale of 1 to 10". I wonder if ANYONE has ever said 0. "Gee doc, I must be crazy, because my life is perfect!".

[Genius]

I accidentally got my penis cut off a few years back. They accidentally attached a 14-incher in place. Now I go by Mr. Big Reattached Penis.

[Syndicate]

My father had a severe ear infection once. It resulted in total vertigo, vomiting, a fever, he was actually pretty fucked up because of it. Of course none of us had any idea an ear infection could get that bad, so we were freaking. We had no idea why he was so messed up. So we took him to the emergency room, and the ER doctor gave him a glass of water, and aspirin, told him HE WAS JUST DRUNK, wrote him out a bill for about a grand, and sent him home. That was his expert diagnosis. My father toughed it out that night, went to his doctor the next day, and said doctor removed enough wax and infectious crap from his ears to form a mass the size of a tennis ball.

[Da Raider]

I had to go to the emergency room to get my appendix removed - It was New Year's morning - around 4am when I got there. The staff was apathetic, basically ignored me until I went up to them and starting screaming before they would check me in. When I finally got a room a handful of hours later, there was no bed or chairs. Finally, I got a bed, but with no pillow. We had to steal out of one of the neighboring rooms. When I got out of surgery, none of the nurses spoke fluent English except for one lady on the entire floor. When I requested a painkiller, I specifically requested that they not give me moriphine. So that's what they gave me, repeatedly. I had to buzz them over and over for 6 hours before they would even get me a glass of fucking water. My monitoring system got disconnected so it would raise this obnoxious shrieking alarm and they would flat out ignore it for hours. I couldn't sleep so I literally disconnected the power to the device. Basically, it was the best hospital experience ever.

[Will]

Well, not much of a patch on the others but when I was 14 I did my hip in playing tennis, started off as just a bit of a limp then over the next 2 days I couldnt walk.

Went to see my GP and got referred straight to the ER for x-rays and such (which was doubly uncomfortable since the woman doing them was my good mates mum and my cock was there for her to see on the sheet).

Got blood tests and seen by a consultant who told me I was going straight in for surgery the next morning and I'd have screws put in my hip and be on crutches for 6-8 months. So naturally I'm bricking it all night then in the morning he comes in and says to give it a bit longer, fucking 2 days bed rest later and I'm completely fine, turns out I had a viral infection in my hip joint and it just disappeared naturally, fuckers nearly had me a cripple for half a year.

Embarrassingly enough the consultant then told me I had to lose weight as I was putting too much pressure on my legs (which sounded quite harsh since although I was fat, I wasnt exactly morbidly obese!).

[}{arlequin]

went to school w/ a guy that worked er/ambulance duty. one day they had a burly harley biker type that had a dildo stuck up his ass. guess he went deeper and deeper until he lost his grip. funniest part was that it was still 'on' when they admitted him

[comicfan]

My father had a severe ear infection once. It resulted in total vertigo, vomiting, a fever, he was actually pretty fucked up because of it. Of course none of us had any idea an ear infection could get that bad, so we were freaking. We had no idea why he was so messed up. So we took him to the emergency room, and the ER doctor gave him a glass of water, and aspirin, told him HE WAS JUST DRUNK, wrote him out a bill for about a grand, and sent him home. That was his expert diagnosis. My father toughed it out that night, went to his doctor the next day, and said doctor removed enough wax and infectious crap from his ears to form a mass the size of a tennis ball.

That was just fucking stupid. It really pisses me off when I hear things like this.... did they even bother to look in his ear? That would have been the first place I looked!

[Claydon]

ERs are necessary evils.

[comicfan]

ERs are necessary evils.

Oh I completely agree but there are good ways and bad ways to deal with patients... all it takes is listening to what they are complaining about and ask the right questions to come up with a pretty good idea of what the potential diagnosis is. They you check the suspicious areas to help further support or exclude your working hypothesis and then finally do investigations.

[Claydon]

Oh I completely agree but there are good ways and bad ways to deal with patients... all it takes is listening to what they are complaining about and ask the right questions to come up with a pretty good idea of what the potential diagnosis is. They you check the suspicious areas to help further support or exclude your working hypothesis and then finally do investigations.

the annoying thing about an ER is that 50% of the people in there do not need to be there and could have gone to local Urgent Care facilities. Why people have such a hardon for an ER I will never understand. If you have a bad flu why spend $500 for the MD and another $1000 for labs and meds, when you could spend less than $200 and an Urgent care.

[comicfan]

Not just that, but why do so many people come into the ER for things like a prescription renewals. These are things that their family physicians can do. I do not know how bad it is in the US to see your family doctor, but I know in Canada we are sort quite a bit of GP. However, there are many walk in clinics that can deal with this... you do not need to clog up the ER for this and many other things!

[Titus_Pullo]

The true ER horror is taking a once decent show and stretching it out for 15 years.

[Daydreamer]

the annoying thing about an ER is that 50% of the people in there do not need to be there and could have gone to local Urgent Care facilities. Why people have such a hardon for an ER I will never understand. If you have a bad flu why spend $500 for the MD and another $1000 for labs and meds, when you could spend less than $200 and an Urgent care.


50% of the people in an ER do not have insurance and will never pay their bills.

[Titus_Pullo]

They are called Obama supporters.

[medlar]

The real horror of ER starts in the waiting room. You've got at least two hours of entertainment seeing who is worse off than yourself and if your lucky someone will spew all over the magazine table right in front of you, while another one is bleeding profusely from his head and a baby is filling its diapers and screaming its face off. An old man is swearing at nobody and promptly pees his pants to get attention..I would have gone home to stitch my wound myself to go through that hell again. I feel sorry for the ones behind the doors to have to attend to that freak show.

[Bizz]

I did all my shifts in either ER or ICU so I usually got to see most of the fucked up shit either coming in or while it was still critical. One of the most fucked up things I've seen was when I was working in ICU. I wasn't working when he came in, but he was in my bay in ICU. The guy shot himself in the mouth with a shotgun and lived. He put the gun in his mouth and aimed upward, but closer to the sinuses. Of course when I showed up and read about it, I wanted to see it. I went into the bay and his face was covered with wet gauze. A nurse who I knew fairly well was looking after this guy and when she saw me she said "OMG YOU HAVE TO SEE THIS". She peeled back the gauze and you could see inside this guys head. You could see his brain, one of his eyes were gone and the other had no ocular cavity to rest in. You could see right down his sinuses and it was seriously fucked up. You don't hear about it on the news, but there are alot of suicides and suicides attempts. Especially around Christmas time. Normally you feel bad about it, but we heard that this guy did it in front of his young children.

[Claydon]

They are called Obama supporters.

pwnt!

[VoxAngelikus]

My dad had to go to the ER and I had to take him, so while he was resting in one of the ER beds, I had about 10 hours to kill. That meant lots of trips outside for cigarettes and lots of gawking at all the hurt people. It was like when you pass an accident on the highway, only in this case I wasn't in my car so I could stare at everyone without having to worry about smashing into the car in front of me.

The low-light was when I was outside, and the helicopter landed on the roof. This, to me, was awesome, because it was a big helicopter only four stories above me. Cool. But then I was inside and everything went Code Blue and they wheeled in a gurney with a white sheet stained with blood. Which, I hate to say it, was also kinda awesome. There was blood everywhere.

But then, about an hour later, I was walking around and I passed a room where a guy had some people sitting down - the family of the bloody sheet. Apparently the person didn't make it, because they were in a state I wouldn't wish on anyone. Then the guy got up and gave me a nasty look and shut the door.

Not really a horror story, but it made me realize that I would much rather be anywhere but the ER. It is a very emotional place and all of a sudden the whole situation went from marginally interesting to absolutely overwhelming. And also, if you're going to tell someone a family member died, why would you leave the door open, guy? Shut the door. Don't give me a dirty look because you forgot to give the family some privacy when you broke the worst news of their lives. Stupid guy.

[Oggie]

Vox: Making family death more uncomfortable since 2000.

[comicfan]

I was working in emerge yesterday when a couple came in and started taking pictures with their cell phones of people in the ER... They pretended they could not speak English but we had heard them before speaking English fluently. We confiscated their cell phones and security wiped the memory cards. Why would anyone want to take pictures of people in bed and of the ER staff.... really boggles my mind!

[Smuckers]

My aunt was a nurse, and I'll never forget a story she told me that happened around 2004.

A woman walked into the ER, said she dropped a bottlecap on her toenail and that her toenail was in exruciating pain. The doctors took her back to the room, but were befuddled when something very stange happened: when a nurse left the room (after evalulation), she came back unexpectadly early while the patient was waiting for the doctor and she caught the woman taking a sharp intrument that was by the sink and was trying to lift her toenail up. The woman later admitted she was making it up, intentionally tried to hurt her nail, all because she wanted to seduce the doctor...

[Claydon]

My aunt was a nurse, and I'll never forget a story she told me that happened around 2004.

A woman walked into the ER, said she dropped a bottlecap on her toenail and that her toenail was in exruciating pain. The doctors took her back to the room, but were befuddled when something very stange happened: when a nurse left the room (after evalulation), she came back unexpectadly early while the patient was waiting for the doctor and she caught the woman taking a sharp intrument that was by the sink and was trying to lift her toenail up. The woman later admitted she was making it up, intentionally tried to hurt her nail, all because she wanted to seduce the doctor...

jesus, she could have just left a number for the doctor.

[Bizz]

Or gone in with a hot problem like "my pussy is just so wet and tight".

[Swurgen]

50% of the people in an ER do not have insurance and will never pay their bills.

God bless illegal immigration. I always hoped my taxes would go to criminal invaders.

The ER should simply not do all of these non-emergency things that people request of them. To do them would just encourage them to keep coming back.

[Claydon]

God bless illegal immigration. I always hoped my taxes would go to criminal invaders.

The ER should simply not do all of these non-emergency things that people request of them. To do them would just encourage them to keep coming back.

State of California spent 9 billion on illegal immigrants medical care last year in the ER, neonatal etc.

true story

[janois]

I'm watching ER for the first time in years, and I'm still not a fan.

[nuclearjew]

God bless illegal immigration. I always hoped my taxes would go to criminal invaders.

The ER should simply not do all of these non-emergency things that people request of them. To do them would just encourage them to keep coming back.
Yeah, if my ER services were free, I would do my damndest to make sure I made it back to the ER as often as possible!

[mongo]

emergency rooms are for suckers.

[Claydon]

emergency rooms are for suckers.

unless you are in a car accident.

[mongo]

unless you are in a car accident.

you must remember, i'm not female or asian.

[Face]

not all people involved in accidents are female or asian... what about the people they hit?