Hospital Horrors From Real People
The hospital is unpleasant at the worst of times—but for these doctors, nurses, and patients, it turned into an absolute horror story.
1. Total Blank
I woke up in the hospital buckled to the bed, and I didn't know why I was there. This happened more than once because I was there for a brain injury. I couldn't remember why I was in the hospital, so I kept trying to escape.
They ended up writing on a whiteboard at the end of my bed that I was supposed to be there and why (to avoid future freakouts).
2. Teenage Dream
When I was about 13, I had intestinal surgery. I had to stay there and recover for about seven days to be sure that all the plumbing was working properly. On about the fifth day, I woke up to a fairly large wet spot covering my crotch and gown.
It turned out I had a wet dream but was still unable to move easily to clean myself up, so I had to inform the nurse. For a 13-year-old, it was a nightmare!
3. Who Am I?
I woke up from a coma and while I was in the ICU recovering, I had some really weird situations occur. One, in particular, stands out. I was having a lot of trouble sleeping, so I was watching a lot of television.
One night, I put on Jamie Oliver's 30-Minute Meals. I fell asleep, woke up, and for some unknown reason, I had the strangest thought: "I am one of Jamie Oliver's sous chefs, and I am currently working on his next cookbook."
I have NO idea why I thought this. I got out of bed, walked to the nurse’s station where my ICU nurse was folding blankets, and her back was towards me. It was around 3 am and the ICU was pretty dark. She wasn’t expecting me to be standing in the middle of the hallway. When she turned around, she nearly jumped out of her skin—I was just standing there like a zombie.
I told her about Jamie Oliver and the cookbook. After about 10-15 minutes, I woke up or snapped out of it, and I was SO embarrassed. She ushered me back to bed and had a good laugh.
She told me it was pretty normal for people in comas and the ICU with head injuries to have very vivid dreams and hallucinations while totally awake.
4. The Endless Wait
I came in with a kidney stone stuck and causing me horrible pain. I was left screaming and vomiting, writhing in pain in the waiting room for six hours before I finally got taken back to a room and given ibuprofen.
Then they ordered a CT scan, found out about the kidney stone and the sepsis, then finally gave me heavy pain meds.
I sat in that ER room with no update for 26 hours while they were trying to get me a room. I begged the nurses to get the doctor to come to see me and give me an update on what they were going to do to treat my condition since they had done nothing at all. After six hours of waiting for a doctor, a nurse came in to say she was going to give me a bag of fluid. That, to me, was a red flag.
I refused it knowing the doctor would come in because I was being non-compliant. He was in the room within 10 minutes. They couldn't give me an actual description of my treatment plan, they just kept saying, "We'll see what happens."
After two more days on another floor with nothing but fluids—no meds, no extra testing, no anything, I finally was discharged with Flomax and that was it.
