From dumb patients to heartbreaking diagnoses to unbelievable injuries, these medical "OMG" moments are not for the faint of heart.
1. Yikes, This Sounds Awful
I was in the ER when patients from a serious car accident and rollover were brought in. The driver hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt, and at one point we had to call a “traumatic code,” which alerts doctors that a person’s heart has stopped because of a major injury rather than a blockage. He suffered devastating injuries—one of his legs had been completely stripped of skin.
After seeing something like that, I always remind myself that even on a terrible day, things could still be worse.
2. Ribbit, Ribbet
I was doing an abdominal exam on a very large woman with a BMI of 74. When I lifted one of the folds of skin, I found a decaying frog—and the patient had no idea it was there.
Apparently, she and her husband had been swimming in a pond, and the local wildlife ended up paying the price.
3. A Valuable Lesson Learned
When I was a kid, I had one of those erasers that fits on top of a pencil. It was a Yogi Bear eraser, about two inches tall, with a hole in the bottom.
For some reason known only to my younger self, I decided I needed to find out whether Yogi’s ear would fit in my ear. I still remember the awful moment. It did fit—but then it got stuck. I was completely panicked.
I had to go to the doctor and have it removed, and it took a while. They used water to flush it out while also trying to grab it with tweezers.
After some time and a pair of slightly blood-streaked tweezers, it finally came out. I never tried anything like that again. Lesson learned.
wuttichai tongsuk, Shutterstock
4. Lesson Learned Twice
I got an ingrown hair from shaving a very sensitive area. I noticed it in the shower and figured I’d just squeeze it. A few days later, I was in a lot of pain, so I went to a walk-in clinic to have it checked out.
In case you’re wondering, there’s no graceful way to explain that you have severe pain and swelling in that area, but I did my best. The doctor took one look and said, in a very concerned voice, “Oh, that is very infected.”
He explained that I never should have tried to pop it, especially in that area, because if it doesn’t drain properly, the infection can spread inward. Not good.
He gave me medication and warned me I might develop an abscess. If that happened, I’d need to come back so it could be drained. I followed the treatment plan, and after a couple of days it started to feel a little better.
Then one day after a shower, I noticed it had in fact turned into an abscess. It looked like a patch of raw skin, and I convinced myself I could probably just remove it, so I did.
I felt pretty proud of myself right up until I saw the hole it left behind—about the size of a dime. I found a bandage, covered it up, and headed to the emergency room. Again.
Just like there’s no graceful way to describe severe swelling there, there’s also no graceful way to tell someone you have a hole in your scrotum. On the bright side, saying that tends to move you to the front of the line.
I ended up getting an ultrasound ahead of a whole room of waiting patients. After no fewer than seven people examined me, they said I’d need to wait for a urologist. They checked everything, reminded me several more times not to squeeze ingrown hairs, and said that as long as I finished all my medication, I should recover—which I did.
5. So Close!
My grandfather was a doctor, and one of his patients came in complaining of a mild headache. The receptionist asked him to wait in the waiting room.
Later they called his name, but he never came up to the desk. The outcome was tragic—he had suffered a massive brain hemorrhage and died there in the waiting room before he could be seen.
6. They Took The Patient To 7/11
We once got an ambulance call for a man who had been in a car crash. He was sitting in the front passenger seat. His friend had hit a lamppost, and the post had gone straight through his abdomen. It was enormous—probably 10 to 15 cm across.
As terrible as it was, the fact that the post stayed in place likely prevented even worse bleeding. When we arrived, the fire department was already trying to cut the lamppost down, since it was too long to fit in the ambulance. But cutting it too close to him could create heat and cause more injury. The situation was critical, and we knew we had to move fast.
So we drove to the nearest 7-Eleven to get ice to cool the metal. Then we loaded him into the ambulance. On the way to the hospital, I called the surgeon, explained the case, and he agreed to take him immediately. We got the patient ready as best we could.
Then, as we were bringing him into the elevator, the pole got stuck because it was too large to fit through the elevator door. We had to call the fire department again, and this time they showed up with bags of ice from 7-Eleven. The patient made it to the operating room, where the surgeons were able to remove the pole. He survived and had no lasting disabilities.
7. Cause, Effect, And 7-Year-Olds
This was one of those situations where one thing led to another. A doctor at a religious clinic my parents sent me to prescribed medication for my migraines. Then, about two years later, a different doctor prescribed birth control.
What neither of them explained was that for every 50 mg of the migraine medication, the effectiveness of the birth control dropped by 25%. I was taking 200 mg. That led to some very unwanted consequences.
The first doctor didn’t mention it because I was 19 and unmarried, so in that doctor’s view I shouldn’t have been sexually active. The second doctor didn’t mention it because it was at a Planned Parenthood that was extremely busy, and there were protesters outside, so the whole place felt tense and overwhelmed.
Long story short, I now have a 7-year-old. Thankfully, I also have an amazing partner who supports me through everything, and we’ve learned to handle life as it comes. But I still wonder how different things might have been if that first doctor had just been honest and fully informed me.
8. Oh, The Gall!
It took me 13 years to find out that my gallbladder had basically stopped working. I went to my doctor again and again, then to another doctor, and then another. In total, I saw seven different doctors. I had severe pain that never changed location and always flared up after I ate. It would last for hours.
Once the pain started, it would usually stay for six to nine hours before easing up. It was a full 10 out of 10 on the pain scale. If I ate anything besides toast the next day, it would come right back. Sitting, standing, moving, lying down—everything was miserable. It was impossible just to exist normally.
I went to the ER several times. They kept doing ultrasounds, and because they saw no gallstones, they dismissed it. I was told it was probably constipation or that my weight was the issue.
After I pushed hard for a referral to another specialist, they finally did a full-body MRI and several hours of testing, including a HIDA scan, which measures how well your organs are functioning over time. That was the test that finally found the problem.
It turned out my gallbladder was 93% nonfunctional. It was basically a dead organ. They scheduled surgery for the next week. I had it removed, and it changed my life.
It was only after the surgery that I realized how common gallbladder removal is, and how any doctor who had really listened might have known that a gallbladder can fail even without stones.
I didn’t know how to advocate for myself because I had been dismissed so many times. I wish I had pushed harder, because I suffered a lot.
9. Sad, With A Happy Ending
At UCSF Mt. Zion, a man came in complaining of a headache. It turned out he had attempted to take his own life with a .22-caliber pistol. The bullet hadn’t killed him—it had caused a concussion and short-term memory loss, and it was still lodged in his head.
We were able to remove the bullet, and he recovered physically. He also got the help he needed.
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10. A Year Full Of You-Know-What
I work in a hospital as a medical professional. A patient came in saying he had seen blood in his stool for nearly a year, but he had convinced himself it was just hemorrhoids.
He didn’t seek help until he started having abdominal pain, but by that point it was too late. It turned out to be colorectal cancer. The lesson is simple: if you notice blood in your stool, especially if it’s dark, don’t ignore it.
11. M.R…Why?
It’s a long story, but a sports injury surgeon ordered a contrast MRI, and it was incredibly painful—honestly worse than the injury itself. After reviewing it, he told me nothing was wrong. He had me do physical therapy for about two months, and I only got worse.
Since he still couldn’t figure it out, he referred me to a hand specialist in the same office. At my very first appointment, she looked at the exact same MRI disc he had ordered and immediately saw the problem: one of my ligaments was completely severed.
Not only could she see it clearly on the image—and she showed me—but the very last sentence of the report, on a page by itself, plainly said there was a complete tear of that ligament.
She showed me the report herself. The first doctor had either misread the imaging or didn’t bother to read the full report.
Unfortunately, even after all the pain, stress, and lost work time for more than a year, I can’t take legal action because I didn’t end up with a permanent disability.
12. It Was All An Act
I was a volunteer intern—not medical, more of a critical care extender—and one of my most memorable ER moments involved a 13-year-old boy with a rat-tail braid. He came in after he and his friends decided it would be a great idea to get very drunk on some kind of hard liquor and then jump out of a second-story window.
We had to staple the wound on the back of his head without anesthesia because he had been drinking too much. But the part I remember most was when his mom showed up and he immediately started crying: “Mama, I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to disappoint you—please don’t be mad.” It was especially memorable because the hospital was in a rougher part of Long Beach, and before she got there, he had been trying very hard to act tough.
13. I’d Rather Give Birth
I got a brown recluse bite under my nose, and it started to open up. I went to urgent care, and the doctor told me to lie down and brace myself. I work in healthcare, so I already knew this was going to hurt.
He said he was going to clean out the wound, pack it, and send me home. Then he came in, gave me no warning, and stuck a needle with lidocaine straight into my face. He didn’t wait for it to take effect before he started scraping out the wound.
I gave birth without pain medication, and I would still choose that again over ever going through this experience another time. I was in complete shock afterward and couldn’t stop shaking from the pain.
14. Diagnosis: Giant Ego
I was having severe migraines—to the point that I couldn’t work or function normally. I waited almost a month to see a neurologist. After a very brief exam, he told me, “There’s nothing wrong with you. Just exercise and try not to get headaches.”
Three months later, he finally agreed to order an MRI. It showed major lesions on my brain. I was diagnosed with MS. What made it worse was that he seemed irritated that the scan actually found something. My health seemed less important to him than being right.
15. That Wasn’t Supposed To Happen
I was wearing brand-new tall platform Doc Martens that I had barely broken in. A little tipsy and walking back to the bar, I decided to show my new friend how short I was without them.
I deliberately tilted my ankle to the side to cancel out some of the height from the platform, like I would have done in sneakers or low heels. My shifting balance did the rest—I heard a crunch, a pop, a snap, and I went straight down.
The next morning, my ankle was the size of a grapefruit. I didn’t have any basic first-aid supplies at home, but thankfully I live only five minutes from the hospital. After an X-ray, they told me it was a Grade II sprain. And that’s how I managed to “intentionally” sprain my ankle.
16. The Cons Of Bravery
I broke my hip while getting up from the couch. I’d already been dealing with hip problems for years because of medication I was on, so pain wasn’t unusual. When it finally gave out, my first thought wasn’t, “Oh no, my hip is broken.” I just thought, “Great, it’s acting up again.” But then things took a serious turn.
It turned out the bone had become necrotic and released a major infection into my body. I blacked out, and when I woke up from a medically induced coma a month later, I had no idea how I’d ended up in the hospital.
17. Tampon Gone Rogue
I couldn’t find my tampon, and I was panicking. I even had a friend help me look for it—that’s how desperate I was. Eventually, I realized I had no choice but to go to the hospital.
Maybe it was because I was younger, or maybe I’d read too many romance novels, but while I was lying there with my feet in the stirrups, a young, incredibly handsome doctor walked in. I wanted to disappear from embarrassment.
The only thing more humiliating than going to the hospital because you think a tampon is stuck inside you is finding out there was never a tampon there at all. I stayed under the covers for three days.
18. Oops, Someone Messed Up
Over the course of one evening, nine teenagers were brought in by their parents because they were hallucinating. None of them could explain what had happened, and they showed up gradually over about four hours.
Their drug screens came back negative, but they were all clearly very out of it. Eventually, one of their siblings told us they’d all been at the same party. One teen had convinced the others to try mushrooms, except they weren’t the kind people take recreationally—they were mildly poisonous.
They spent the night severely disoriented and had to remain in the ER until they were clearheaded again.
The staff found it a little entertaining, but the parents were furious.
19. Oops! That Was Close
I worked in a hospital, and a few people from the same house were brought in with confusion, agitation, and other vague, unusual symptoms. Within an hour, more people from that same house arrived in several ambulances with similar issues.
One of our nurses noticed they were all from the same place and called the fire department. It turned out they were suffering from carbon monoxide exposure caused by an indoor cooking fire.
Thankfully, everyone ended up being okay.
20. Tick, Tick, Boom
One of the most disturbing things I’ve seen was someone walking in holding his severed hand in his other hand. And how did it happen? He’d blown it off with a homemade explosive.
21. Out Of The Blue
As a kid, I got rushed to the ER because I woke up with my face looking blue. My parents thought I wasn’t breathing. I was about 8 or 9, and the way everyone suddenly panicked definitely scared me. Meanwhile, I just kept getting bluer.
At the ER, they ran all sorts of tests, and nothing seemed wrong. Then my dad finally realized I had put the brand-new Toronto Maple Leafs pillowcase I’d just gotten onto my pillow.
One washcloth later, I was completely fine.
22. Not A UTI
He had stomach pain and thought it was a UTI.
He’d also been losing weight, having night sweats, and dealing with a few other symptoms. It turned out to be terminal pancreatic cancer, and within two weeks he was delirious and very close to the end.
23. Oh Lord
I’m a nurse. I recently had a patient who said he used to have diabetes, but that Jesus had cured him. His blood sugar was nearly 300 when he was admitted, and he was in the hospital to have a gangrenous toe removed because it hadn’t healed due to the diabetes.
I’ll never forget the doctor’s note. It said: “Patient has a history of diabetes, but states Jesus healed him of it. Since his blood glucose was 289 on admission, we will treat him as though he is diabetic…”
Monkey Business Images, Shutterstock
24. 200% Is A Bad Grade
I went in with chest pain and intense pain around my left shoulder blade. I filled out the paperwork, then got told to wait in one area, move to another, go back to the waiting room, and then come back again.
Finally, the doctor came over—the first time I’d seen him—and handed me discharge papers. He told me to follow up with my doctor in a few days. My wife drove me 40 miles to another hospital. They panicked and rushed me straight to the cath lab just in time.
I had a 200% blockage in the coronary LAD, also known as the widow-maker heart attack.
25. Bullseye!
I’m the son of an ER doctor, and my dad used to tell me some unbelievable stories from his late-night shifts.
One night, he came home and told me a thief had broken into someone’s house and was bent over going through the homeowner’s stuff.
The homeowner was standing five feet away in a closet with a crossbow. They had to carry the thief into the ER because the homeowner had shot him right in the rear.
My dad said he’d never been so horrified by an injury until he saw that.
26. What Happened To You?
I’m a medical assistant, and I did my placement at a kidney and hypertension center. One day, a man came in complaining of painful urination and thought he had a UTI. I gave him a sample cup, told him to provide a urine sample, and placed it in the lab window.
The lab took one look at it and immediately brought him back to a room, which was unusual because the clinic was packed and usually worked on a first-come, first-served basis. It turned out there was a lot of blood in his urine.
He weighed well over 300 pounds, very large and extremely tall. The doctors saw him and stayed in the room for about 15 minutes before we arranged to transfer him to the ER.
He had fractured his penis and had no idea. The nurse supervising me said that when they lifted his stomach, his entire groin area was purple and black, and his penis was swollen and bent at an odd angle. She said it was something she would never forget.
The man never explained what had happened. He seemed just as shocked as everyone else.
27. Congratulations, You Are A Mom
After a couple of years working in the emergency room, the most dramatic self-misdiagnoses I’ve seen usually involve pregnancy.
A lot of patients come in complaining about morning nausea and weight gain, convinced they have some kind of stomach problem or infection.
Then, when we start asking questions, they’ll say something like, “Now that you mention it, I haven’t had a period in three, four, or even five months.”
And that’s not even counting the people who come into the ER already in labor and are genuinely stunned to find out they were pregnant at all.
I understand that some people have irregular periods, and there are definitely situations where it makes sense that someone wouldn’t immediately realize what’s going on. But there’s also a large group of patients who overlook a lot of pretty clear signs.
I do have empathy for people who don’t want to be pregnant and may be subconsciously pushing that possibility out of their minds. But in many cases, it’s not exactly a medical mystery.
Zoriana Zaitseva, Shutterstock
28. A Failure Of Too Much Communication
My family doctor referred me to the therapist in the same office. Before the appointment, I specifically asked about confidentiality. The therapist assured me it was completely private and kept behind a separate access level, so only she would be able to see that part of my record.
At the time, I was struggling badly with my mental health and really needed help, so I was completely honest during the session.
At my next appointment with my family doctor, the nurse doing the intake started listing all the deeply personal things I had told the therapist and asking me for updates for my chart.
There was no extra privacy at all. The therapist had just entered everything into my regular patient notes where the whole office staff could see it.
I walked out and never went back to that office.
29. Well, Now He Knows
My new doctor checked my pharmacy report before my appointment, which is standard practice. At the time, I lived with my terminally ill brother. His name was James, and mine is Jamie, so we had the same address, phone number, initials, and very similar names.
When they pulled my pharmacy report, my brother’s long list of medications showed up under my file. The doctor yelled at me, accused me of drug-seeking, and kicked me out of the office while I cried and begged him to listen.
I kept telling him those medications belonged to my brother, not me. He insisted that wasn’t possible.
I eventually called the board of pharmacy, and they confirmed that relatives with similar names who live at the same address can absolutely appear on the same report. They also explained that while the names may not always show clearly, each patient has a separate ID number, and the doctor would have seen two different numbers if he had looked more carefully.
A board representative called the doctor and told him he needed to search using my social security number for a more accurate report. When he did, he realized he had made a mistake, apologized repeatedly, and didn’t charge me for the visit.
He said he had no idea that kind of mix-up could happen, and now he shares the story at conferences so other doctors don’t make the same mistake. Apparently, most of them didn’t know it could happen either. They do now.
30. Nurse Wanted Me To Be Pregnant
When I was in high school, I started feeling nauseated in the mornings.
The more active I was early in the day, the worse it seemed to get, and it was really worrying me.
My mom took me to the doctor, and the first thing the nurse asked after hearing my symptoms was whether I was sexually active. I wasn’t, so I told her no.
That’s when the whole visit became uncomfortable. She assumed I was lying and thought I might be too embarrassed to admit it in front of my mom. She pulled me aside and asked me again in private, and I gave her the same answer. She replied, “You know there’s no point in lying about this, right? We’re going to find out.”
That made me angry. I knew something was wrong and wanted them to figure out what was causing it. But if no one believed me, that wasn’t going to happen.
So she ordered a pregnancy test. It came back negative.
Then she ordered three more. Yes, four total, and all of them were negative. At that point, her face turned red.
She seemed upset by this, which felt incredibly unprofessional. All of this happened before the doctor had even come in. And when the doctor finally arrived, I heard the nurse say in the hallway, “She might just be too early for the test to show positive.”
I definitely was not pregnant. What I was actually dealing with were physical symptoms of anxiety. On my way out, I overheard the doctor scolding the nurse for wasting resources by ordering the same test over and over. That honestly made me feel a little better.
31. Don't Open Doors This Way
I avoid touching doorknobs with my hands, so I usually use my forearm and press down with enough friction to turn them. I was joking with my girlfriend that I could probably open a door with my butt the same way I do with my forearm.
So I went for it, backing into the door first, and the small metal latch that guides the door ended up cutting me. It wasn’t even a clean cut, because it wasn’t especially sharp. I needed more than 30 stitches.
While I was healing, my girlfriend had to stand behind me holding a bowl over my butt every time I showered so the wound wouldn’t get wet.
32. Perils of Childhood Boredom
When I was 8, I got bored and grabbed a bottle of Gatorade from the pantry. Then I took a kitchen knife and started stabbing the bottle over the sink to see how easily it would go through the thicker plastic.
Unsurprisingly, I ended up cutting myself badly and nearly lost my thumb.
33. It’s Supposed To Come Back
I threw a boomerang, but lost track of it in the sun. I stood there with my hand over my forehead to shield my eyes while I tried to spot it again. Then suddenly, BAM—it came back and hit me right in the face. My friends had to call an ambulance.
34. Apparently, This Happens A Lot
There was an older man who thought his lawnmower was making a strange noise. He assumed the blades had stopped spinning, so he flipped the mower over to check. They were still moving.
He lost the tips of several fingers on one hand. I was taking his X-rays at the time as a radiography student, and he was surprisingly calm—probably a mix of shock and pain medication—which helped, because it was a pretty intense case for me back then.
I was later told this kind of thing is, unfortunately, not that uncommon.
35. This Was Too Much For Them
A few years ago, I was doing ER clinicals for a PCT class. The first patient I saw was an older veteran brought in by his wife. He had a catheter and hadn’t passed urine in almost 24 hours, so he was in a lot of pain.
They figured out there was a blockage somewhere, and the person I was shadowing replaced the catheter with a new one. Right away, at least a liter of dark red, chunky urine rushed through the line and filled an entire bag.
Later, people in the ER joked that cranberry juice and jellied cranberry sauce would never look the same again.
36. No Appy For Your Baby
One night, I started having terrible cramps that were so painful I had to wake up my mom.
She asked where it hurt, and I pointed to the right side of my stomach. Right away, she told me to get in the car, and we headed to the ER.
She thought it was appendicitis.
We got there, and they put me on morphine. Then they ordered an X-ray. It turned out I didn’t have appendicitis... I just really needed to use the bathroom.
37. Remembering The Night Before
I once convinced myself I had a perforated colon because my stool was bright red.
I spent an hour on the toilet, in pain, googling symptoms, and then I remembered that the night before I had demolished a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos.
38. I Diagnosed Myself And Got My Medicines
A very kind man came into the emergency department with severe weakness that had been going on for weeks. It had all started with chest pain a couple of months earlier. He thought he was having heart problems, and he knew aspirin was used for heart attacks...
So he took a couple of aspirin every day for the next few weeks. The pain got worse and started affecting his legs too. He also became weaker and weaker.
Then he started passing a lot of blood in his stool. That’s what finally brought him to the emergency room. When I looked at his labs, his hemoglobin was around 4, which is alarmingly low. Normal is usually around 13 to 15, and most people start feeling weak or tired when it drops to about 10.
So his symptoms, including the chest pain, weren’t from heart disease at all—they were caused by severe anemia.
It turned out he had a small bleed in his colon, and the aspirin, which thins the blood and makes bleeding worse, turned it into a major bleed.
So we gave him blood transfusions, ran several tests, and did a colonoscopy to find the source of the bleeding. That’s when we found a locally advanced colon cancer.
Thankfully, it hadn’t spread, so he eventually had surgery and treatment, and the last I heard, he’s doing really well.
So this man was incredibly lucky. By wrongly diagnosing himself with heart disease, he took the wrong medication, which caused a side effect that set off a chain of events leading him to me—and to an early diagnosis of a serious illness that could still be cured.
If he hadn’t taken the aspirin, that cancer might have gone unnoticed for another year or two and kept spreading. At that point, it may have been incurable, and he likely would not be here now.
39. Proof the Patriarchy Is Alive And Well
When I wanted a hysterectomy because my life was genuinely in danger from anemia and nonstop bleeding, I was told no. The reason? My husband might want children. I was not married, and I never had been.
I was in my 40s, and I didn’t want kids in the first place. Even after I explained all of that, I was still told no because I might meet a man someday, and he might want me to have children after 40. Apparently, my opinion didn’t matter.
I went to Mexico, and they removed it for me. When I came back, I saw a completely different doctor for follow-up care. After learning I’d had a hysterectomy without my future husband’s consent, he told me he would not treat me.
This was six years ago, in 2017, if you’re wondering. I have no reason to believe things have improved, and quite a few reasons to think they’ve gotten worse.
40. Wrong Time, Wrong Place, Terrible Joke
I was getting a Pap smear from a doctor who weighed at least 450 pounds. During the exam, he made a shocking comment to the nurse—he said that once, a larger woman was getting a Pap smear, the table somehow gave out, and she fell pelvis-first right into his face.
I was overweight at the time, and I couldn’t believe he would say something like that so casually. The nurse looked horrified.
41. Life Was Squeezing By
My mom was an ER nurse right after college. One time, a family came in after a car accident. Nobody had serious injuries, but they were brought in to be checked out. They had a baby, and my mom was asking the parents questions about the baby’s health. When she asked what the baby was being fed, the mother said, “Juice.” Just juice. She had heard that once a baby reached six months, you could start giving them juice, but she hadn’t realized that meant juice in addition to baby food or milk. She had been feeding the baby only juice for months.
42. Not Your Ordinary Blackhead
I was working at an old folks center near our house, and I was with this one older gentleman. On his hip, was a blackhead the size of a dime, on top of a decent-sized lump, about 5 cm (2 in) long. So, I threw on some gloves, made sure I had the permission of the man of course, and squeezed the black head. To my shock, out popped this roll of gauze that was left over from his hip surgery 10 years prior that he never bothered to get removed.
The smell was horrid and I will never forget it.
43. Help Me Doc, I’m Blue
When I was younger, my family took me to the ER because my fingers had turned blue. They had been Googling all kinds of rare and exotic illnesses and were seriously worried.
The doctor didn’t say much. He just rubbed my hand with a disinfectant swab and then wiped the same swab on my jeans. Same color. It was the blue dye from my brand-new jeans.
44. The Classic: I Fell
My mom worked in the OR and said a surprising number of guys ended up there because of things they supposedly “slipped and fell” on. The wildest case she told me about was a guy who claimed he had “slipped and fallen” on a snow globe.
The stories she tells are hilarious, even though I still feel a little bad for those people.
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45. Yeah, This Got Weird
Around two in the morning, EMS called to tell us who they were bringing in—age, main complaint, and so on. I answered the phone, and the paramedic was laughing so hard all he could say was, “We’ll explain when we get there.”
They brought in a little old lady, which could mean anything from dizziness at church to a severe UTI causing total confusion. As it turned out, she wanted a rabies shot “just in case” because her “service animal” had bitten her.
So we asked, “What kind of service animal do you have, ma’am?”
She said, “A capuchin monkey.”
The paramedic behind her was trying not to laugh. He told us that when they arrived at her house, the monkey was sitting on the couch with one hand in a bag of Doritos and the other...busy entertaining itself.
Apparently, it wasn’t happy about being interrupted either.
46. Tales Of The Psych Ward
It’s often people dealing with psychiatric issues or substance use who really keep you on your toes.
One frightening case involved four teenage boys who had each taken around 6 mg of Xanax. Three of them passed out at home, and one was brought to the ER extremely sleepy, with no one knowing what was wrong. We couldn’t reach the other three boys he had been with because they were all unconscious. It was incredibly difficult to figure out what he had taken.
47. Kids Do The Weirdest Things
When I was 2 years old, I shoved a broken crayon up my nose. It took a week before I finally complained about it. We saw two doctors and then went to the ER, but no one could get it out. The ER doctor actually pushed it farther in.
I eventually got an appointment with a pediatric ear, nose, and throat specialist, who removed it in about 60 seconds.
48. I Complained, You Didn’t Listen
When my husband was eight years old, he started having severe stomach pain and became so lethargic that no one could wake him up. His doctor said nothing was wrong and claimed he just had growing pains for two years.
The real issue was much more serious—his gallbladder had stopped working and only functioned properly a few days each month. After the doctor refused to refer him for a second opinion, his mom took him to the emergency room, and within 15 minutes he was headed into surgery to have his gallbladder removed.
To make matters worse, they gave him so much pain medication that he became severely constipated and couldn’t use the bathroom for two weeks. When he complained about stomach pain again, the nurses never even asked when his last bowel movement had been and later said they had forgotten.
He had to undergo another procedure later that week, during which 15 pounds of waste was removed. It was an awful experience.
49. Nothing Is Wrong With Me
I was in high school, walking to class, when I suddenly felt a sharp pain in my foot. I was running late and didn’t have time to deal with it right then, but I only really noticed it while walking. When I stood still, it faded quickly, and even then it seemed minor enough that I assumed it would go away on its own.
After putting up with it for a couple of weeks, I mentioned it to my mom, who thought it might be gout.
I was a very lazy kid, so honestly, that seemed possible. We went to the doctor, and he ordered an X-ray. It turned out I had broken one of the bones in the ball of my foot.
So basically, I broke my foot and tried to walk it off for two weeks.
50. A Doomed Generation
Pediatrician here—a lot of parents come in convinced their child has a serious illness because they “won’t eat anything.”
But really, the child just doesn’t like vegetables, and the parents keep substituting them with other foods until the child ends up overeating.
51. Not Faking It!
I had what felt like a non-emergency emergency while I was out of network. Later, I found out I have PCOS and that one of my cysts had burst. Definitely would not recommend. I managed to get back into an area covered by my insurance, and a doctor’s office was closer than the ER.
I went to that doctor, and he seemed convinced I was either making it up for attention or pretending so I could get pain medication.
During the exam, he kept pressing on my lower abdomen and around my uterus. Every time I cried out in pain, he told me to stop being dramatic and said that if I didn’t stop “tensing up,” he would have to press harder. I wasn’t tensing that area, but he kept insisting that I was.
I kind of faded in and out through the rest of the exam, but I remember realizing how bad things were when he was literally bouncing up and down to try to feel what was going on.
Eventually, he announced that I probably just had an upset stomach because I was overweight, and said he would draw blood if I got my mom to stop “enabling” me.
The nurse couldn’t find a vein after several tries in both arms. Then another nurse tried multiple times and finally said, “Oh, you’re really dehydrated,” and the doctor immediately scolded me for drinking too much soda, saying that was probably what caused it.
My mom was panicking and keeping my regular doctor updated about everything. My doctor told her to just take me and leave and try to make it to the nearest ER.
As we were leaving, that doctor told us he had already called several nearby ERs in our insurance network to tell them I was only trying to get pain meds and that they shouldn’t give me any.
Eventually the pain started to ease, and we drove to my regular doctor. She was furious and helped us file a huge amount of paperwork to report him to the medical board.
The main reasons my doctor urged my mom to file an official complaint and negligence claim were:
1) He didn’t know what was wrong, and if someone says they’re in pain, you should not press so hard that you’re practically jumping up and down trying to dig into the area, because you could make things much worse.
2) Since the pain was caused by a cyst bursting, there was a real chance that pushing so hard into my lower abdomen could have caused more cysts to burst.
3) If a patient comes in screaming and crying in pain, you should not automatically dismiss them, especially when they continue reacting in pain when you touch the exact area they say hurts.
52. I.U. Don’t!
Without question, my IUD insertion was the worst experience I’ve ever had at a doctor’s office. No warning, no numbing, nothing. I was just placed on the table, and a terrible woman forced the device into my cervix. I honestly screamed at the top of my lungs, threw up, and then passed out for about two minutes.
After that, I spent the next hour curled up in the bathroom crying and vomiting. Then I somehow drove myself home, hunched over and shaking from the pain.
53. Just Have a Baby, Already!
I was sent to a rheumatologist for testing and medication for lupus. The doctor’s attitude made me furious—she told me she had medicine that could help, but she would not prescribe it because I was in my “prime childbearing years.”
Tamdathepanda
54. When A.I. Fights Back
I was building a self-balancing robot with a pretty large battery pack, so it was heavy—probably around 25 pounds. I didn’t realize how badly I had calibrated it until I turned it on, and what happened next was awful.
It immediately shot forward and then spun around. I tried to step in and grab it so I could get it under control, and it slammed straight into my shin. It hit hard enough to break the skin, and I ended up needing 7 or 8 stitches.
55. The Hidden Dangers Of Having Asthma
I went to the ER with severe, unexplained chest pain. Since I have asthma, I was worried it might be something serious. It turned out I had pulled a muscle in my chest from using my asthma inhaler.
56. A Rare Case of ‘Kimichitus’
About 24 years ago, I ate nearly an entire quart of Korean kimchi for dinner. It was incredibly spicy, but so delicious that I just couldn’t stop. That night, I ended up with the worst stomach pain of my life—far worse than when my appendix burst 10 years earlier.
It got so bad that I tore off all my clothes and sat outside on my front porch in my boxer briefs, clutching my swollen stomach and twisting around in pain.
My wife eventually took me to the ER. They started an IV, gave me pain medication, and kept me for 23-hour observation. As the night went on, the pain slowly faded and I finally started to feel human again.
By the next morning, I felt much better and was pretty much back to normal. Just as the hospital was getting ready to discharge me, the night staff changed over to the day shift. A few nurses came in to check on me, followed by the new attending ER doctor—who, as it turned out, was Korean.
He walked in smiling and trying not to laugh. He told me I had a case of “kimchiitis,” then explained that kimchi is meant to be a side dish, not the entire meal.
I absolutely made his day. Everyone in the room—including my exhausted wife, who had stayed with me all night—was laughing, shaking their heads, and smiling at my poor decision-making.
To this day, I still wonder whether that Korean ER doctor told my case as one of his favorite funny ER stories.
57. The Lost Finger
I don’t work in the ER, but I was there as a patient when I saw this happen.
A couple walked calmly up to reception and spoke to the nurse. She asked why they were there, why they had skipped the line, and kept firing off questions.
The man said very casually, “We had some friends over for drinks and cheese, and while I was cutting one of the cheeses, I cut my finger.”
By that point, the nurse was clearly irritated and asked why he thought that was a reason to jump the queue over a simple finger cut. The man just looked at her, completely calm, and said, “No, you don’t understand—I cut my finger off.” Then he lifted up his hand, which was wrapped in a very thick towel.
The nurse instantly panicked and ran off to get a doctor. Three doctors appeared almost immediately, took the man away, and disappeared with him. Another nurse asked where the missing finger was, and the girlfriend explained that their friends were on the way with it.
A little while later, just as things had settled down, another couple came in. By pure coincidence, they ended up with the same nurse—or maybe the girlfriend had warned them. The nurse, already annoyed, started in again about skipping the line. The couple just looked at her, held up a bowl, and said, “We’ve got the finger.”
The nurse grabbed the bowl and sprinted off again. The whole thing happened so quickly that it felt unreal. Honestly, I was in so much pain myself that I half wondered if I had imagined it. It played out like a scene from a movie.
58. This One Is Interesting!
The EMT instructor teaching my refresher course told us about a day when a car pulled into their station lot and a woman jumped out with her daughter. The mother said they had been at the playground when the girl suddenly started having an asthma attack.
You could hear the child wheezing, and she was sitting in a tripod position, so the mom had decided to bring her in on the way to the hospital.
During the evaluation, the instructor listened to her lungs and noticed they sounded completely clear. He asked another medic to take the mother inside and get her billing information. The medic gave him a strange look but went along with it. Once the mother was out of earshot, the instructor looked at the girl and said:
“Stop it. You’re not having an asthma attack.”
She stopped wheezing immediately and said, “Okay.”
What had actually happened was that the girl had fallen off a swing while her mom wasn’t looking and had gotten the wind knocked out of her. When the mother finally looked over, she saw her daughter bent forward in a tripod position and assumed it was asthma.
The daughter had heard her mom say that was what was happening, so she just went along with it and started copying the symptoms.
59. Mom’s Unnecessary Details
An older man came in one night with a plastic teaspoon lodged in a very unfortunate place. When he was asked why it was there, he said, “I did it for gratification.” We all just looked at him for a second.
Then he added, in a very matter-of-fact tone, “It doesn’t work, in case you’re wondering.”
We were not wondering.
Later, the nursing home told us they had stopped using plastic cutlery because of him, and they still had no idea how he had managed to get hold of one.
60. I Googled So I Know Better
I’m a physician assistant working in the emergency department. One time, I saw a woman around 45 years old who came in with her mother because they thought she had a spider bite on her back. It was actually an abscess.
That’s very common—people mistake abscesses for spider bites all the time. I drained it, prescribed antibiotics, and sent her home. Pretty standard treatment. I told her to come back in two days so we could check on it.
When she returned, it was already looking better. She and her mother were worried because it hadn’t completely disappeared yet, but it was healing normally and there wasn’t much else to do.
Then they came back two days after that and announced that it was gangrene. I tried to reassure them, but both of them insisted I didn’t know what I was talking about.
It was a healing abscess and looked much better than before. It looked nothing like gangrene, which they had apparently Googled. I even had two of my colleagues come into the room to back me up, but they still didn’t believe us. I think they eventually went to another hospital.
61. Chain Of Unfortunate Events
One night, I got way too tipsy and decided to end the evening with a huge Taco Bell meal. The next morning, I woke up with a terrible stomachache. It kept going for about three days, and I was constipated the entire time.
My roommates, who were all pre-med or nursing students, figured it was just the Taco Bell messing me up. But by about the fourth day, I couldn’t handle it anymore, so I had one of them drive me to the hospital. He kept calling me names and saying the doctors were probably just going to tell me to take laxatives.
At the hospital, though, they found something alarming—they saw that my appendix was really swollen and looked close to bursting, so they rushed me in for surgery. On the way there, a doctor came running in and yelling for them to stop. He showed the X-ray to the surgeon, and they realized the appendix wasn’t actually the issue—it was my intestine.
Somehow my colon had folded in on itself like a sock, which caused major swelling and blockage. I ended up on antibiotics and other medications for a couple of days.
I still have no idea how it happened, and the doctors tried to explain some possible causes, but I was too worn out from everything to really follow it. I do remember them asking if I had recently been to Haiti or the Dominican Republic. About three years later, I started having similar pain again and went to the doctor right away. That time, they just removed my appendix.
62. What If?
About a year ago, I went to a doctor because my hands were shaking badly. He told me it was probably temporary and would likely go away by the time I was in my late 20s.
I mentioned that I was taking medication, but he brushed it off like it had nothing to do with the problem.
Recently, I went to a different doctor. He looked over all my symptoms—jerking limbs, facial twitching, shaking hands, jaw locking, and more. It turned out I have tardive dyskinesia, which is a very rare side effect of one of the medications I had been taking.
After age 25, it can become permanent. If I had just listened to the first doctor, I could have ended up with lifelong brain damage by 25.
63. Oops!
I went to a dermatologist to have a mole removed from my back and sent for a biopsy. I was lying on my stomach, with the doctor on one side of me and his assistant on the other.
They were chatting like they were catching up after months apart, and I felt like I barely mattered. I was getting irritated, thinking, is this supposed to be my appointment or theirs?
Then I felt a sharp, burning pain, immediately followed by something warm running down my side, and I heard the doctor say, “Oops.” That is not something you want to hear from a doctor.
By then I was furious, and I said, “Would you mind focusing on what you’re doing when you have a scalpel in your hand?”
I ended up needing about five stitches, and now I have a scar there that’s around an inch long. Then, when I went back to the changing room to get dressed, I noticed a window washer hanging outside the window and looking right in.
At that point, my anger turned into outrage. Once I was dressed, I went out into the waiting room and let the staff have it in front of everyone there, telling the whole story. I hope at least a few people decided to cancel their appointments. I definitely never went back.
64. Anxiety Is Real
When I was 15, I told my pediatrician I was having chest spasms and anxiety, and that I wanted to see a therapist. My mom was in the room with me. He told me to stop looking things up online, said I was fine, and claimed teenagers don’t have anxiety because they have nothing to worry about.
I never went back to him after that, and I didn’t see another doctor until I was 19 and got admitted to a psychiatric ward. It turned out the anxiety was very real, and getting help at 15 might have prevented a lot of painful things from happening later.
65. Type 1 Negligence
I had a long list of symptoms that pointed to type 1 diabetes. I was sent for blood work, and the results showed that I was diabetic, but my doctor never referred me for treatment. I ended up going untreated for ten extra days before anything was finally done, and that absolutely could have killed me.
After everything was finally resolved, I was given the option to sue.
66. A Really Big Ouch
I once stubbed my toe really hard. At least, that’s what I thought it was. I’d never broken a bone before, so I didn’t know what it would feel like, and I have a pretty high pain tolerance, so it only really hurt when I put weight on it.
I ignored it for two days. Then on the third morning, I woke up and realized my toe had turned pale and wouldn’t move. Turns out I hit it so hard that I split the bone in half. Trying to explain to the triage nurse that I really had just stubbed my toe that badly was interesting.
67. Call Me Mr. Potato Head
I still don’t know why, but I made a homemade spud gun—you know, one of those things that shoots potatoes. I added an accelerant to make it fire, then pulled the trigger to test it. That’s when things went downhill.
It didn’t fire, so I looked straight down the barrel to see what was wrong. And while I was looking into it, I pulled the trigger again. A flaming potato shot out of the end and burned my eyeball.
68. “Welcome Home Lefty”
I was having some pain down there, but because I’m absolutely terrified of hospitals, doctors, and needles, I decided to ignore it and hoped it would go away. It did not.
I kept telling everyone I was fine, that it was probably a stomach bug, or that I was just feeling off. Eventually, I had to admit that I couldn’t really sit properly.
So we went to the ER. The doctor quickly informed me that one of my testicles was about the size of a small grapefruit. It had no blood flow, and it needed to be removed immediately. Testicular torsion is no joke.
So my worst nightmare came true—I spent the night in the hospital, then came home to a “Welcome Home Lefty” cake, courtesy of my sarcastic kids.
69. This Is Why ER Shows Are Classified As Dramas
I once had the whiniest French exchange student. This grown man was genuinely funny. He woke up at around two in the morning and announced, “I want a snack, I shall make myself some chicken.” Then he pulled out raw chicken and was apparently ready to cook himself a full meal in the middle of the night.
He reached for a knife from the block and somehow sliced his finger open. I still don’t understand how. He moaned and complained through every little movement like it was the end of the world. He only needed a couple of stitches. I had him rinse it off, and even that took about seven minutes because he was being so dramatic. Honestly, I do love the French.
I also once had a very dramatic teenager come in feeling “a little numb, slightly anxious, and like his heart might be beating a bit too fast. Maybe a little paranoid.” He had clearly smoked something. We gave him some water, a snack, and sent him home.
Then there was the time I had a six-year-old whose triage note said, “Rollover MVC” (motor vehicle crash). I immediately thought, Oh no, I need to make sure my room has trauma supplies. My team and I started preparing for what we thought would be a serious case.
Then I looked up and saw the child and family walking in. That felt reassuring right away.
It turned out the child wasn’t in the front seat during an 85 mph rollover—he was the one riding a small vehicle, and a tire had slipped off the curb.
Thankfully, he barely had a scratch.
70. Because It Was Hot
I’m not an ER worker, but I’m chronically ill and have spent a lot of time in hospitals and emergency rooms. The most unforgettable moment was when a man in the room next to mine got himself into an unbelievably awkward situation—he got his genitals stuck in a toaster.
He kept shouting, “You have to save me! You have to!”
You hear a lot through thin hospital walls, and when something is that absurd, even the nurses have to stop for a second and laugh.
I never found out whether the toaster was plugged in or not, but I still wonder how that even happened. Why a toaster?
71. Doctor Almost Separated Us
A doctor told my wife she might have an STD—possibly chlamydia. We had a huge argument, and she was devastated.
She accused me of cheating, and the whole situation was awful. I looked up her symptoms on WebMD and told her it was probably kidney stones. In the end, it was kidney stones.
72. Apparently, I Was Sick
I was never really overweight, but I had a little muffin top that made me feel insecure. So when I was 20, I finally decided to do something about it. I started going to the gym regularly, eating better, and the weight just kept coming off.
After about a year, I’d lost nearly 50 pounds, and my mom got worried, so she took me to the doctor. That’s when I found out I had stage four lymphoma...
73. Not A Pink Eye
I’m a pharmacy technician. Just yesterday, a patient told me she had gone to urgent care, where a nurse diagnosed her with pink eye.
But she felt like something was off—and she was right to trust that feeling. She went to an eye doctor and found out she had an ulcer on her eye. If it hadn’t been treated properly, she could have lost her eyesight, or even the eye itself.
74. A Trip From BC To The Hospital
I went on a boating trip off the coast of British Columbia. We traveled through a bunch of small channels and eventually docked somewhere we could go kayaking out on open water.
We all took turns helping with different parts of the trip, doing simple jobs like watching for logs, otters, and anything else in the water that could damage the propeller, or helping out in the incredibly loud engine room.
The trip lasted about three weeks.
On the last day, everyone started feeling “seasick,” including me. We flew home the next day, and at first, when we landed, I felt okay. But over the next couple of hours—while waiting at the airport and driving home—I started feeling worse and worse.
By the time we got close to my house, I was lying in the back seat and we had to pull over just a short distance from home so I could throw up. I’d had migraines before, and this felt exactly like one.
Later that night, it got so bad that even the little bit of light coming through the gap under my door caused intense pain. We went to the emergency walk-in clinic.
While I was there, I had to keep my right eye covered because otherwise the pain was unbearable. They prescribed something—I don’t remember what—but it didn’t help at all.
The next day, the pain was still there, and during the day it got so severe that I was desperately trying to get hold of my parents to take me to the hospital.
Once they finally did, I was admitted and sent for a CAT scan. That’s when they discovered I had sinusitis. The infection had created pressure on my optic nerve, which caused a blood clot to form.
I ended up in the hospital for two months, in strict quarantine, while doctors treated me with blood thinners and a mix of antibiotics that wiped out all my white blood cells.
When I was released, they sent me home with a pump that delivered medicine through my arm and directly to my heart through a vein.
I don’t think anyone would have guessed that diagnosis from just light sensitivity and a headache, but I’m incredibly glad I went to the hospital—and that the children’s hospital in that city is among the best in the world.
The trip itself cost around $8,000, and the treatment probably cost much more. Thank goodness I live in Canada.
75. This Is Almost As Dumb As Tide Pods
A coworker once told me this story: she and a few student friends were drinking and watching TV when a show claimed that if you put one of those old round light bulbs in your mouth, it was easy to get in—but impossible to get back out.
Naturally, they decided to test it. Two of her friends tried it, and yes, they couldn’t get the bulbs out of their mouths. They ended up in the emergency department, where a very unamused doctor had to use a small hammer to break the bulbs and carefully remove the glass without cutting their mouths.
After lots of apologizing, the group finally left the hospital—just as another group of tipsy students walked in...
Sure enough, three of them had light bulbs stuck in their mouths.
76. Stage Five Whiner
My story is ridiculous, and it still makes me really angry.
It was an incredibly busy day in the emergency department, right in the middle of the COVID surge. In the middle of all the chaos and seriously ill patients, a 32-year-old man came in and started complaining loudly because he’d been waiting two hours… for a stubbed toe.
He had bumped his little toe on a table leg and said it “felt like the world was ending” and was “the worst pain ever.” He made such a scene that I had to assess him and calm him down. Was his toe broken? No. Was it swollen? No. Was he in pain anymore? No. Was it bleeding? No.
The pain had lasted maybe five minutes, but he insisted he had to be seen because it was the worst pain imaginable and we just couldn’t understand.
Actually, I could understand. Everyone stubs a toe at some point. It hurts, and then it passes. You can wait while I take care of my COVID patient in respiratory failure.
That was absurd. It still frustrates me when I think about it.
77. He Looks Healthy
My husband nearly died because of a wrong diagnosis at urgent care. He went in with severe back pain and a fever. The fever should have been a clear sign that something more serious was going on, but the doctor missed it.
He was young, 30 years old, healthy, and hadn’t had any recent injuries, so she assumed he had just strained his back. Her advice was, “Go home and take ibuprofen.”
The next day, I watched my healthy husband collapse to the floor. He couldn’t get back up. He had completely lost the ability to use his legs. We lived on the third floor, and he’s 6'4" while I’m 5'4", so I had no idea how I could possibly get him downstairs. We called an ambulance.
At that point I was panicking. I thought maybe this was what the onset of MS looked like, and I was terrified I was going to lose him.
We spent the whole day in the ER waiting for tests while the doctors tried to figure it out. Finally, they found the problem: MRSA, an antibiotic-resistant staph infection. It had spread into a massive abscess running the length of his back, pressing on his spinal cord and damaging the nerves.
He was rushed into a five-hour emergency surgery that same night.
As they were bringing him back, they told me, “Thankfully, the only spinal surgeon who can do this surgery is able to get to this hospital. Otherwise, we would have had to transfer him, and that would have been very bad.”
I didn’t fully understand what they meant until much later. If they had moved him and the abscess had burst, he could have been paralyzed.
It took him weeks to learn how to walk again, but a year later he was okay. If you’re young and otherwise healthy, it can be easy for doctors to miss something serious because it’s not what they expect to find.
78. Something Feels Wrong
I fell while rock climbing and landed directly on my knee. I went straight to the emergency room because I knew something was seriously wrong. They took an X-ray and told me I had dislocated my knee and might have a small fracture. It didn’t seem like a big concern to them, and they suggested I follow up with an orthopedic surgeon sometime in the next week.
No prescription for pain medication either—they just told me to take Tylenol.
Later that week, I saw an orthopedic surgeon who immediately prescribed painkillers and scheduled me for an MRI the very next morning.
I went back the following day and found out I had a very serious tibial plateau fracture, basically where the shin meets the knee. I had also completely torn my ACL, PCL, LCL, and meniscus.
He moved his surgery schedule around to get me in as soon as possible to repair my knee with a plate and eight screws. Then I had another surgery six months later to fix everything else.
My takeaway from all of this is simple: if something feels seriously wrong, it probably is.
79. You Mean “Wind”?
I know a girl who woke up one morning with abdominal pain. She thought it was gallstones and called an ambulance—but the actual cause was almost laughable.
Gas. That was it. Just trapped gas. I honestly thought only cartoon characters made mistakes like that.
80. Now THAT’S A Pregnant Pause
I was in the ER for dehydration when I was almost 12 weeks pregnant. I already have difficult veins, so when the doctor said he was going to start my IV, I asked if he could get a nurse instead.
I work in medicine, and I know nurses usually place IVs all the time and generally have much more experience with them than doctors. He tried four times and failed, blew one vein, and then let his resident try. The resident failed three more times before they finally called in a nurse.
She got it in after two tries, and honestly, that was understandable since she was working with bad veins and all my good spots had already been used.
But it got worse.
They couldn’t find a fetal heartbeat with the Doppler. They told me not to worry, that it was still early and sometimes it’s hard to pick up. Because I had a history of recurrent miscarriages, the doctor told the resident to do an ultrasound and then left.
The resident brought in the ultrasound machine and started the scan. After about five minutes of moving it around my stomach, he said, “Hmm, I’m having trouble finding a heartbeat,” and then he went completely silent for 30 minutes.
By then, I was crying. My husband was holding my hand, and he was crying too. We had already had multiple ultrasounds confirming a healthy pregnancy. We had heard the heartbeat at three separate appointments.
We were both completely convinced we had lost another baby. Then the resident finally finished and said, “Everything looks good.”
I said, “Wait—you found a heartbeat?”
And he said, “Oh yeah. Did I not mention that?”
81. A Multi-Pronged Fishing Hook
I went to my urologist just to ask a few questions—literally, just to ask questions. At that point, I already had a catheter, and the doctor said, “Hey, let’s change that.” He didn’t use any anesthesia at all. He pulled the old one out and pushed the new one in.
I started screaming because there was no anesthesia. It felt like he was forcing something sharp and hooked all through the most sensitive part of my body. Then he said, “Yep, it’s in. Let’s inflate it.” The pain was so overwhelming that I passed out.
The next day, there was less than an ounce in the bag. I went back, and they told me, “You need to go to the ER.” Nine hours later, I was scheduled with the same doctor who had put the last one in.
I ended up needing surgery because the badly placed catheter was loose inside my body, causing painful swelling and pressure. They removed the old one and put in a new one without any trouble, and this doctor actually used anesthesia. I’m still incredibly sore from that failed replacement.
82. Lucky Number 13
I went in for bloodwork before surgery. They tried 13 times—in my hands, wrist, and elbow—and still couldn’t get any blood.
My mom had come with me because this appointment was two hours away, and she finally asked if she could try.
She got it on the first attempt. For context, my mom used to be a phlebotomist.
83. Internal Panicking!
I woke up in the ER with people all around me, running tests and doing all kinds of things. For about a minute, I couldn’t remember my name or anything else, and then it slowly started coming back.
I didn’t show panic on the outside, because I’m a doctor myself, but internally I was terrified. I had no idea why I was in the ER.
It turned out I’d had a seizure in my late 40s, even though I had no history of brain injury or seizures before that.
They eventually found out it was caused by untreated sleep apnea, but even now, thinking about it still makes me anxious.
84. This One Is Wholesome
I don’t work at a hospital, but my job does require me to respond there and make reports for patients who come in with suspicious injuries. You can probably guess what I do. This case stood out more and more as I talked to the kid involved.
A 12-year-old boy came into the ER with his friends at two in the morning and asked to make a report about an injury. I showed up, asked what happened, and asked where his parents were.
He told me he’d been bitten by a mouse and wanted to report it. A mouse had bitten his finger. Strange, but yes—that was the story. The hospital cleaned and treated the bite, and I called his parents to come get him.
Then I learned he was a runaway and had been living under a bridge for the past four months, surrounded by rats and mice.
In the end, that one little mouse bite led to him being reunited with his parents. Thankfully, it turned out to be a happy reunion.
85. They Always Say, You Know Your Own Body
Here’s an odd one. I work in an Emergency Department, and we had a patient come in at three in the morning because he ate a bowl of cucumbers and didn’t burp afterward.
Apparently, he always burps after eating cucumbers, and this time he didn’t. He got so worried that he came straight in to get checked.
86. When Improvising Gets You In Serious Trouble
I spent a night at a big bonfire party doing fire-breathing tricks. By morning, I’d run out of the special “safe” fluid I normally use, but I still wanted to perform.
So I made the terrible decision to use some Zippo lighter fluid I found instead. It was a disaster waiting to happen. At the worst possible moment, just as I started breathing fire, a gust of wind blew straight back at me and lit my face on fire.
I panicked and tried to put it out with my hands and by wiping at my face, but then my hands caught fire too. In the end, I managed to smother the flames by quickly wrapping myself in my sweatshirt. Never again.
87. A Series of Unfortunate Events
I got a porcupine quill stuck in my ankle and had a really bad reaction. My eyes swelled shut, and I found out I’m apparently allergic to porcupines. I was on crutches for a while, and I couldn’t wear my contacts because my eyes were still so swollen.
Then after class one day, while trying to get around on crutches and barely able to see, I tripped and fell down the stairs. One more trip to the ER later, and I had a sprained arm to go with everything else. It was an awful week.
Dotun55, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
88. Better Out Than In
I went to the ER because I had really bad stomach pain. They brought me in for an ultrasound, and afterward the nurse told me it was just trapped gas.
A little later, I stood up to get dressed and leave. The nurse was helping me since I was still hurting, and I let out the longest, loudest burst of gas I’d ever had in my life. The relief was instant, and both the nurse and I started laughing.
ORION PRODUCTION, Shutterstock
89. Back Pain To Heaven
I worked in a medical office, and we had a patient come in because of back pain.
He thought he had strained something while working on his truck and that it just wasn’t getting better the way it usually did. It turned out to be spinal cancer. He passed away about two months later.
90. No Pain, Yes Surgery
I was 21 when I went to the ER—or more accurately, when my NCOIC told me I had to go—because I had abdominal pain. The pain was in my lower right side, I had a high fever, I couldn’t stand up straight, and the ER staff said I was starting to look green.
The doctors assumed it was appendicitis and sent me straight to surgery.
Once they got me into the OR, they found out my appendix was completely fine. The real problem was a perforated colon caused by a ruptured diverticulum. They said that was unusual for someone in their early 20s, and even more unusual for a non-Asian person to have one on the right side.
They repaired my colon and removed my appendix anyway since they were already in there.
I probably should have gone in earlier, but it didn’t get seriously painful until the day I finally did. I think my pain tolerance might be a little broken.
91. That Pediatrician Is My Nemesis
My daughter had severe constipation as a baby, to the point that we had to give her enemas every day. As you can imagine, it was traumatic for both her and for us.
Her pediatrician told me, my husband, and my mother-in-law, who came to several appointments with me, that she would grow out of it.
But when she was almost five, she was still struggling, though he finally agreed to put her on a daily laxative. We still couldn’t get her potty trained.
She was embarrassed and really did try, but she told us she couldn’t tell when she needed to go. I kept begging her pediatrician to refer us to a potty-training program I’d read about that had a very high success rate.
He eventually agreed, though it wasn’t her main doctor who wrote the referral, but another pediatrician in the same office. I had always liked him, but the day he wrote it, he threatened my daughter, saying he wouldn’t let her leave the office until she used the potty. Then he told me I was a neglectful mother because she wasn’t potty trained.
When we left that day, my daughter was in tears, and we never went back. I only wish I’d made that decision sooner.
My husband was in nursing school at the time, and when the potty-training class led nowhere, he decided we should take her to a urologist.
I wish I had gone to that appointment with them. By then I was so frustrated and confused that I assumed it would be another visit with no real answers.
But it wasn’t. An ultrasound showed that she was missing the lower part of her spinal cord, including the sacral nerves, which are what give you the feeling that you need to use the bathroom.
She had sacral agenesis and caudal regression. Because this condition usually comes with foot and leg deformities, no one had considered it before.
Still, while it’s rare, it’s much more common in children whose mothers have Type 1 diabetes.
So basically, my daughter’s pediatrician dismissed me as an overly emotional mother. I assume part of that was because I was young when I had her. Meanwhile, my daughter struggled for years with a real medical condition before we finally found the answer ourselves.
There have been so many days when I wished I had marched back into his office and sued him.
Thankfully, on a positive note, my daughter now has an excellent pediatrician who is supportive and understands her condition, and she’s now as happy and healthy as she can be.
92. Advil, The Universal Cure, Apparently
I had my first panic attack and went to the ER. The doctor told me to take some Advil and then sent me on my way. That experience made it much harder for me to reach out for professional help with my anxiety afterward.
93. He’s Alive!
I was mistaken for a dead child. I was in a room across the hall from a kid who had passed away, and somehow the staff mixed up our paperwork. They went to tell my parents that I had died. It was just one of many mistakes that hospital made.
Things got so bad there that they ended up replacing board members, staff, and even changing the hospital’s name.
94. An Almost-Souvenir
The doctor forgot to remove the speculum. I had to call him back as he was leaving the room so he could take it out. He acted like I was inconveniencing him.
95. Whoa, Talk About A Miracle
This isn’t funny or strange, but it was so shocking that I think it still fits.
I work in an emergency department, and one day around four in the afternoon, a woman came in complaining of mild neck pain. She had been in a car accident that morning, had been checked by paramedics at the scene, and was cleared. They told her to go to the ER if she developed headaches or neck pain. Later, when her neck started hurting a little, she decided to come in just to be safe.
And it’s a very good thing she did.
We put her on spinal precautions and took her for X-rays. When she came back, she was just lying there calmly in bed, still in some pain but nothing severe.
Then, a minute later, the head of radiology called the ER literally screaming, “DON’T LET THAT WOMAN MOVE.”
It turned out she had a C1 dislocation. Her skull had become dislocated from her first vertebra. One small movement and she could have died instantly.
Somehow, she had walked into the ER hours after the accident and made it through the whole day without one wrong turn of her head killing her.
She was rushed into surgery and survived.
96. The Classic DIYer
I don’t work in the ER, but I do have a story about going there that caused a bit of a scene.
I was working on my truck with a friend, and we were taking off body panels. I was holding a wrench behind a bolt while he used a high-torque electric impact to remove the nuts. One of the bolts was in an awkward spot, and the wrench slipped out of my hand, spun around, and slammed my thumb against the frame at full speed with the open end of the wrench.
After running it under cold water and wrapping it with whatever we could find, I lay on his floor for a couple of hours until I got called in to work. On the way there, they called back and told me not to come after all. That’s when I noticed two things: my thumb was still bleeding steadily, and I happened to be near the hospital. So I figured I might as well go in since I had the day off now.
I walked up to the reception desk, calm as could be. The receptionist looked up and said, “Hi! How can I—oh, you’re bleeding!” And I said, “Yeah, uh, this thing just won’t stop.”
After soaking my hand in some sterile solution to loosen my homemade bandage, they took off the paper towel, electrical tape, gauze, and even the nasal strips we had used to piece it together. Then they gave me five or six stitches, some real bandages, and instructions on how to clean it properly.
The nurses gave me a hard time for not coming in sooner, but everyone got a laugh out of my improvised bandaging job.
It kept bleeding a little under the nail for the next couple of days. Almost ten months later, the thumbnail had nearly grown back completely.
ShotPrime Studio , Shutterstock
97. Ok, The Ending Though
This wasn’t just strange; it was one of the creepiest things I saw in my first few years working in the emergency department.
A woman chopped off her own hand with a rusty hatchet because she believed she had sinned and that Jesus told her it had to be done.
Strangely, she struck from the top down, and luckily the metacarpal bones kept her from cutting all the way through the ligaments and tendons. Here’s the part that really stayed with me:
Even though the hand looked basically detached—about 98% of it was—when the doctor held the hand and I held the forearm, she was able to wiggle her fingers on command.
It was deeply unsettling. There was a two-inch gap between her hand and forearm, with only a few strands of tissue connecting them, and she still moved her fingers.
The hand was saved after a long surgery and, from what I heard, healed well overall, aside from some early tissue death.
...But later I heard she injured it again, and this time it couldn’t be saved.
98. Even I Learned A Lesson Today
My mom worked in the ER, and one day I was supposed to meet her for lunch. At the last minute, she called to cancel because a trauma case was coming in. I decided to go see her anyway and wait. That’s when I ended up witnessing this awful sight.
A man was rolled in covered in fishing lures. His friend had left the tackle box on the dashboard, and when they had to slam on the brakes, it flew open. He had hooks and lures stuck all over his face, arms, chest, and stomach.
You could tell he was trying not to move because any stretch of skin pulled against the barbs. It was horrifying. Every time he shifted even a little, he cried out in pain.
Everyone in that room learned a lesson that day.
cottonbro studio , Pexels
99. The Ugly Tooth
I was a children’s nurse. During my first week in the pediatric ER, a young girl, around six or seven, came in with a badly swollen jaw and face. The poor child couldn’t move her jaw without severe pain and hadn’t been able to eat for several days.
It turned out she had only recently started brushing her teeth for the first time ever and had already developed several abscesses and badly decayed teeth. To make things worse, her mother told us she was recovering from having most of her own teeth removed for almost the same reason.
They hadn’t wanted to bother taking the girl to the doctor because they thought she was pretending to avoid going to school.
Freepik, DCStudio
100. An Embarrassing Lesion
I had developed a strange red mark on my forehead. My somewhat disorganized dad became convinced I’d been bitten by a brown recluse spider, which can be very dangerous. He even thought he could see “fang marks.”
So, mostly to help him calm down, my mom took me to the ER. Once we got there, they ran a few tests and found out it wasn’t a spider bite—or even a bite at all. It turned out to be herpes...yes, on my forehead.
101. The Gasp Heard Round The Waiting Room
I went to the doctor’s office for a 9 a.m. appointment. By 11, I was still sitting there waiting. Then some pharmacy reps showed up with pizza. By noon, I’d had enough. I went to the desk to say I had to leave, and the receptionist tried to charge me $25.
She told me the doctor had been extremely busy that morning. I said, “Not too busy to eat pizza with the pharmacy reps.” Everyone else in the waiting room gasped at the same time. They didn’t charge me, and I never went back.
102. It Ultimately Wasn’t Very Fun-Knee
I overheard a conversation in the ER between a nurse, a doctor, and a patient. They were trying to figure out whether the patient had a head injury or was just extremely confused. It was both funny and a little sad. He kept saying he was there because his leg hurt, but he couldn’t explain why it was hurt, how it happened, or even how he got there—almost anything, really.
I could hear them talking in the hallway. The nurse was convinced the patient had hit his head. The doctor, without missing a beat, gave his unexpected opinion: “No, he’s just not very bright.” As it turned out, the doctor was right. They managed to reach the man’s wife. She told them in the hallway that he’s always been like this, and that if she left him alone, he’d probably get lost in his own house and forget to eat.
It sounded like the patient’s leg was clearly injured or swollen. But whenever they asked what happened or what it felt like, he gave vague, nonsensical answers. He wasn’t slurring his words—he was speaking normally, just not making much sense. He said things like, “It feels hurt,” and “I was talking to Jimmy, and we were doing our usual work, and my leg hurts.”
The doctor would ask, “Did something happen? What kind of work?” But the patient kept saying things like, “Something always happens; you know how it goes,” or “I just want my leg fixed.”
