There are a lot of things that happen in a hospital ER. While most incidents are fairly common, there are some patients that come through with ailments so weird that it leaves medical professionals talking about it for years.
From hilarious intimate mishaps to dumb self-diagnoses, here are 50 bizarre and entertaining stories from doctors, nurses, and even some patients who have seen some pretty weird things in the ER.
1. Yikes, This Sounds Awful
I was at the ER when patients involved in a car wreck and rollover were brought in. The driver was not wearing his seatbelt and at some point, we had to call a “traumatic code," alerting doctors that his heart had stopped due to trauma rather than a blockage. He had a horrible fate—his whole leg had been de-gloved (skinned off).
After witnessing all of that, I always tell myself that I'm having a bad day, it could always be worse.
2. Ribbit, Ribbet
I did an abdominal exam on a large woman (with a BMI of 74). I lifted a large flap of her skin to find a rotting frog—and the patient had no idea it was even under there.
It turns out the husband and the wife had been swimming in a pond, and the wildlife suffered for it.
3. This Is Heartbreaking
A real live gorilla came into my ER. Not a man in a suit.
There had been some sort of altercation at the zoo between the male gorillas and one dropped the other on its head quite violently. The zoo had put in a breathing tube and knew the injury was bad. They called our neurosurgeons and asked if they would look at him as a last resort.
So, they brought this massive beast in with IVs, a heart monitor, etc. They did a CT scan of it and the doctors said even if it was a human, it wouldn't survive.
The zoo staff were crying...It was sad.
4. This Is Very Weird
I’m an RN in an emergency department. A 20-something homeless guy came in complaining of penile pain. A quick exam revealed something seriously wrong: swollen, red, infected, with multiple puncture wounds in various stages of healing.
I casually asked if he'd been using, and if he’d been doing it through his private parts. He said no, but he did admit to doing it in his arm and then inserting the used needles into the shaft of his member "to hide them".
An X-ray revealed around 30 fine-gauge needles lodged in his member. He'd broken the needles off the used syringes.
Emergency surgery got most of them out. The patient left AMA and no one knows what happened to him after that.
5. Sad, With A Happy Ending
UCSF, Mt. Zion: A guy comes in complaining of a headache. It turns out he tried to end his life with a 22-caliber pistol. It gave him a concussion and short-term memory loss. The shot was stuck in his head.
We were able to remove the shot from his head and he was okay. He got the help he needed.
6. He Threw In A “Your Mom” Joke
I worked in hospital security so I have a bunch of funny and weird stories from the ER. My favorite is the kid who was on some sort of hallucinogen and kept trying to plug his hand (which he thought was his phone) into the IV line in his arm (which he thought was the charger). For a while, he was convinced I was with the FBI or the Sheriff's department and he was in a secret underground detention center.
I think my favorite line from him was when he was looking for his lighter when he yelled, "I must have left it in your mom last night, you think you'd have the courtesy to bring it back for me".
Valentin Angel Fernandez , Pexels
7. Did Not See This Coming
A boy came into the ER. He was about 13 years old. He comes in with his mother. He is having stomach pain, nothing we have not seen before in the ER. So, I go ahead and start an IV while making some small talk. You know, what’s wrong, did you eat anything weird, those kinds of questions.
The mother speaks up and says that while she and the husband went to see a friend, they had left him at home. She gets a call not a half hour later from the boy stating that they need to come home now, that something was wrong.
They find the boy in the bathroom with some dirty magazines on the floor.
I did not see that coming...not at all. We have had this before, but never a kid. X-rays showed he had gotten something pretty far up his back end, and there was no way it was coming out on its own.
And to make it worse is that the object belonged to his older sister.
We had to transport him to a Children's hospital to have surgery to get it out. I felt sorry for the boy.
TommyStockProject , Shutterstock
8. They Took The Patient To 7/11
Once, we received an ambulance call from a guy who was involved in a motor vehicle accident. He was riding as a front passenger. His buddy hit a lamppost and the post impaled his entire abdomen. The post was at least 10 to 15 cm in diameter.
Lucky for him the post penetrated his entire abdomen, thus stopping excessive bleeding. When we arrived on scene the fire department was working on cutting the lamppost as it was too long for the ambulance and cutting too close would cause too much heat and risk injury. Things were looking bad—but we knew we needed to act swiftly.
So, we took the ambulance to the nearest seven-eleven (convenience store) to get some ice to cool the post. Then, we placed him in the ambulance. On the way there I called the surgeon and presented the case. He accepted and we prepared the patient.
As we were wheeling him into the elevator, the pole got lodged as it was too big for the elevator door. We had to call the fire department again but, this time they came with packets of ice from seven-eleven. The patient went on to the OR where they managed to remove the pole. He survived with no disabilities.
Super stoked
9. Ahhhh, No!
A guy walked in through the front entrance holding his…family jewels…in his hands.
He had been climbing a flagpole and slipped down and they got caught on the part where you tie the rope for the flag.
That was the weirdest thing I’ve seen so far in the ER.
10. Even I Learned A Lesson Today
My mom worked in the ER, and I was meeting her for lunch one day. She called at the very last minute and had to cancel because of a trauma coming in. I decided to go to her anyway and wait. That’s when I got to witness this atrocity.
The dude was rolled in and covered in fishing lures. His buddy had put the tackle box on the dash and when they had to slam on the brakes it flew open. He had hooks and lures all over his face, down his arms, and stuck to his chest and stomach.
You could see him trying not to move because any stretch of skin would pull at the barb. It was terrifying. He was crying out in so much pain every time he moved.
Everyone there learned a lesson that day.
11. Bringing In A Firefly
As a kid, my mom's EMT stories seemed hilarious, but as an adult, I don't think I'd have the patience to tolerate so many people's nonsense.
That being said, here goes the story: they get a call that a guy has a severe nosebleed, is already feeling dizzy, losing a lot of blood, and can't stop it. Needless to say, they floor it, thinking the guy might bleed out, get there in a very short time. They ring the doorbell, and a guy answers.
They ask him to take them to the victim; he says they're talking to him. Not one drop of blood on the guy's face or clothes or anywhere, cheeks are all rosy, doesn't look like he's lost a lot of blood so they ask what the deal is. He says it's hard to explain but he was worried they wouldn't send him an ambulance if he was honest about his symptoms and he's in a lot of pain.
My mom tells him to sit down and tell them about the symptoms while they take his blood pressure. Guy says he'll do all of that, except for the sitting down part. Now, I bet you all know where this is going...
It turns out he'd been trying to convince his girlfriend to do something she wasn't into. So, the guy says "If I show you on myself, will you do it"? She reluctantly said yes. So, the guy lubes up a thin aluminum flashlight, bends over, and, well...you know what happens next.
He's got it good and up there, holding on to the end with two fingers. However, the flashlight (being cheap) wasn't machined properly in the factory and a small burr on the rim pricked his colon from the inside.
So, he jolts upright from the sharp pain, the lubed-up flashlight escapes his grasp and gets schlepped up inside him.
They put him on a stretcher and the driver says into the radio, "Ambulance 98 returning, a 28-year-old male with severe constipation and foreign object in his bottom. Uhm... it's a flashlight, in case it matters. So, uhm... Yup, you heard that right: we're bringing you a firefly, stand by".
12. Sibling Rivalry
I had a patient come into the ER by himself. When asking what brought him in today, his response made me roll my eyes. He said he was arguing with his sister about the car and how much things cost, etc. He was tired of arguing with his sister and would rather be admitted to the hospital.
13. Oops, Someone Messed Up
Throughout an evening, nine teenagers were brought in by their parents for hallucinations. None of them were able to tell us what was going on and they trickled in over about four hours.
The dope screens were negative but they were all pretty badly out of it. Finally, one of the siblings was able to tell us they had all been at the same party. One of the teens had talked the others into trying mushrooms except they were mildly poisonous ones instead of the ones you take for partying.
They were all tripping like crazy for the night and they had to stay in the ER until they were clear of mind.
It was amusing for the staff but the parents were quite irate.
14. Oops! That Was Close
I worked in a hospital and a couple of people from the same house were brought in with confusion, agitation, and other non-descriptive, strange symptoms. Within an hour, from the same house, in multiple ambulances, more people arrived with similar symptoms.
One of our nurses noted that they had all come from the same house and called the fire department. Turns out they all were suffering from carbon monoxide from an indoor cooking fire.
Luckily, everyone was fine in the end.
15. Tick, Tick, Boom
One of the grossest things I've seen is a person coming in holding his detached hand in the other hand. And how did that happen? The guy blew it off with a homemade explosive.
16. He Looked Like A Halloween Decoration
When I worked in an ER, a man came in with a porcelain turtle shoved into his front end...yes, front end. It required surgery to remove.
Also, a man that was mauled by four pit bulls arrived in cardiac arrest. He looked like a Halloween decoration.
Both of these stories have stuck with me forever.
17. Bullseye!
Son of an ER doctor here. My dad always told me some wild things about the late-night shifts.
One night he came home and told me a thief had broken into someone's house that night and was bent over, rummaging through the homeowner’s belongings.
The homeowner was five feet away in a closet with a crossbow... They had to carry the thief into the ER because the homeowner shot him square in the bum.
My dad said he'd never been so mortified by a wound until he saw that.
18. What Nightmares Are Made Of
The worst thing I have seen has to be a female patient in her mid-20s, who came in after overdoing it on something you get on the street. She was attractive but had to be restrained as she would come in and out of respiratory arrest without Narcan to see her yell and scream and stand on the gurney bed was like something out of "I am Legend".
It was terrifying, to say the least.
James Heilman, MD, CC BY-SA 4.0 , Wikimedia Commons
19. Weird Situation Calls For Some Weird Follow-Up Questions
Paramedic here. Several years ago, I responded to a self-inflicted shot wound to the head. This guy did it in front of his ex-girlfriend’s house, and evidently, no one heard the shot. Emergency services were called a few hours later, and it was cold that night. He shot himself just above his right ear, with an exit wound near his left temple, and slumped forward a little bit.
When I got there and looked in, I was mind-boggled—there was like a red, bulbous, shiny, thing hanging from his exit wound to the floor. It was a brain-cicle. An icicle-shaped piece of blood and brain that had slowly poured out, congealed, and frozen solid.
It was like two feet long. It was the weirdest thing I had ever seen. He was obviously not alive and we just pronounced him as opposed to try and resuscitate him, so we left him exactly as we found him.
As a consequence, I didn't get to see the eventual fate of the brain-cicle. How did the medical examiner deal with the brain-cicle? Did he just break it off? Break it into pieces so he could fit it into biohazard bags? I’d love to see the photos they took.
I'll never know. And these are the weird details that I like to know.
20. Apparently, This Happens A Lot
There was an older man who thought something sounded off in his lawnmower. He thought the blades had stopped spinning when he turned over the mower to investigate. The blades were still moving...
He lost the tips of his fingers on one of his hands. He was oddly calm between the shock and the pain medication when I was taking his X-rays, which was nice because it was quite a vivid case for me at that time as a radiography student.
I was told though that this isn’t all that uncommon, unfortunately.
21. This Was Too Much For Them
I did ER clinicals a few years ago for a PCT class. The first one was an older veteran brought in by his wife. He was catheterized and hadn't passed urine in nearly 24 hours, so he was in some pretty severe pain.
It was determined there was a clog somewhere, so the guy I was shadowing changed out the catheter with a new one and at least a liter of red, chunky urine just gushed through the line and filled up an entire bag.
The whole ER later made jokes about cranberry juice and jellied cranberry sauce never being the same again.
22. Some People Never Learn
This story falls more in line with the absurd than funny, or weird. I had a patient who came into the emergency department in a T-shirt and a small towel wrapped around his waist. I noticed in triage the patient refused to sit down the entire time. The patient then suddenly gets rushed to the back—something was off.
It turns out, the patient and his SO were having a little too much fun and lodged something up his rear end. The object in question had a suction cup on the end of it that they were using as a handle. The object had also broken inside of him while trying to retrieve it on their own.
He had to be transported to a higher level of care for surgery on a perforated behind.
The kicker?
He did it again three months later and was back again to see us.
23. The Classic: I Fell
My mom worked in the OR and said some so many guys ended up there because of things they, "slipped and fell" on. The craziest one for her was the guy who "slipped and fell" on a snow globe.
The stories she tells me are hilarious, even though I still feel bad for these people.
Dark Light Studio , Shutterstock
24. Yeah, This Got Weird
Around two in the morning, EMS called to let us know what they were bringing in (age, chief complaint, etc.) I picked up the phone and the paramedic was laughing so hard he said, “We’ll just tell you when we get there”.
They wheeled in a little old lady which could mean anything from feeling lightheaded while singing at church to crawling on the ceiling with a raging UTI. It turns out she wanted to get a rabies shot, “just in case”, because she had been bitten by her “service animal”.
So, we asked, “What kind of service animal do you have, ma’am”?
She replies with, “A capuchin monkey”.
The paramedic standing behind her was trying to hold back his laughter. He said when they went into her house to pick her up the monkey was sitting on the couch with one arm in a bag of Doritos and the other was…playing with himself.
I guess he wasn’t too happy about being interrupted, either.
25. Tales Of The Psych Ward
It's mostly psychs and drug users that give you your run for your money.
A scary one was four teenage boys who all took like 6mg of Xanax each. Three of them passed out at home and one was brought into the ER, VERY sleepy, and nobody had any idea what was wrong with him. We couldn't get a hold of the three other boys he was hanging out with because they were all passed out. It was extremely hard to figure out what he had taken.
26. The Lost Finger
I don’t work in the ER, but I was in the ER when I saw this happen.
A couple casually walked into the reception, talked to a nurse and the nurse simply asked why they were there, why they skipped the line, etc. Many why's.
The guy calmly said: "We had a couple of friends over for drinks and cheese and, while cutting one of the cheeses, I cut my finger".
The nurse, at this point, very annoyed asked why he cut in line just for a finger cut. The guy just looked at her with the calmness of a saint, then he admitted the shocking truth: "No, you don't understand, I cut my finger off". And he proceeded to show his hand wrapped in a very thick towel.
The nurse went crazy and rushed out to call a doctor. Three doctors came in and took the guy and left. Another nurse asked where the finger was, and the girlfriend explained that friends were coming to bring the finger.
Fast forward some minutes, the nurse finally calmed down and another couple showed up. Coincidentally, they go to the SAME nurse or were warned by the girlfriend. The nurse once again, slightly annoyed skipped the line, the couple just stared at her raised a bowl, and said, "We got the finger".
The nurse quickly took the bowl and ran off again. It all happened so fast and it was surreal. I fear my pain caused me to see all that happen. It was like a panic scene in a movie.
27. This One Is Interesting!
The EMT instructor leading my refresher course told us that one day while they were at the station, a car pulled into their lot and some lady jumps out with her daughter. The mom says they were at the playground when her daughter started having an asthma attack.
The kid is heard wheezing the whole time and in a tripod position, hence why the mom was going to take her to the hospital.
During the evaluation, the instructor listens to her lung fields and notes they all sound clear. He asked another medic to take the mom inside and get her billing info. The guy looks at him funny but ultimately complies. Once the mom is out of earshot, he looks at the girl and says:
"Stop it! You're not having an asthma attack". She instantly stops her wheezing and says, "Okay".
It turns out they were at the playground and while mom wasn't paying attention, the daughter fell off a swing and got the wind knocked out of her. When the mom did look up, she just saw her daughter in the tripod position and assumed she was having an asthma attack.
The daughter, having heard her mom say that's what was happening just went along with it and started mimicking the signs.
28. Mom’s Unnecessary Details
There was an old guy that came in one night with a plastic teaspoon inserted into his front end. When he was asked why it was there, he said “I did it for gratification”. We just sort of looked at him funny. So, when he says, “It doesn’t work, in case you’re wondering”. He was very matter-of-fact. We were not wondering.
The nursing home said they stopped using plastic cutlery because of him and couldn’t work out how he got one!
29. This Is Why ER Shows Are Classified As Dramas
I had the whiniest French exchange student. This grown man was hilarious. He legitimately woke up at like two in the morning, and was like, “I want a snack, I shall prepare myself some chicken”. He took out some completely raw chicken and was about to make himself a whole meal, in the middle of the night.
He went to take the blade out of the block and cut his finger open. I don’t even understand how that happened. He moaned and cried and groaned with every movement or task like his life was ending. He barely needed a couple of stitches. I had him rinse it off and just rinsing it took like seven minutes because he was so dramatic about it. Gosh, I love the French.
I also had a very dramatic teenager who came in for, “Feeling a little numb, slightly anxious, and like his heart might be beating a little too fast. Maybe slightly paranoid”. My man had smoked some stuff. We asked if he was hungry, basically gave him a cup of water and a snack, and sent him home.
And then another time, I had a six-year-old and the triage note said, “Rollover MVC” (motor vehicle crash). I was like oh gosh, I need to make sure my room has trauma supplies. My team and I panicked, thinking this was going to be a tough one.
I look up from my desk and the child and family are walking in. “Well, that’s reassuring,” I think to myself.
The child wasn’t just in the front seat in an 85 mph rollover, he was the one driving and a tire slipped off the curb.
Thankfully, the child barely had a scratch on him.
30. Because It Was Hot
I am not an ER worker but I am a chronically ill person who has been hospitalized and in the ER many, many times. The best one ever was a man who got himself in a truly awkward predicament—he got his junk stuck in a toaster in the room next to me.
He would not stop screaming, “You HAVE to save my junk! You have to”!
You hear a lot when separated by flimsy walls and when a situation is so silly even nurses can’t help but pause and giggle.
I never found out if the toaster was on or not. But I couldn’t help but wonder how this could happen in the first place. Why a toaster?
31. I Can Think Of A Few Fitting Nick Names
I used to work in the OR in the Army and we'd often get emergency surgeries sent to us from the ER.
The oddest of all was a PFC who karate-chopped his manhood. Yes, you read that right. He came in with his member swollen the size of a golf ball.
I was coming back from lunch and went to check the board to see what room I was going to be in when one of the surgeons, who was also in my unit, swung by and told me I was going to be with him and that "I'd get a kick out of this”.
So, I followed him to the OR, scrubbed in, and the OR nurse started telling everyone the story that she was told by her friend in the ER.
The guy had told them some seriously detailed stories of what he did during his private time to make the result “better”. The details included doing things that added physical pressure to his experience, one specific was that he “lightly tapped it” during that final moment.
Somehow that evolved to doing "light" hand chops. Well, this time he did it so hard it instantly swelled up.
It didn't take long for the entire OR staff to get wind of the story. The funniest part in all this was that the guy was in training to be an OR technician and it was only his third day of AIT. He started it off with a bang.
When he got to the portion of training where they started shadowing in the OR everyone knew him as the guy who karate chopped his member.
I wish I remembered the clever name they gave him.
32. This Is Almost As Dumb As Tide Pods
A work colleague told me this peach: She and some student friends were drinking and watching TV and there was a show on that stated if you shoved one of the old-fashioned round light bulbs into your mouth, it was easy to do, but getting it out would be impossible.
Well, of course, they took this as a challenge. Two friends tried it, and yes, the dummies couldn't get the bulbs out of their mouths. They went to the emergency department where a less-than-pleased doctor ended up using a small hammer to break the bulbs and slowly extract the glass out without cutting their mouths.
After a lot of apologizing, the group left the hospital just as another group of tipsy students came in the door...
You guessed it! Three of them had light bulbs jammed in their mouths.
33. This Is A Freak Accident, Right?
So, when I was doing my EMT clinicals I had to do two overnights in the emergency department. Most of it was relatively uneventful, but one time, this one Hispanic dude, maybe 17 years of age, rolled up in a wheelchair, pushed by his two buddies.
It turns out his girlfriend's ring got caught on his skin. Have you ever wondered what the inside of a man’s private part looks like? Me neither.
Turns out it is incredibly smooth.
The doctor stitched it up, having me cut the thread every time he tied a knot. Stitches aren’t something an EMT does, but the teacher told us to do anything the staff let us do, so I cut those darn strings.
The distress on that kid’s face is something I will never let go of.
And I’m not going to lie, I had to have the doctor confirm that this isn’t something that happens a lot during that kind of act. I was deeply afraid.
34. Stage Five Whiner
My story is absurd and also made me want to throttle someone.
It was an extremely busy day in the emergency department and during the peak of COVID. Amidst all the drama and very sick patients, had a 32-year-old male walked in and make a fuss for being made to wait for two hours… with a stubbed toe.
He stubbed his tiny toe on a table leg and, “felt like the world was ending, in the worst pain ever”. He made such a fuss that I had to assess him and calm him down. Was his toe broken? No. Was it swollen? No. Was he in any pain now? No. Was it bleeding? No.
The pain had lasted for five minutes and he HAD to be seen because it was the worst pain ever, we couldn’t imagine it.
I can imagine. Every human being stubs their toe at some point. It sucks and then it’s fine. You can sit here until I manage my COVID patient with respiratory failure.
Talk about absurd. It still angers me when I think about it.
35. This One Is Wholesome
I don’t work in a hospital, but my profession requires me to respond to the hospital to make reports for patients who walk in with suspicious injuries (if you can only guess what I do for a living). This one was interesting as the story unfolded the more that I spoke to the kid.
A 12-year-old kid walks into the ER with his friends at two in the morning and asks to make a report about his injury. I get there and ask him what’s up and ask where his parents are.
He said he was bitten by a mouse and wanted to report it. Bit by a mouse on his finger. What? Yep. He was bitten by a mouse. The hospital sterilized it for him and I called his parents to come pick him up.
I then found out that he was a runaway juvenile and was living under a bridge for the last four months amongst the rats and mice.
All it took was for this one small mouse bite, and he was finally reunited with his parents. And thankfully, it was a happy reunion.
36. They Always Say, You Know Your Own Body
Here’s a weird one for you. I work in an Emergency Department and we had a patient who came in at three in the morning because he ate a bowl of cucumbers and didn't burp.
He always burps after eating cucumbers and this time he didn’t. He was very concerned, so he had to come right in and get checked out.
37. Whoa, Talk About A Miracle
This isn’t a funny or weird story, but it was quite insane, so I think it still counts.
I work in the emergency department and a woman walked in around four in the afternoon, complaining of mild neck pain. She'd been in a car accident that morning, seen by paramedics at the scene, and cleared. They told her to go to ER if she got headaches or neck pain. She now had some mild neck pain so she felt she should come in just in case.
And it’s a darn good thing she did.
We put her on spinal precautions and wheel her off for x-ray. She comes back and is just chilling on her bed, still in pain but nothing major.
The very next minute the head of radiology calls the ER, literally screaming: "DON'T LET THAT WOMAN MOVE".
It turns out, she had a c1 dislocation. Her skull had been dislocated from her first vertebrae. A single twitch and her demise would've been instant.
Somehow, she'd walked into ER hours after the accident, managing to not pass away the whole day from one wrong turn of the head.
She was rushed into surgery and survived.
38. The Classic DIYer
I don’t work in the ER, but I have a story of myself going to the ER that caused quite a stir.
I was working on my truck with a buddy and we were unbolting body panels. I was holding a wrench on the back of the bolt while he zipped the nuts off with a high-torque electric impact. One of the bolts was in a difficult spot, and the wrench slipped out of my hand, spun around, and pinned my thumb to the frame with the open end of the wrench at full speed.
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 into work. On my way to work, they called me back and said never mind. It was at this point I noticed two things: my thumb was still bleeding consistently, and I was coincidentally near the hospital. May as well go in, I’m off for the day now.
So, I walk up to the reception desk, calm as daisies. The receptionist looks up and says, “Hi! How can I- oh, you’re bleeding”! And I was like, “Yeah, uh, the darn thing won’t stop”.
After soaking my hand in that sterilized water stuff to loosen off my “bandaging”, they removed my paper towel, electrical tape, gauze, and the darn nasal strips we used to jimmy up a bandage, and gave me like five or six stitches and some proper bandages along with cleaning instructions.
The nurses gave me a lot of trouble for not coming in sooner, but everyone found my DIY bandaging job to be quite amusing.
It continued to bleed a little bit from under my nail for the next coupleof days. Nearly 10 months later, the thumbnail is almost grown back completely.
ShotPrime Studio , Shutterstock
39. Ok, The Ending Though
This one isn’t just weird; it was one of the creepiest things I had seen during my first years working in the emergency department.
A woman chopped off her own hand with a rusty hatchet because she sinned and Jesus told her it’s what was needed (harsh).
Oddly, she whacked from the top down and fortunately, the metacarpal bones prevented her from chopping through the ligaments and tendons. Here’s the creepy part:
Even though it appeared the hand was not attached (98% was not), when the doctor held the hand and I was holding the forearm she wiggled her fingers on command.
It was so creepy! There was a two-inch gap between her hand and forearm except for some strings of stuff and this fool wiggled her fingers!
The hand was saved after a long surgery and healed nicely from what I heard, minus initial necrotic issues.
…But then I also heard she sinned again and there was no saving it this time.
40. Not Once, But Twice
I once had a woman come into the ER who had superglued her eyes shut.
In the middle of the night, she mistook the bottle for eyedrops, and blindly put several drops of superglue into her eyeball.
The best part is that it was in BOTH eyes. Not only did she make the initial mistake, but she also had a moment of, “this is probably fine” and did the second eye.
AbsoIutely wild.
41. ‘Til Death Do Us Part…Not!
A man was admitted to the emergency department after a heavy leather-bound photo album fell off the top of a free-standing wardrobe during an intimate encounter with his new woman and hit him on the head.
He ended up with 12 stitches and a multi-layer closure and luckily missed out on a skull fracture.
The album in question? The woman’s wedding day with her late husband.
We joked later that it was his ghost disapproving of his wife’s new partner.
42. Adventures Of Preteen Boys
I’m a cop and was posted at the ER on night shift once when a woman came in because she got bit by a snake in her yard. She was panicking because of it. Her hand was really swollen. One of the nurses asked if she saw what kind of snake it was and she said no.
A couple of minutes later these two boys, maybe 12-13 years of age came running in holding a decapitated snake in pieces inside of a Ziploc bag. They had ridden their bikes from their house to the hospital to show the doctors the snake that bit this lady.
Like these kids heard about what happened ato went on her yard to get the snake just to do this. It was funny and oddly heartwarming. Th really concerned about IDing the snake for her.
43. I Heard This Can Last Hours Sometimes
I didn't work in an ER but was a patient and someone a few stalls down from me was flipping out because the “edible” brownie he ate was too strong. It was kind of funny. He kept saying, "I can't breathe, I can't breathe", and the nurse said, "but you're breathing just fine".
Someone else he was with said, "I told you not to eat the whole thing".
The nurses just kept offering him water and told him he had to ride it out, but no one knew how long that would take.
44. He Was Like A Tipsy Winnie The Pooh
I was a frequent visitor to the ER when my mother and grandmother were taking turns as patiterally got to know the staff because I was there with either one of them on at least a weekly basis. The ER that I frequented was a great big room with a bunch of beds separated by curtains. Since there was nothing but curtains, there was also very little privacy when the doctors or nurses were talking to the other patients or each other.
One day a guy came in who only spoke Portuguese, so he needed an interpreter. I couldn't see him, but I could hear he was having trouble speaking. The interpreter had a very loud voice and apparently, this guy had been drinking, found a beehive, and tried to open it to eat the honey.
Great plan, except it wasn't a beehive, it was a wasp's nest. He has been stung around the mofacesand face many, many times. I wish I had been able to get a peek, but everyone who did get to see him audibly gasped when they walked in.
45. Sad Yet Interesting
I worked in a psychiatric ER. I saw a case of Foile a deux, which is a shared delusional disorder between two people.
In this case it was a mother and her daughter. The mother was so paranoid. She believed the government was after them, that they were reading their thoughts. They legitimately had aluminum foil in their purses that they would put on their heads to block out the government from reading their thoughts but that's not even the weirdest part. She'd obviously raised her daughter to believe this was true. I believe they were found in a train or bus station and were acting so strange that officers brought them in to be checked out.
They barely spoke to us, and would not tell us where they were from or where they were going. I'm assuming they gave us false names and dates of birth. They also would not be separated, and we couldn't try as the mother had some sort of heart condition, and making her panic could've possibly made her heart give out.
They wanted to admit the mother as she was the one most obviously ill but didn't dare separate her from the daughter. They eventually just let them go as they were not a danger to themselves or others.
I remember calling them a free taxi to take them whenever they wished but they never waited for it and walked off into the night.
To let you know how rare one of these cases is, I've worked in psychiatry for over 10 years and this is the only time I've ever seen a shared psychotic disorder.
GagliardiPhotography , Shutterstock
46. Should I Eat This?
I had a patient once that ate a mushroom off the ground in his neighborhood. He brought himself to the ER, and screamed all night.
There was nothing else memorable about him other than the level of stupidity and the screaming. Not just screaming now and then for hours... he used every breath to scream. I remember a few other folks that pushed pain to new levels... he was one for sure.
47. Clearly, She’s A Zombie
A woman came into the ER because she could not find her pulse and was deeply worried. To repeat, the woman WALKED HERSELF INT THE ER, but thought she was already a goner.
The nurse had said, “Well, that’s weird, usually people in your condition can’t walk or talk”.
48. She Had A Blood Bowl With Her
A woman came in after she cut her hand pretty badly making dinner. Instead of putting any pressure on the cut to stop the bleeding, she was just letting herself bleed into a large kitchen bowl.
49. It Was All An Act
I was a volunteer intern (not medical, a critical care extender) and my most memorable time in the ER was when a 13-year-old boy with a rat-tail braid came in after he and his friends decided it would be a wonderful idea to get very tipsy off some kind of hard booze, and then run and jump out of the second story window.
We had to staple his wound on the back of his head without anesthesia because he had drunk too much. But my absolute favorite part was when his mom came and he instantly started crying, "Mama I'm so sorry!! I didn't mean to let you down, don't be mad". It was especially funny because this hospital was in the more dangerous part of long beach, and he was trying to act especially tough before she arrived.
50. The Words Were Stimulation Enough
Oh, man...I don’t work in the ER but my dad’s old girlfriend did and he loves to tell this story. One night a guy came in with chronic hiccups. The poor guy had them for about a week. He tried everything, but nothing worked, and he was getting desperate.
The nurses tried everything they could think of and not even their tricks worked. They had to go back to the books and look for alternative cures. Sure, enough there was one.
So, they go to tell the guy about their new plan. Apparently, as soon as he heard the words, "digital rectal stimulation", his hiccups went away.
Sources: Reddit,
