ER Doctors, What's your MOST MEMORABLE Emergency? - Reddit Podcast

🧠🧠 finish listening to ALL the stories here youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5FcevqxOz5tuU1qghkOUcB… instagram - @amithejerk twitter - @amitheje

I once had to go to the ER for possibly having appendicitis, ended up losing what felt like 20 pounds of poop. Most embarrassing day of my life.

The one with the two year old broke my heart. That poor baby had to suffer such horrific pain.

PSA: When sticking things up your button hole, make sure it has a WIDE BASE. Think, upside down capital "T," preferably with a suction cup on the underside if using alone. This can help prevent the "vacuum effect" from getting things lost and out of reach. Also, never forget to lube. This has been a warning from your friendly neighbourhood ER/Urgent Care.

I had an experience which made me realize that despite the problems, our medical system in Canada works wonders in a true emergency. First, let me say that the ER nurse who admitted me stopped in my room and mentioned that she was astounded I actually walked into the hospital under my own power. And this is why: I had a minor pain in my right side, following some vomiting related to a migraine headache, and went to the ER, was told it was likely a pulled muscle, given some Tylenol #3 and sent home. Three days later, I'd pretty much not moved from my easy chair since I got home and my mom noticed my belly was a bit bloated. She said we needed to go back to the ER. I got up and collapsed, out for 1/2 a minute. Went to the washroom, blacked out and fell into the bathtub, again just for half a minute. My mom drove me to the ER w/o further incident. Walked into triage, and the nurse took my BP. It was 60/10. Very calmly she said, "well, that's a little lower then we'd like to see it." Immediately I was sent to imaging (ultrasound). They offered a wheel chair but I declined. The tech showed me the screen which showed (in black & white) a large mass of white which moved and flowed in my abdominal area. He said, again, very calmly, "that white blob is fluid. We don't like to see that." This time he insisted I sit in a wheelchair and he wheeled me off to the OR. Turns out I'd blown a blood vessel in my abdomen and had been bleeding into my belly for 4 days. Bizarrely, the blood vessel I blew was actually just under my rib cage, outside of the abdominal sack. I'm told it's a very strange thing to happen. They drained 4 litres of blood during surgery (I was a a big guy, i was estimated to have a blood volume of 7 to 8 litres total, apparently). From the moment I walked into the hospital I was in the OR in under 20 minutes, and even though I was quite drowsy, everyone was so calm and relaxed that at no point did I feel afraid. The reality is, though, that BP is so low that it is very close to the point where the heart stops beating simply due to a lack of resistance. An interesting experience - I do not recommend.

My mom works in a hospital. One night a code GREY (meaning a patient/family member attacked staff) was called. Apparently, the mother of the patient who was brought to the ER left to get Macca's for the two of them. Despite being told by the doctor that she cannot have food in the hospital, she started throwing everything she could find at anyone who told her no, even looking at her you were a target. This includes doctors, nurses, cleaners, PSAs, security personnel, even patients. She was escorted out. If you are wondering why you cannot take outside food into the hospital, it is due to the possibility that tests or procedures may be performed. To rule out various illnesses, some require an empty stomach.

7:00 I'm pretty sure there's actually a law that says that the news isn't supposed to report a death until after the family has been informed first. This came about after Buddy Holly's death in the 50's

I responded to major trauma and no patient showed up. Half hour a 16 yo showed up with a 4x4 sticking out of his chest. Paramedic said his out of control car crashed a fence, ripped the 4x4 out of ground, through the windshield, steering wheel, his chest, and the seat! They had to cut the wood just in front of the boy, made him lean forward (yeah, he was conscious!) and cut the 4x4 off near his back. Next day parents wanted him to go home from ICU. Doctor showed them photos convince them to not sign him out.

5:25 fair warning this is Graphic child abuse against a toddler I heard this story when my kid was two. The eye burning has haunted me for years,l. I'd forgotten where I'd heard it. The horror had worn down. It's one of very few things that give me nightmares. I couldn't handle looking down into my kid's eyes for a long time without remembering. They forced that baby to hold open his eye and watch as they burned out his irises. The last thing that baby ever saw was his parents smirking while lowering burning cigarettes into his eyes repeatedly. The torture. Betrayal. Agony. The filth, blisters and infection. Those parents shouldn't be allowed to ingest calories ever again. Just let them watch it happen.

The parents of one of my friends got a phone call from the ER about one of their daughters that was on a car accident. Both parents went to the hospital and while they waited to talk with a doctor the mother started looking around for her daughter. She found her. Dead on an ambulance stretcher. She was 22 years old. Too many accidents that night and somebody somehow made a mistake. Imagine

Sticking things up your butt isn't the issue. Sticking things up your butt that don't have a flared end (designed to prevent them from going ALL the way inside) is the issue. Of course that doesn't necessarily mean things won't get stuck if you do other things wrong, but it is less likely to happen! PSA from this PSA

For anyone curious: priapism is when an erection doesn't go away, which can cause tissue damage and other issues. It's one symptom of Brazilian wandering spider bites (only reason I know this, I'm a girl and not in the medical field).

1:55 - Now to be fair, depending on where she lived, her health class might have been so abysmally bad that they didn't cover periods....

I am an RN and at one of the teaching hospitals where I worked at one of the doctors was telling us about an ER patient from when she was working on the West Coast. This was a male patient with...you guessed it...abdominal pain. When they took the abdominal X-ray, she said that everybody just about lost their minds when they realized what they were looking at were NOT 1, NOT 2, NOT 3, BUT 7 Barbie doll heads inside this man's rectum. She also mentioned the male patient that came in and had NOT 1, but 2 live hamsters in his rectum. When I was working at a psychiatric hospital if there were medical emergencies they needed to be taken to a medical center. One night I accompanied a patient to the ER of this medical hospital. It just so happened that the radiology department was located within a wing of the ER. All of a sudden I heard this group of people laughing pretty hard and it was one of those laughs that you just had to know what was going on. When I peeked my head around the wall and asked them what was so funny, while still laughing hysterically, they motioned me to come in, they said this was one of their favorite X-rays of all time. It was an X-ray of a man's rectum that contained a jar full of baby gherkin pickles and you could see the individual pickles and the outline of the jar with the lid on it.

Story 12 is so sad, I can just image the utter Terry that 16 year old was feeling and understand why he crashed into the bay as he moat likely was just flooring it to get to the hospital so couldn't stop. Hope the younger brother lived.

I gotta tell this one (I'm not from the US). I was with my bf in the ER waiting for some tests results. This was in 2021, still with the rona going strong so there weren't rooms or beds, we were left in a hallway waiting because he would only be priority depending on the results. But they wouldn't let him go just in case, so we were left there waiting and witnessing a lot of things. A woman walked in with a friend, the woman was holding a hankerchief over her head and claiming it hurt so much. They were just around the corner and we heard more or less what was happening but didn't see anything. The woman had hurt her head some time ago and let it get infected. Not only that, it was infested with eggs of some insect (i guess from flies). The doctors and nurses had to clean it. We heard screams of pain, saw the staff walking in a hurry and some left the room to compose themselves. There were hundred if not thousands of eggs, some med students described them as "similar to rice". Then the cleaners came and left in a shock taking a bucket full of the thing, I tried to see it but couldn't. Two hours later the woman left, with her head all bandaged, an antibiotic prescription and a warning to not let this happen again.

How much money do you think hospitals would save per year if they gave out proper adult toys with a flared base to those repeat stuff-up-the-butt offenders?

Scariest thing I’ve ever gone in by EMT’s for was sudden onset abdominal pain two months after my fourth and final kidney transplant failed! I thought my kidney had ruptured! Docs couldn’t see anything on CT scan. Last thing I remember was the doctor saying, We can’t see anything on the CT. We have to do exploratory surgery!” That was a Saturday and I awoke in ICU the following Thursday! My small intestine had ruptured and doctors didn’t think I’d make it! They saw the problem but my Potassium came back sky high so they had to close me up and give dialysis then drugs to fool my body into thinking it was lower than it was! I had gone to my dialysis treatment the day before so my Potassium should’ve been fine! That was one of the very few times I actually thought I was going to die!

"Maybe try a sandwich." Maybe give the poor man a sandwich.

This is something I heard or read somewhere and I think it’s a good PSA: “If the base doesn’t flare, don’t stick it up there”. Good advice.