A Dangerous Cue
Doctors and nurses see some of the craziest things happen in the emergency room. People tend to do things they shouldn’t and get injured in the strangest ways. Have you ever wondered what’s happening in the room next to you at the hospital? You might have heard some yelling or strange sounds that piqued your curiosity.
We looked into some of the craziest accidents and mistakes that have landed people straight in the emergency room, and some of them are difficult to believe. You may be floored once you discover how some of these people were injured (and what happened afterward). These are truly some of the wildest emergency room stories you’ll ever hear…
Too Much Pudding
The most serious time that I remember was when I was stabbed in the eye with a pool cue. I was bending down to pick it up just as my sister lifted it straight up towards me (she was about four years old at the time). I think I was in shock for all but two seconds and then….
Apparently, it tore the membrane covering my eye. I was in pretty serious pain for a few days. Reddit User: SevegeKaelen
She Wasn’t Lying
I was on my scooter following my younger brother down this steep hill leading to our house, and my mom was gardening. Before doing this, I had consumed around 4-6 pudding packs. Anyway, my brother tells me to chase him down the hill, and I go flying down behind him. What a mistake….
I need to slow down, and me being dumb, I hit the front wheel brake instead of the back one, which makes me flip over, shattering both bones in my arm. I get up and my forearm drops; the bone is popping out. I call my mom out in shock; she turns, screams, and rushes me to the ER.
We get there with a 30-person wait. A cop sees me, and he gets me through and gets us a room. They get my arm in a cast. When I wake up, the nurse asks me if I’m good and if I’d like anything, and I immediately throw up the packs and packs of pudding I had eaten earlier all over her. Reddit User: borpsnorp
A Terrible Fight
I was in an emergency room with a low priority injury. A woman walked in yelling and crying, saying she was about to give birth. No one batted an eye, as this seemed to be a pretty common occurrence. I was definitely shocked that she wasn’t receiving attention, and the craziest thing happened….
A baby then basically proceeded to fall out of her. It is by far the most insane thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Reddit User: Rs3ironmemes
Stay Away From The Knives
As an ER resident, I saw a real live gorilla. Not 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. They 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, and the doctors said even if it was a human, it wasn’t survivable. The zoo staff were crying. It was sad. An amazing beast and crazy that it was in my ER! Reddit User: _Stamos
Don’t Drink And Light Fireworks
I had a friend who made a point by slamming a serrated steak knife into a cutting board. He ended up burying the knife in the first knuckle of his pinky, severing everything but an artery and a bit of skin. It was the 4th of July weekend, and there wasn’t a surgeon in the city who could help….
The ER staff bandaged it soundly and sent him on his way with some high-end painkillers. They were able to reattach the digit when the proper surgeons came back from their partying. I don’t recall what the argument was about, for the record, but I do believe he won the debate.
The lesson here is three-fold. First, don’t try and lose a finger around any major holiday. Second, don’t argue drunk. Third, if you are going to argue drunk and it gets really out of hand, please remember that trying to use your own blood to make a point generally makes everyone’s day a little worse. Reddit User: EclecticDreck
Jokes Aren’t Always Funny
My mom works at an ER, so this is her story. A guy came in with his hand blown off and nearly passing out from blood loss. His friends were with him, and they were obviously drunk. They kept calling him “stubs” and getting in the way. The friends waited while the guy went to the OR….
He ended up losing his hand. He’s in recovery, and all of a sudden, BOOM! A freaking firework goes off in his room. His friends thought it would be funny to throw some stuff on their friend, blowing off part off his foot. He lost a few toes. Reddit User: meatkissy
He Was Lucky
I don’t work in the ER, but a guy came in this week who’d put a roman candle in his pants for a witty and original male sex organ joke. But it wasn’t a regular candle. The guy decided to place a candle with a lit wick into his pants for his joke.
His shorts melted into his crotch and all over his man bits. He needed a skin graft and reconstructive surgery. Reddit User: furiosas
Always Make Sure The Blades Aren’t Spinning
Once, we received an ambulance call from a guy who was involved in a motor vehicle accident. He was riding shotgun. His buddy hit a lamppost, and the post impaled his entire abdomen. It penetrated his entire abdomen, thus stopping excessive bleeding. When we arrived, the fire department was cutting the lamppost, as it was too long for the ambulance….
On the way to the hospital, I called the surgeon on-call and presented the case. 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; this time, they came with packets of ice from 7-Eleven.
The patient went on to the theatre, where they managed to remove the pole. He survived with no disabilities. Reddit User: superstoked
Drinking And Bees Don’t Mix
An older man thought something sounded off in his lawnmower while he was cutting the grass. He thought the blades had stopped spinning and then decided to turn over the mower to investigate. The blades were still moving, and he lost the tips of his fingers on one of his hands in the process.
He was oddly calm between the shock and the drugs when I was taking his x-rays, which was nice, because it was quite a graphic case for me at that time as a radiography student. Reddit User: carolinablue199
Don’t Be A Thief
I was a frequent visitor to the ER when my mother and grandmother were there. I literally 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 basically 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 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….
Apparently, the guy had too much to drink, found a beehive, and tried to open it to eat the honey. But it wasn’t a beehive, it was a wasp’s nest. He had been stung around his mouth and face many, many times. Everyone who did get to see him audibly gasped when they walked in. Reddit User: stormydog
A Shipping Container Caused This
Son of an emergency 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. He was bent over, rummaging through the homeowner’s belongings. The homeowner was 5 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 anus. My dad said he’d never been so mortified of a wound until he saw that. Reddit User: XIIInails
Bobby Pins Aren’t For That
I was coming into the ER to relieve my partner (we worked at the same hospital) and saw a man with these strange-looking flat legs from the waist down. I initially thought it was some form of elephantiasis. I did a double-take and realized they were literally flattened. A shipping container landed on them.
Picture your legs: bones, cartilage, blood vessels, and all. Now picture all of that occupying a total thickness of about 1/2 cm. It was surreal. Reddit User: f_ranz1224
Listen To Your Friends
I had a little old lady with a big gaping head wound walk into the hospital. I’m not exactly sure how it happened or even how she managed to make her way to the emergency room, but there she was. When I inspected her, I saw something I did not expect to see….
She used some bobby pins to clip the hair together and hold the wound shut so she could clean up the blood and finish supper before coming in. Reddit User: BunBunRN
She’s In Trouble
I once had a friend that hurt his leg in basic training. He camped out on our couch because he was having roommate issues. After a few days, he was super sweaty and really didn’t move at all. I would fill his water cup, and he just sat there, doing nothing.
One day we walked into our living room, and he had no pants on and was basically making no sense at all. We noticed he had been taking a very large amount of Advil, and his skin was yellowing. Thinking his liver may be having some issues, we insisted that he go to the hospital.
Keep in mind that he had gone to the walk-in clinic that afternoon, and they sent him home. That night, we brought him in, and they rushed him into surgery. He had blood poisoning, and they amputated his leg up to the hip bone. The surgeon said he would’ve died on our couch that night. Reddit User: gnarlycastle
A Strange Feeling
We had a lady that came in a few months ago that stubbed her toe. Now, this didn’t seem like that much of an emergency, especially when people were dying and bleeding. But she was getting irate that patients with chest pain, shortness of breath, and stroke symptoms were being called before her.
She started screaming and cursing in the lobby. The craziest part was her spitting in the police officer’s face when he came to ask her to calm down. Reddit User: craig0930
A Scary Sight
I had a patient come in with a live moth stuck in his ear canal against the eardrum. It somehow got in when he was mowing the lawn. It was initially flapping its wings against his ear, which he said was the weirdest feeling he ever felt. It didn’t hurt; it was just weird.
We tried everything to get it out (moth died in the process). We eventually had to just send him home with a prescription for ear drops to dissolve it. Reddit User: drewdp
Don’t Swallow Those Things
A 20-ish-year-old quadriplegic man with a permanent colostomy bag came in. He somehow managed to herniate his intestine into the bag a little bit. He also had a lung infection. Every time he coughed, more would slide into the bag. He thought it was hilarious (he couldn’t feel a thing), and his chuckling caused it to herniate further…
I’ve never tried so hard to stop someone from laughing or breathing too hard on a call before. By the time we made it to the ER, he had put a good 14” into the bag. Reddit User: markofshame
Mom Saw Some Crazy Stuff
A man, just over the age of 30, came in once because he had swallowed some stuff he wasn’t supposed to. It turns out, by asking him a series of questions and looking at his x-ray, that he did that frequently. During the surgery, they pulled all kinds of stuff out of his stomach and intestines.
By the end, there were three matchbox cars, a lighter, about 17 poker chips, and also a bunch of smaller stuff. Reddit User: Lighterlow
He’s Lucky They Brought It Back
My mom was an ER nurse for over twenty years. All of her best stories came from men showing up with various unique objects stuck in their rectums, funny enough. The few that still stick in my head to this day are the guy with a peanut butter jar (don’t ask me how) and the guy with a lightbulb.
The worst was a guy with a carrot. He was in the shower and really had to scratch his butt hole, and the carrot was all he had on hand, or so he claimed. Reddit User: cassitea
“Dem Skittles”
I was doing an observation as a student in an emergency room once, and a guy came in with a chopped-off finger (he said it was a workplace accident). It turns out he forgot his finger in the taxi-cab, and we had to call the company to bring the finger back into the hospital.
Lucky for him, they still reattached it successfully. It was an absolutely crazy story that he learned to laugh at once enough time had passed. Reddit User: Yallah_Habibi
Suppositories Are Complicated
We were checking patients in when a mid-30s woman came up trying to explain her symptoms. She leaned over and whispered, “I got dem skittles down there. You know? I had sex with a guy and got dem skittles.” As I’m trying to see if she’s serious, she says she has to go to the bathroom.
The skittles lady came back and said, “Never mind, don’t have to worry about dem skittles, they gone.” She walked out of the ER, leaving me there while I’m trying not to bust out laughing. Reddit User: MechanicalNurse
Couldn’t Get It Out As He Normally Does
This one woman came back to us because her constipation was not letting up. Going into her chart, I saw that she had been previously given suppositories to take, and in the triage note, she said her meds weren’t working. So the doc is asking her questions, making sure nothing else is wrong, and they get to the part about the meds.
She says, “Well yeah, the pills I got last time were huge! I had to break them in half to swallow them!” And then we had to explain that suppositories are not meant to be eaten, and that was why her medication was not relieving her symptoms. Reddit User: mamblepamble
Sucking Blood
I’m a lab tech and got a call about a patient experiencing a “foreign body.” These typically end up with either hearing that a child ate something or that someone shoved something where it didn’t belong. Turns out a middle-aged male had stuck a bottle in his anus and could not get it out.
I looked at it while I handed it over to pathology and found that it was an unopened bottle of Taco Bell mild hot sauce. Apparently this guy had done this before and “couldn’t get it out as he normally does.” Reddit User: [redacted]
Asbestos
Had a guy come in dizzy and short of breath, but otherwise alert. His nurse caught him later, confused and sitting on the edge of the bed. He chewed through the tubing and was sucking on the blood that was transfusing. A few of us came in to help clean him up. The ER doc walked in to find out what was going on.
He motioned her to come closer and then unexpectedly put both his bloody palms on her chest, leaving two red handprints. Silence fell like a thick fog. The patient giggled and pointed to the marks. Reddit User: EveGor
Frisbee Accident
For context, airborne asbestos should never be allowed near air vent units, as the particles are small enough to slip through the filters and get spread by the vents. With this in mind, you can imagine my stepdad’s panic when a construction worker walks into the ER covered head to toe in asbestos (as in, you could no longer see the high viz jacket under it) and says to him, “I think I’ve been exposed to asbestos.”
Guy had been doing work on one of the older wings of the hospital and had taken a sledgehammer to a wall, which they hadn’t checked to see what the insulation was made of. Reddit User: Fish_Can_Roll76
It Must Be Genetic
Don’t work in an ER, but when I was a kid, I broke my ankle. Waiting for an x-ray, this guy sits down. His foot was all black, like sooty. Me and my mom tried to figure out what the hell happened to him. Stepping in a campfire? Hot coal accident? The man had a conversation with my dad about nothing.
My dad asked him what happened to him. “Frisbee accident.” He replied gravely with total seriousness. Still trying to imagine the situation where he came out looking like that. Reddit User: TheSilviShow
Batteries Don’t Go There
One time, my mom had a woman come in who was complaining about “funny smells from down there,” so my mom took her to a room to inspect and pulled out the nastiest looking tampon. I’m a dude, so I don’t know how long it would hypothetically take for one to go bad, but my mom said it had turned green.
When my mom explained to the woman what the cause of the smell was, she responded, “Oh that’s so funny, the same thing happened to my mother. It must be genetic.” Reddit User: Oripahs_Mada
Drug Of Choice
I work in the OR, not the ER, but a male patient came into the ER one time with 2 AA batteries shoved in his urethra. He needed emergency surgery because the batteries were starting to corrode inside of him. His girlfriend showed up, and he briefly told her what had happened. She had a complete meltdown and requested the chaplain.
I’ve never felt more awkward than when I was riding in an elevator with a male patient in extreme pain because he had batteries stuck in his penis, a crying girlfriend, and a chaplain. Reddit User: lewhit6
The $500 Fart
Patient brought in because he was high as a kite wandering in the middle of a busy street. Ask what he’s been taking. “I dunno, man, a little of everything, I guess.” I start listing drugs. Marijuana? Yeah he just had some. Cocaine? Oh yeah, that too. Methamphetamines? Yes. Also, he had some alcohol to top it all off. Heroin? “NO, I don’t touch that!”
Okay sir, thanks for letting us know. We ran a urine drug screen. It only came back positive for heroin. Reddit User: LatrodectusGeometric
Bolt Cutters Aren’t The Most Delicate Instruments
I was the patient. I was in extreme pain all day when I was maybe 13 or 14. The pain was in my stomach area. They ran some tests and the whole lot. They ended up giving me some muscle relaxers. Completely out of my control shortly after, I let out the biggest fart.
Everyone got a big laugh about it, and I got to feel awkward as I farted in front of everyone and said, “OK, I feel better now.” My parents now refer to the incident as the $500 fart. 13 years later. Reddit User: kotagil
The Catheter
When working in an ER in a rural area, we had a man come in with the broken-off end of an adjustable wrench, the ring part that is there so you can hang it up, stuck on his erect penis. He was using it as a sex toy. We ended up having to use bolt cutters to remove it.
Bolt cutters are not the most delicate instruments. Needless to say, his penis was chewed up pretty good by the time we removed it. I hope he learned his lesson. Reddit User: mburgess64
The Blowgun
My high school biology teacher has a best friend who is an ER physician. The doctor told my teacher a story (who then passed it on to us) about a drunk and belligerent college kid who came in unconscious. He woke up to a catheter in him and walked into the hallway (urine bag in hand) demanding the doctor take it out.
After the doctor refused, he got angry and decided to throw the bag at the doctor, who promptly stepped out of the way. Of course, the cath was still attached…for a little while. Ouch. Reddit User: dhruchainzz
The Axe Thrower
In the summer of 2014, my friends and I were messing around with a blowgun. We (gladly) used rolled up papers as ammo. A friend of mine decided to aim at me and blow. As he blew, I turned my head away, and suddenly I heard a bang followed by the loudest ringing sound.
The paper penetrated right through my eardrum while I turned…what are the odds. After I went to the doctor’s, he told me he hasn’t experienced something that dumb ever. Ringing sound went away after 6 weeks. Reddit User: WD40apper
The Rodeo
Had a patient come in who got drunk, swung his axe the wrong way, and axed himself in the face. Dude was lucky all he did was break some teeth and his nose. He had 42 stitches from his eyebrow to the bottom of his chin. Still drunk as a skunk. Kept mumbling about how his mom was going to kill him.
I told him when he sobered up that he was probably going to be madder at himself. Handsome kid, or he probably was before he looked like Dr. Frankenstein’s monster. Reddit User: CatchPhraze
The Pee Blanket
I was doing my ER rotation back during school. Drunk guy comes in and after a while needs to be restrained. I and about four other people are working to place soft restraints on the patient when one of the orderlies grabs the guy’s belt, takes it off of the patient, and wraps it around the patient’s legs at the knees.
After securing the belt, he throws up his hands like he’s doing a calf roping at the rodeo. It was quite difficult not to burst into laughter. Reddit User: red_tux
Zippy
Was bringing the stretcher back to the rig when a woman sitting and waiting for triage asks me for a blanket. Now we are a small service. I go to grab this woman a blanket, and when I get back, she’s standing up yelling about wanting a blanket. I reach out to hand it to her when she stares at me, starts laughing like a maniac, and pees all over the ER floor.
I look at her and tell her that now she doesn’t get the blanket. Instead, I use it to cover her giant urine spot. Reddit User: Climber_Slacker
The Love Board
I have a male cousin who landed himself in the ER because he thought that instead of a condom, he could put something tight around his male appendage, and it would force the sperm to stay inside. He tried this method by putting a zip tie around his member, then finally realized it doesn’t work that way.
Unfortunately, getting it off posed a problem, and he ultimately wound up in the ER with a zip tie around his male parts. His nickname has been ‘Zippy’ for 5 years now. Reddit User: Xeno_Prism_Power
Glass In The Eye
My friend worked in the ER. She had an obese man come in complaining of a rash under his gut. Upon close examination, they found several splinters. When asked, the man casually replied, “Oh, that must be from the love board.” They all looked around, confused as to what a love board is, and so the crew had to ask for details.
Apparently, the couple had to use a board to pry the man’s gut up to get to his penis for lovemaking activities. Reddit User: 11111one11111
This Seems Quite Serious
My aunt is a nurse for the ER, and this is her story. Two extremely drunk men came in. One of them fell down the stairs, and somehow he got glass in his eye. They were extremely proud of the work they had done to fix it. The men pulled out the glass and sealed the gash in his eye. With superglue.
The doctors had to soak his eye in acetone to get it open. I wince every time I think about this story. Reddit User: [redacted]
Guy walked in completely impaled with a 4×4 wood post. He was drinking and working on his roof when he fell off. His buddy got a chainsaw, cut the bottom of the post, and somehow the impaled guy stood in the back of the pickup for the ride to the ER.
He walked into the reception area and said, “Hey everybody, I hope you don’t mind if I cut in line a bit. This seems quite serious” and promptly passed out. He survived. Reddit User: [redacted]