Nurse here.
I work in a very rural hospital, and we have a patient population that seems to avoid the hospital at all costs. I have had so many, usually related to diabetics with foot sores- almost always resulting in amputation of a toe (or more).
However, my favorite was an elderly farmer who came in with chest pain that, ‘Wouldn’t go away’, as he put it. When we asked him if he had it before had it before- he had said that he had been having chest pain on and off for years, but it would typically go away after he grabbed his electric fence.
Apparently, the first time he had the pain- he was standing out near an electric fence on his farm, and he reached out to steady himself and accidentally grabbed the electric fence, which shocked him, and made the pain go away. So after that, whenever he would have the pain, he just went and grabbed the fence and it made him feel better.
He had literally been cardioverting himself for years.
He was fixed up and sent on his way- but we all still chuckle about it now and then because he was so nonchalant about it.
This has happened a few times, actually…
But I had a gal come in on Monday after being discharged from the hospital Friday after giving birth.
So basically, we tell ladies to avoid intercourse until a doctor clears you, and well, her spouse kept insisting and insisting and insisting that Friday night she caved and let him go to town. He wound up tearing some stitches that were placed and bleeding like a stuck hog all weekend long.
Came into our clinic, blue in the lips and fingers, and her hemoglobin was 4 (normal should be 12 – 15).
She didn’t wanna be a bother, so she waited until she started feeling dizzy all the time. She got another trip to the hospital for transfusion and repair for that.
But…like I said, this isn’t the first time I’ve seen that, so for the love of God…if homeboy is begging for it after you just had a baby, maybe he needs a lesson in self control and a bottle of moisturizer.
I’m still just a nursing student, but my professor told us a story of when he was an ER nurse. An elderly 80 something year old woman came in to the ER, and as he assessed her, he noticed her oral temperature was normal despite her neck being extremely hot to the touch. He decided to take a rectal temperature, which ended up being like 103 or something crazy. While he was down there, he noticed something peeking out of her v****a and proceeded to remove it. It was an old sock. She said her uterus had prolapsed months before and she was using the sock to keep it in. They began treating her for TSS immediately but sadly she went septic and died later that day.
Tongue in cheek, he told us she died of toxic sock syndrome. 😩💀 nurses have to use dark humor to cope.
A&E/ED doctor here!
A farmer in his 70s reluctantly came in with his wife after falling over outside while wrangling a sheep one WEEK earlier. He did not want to be there but had been “forced” to come by his wife who was worried about him. On questioning/examining he was pale, short of breath, and clearly in pain all over the right side of his chest but not wanting to show it! X-ray and bloods showed he’d broken loads of ribs, punctured his lung and bled profusely into his chest and was now very anaemic!
Former medic here. Called to a patient who had cut their leg while chopping wood about a week prior and now it was really itchy. Old gentleman, didn’t drive, lived alone. Got to his house, unwrapped the ungodly swollen leg to find that he’d tried to superglue the wound closed and maggots had commenced to growing inside. The itching he was feeling was the writhing maggots under his skin.
Elderly woman fell at home and broke both femurs. Son thought she just needed to rest so he carried her to her bed. She laid there in her own filth for 3 days before anyone called 911. The son lives with her, and there’s family next door as well. HOW. WHY?!
I had a patient once who I use as an inspiration to others.
In his late 40s he was diagnosed with alcoholic cardiomyopathy (his heart was only pumping 15% of the blood out per stroke, normal is 60%+), atrial fibrillation (fast irregular heart), diabetes, and hypertension in the same day. He weighed 140kg, smoked heavily, ate nothing but food from the pie shop, and spent every night in the pub. The cardiologist told him he was basically about to die (true), and was put on five different medications.
He stopped drinking altogether, started exercising, quit smoking, ate nothing but salad. He lost 45kg, his diabetes reversed and he stopped some medications, his heart went back to 55% stroke volume (pretty much normal) and most of his HF meds were stopped, his blood pressure dropped to normal.
He was “the happiest he’d ever been, and not just to be alive”. After a couple of false starts, he found himself a decent girlfriend. He still went to the pub for the social aspects, but drank soda-water.
He was a really decent bloke too, and was quite the inspiration to many people in the small country town where we were living at the time to improve their lives.
I was working as a surgical junior when my team was called down to A&E to see a patient who had come in with a complication from a recent hernia operation. When we came down, we saw that the patient was holding a plastic bag over their abdomen. When this was removed, we found that their wound had opened and their intestine was visible to the air. It transpired that this was not something that had happened over night, it had taken several days. The patient had started using plastic bags and newspaper to dress the wound when they ran out of dressings.
Edit: Addendum – because this is getting a lot of views, I must stress that this case was exceptionally uncommon, and an example of what happens when someone does not seek medical attention when it is obviously required. In general, hernia operations are very common and very safe; that being said, if you have any surgical procedure and you are not certain the wound is healing properly, you must seek medical attention.
Had a patient brought in by her son who “took care of her,” when she arrived to our unit I performed a skin assessment…took off her socks and found a fallen off gangrenous toe. Seems fake and I wish this was but it was by far the nastiest thing I’ve witnessed. Son said he had no idea when his mother’s foot became “that bad.” No words.
I had a patient come in saying he couldn’t see. How long had it been going on? For five days. The man had been blind for five days and didn’t come in because he thought it might be “like a cold Or something”.
During the exam when I asked him to move his legs he said “oh, I can’t do that”… (??) I asked how long he’d been unable to move his legs or walk? Wife chimes in- about two years. Never saw a doctor about it- They just borrowed a friends wheelchair and kept it rolling.
Turned out he’d had multiple strokes with multiple risk factors he never addressed. Given how little insight he appeared to have into the condition I honestly felt sorry- he didn’t have insurance so I’m sure that played a role in him avoiding seeing anyone.
I’ve seen a few over the years, and they generally fall into the category of ‘If it’s not diagnosed then I can’t have it,’ or ‘I didn’t think it was that bad.’ As a medical student I remember an older lady that had a breast that was necrotic and falling off. It had been progressing over the last several years. But, if she didn’t get diagnosed with breast cancer, then she couldn’t have it. In the other category I’ve seen a few cases of Fournier’s Gangrene. Pretty much obese, male diabetics that had a pimple/sore that started in the pubic region. By the time they come to the hospital it’s a raging infection where the treatment is basically to cut away everything in the pubic/ groin region down to the muscle layer. That little sore didn’t seem like much at first.
OR RN, was on call on a Friday night. Got called in for an exploratory laparotomy. Some late staff had gotten the case ready and patient in the room when I arrived. I walked into the room to see the patients testicle was bigger then a basketball, two people holding it up to prep it. The guy had a large part of his bowel in his l ft testicle, and his bowel had ruptured due to the pressure. We suctioned poop out of his abdomen for over an hour. Apparently the week before he lifted something heavy and felt a pop. Hadn’t urinated in two days because it was so swollen his p***s was not visible. That’s why he finally came in, he couldn’t pee. Although his testicle had been slowly growing for a week. Unfortunately he didn’t make it, he lived thru 3 abdominal surgeries but sepsis did him in from the ruptured bowel.
My girlfriend is a care worker and she recently told me that she slipped off a patient’s slippers and remarked “I didn’t know you had lost your toes” to which the patient responded “Well I hadn’t till you took the slipper off dear”
Sounds like something from a grim sketch show, god bless anyone who can do jobs like that.
Had a guy show up in my clinic one day with a complaint of finger swelling. So as the story went, his finger got swollen and painful about a week prior. Just got worse and worse, and about 3 days prior to coming, a hole opened up in the tip of his finger (this is where I, personally, would have noped right to the office).
So come the day of the visit, he says, “By the way, I pulled something out of the hole in my finger yesterday with a pair of tweezers, no idea what it is.” I asked him if he took a picture or kept it, and he produced a tissue from his shirt pocket.
It was his distal phalanx (read: last bone in the finger). The bone had gotten infected and the body did it’s thing and basically tried to eject what was now a hot foreign body.
The guy pulled his fingertip out of his fingertip. A better magic trick, I have not since seen.
Story from my SIL who is a nurse. Young man was brought in to the ER. He had a sinus infection that he had let go to the point that it had eaten through the skull and into this brain. She was told that it had started several months before. He didn’t want to go to the doctor for it. All it would have needed was 10 days of antibiotic pills. Instead, he was not brought in until he was unconscious, and died within a few hours.
Children’s nurse here, my first week in paediatric ED we had a young girl (6/7) come in with a really swollen jaw/face. Poor girl was unable to move her jaw without intense pain and hadn’t been able to eat for several days. Turns out she had only just started cleaning her teeth for the first time ever and managed to develop several abscesses and rotten teeth in the process. To make it worse her mum told us she was recovering from the same procedures to remove most of her teeth because of almost the same thing… they didn’t want to bother the gp as they thought she was just messing about to get out of school.
We once had a patient who went to Emergency for abdominal pain and they discovered a fungating breast wound (don’t image search that) that she’d had for two years and hadn’t gotten medical attention for. A biopsy and a PET scan later she was diagnosed with breast cancer with extensive liver, lung and bone mets. This was also in Australia so it wasn’t a money issue. Just sad.
Not a doctor but medical physicist. About 12 years ago I was asked to look at and give advice on a lady who had a very slow growing tumour on their nose. A Basel cell carcinoma. Usually not much of an issue as if caught early can be cut off with surgery and that’s it or a short course of radiotherapy.
Turns out this lady was quite vain, and as soon as the lump had started to grow she hid it under a scarf. She ended up hiding it for 20 years. By the time it was seen by any medical professional the tumor had taken over most of her nasal cavity, had crushed 1 eye, deformed her whole face, and grown inbetween all the nerves and blood vessels. It was inoperable and there was very little you could do with radiotherapy without doing alot of damage to everything else.
Such a shame as it would have been so easy to fix 20 years ago. Please get lumps and random bleeding checked out.
Lady with very poorly controlled diabetes and morbidly obese came in via ED with a gaping hole on her thigh…like so deep you could put you’re whole fist through it. It was oozing ridiculous amount of blood, so much so she had to be transfused. Her blood levels were rock bottom. It transpires she’d accidentally cut herself when tryna to wriggle into jeans. Meantime, the wound just kept getting bigger and bigger, and she attempted to just sort it by packing the wound with socks! Single worst thing I’ve seen.
Guy came in with a dead leg. Waited until it turned black and then decided to head to the ER. They tried an angiogram to open up blood flow but it was way late for that. Guy had several clots in his lungs and legs. Undiagnosed atrial fibrillation. He couldn’t believe we were going to amputate, kept asking me what else I could do.
Go back in time a week ago and come in. Kinda around when it turned blue.
I am a doctor and while working in A&E we had an older chap, possibly in his 70s, who several days prior to presentation had a sudden onset severe chest pain and vomiting while loading the car with shopping. He ignored it and struggled home.
The next day he started to lose the use of both legs and by the time he came to hospital had been CRAWLING around his house for SEVERAL DAYS because he thought it would get better.
He had had a major cardiac event, developed a clot which his heart had pumped out, it went down his body, broke in half and blocked off the blood supply to both legs. He literally had dead legs.
I don’t know what ended up happening to him, but there was no way to save the legs and I reckon the outcome was very poor, if not fatal.
Edit because there is a lot of USA assumption going on: this is in the UK where healthcare is free-at-point-of-access, so debt is not a contributing concern for our patients.
Not a doctor, but an Army medic. Had a dude come in to the aid station at like, 2am with his arm all wrapped up. Took the wraps off, s**t looked necrotic. I asked him what the f**k was going on.
Turns out, the weekend before we went out to the field, this man went and got his whole forearm tattooed. He then spent the next week wading through chest-deep swamps, figuring that if he just kept his arm wrapped, he’d be okay.
I was like…brother no.
Edit: oh yeah, there was also that time some female LT came in with vaginal pain. Took a look, saw one helluva infection. Apparently, she hadn’t changed her tampon in nearly a week. We (meaning I, while the Dr watched) had to “retrieve” it.
ER PA here. The worst I ever saw was a man in his 50’s who was an alcoholic and had anxiety problems who was brought in by his neighbors for a “facial infection”. Turned he had squamous cell skin cancer that made the left side of his face look like the Batman villain two face. The ct of his face and neck revealed that it had spread into his lymph nodes and mandible. The skin on his face was literally sloughing off as I spoke with him and the smell was absolutely horrible (and I smell terrible things all the time). I have never almost vomited in a room except for him just due to the smell. I asked him why he waited and he said he was just terrified of doctors and hospitals and I believe him. He was extremely anxious the entire time he was in our ED. His neighbors were saints, they said they had been trying to get him to the hospital for months but he wouldn’t come in. We transferred him to a tertiary hospital with ENT and cancer specialists. When I checked his chart a few days later they basically said he was terminal.
My Dad is the one that wouldn’t go in. He got a sore in the crease on the bottom of his second toe (the one next to the big toe, so it would be the Piggy That Stayed Home) and just kept ignoring it. He would go with his wife to her nail place and have his toe nails trimmed and I think that’s where the infection probably got in when they soaked his feet. He blew it off for a couple of weeks until the wife made him see the doc. It’s a good thing she did. The infection had gotten into the bone so they had to snip his toe off to the first knuckle to catch it before it went any further. The doc said had he waited any longer, he could have lost the entire foot. He’s lucky to just have a Stubby Piggy and not a Stubby Leg.
I work in Orthopedics, a very common occurrence is a patient is told to follow up within the week (we like to see fractures between 5-7 days) and the patient will call on the 6th day and say “I broke something and need to be seen tomorrow”. This is frustrating because we very rarely have the ability to get a patient in next day, and if they had called the day of or the day after then we definitely could have gotten them seen.
BUT my number one “why didn’t you come in sooner?!” moment was getting a call from a patient who had broken their forearm *two months ago* and never followed up. I got them scheduled, they no showed their appointment. Rescheduled, they no showed. Second reschedule, they arrive with a very obvious deformity to their arm due to the fracture healing incorrectly. If they had just come in, it wouldn’t have been an issue at all. Blows my mind that they went almost three months without care.
Oh, so many stories here. We can start with a gentleman in his 70s who was diagnosed with diabetes. His doctor had instructed him that it’s important for him to wear socks and supportive shoes throughout the day. So this guy decides that meant “wear the same pair of socks for weeks and never take them off.” He had showered, slept, and carried on in the same pair of socks for weeks. He came to the ER because there was blood oozing through his sock and there was pain under there. Take the sock off, he’s got a diabetic ulcer that had opened and was full of maggots. Not a pretty site. We clarified those instructions pretty quickly.
My favorite story (psych NP). I was called to a suburban ER to see a man who said he had a horrible stomach cancer and needed to lose weight in order to get better. He insisted that he’d been diagnosed by a very prominent gastroenterologist with “Barrett’s stomach” which isn’t even a thing (it’s an esophageal problem). I guess I got called in because the story was bizarre and the staff didn’t know what to do with him.
He eventually disclosed that he’d shot himself in the leg a few days previously and was waiting for gangrene to set in. He believed that the resulting amputation of the leg would allow him to lose the required amount of weight, thus curing his cancer.
I excused myself to let the ER staff know that they should probably examine the leg and to call the county psychiatric service, which was protocol at this particular hospital. I’m not sure what ever happened to him but that was a very impressive manifestation of a delusion!
My dad works as a nurse in the ER. I man had been doing mechanic work all night in the middle of winter. He came in complaining that he couldn’t feel his fingers because they had gotten so cold. They weren’t just pale or purple, they were literally black. His fingers had gotten so cold that they literally died and had to be amputated.
Had a guy come in with his pregnant wife in a wheelchair. The baby’s head was hanging out of her and we asked why she didn’t go to the maternity ward when she was 4-1-1.
He said that the waiting room was busy and he wasn’t waiting because she had some pains and they were only there to shut her up.
She ended up delivering around 20 minutes after she got taken back and I dread what could have happened if he refused to wait the A&E times too.
Not a nurse/doctor but a lab scientist. Had a guy come in at the end of the day for chest pain that’s been bothering him “all weekend”. The ED doc ordered a troponin blood test which helps rule in/out heart attacks. If the test runs above 0.03, we consider that a sign for a heart attack and act accordingly. This guy’s very first troponin was 21.00. TWENTY-ONE. The highest we’ve ever had up till then was an 8.00. The guy should’ve been dead ages ago, but he somehow pulled through. Don’t ignore chest pains, people.
Edit: Just wanna clarify that the hospital I work for is a tiny a*s, 25 bed, rural community critical care hospital. Definitely not a place with dedicated cardiologists, cath lab, bedside assays, or even a big test menu, period. Bare basics! And the guy did, somehow, end up surviving.
I am an EMT and have some pretty gnarly stories. One of the worst things I’ve seen (mostly is because of the smell) is gangrene due to lack of control over diabetes.
The call came in as extreme lower limb pain. We pull up on scene. I examine the wound to see a man’s metatarsal exposed (yes, the bone). And maggots were eating the wound.
Long history of diabetes, and of course, did not do anything to control it. He eventually had his foot amputated.
The smell is something that has stuck with me and probably will forever. Just take care of yourself. Get help when you need it.
When I was training to be a nurse, I got paired with a play specialist for a few weeks. A mum came into a and e with a little boy of about 4 or 5. Doc requested we come and entertain/ distract little man while he examined him and left it at that. He was happy, chatty and a picture of health from the shoulders up. His belly however looked like he was expecting very soon. This was a shock to both me and the other girl who had taken the usual toys (we had little baskets for each of us to take where needed). We trailed this little guy while he had a multitude of tests and he was extremely brave letting the docs do what they had to. Mum was asked how long it had been going on and she said 3 months. He had a tumour and the surgeons managed to remove it but the poor kid was so embarrassed after surgery because he had saggy skin and stretch marks. He often plays on my mind, even more so since having a kid of my own. Hope he’s doing OK now.
I had just gotten my first job out of college at the ER at my local hospital. My first week went by with the usual stitches and broken bones. My second week around midnight, this very obese woman came in complaining of chest pains. So we rush her back, grab her vitals and do an EKG and blood work. Everything comes backs normal but this woman is still complaing of chest pain.
So my supervisor and I ask the lady if we can do a head to toe check up. Now this woman had a rather pungent smell to her when she came in but I’ve learned to not think of it, as people in the area weren’t known for their cleanliness. So we’re looking at her chest and I notice that her left breast was reddened and swollen. So I tell her that I’m going to lift up her breast to rule out any skin infections; as I lifted up her breast a wave of noxious stench engulfed the air around me.
Thank the gods for facemasks. As I lifted up her breast even more I could seen what looked my a mass of rotting tissue going into her chest. Now my supervisor ran out of the exam room and proceeded to vomit in the nearest trash can. I looked at the lady and asked her why she didn’t come in earlier as it looks like a massive skin infection was raging under her left breast. She replied that she didn’t have insurance and that she didn’t think it was a huge deal.
So I called in a few other nurses and the doctor to assist with cleaning the wound. Well as we begone cleaning, one nurse noticed a bit of fur and bone. As we further inspected, we come to find out its a small animal of sorts. So they collect the sample and sent it to pathology. After we removed said animal, we noticed that it had rotted into her chest so much that her ribs could be seen. In the end it ended up being the ladies missing kitten and she spent 4 months in the hospital for massive sepsis and other related issues.
Imaging guy here. I have a million of these, I work with vascular patients and wounds. Had a guy whose foot was completely broken sideways at the ankle. he had it still wrapped from when he left the hospital. He would use the stumpy part to move around on his wheelchair and leave little blood sponge prints on the floor.
Another guy with bad ankle and foot wounds decided to stop going to wound care, and was afraid to take the wraps off even after his foot started to stink. By the time I saw him his skin had kinda liquified.
Earlier on in my career I saw a guy with necrotizing wounds to both legs that had eaten to muscle in multiple places below the knee. I asked him how long they looked like that and he said about two years. Next time I saw him he was bilateral above knee amp.
Stump wounds. Just… Stump wounds.
Take care of your feet people. If you’re diabetic and can’t feel the bumps and scrapes please check your feet regularly.
Was working in A&E a few years ago. The witching hour was upon us and a man came in looking in some discomfort. He had a delicate issue in his nether regions. He was very embarrassed so off we went to a cubicle where he told us that he had fashioned himself a not-made-for-purpose cockring out of a large metal nut. Unfortunately there was no venous return possible and his p*nis had become oedematous (swollen) and painful. He thought (hoped) it might subside but then it started turning blue. By the time we saw it it was extremely swollen and turning black. If he thought he was saving himself embarrassment by waiting, he thought again when we called the fire brigade to bring their large cutting instruments to free his strangulated member.
EDIT: the urologist said he would keep his piece but may suffer functional problems in the future…
I had a patient come in who was blind in one eye. He’d waited a week to get to the ER. If he’s come in when it happened we could have saved his vision. He was too scared of the cost and thought it may go away on its own.
This happens all the time…. People have a big stroke at home and can’t move an entire side of the body. They wait several days thinking it’s a flu or something. Nope, not the flu…. Just a large clot in the brain that could have been reversed if you came in right away.
I’m a PA in ortho, working in hand surgery at the time. Patient says he had a wrist replacement a number of years ago, and has a hole in his wrist. I figure he has a small draining sinus. He comes in, first I see his X-rays which looks like he has a massive contracture. Not ideal, but not uncommon. He has coband on his wrist which I peel off to see a 3X6cm hole in his wrist opening directly on his implanted wrist replacement, specifically on the poly insert that allows the two portions of the implants to glide on one another. He said he noticed the hole about 4 YEARS AGO and when it got so large he finally decided to see someone!!!
Once had an older lady call in wanting a prescription for pain meds because she was sure she had shingles. Said her neighbor had them and she was sure that’s what it was. She hadn’t been in for an exam in almost 2 years, so the doctor asked that she come in to be evaluated before a prescription could be given. She refused and called again the next day asking for a prescription. This went on all week. Her calling for pain meds, the doctor asking her to come in to be seen. She finally agreed to make an appointment. It wasn’t shingles. It was a skin ulceration from advanced breast cancer. :(.
Work in the ED as a medical student. Had a guy the other day who let a leg infection get worse for years and when he finally came in his infected leg was at least 4 times the size of the other one and was draining copious amounts of foul-smelling pus.If the infection had been seen earlier, he would have just needed antibiotics. Because he waited so long, he’s going to lose the leg, if not his life.
Doctor here, might be a bit late and will probably be buried but had a 65 year old dude who was diagnosed with lymphoma 8 months before we saw him. He lived an hour out of the city and didn’t want to drive in for treatment so decided he wouldn’t get treated at all and stayed on his little remote place in the country by himself.
Essentially, because it didn’t get treated, it spread along his skin and his neighbors called an ambulance when popping in on him.
It had spread so far that it essentially went from his head to his knees. It had started to invade his eyes and mouth membranes. He couldn’t drink and could barely see. His skin had started to slough off and he was so severely dehydrated because he was losing so much excess fluid from his open skin that we had to treat him like a severe burns patient and had plastics involvement.
The consultant said if he had received treatment, there was a chance he could have recovered. Instead he died 3 weeks later.
Nurse here. Had a patient come in due to pain in her chest four months after having a mastectomy. When we changed her dressings the site was so infected that I could see her lung inflating when she took a breath. She died a week later. Still don’t know why she didn’t come in earlier.
Note: this post originally had 66 images. It’s been shortened to the top 45 images based on user votes.
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