Doctors Share the Best Excuses They’ve Heard From Patients With Something Stuck Wayyy Up Yonder

I have a good friend who’s a nurse and he told me that people come in wayyyyyyy more than you’d think with things stuck in their butts that need to be removed.

Ouch!

And the excuses? They usually sound like total bullshit, as you can probably imagine.

So let’s see exactly what’s going on out there.

AskReddit users shared their painful stories.

1. Let’s try something new.

“Had a guy with a screwdriver up there (handle first).

He was honest. Said the wife wanted to try something new.

Why the screwdriver? Something shaped like a dick would have been gay.

I always thought that was a real weird place to draw that line.”

2. Walking awkwardly.

“Guy comes in, walking kinda awkwardly.

Doesn’t take a seat.

When it’s his turn, he’s called up to triage and again, refuses to sit.

“What brings you in today?” I said.

“I.. uh…. I’ve lost a glass. You know, like a tumbler.”

/Shuffles

“Ok. So, why are you here?”

“Well, we had a party that got out of hand last night. I was cleaning the house this morning and I noticed one of my drinks glasses was missing. And I think it might be up my ass.”

That’s it as far as explanation, but sure enough, there it was on x-ray. Rim-side first, so after it disappeared up his asshole, it basically filled itself with shit.

Now, any time people that know the story ask if I’ve seen something they’ve lost, I ask if they’ve checked their asshole.

3. This is what happened.

“Guy came to my hospital with a cue ball stuck in his rectum. Said him and his wife were having sex and this happened. Made no excuses and showed no shame.

ER doc was unable to remove it with forceps and he had to get anesthesia to have a minor surgical procedure to get it out. My job was basically to just go through a pre surgical check list and send him on his way. When I’m done he shouts excitedly ‘Alright, let’s get this ball rolling!’

I almost died laughing. It was near the end of my shift and I always wonder what happened to him. I’m sure he did fine and is back to having amazing kinky sex with his wife.”

4. Ouch!

“Guy told me he was constipated so he stuck the broom handle up there to break up the poop. I almost believed him.

It was half of a broom handle, cut off and wrapped in electrical tape.

All the way inside…”

5. Fun with Barbie!

“My brother was a triage nurse and examined someone that came in with a barbie doll up their arse….

Don’t know if they were male or female though.”

6. That sounds…terrible.

“My sister is a surgical nurse and a guy came into to the hospital with a pool noodle shoved up his ass. It was so deep that they had to cut open is abdomen, intestines and colon to cut the foam out of him.

He said he “fell on it” while swimming nude. But when they cut him open it had a condom stretched over the end of it.

When they confronted him he said “please don’t tell me wife”.”

7. Back in med school…

“I went to med school in the deep south.

Burly, middle aged southern gentleman showed up in the ED. Chief complaint: rectal pain. After a full history, and physical examination couldn’t ascertain the case of his pain other than him saying “feels like something’s up there,” we decided to start with some X-rays.

Before we obtained them, he says: “Alright I’m gonna be square with you. I was walking down the street, minding my own business, when these thugs jumped me out of nowhere, and held me down and stuck a cucumber up my butt. Please you got to get it out.”

I immediately went to get my attending. One surgical consult and G.I. consult later, a cucumber WRAPPED IN A CONDOM was extracted from this man’s rectum.”

8. Loads of stories.

“Friend is a stomach surgeon so always gets called in to pull things out of arses.

He has loads of stories but the one I remember is a guy who had a glass ketchup bottle up his arse. He’d claimed to have returned home with his grocery shopping, realised he’d lost his key so put shopping down and attempted to climb through a high window.

He slipped, fell backwards arse-first onto his groceries and SHLUM! The ketchup bottle just shot up his a-hole. (Ignore that guy was presumably not naked at time).

After removing it at the hospital, my Dr friend said ‘Thats strange. The ketchup you bought is only half full.’

I think the worst thing is that it suggests he was gonna eat the rest of it another time.”

9. Sounds painful.

“A light bulb.

You could always tell when someone came in to the ER with something lodged in their rectum because everyone would be standing around looking at the X-ray. It was still in perfect light bulb shape.

I have no idea how the patient got it up there without breaking it.”

10. If you loved me…

“Had a patient who showed up with his soon-to-be ex-wife. They were “reconciling” at a nearby motel. She convinced him that if he loved her, he would let her put a dildo in his ass. Only it wasn’t a dildo, it was her vibrator without a flared base.

Rule number one of anal play is make sure that it has a flared base. Rule number two is nothing sharp.

The whole thing went up there and he couldn’t get it out. I had to take it out under anesthesia. She felt awful and was crying the whole time. He was a very blue collar, normal dude and she was dressed in very fancy clothes.

An unlikely match in my mind. He was just happy that they were at my urban hospital and not the uppity town about 15 miles away where they lived.

I often wonder what became of them and their marriage.”

11. I don’t remember…

“A glass water bottle in his ass and he’s desperately trying to find an excuse (not one would really ask at that point actually ) he finally said: I don’t remember who put it there.

Couldn’t you just fell from some stairs or something?”

12. Very interesting…

“My friend is a nurse.

She told me about a guy who came into her ER. He claimed to have fallen out of a tree and a branch went right up his ass. They x rayed him and he had this perfectly round wooden rod up his ass. When they removed it they saw that it was sanded, painted and primed.

That branch must’ve come from a genetically modified species of tree lol.

Do you have any particularly embarrassing medical stories?

If so, please share them with us in the comments.

We can’t wait to hear from you!

The post Doctors Share the Best Excuses They’ve Heard From Patients With Something Stuck Wayyy Up Yonder appeared first on UberFacts.

Doctors Talk About the Different Excuses They’ve Heard From People With Objects Stuck in Their A**

Imagine walking into the emergency room and having to explain this kind of problem to a doctor…

That would be totally humiliating.

But it happens. A lot. Probably way more than any of us realize.

Let’s check out these TRUE stories from AskReddit users.

1. I slipped.

“My mom told me about this one when she was doing rounds in the ER.

Guy came in with a bottle of Worcestershire up his butt. Said he was making a sandwich in the shower and slipped and fell on it.”

2. Honesty…

“I have the worst, but possibly the most honest response I’ve gotten.

I was an EMT and ran a call at a methadone clinic. She was a 28 year old female who had possibly OD’d. When we got there she was sitting on the ground completely naked.

My captain asked what was up her ass to which I responded quickly as “trashbag sir” For some reason there was a contractor bag jammed right up her anus. My captain ordered me to remove it and it felt like I was a magician pulling a bunch of napkins out of a dove, or whatever magicians do.

She looks at me without a word. Until I asked her why there was a trash bag up her ass, at which point she responded ” we didn’t have a condom”

This was my second week on the job.”

3. Disgusting!

“I once had to take a guy to the OR to remove a cucumber from his rectum since it had migrated up further than could be extracted manually.

I don’t remember his excuse, but it had been in there for more than a week and when we took it out it had started to pickle…”

4. Air freshener.

“20 years ago, an ex was an ER nurse. A guy came in with a Magic Mushroom air freshener stuck up in there. He was embarrassed, and did not even attempt to explain it.

She said that when the doctor got it out, he said “Funny. It doesn’t smell pine fresh?” And everybody laughed. I am kind of surprised that didn’t lead to a lawsuit.”

5. Wow…

“RN here.

Had a Jehovahs Witness gentleman admitted to ICU with his bowels perforated. States he had constipation so he decided he needed a cleaning. He happens to do pipework so he hooked some pipes up to the hose then inserted the other end in his rectum to just give it the ol’ swish and dump.

Burst his colon from the pressure and/or the hard pipe crammed up his butt. Unfortunate thing was he needed a blood transfusion but oops, he’s a Jehovahs Witness so no go. I learned then that they actually send a group of people to the hospital to watch you and make sure you don’t stray from your faith.

I always wondered what he told them….”

6. Lost count…

“I’ve lost count how many rectal foreign bodies I’ve removed.

But there was this one kid, well teenager. He got a AA battery stuck up his butt. Told his mom that he had been experiencing constipation and thought his butthole was just too small for the poop to get through, so he was trying to dilate it with the battery.

Umm… yeah… OK.

The kicker was that his mom completely bought this story, and she’s there telling me how this whole thing happened to her precious, innocent son.”

7. Happy holidays!

“A Christmas tree.

Not a doctor, my dads coworker had to have an artificial Christmas tree removed from his ass. Getting decorations off the attic, floor fell through, and he crashed through the ceiling and straight onto the Christmas tree.

He had to be airlifted to the hospital. They said the pressure from his jeans getting rammed up there when he fell is probably what saved him from bleeding out. No I don’t know how far it went up there and I don’t want to ask.”

8. It was still on!

“Friend of mine was doing an ED rotation as a medical student and they had a guy come in around 8pm saying he’d internalized something and couldn’t get it out.

They did the triage and asked him to sit down in the waiting area until a doctor was available. For the next few minutes there’s a really strange humming sound every now and then – which they eventually figured out was because the vibrator was still on.

Turns out usually people wait for the batteries to die before coming to hospital, but this fellow had to pick his wife up from the airport at midnight and didn’t have time to wait.”

9. Let’s get to the truth.

“One claimed that he was assaulted and the perp stuck up a dildo up his behind after the attack. He wouldn’t admitted foul play until we were going to call police.

The second one claimed that “he accidentally fell on this candle cup stand (the most common excuse used by these people).”

10. Attached.

“I was a student at the time working in the ER when medics brought in a couple “attached” to each other.

According to them, they were at a pool party when 1) the lights went out 2) as they were swimming around in the dark, they both felt something “crawl” up their asses…Anal beads. One end in the female, the other in the male.

My friend thinks the reason behind this story is because BOTH their significant others were in the waiting room…”

11. Wasn’t paying attention…

“Not a physician yet – still in medical school. On a shadowing rotation, a young woman came into the ER with a cucumber up her butt. When prompted why and how it got there, she responded with “I wasn’t paying attention while I was cooking”.

Her boyfriend had a different story…”

12. Don’t do drugs.

“Mom worked in admitting for the ER.

Guy came in with flashlight stuck.

She asked why he had done it and he said “well, I was on drugs and it seemed like a good idea. Sober me disagrees”.”

13. I’m not buying that…

“Just last week, my patient said she swallowed a toothbrush as a teen, 20 years ago, when asked about the toothbrush in her colon.”

Now it’s your turn!

Have you ever had to admit something totally embarrassing to a doctor?

Or maybe you are a health professional and have heard some real doozies in your life?

Tell us all about it in the comments!

The post Doctors Talk About the Different Excuses They’ve Heard From People With Objects Stuck in Their A** appeared first on UberFacts.

Doctors Talk About the Different Excuses They’ve Heard From People With Objects Stuck in Their A**

Imagine walking into the emergency room and having to explain this kind of problem to a doctor…

That would be totally humiliating.

But it happens. A lot. Probably way more than any of us realize.

Let’s check out these TRUE stories from AskReddit users.

1. I slipped.

“My mom told me about this one when she was doing rounds in the ER.

Guy came in with a bottle of Worcestershire up his butt. Said he was making a sandwich in the shower and slipped and fell on it.”

2. Honesty…

“I have the worst, but possibly the most honest response I’ve gotten.

I was an EMT and ran a call at a methadone clinic. She was a 28 year old female who had possibly OD’d. When we got there she was sitting on the ground completely naked.

My captain asked what was up her ass to which I responded quickly as “trashbag sir” For some reason there was a contractor bag jammed right up her anus. My captain ordered me to remove it and it felt like I was a magician pulling a bunch of napkins out of a dove, or whatever magicians do.

She looks at me without a word. Until I asked her why there was a trash bag up her ass, at which point she responded ” we didn’t have a condom”

This was my second week on the job.”

3. Disgusting!

“I once had to take a guy to the OR to remove a cucumber from his rectum since it had migrated up further than could be extracted manually.

I don’t remember his excuse, but it had been in there for more than a week and when we took it out it had started to pickle…”

4. Air freshener.

“20 years ago, an ex was an ER nurse. A guy came in with a Magic Mushroom air freshener stuck up in there. He was embarrassed, and did not even attempt to explain it.

She said that when the doctor got it out, he said “Funny. It doesn’t smell pine fresh?” And everybody laughed. I am kind of surprised that didn’t lead to a lawsuit.”

5. Wow…

“RN here.

Had a Jehovahs Witness gentleman admitted to ICU with his bowels perforated. States he had constipation so he decided he needed a cleaning. He happens to do pipework so he hooked some pipes up to the hose then inserted the other end in his rectum to just give it the ol’ swish and dump.

Burst his colon from the pressure and/or the hard pipe crammed up his butt. Unfortunate thing was he needed a blood transfusion but oops, he’s a Jehovahs Witness so no go. I learned then that they actually send a group of people to the hospital to watch you and make sure you don’t stray from your faith.

I always wondered what he told them….”

6. Lost count…

“I’ve lost count how many rectal foreign bodies I’ve removed.

But there was this one kid, well teenager. He got a AA battery stuck up his butt. Told his mom that he had been experiencing constipation and thought his butthole was just too small for the poop to get through, so he was trying to dilate it with the battery.

Umm… yeah… OK.

The kicker was that his mom completely bought this story, and she’s there telling me how this whole thing happened to her precious, innocent son.”

7. Happy holidays!

“A Christmas tree.

Not a doctor, my dads coworker had to have an artificial Christmas tree removed from his ass. Getting decorations off the attic, floor fell through, and he crashed through the ceiling and straight onto the Christmas tree.

He had to be airlifted to the hospital. They said the pressure from his jeans getting rammed up there when he fell is probably what saved him from bleeding out. No I don’t know how far it went up there and I don’t want to ask.”

8. It was still on!

“Friend of mine was doing an ED rotation as a medical student and they had a guy come in around 8pm saying he’d internalized something and couldn’t get it out.

They did the triage and asked him to sit down in the waiting area until a doctor was available. For the next few minutes there’s a really strange humming sound every now and then – which they eventually figured out was because the vibrator was still on.

Turns out usually people wait for the batteries to die before coming to hospital, but this fellow had to pick his wife up from the airport at midnight and didn’t have time to wait.”

9. Let’s get to the truth.

“One claimed that he was assaulted and the perp stuck up a dildo up his behind after the attack. He wouldn’t admitted foul play until we were going to call police.

The second one claimed that “he accidentally fell on this candle cup stand (the most common excuse used by these people).”

10. Attached.

“I was a student at the time working in the ER when medics brought in a couple “attached” to each other.

According to them, they were at a pool party when 1) the lights went out 2) as they were swimming around in the dark, they both felt something “crawl” up their asses…Anal beads. One end in the female, the other in the male.

My friend thinks the reason behind this story is because BOTH their significant others were in the waiting room…”

11. Wasn’t paying attention…

“Not a physician yet – still in medical school. On a shadowing rotation, a young woman came into the ER with a cucumber up her butt. When prompted why and how it got there, she responded with “I wasn’t paying attention while I was cooking”.

Her boyfriend had a different story…”

12. Don’t do drugs.

“Mom worked in admitting for the ER.

Guy came in with flashlight stuck.

She asked why he had done it and he said “well, I was on drugs and it seemed like a good idea. Sober me disagrees”.”

13. I’m not buying that…

“Just last week, my patient said she swallowed a toothbrush as a teen, 20 years ago, when asked about the toothbrush in her colon.”

Now it’s your turn!

Have you ever had to admit something totally embarrassing to a doctor?

Or maybe you are a health professional and have heard some real doozies in your life?

Tell us all about it in the comments!

The post Doctors Talk About the Different Excuses They’ve Heard From People With Objects Stuck in Their A** appeared first on UberFacts.

Health Care Professionals Talk About People Who Came in With Objects Stuck in Their Butts

That was a terrible accident!

I don’t know how that got there!

Where am I?

Doctors hear all kinds of bogus excuses and stories, particularly when it comes to things that ARE STUCK IN SOMEONE’S ASS.

And yes, these things apparently happen all the time.

Are you ready to be entertained?

Let’s take a look at these stories from folks on AskReddit.

1. OH MY GOD.

“A college friend who is an OR nurse said the best thing she ever witnessed was a small snow globe with the message “World’s Greatest Dad” on the inside.”

2. Love triangle.

“Saw someone with a remote control stuck way up in their colon. She said she was “getting herself ready,” for anal sex with her boyfriend and then it got stuck.

The kicker was that she showed up to the hospital with her boyfriend AND her husband in tow!”

3. Mom!

“My ex is a ER nurse.

One night she sent me a pic of her computer of what she was working on. 16yo male brought in by his mother. Shoved a sausage up his ass and “lost” it. Imagine the embarrassment of telling mom … hey mom. I lost a sausage in my ass. Can you take me to the ER.

Fuckin kids.”

4. Come on, buddy…

“Had one guy tell me he slipped on a banana peel and landed on the upright vase on the floor.

He then proceeded to produce a banana peel for good measure.”

5. Holy sh*t.

“When I was a student working in an ER a guy came in with an unraveled wire hanger stuck and hooked up there.

He said he was trying to fish out the vibrator he lost.”

6. Hello?

“Guy came in with a cordless phone up his ass, like one of the old-school ones from 15 years ago.

He said that when he was in the kitchen bending over opening the oven door, someone threw it through his open window and it just went right up.”

7. An accident.

“It always boils down to the person “accidentally” sat on it.

The best my dad saw – a former emergency doctor – was a young guy who “accidentally” sat on a giant tub of vaseline. Accidentally.

I asked how doctors record that in their patient files, and the common way to do so is to say “the patient claims to have sat on x object.””

8. Don’t do that anymore, sir.

“Had this elderly guy come in with a cucumber up there. First month of residency, so my attending asks why did you put that up there? Guy, dead normal, says “well it was just like every Tuesday. I woke up, made some coffee, and sat on a cucumber.”

Stifling laughter my attending just said, “sir you shouldn’t do that anymore.”

He says “ok.” We removed it and never saw him again.”

9. That’s messed up.

“ER nurse: “I tried to dig something out of my ass with a BBQ skewer.”

Skewer got stuck. Ripped a hole in his intestines. He waited so long to come in he was septic. One STAT OR visit and an ICU stay later, “please don’t call my mom”.

Guy was tripping hard on LSD.”

10. Still telling jokes!

“Guy puts a vibrator (one of the massive cordless wand types) waaaaay up there, like a mega seed, and it gets sucked into the sigmoid colon.

When he gets to me in the ER I ask him how he was feeling. He answered, “well doc, I’m way better since the batteries died.”

Made my night.”

11. Honestly is the best policy.

“”I stuck it up there on purpose and now it’s stuck. Please help”

It was a perfectly honest and valid reason for have something stuck up your ass, and we helped. No further questions needed.”

12. I went to investigate.

“Presented at ER in Sydney with carrot stuck in the arse. Doctor: “What happened?”

Patient: ” I heard a noise in the garden. Went to investigate. Slipped and fell over. Carrot went up my bum.”

Doctor: “Carrots grow upside-down out your way huh?””

13. Naked gardening.

“Mostly bottles or vegetables. The aubergine was the biggest but potatoes and carrots seem to be popular.

Ketchup, mayo and glass cola bottles were common at one point. Also one butt plug and a toilet brush.

The last two were honest and very distraught. Others all had naked gardening stories.

There’s an even worse question you haven’t asked which is for things people have shoved up their urethras, only men in my experience.”

Okay, now it’s your turn!

In the comments, tell us about some embarrassing medical stories that either happened to you or that you know about.

Please and thank you!

The post Health Care Professionals Talk About People Who Came in With Objects Stuck in Their Butts appeared first on UberFacts.

Chinese doctor Jiang Yanyong…

Chinese doctor Jiang Yanyong, who exposed the cover-up of China’s SARS outbreak in 2003, was barred from traveling to the United States to collect a human rights award. He spent several months in custody for his efforts.

15 Amusing Tweets About Going to the Dentist

When I was young, I was terrified of going to the dentist. TERRIFIED. I still don’t necessarily enjoy it, but I don’t lose sleep over it and almost have a nervous breakdown in the weeks leading up to my appointment anymore. Mostly.

The dentist really has the power to elicit some incredibly strong responses and opinions…so let’s look at the evidence.

1. Flossin’ all night.

2. Yassss, Queen!

3. Might make things a little easier.

4. You’re good to go!

5. You’re doing it right.

6. It’s a give and take relationship.

7. I want to hear this…

8. I feel this tweet in my soul.

9. Nailed it.

10. Look away!

11. I’m kind of a big deal.

12. Not gonna happen.

13. It’s HELL.

14. You do you.

15. I can’t imagine why…

How do you feel about going to the dentist? Do you dread it? Do you love it?

Let us know in the comments!

The post 15 Amusing Tweets About Going to the Dentist appeared first on UberFacts.

15 Doctors Admit the Biggest Mistakes They’ve Ever Made in Their Careers

Doctors are only human. That means, among other things, that they are fallible, and they will make mistakes. Most of us try not to think about that fact too hard when they’re in charge of our lives, choosing instead to believe that the statistics are in our favor.

Which they totally are, usually!

And if you want to continue feeling good about that fact, you might want to avoid these 15 confessions.

15. Sort of a happy ending.

Pathologist here. Biggest mistake I ever made was cutting myself during an autopsy on an HIV patient. Lucky for me, I did not acquire the virus, so everything had a happy ending. (For me, anyway. That guy was still dead.)

Edit: Thanks to whoever gave me gold for fucking up at my job.

Edit 2: I am going to personally fillet the next person who says “relevant username”.

14. This is just heartbreaking.

My brother is a surgeon, and during part of his residency, he had to work in the pediatric unit. He was working with two newborns. One was getting much better and fighting for life. He was going to make it just fine. The other baby was hours from death. He wasn’t going to make it. My brother was in charge of informing the families. My brother realized about 15 minutes later that he had mixed up the families. He told the family with the healthy baby that their baby wasn’t going to make it, and he told the family with the dying baby that their baby was going to be just fine. He then had to go back out to the families and explain the situation to them. How devastating. To be given a glimmer or hope and have it ripped away from you not even an hour later. That was most upset I’ve heard my brother. He felt destroyed.

13. She almost killed someone.

In health care, we make mistakes. At every level from the top to the bottom, mistakes get made, and you just try to keep them as infrequent and minimal as possible.

When I was a student rotating through OB/Gyn, and I wrote an order for a woman’s post-partum continuation of magnesium sulfate, as she was pre-eclamptic ante-partum. I was super careful, because I knew what could happen with magnesium toxicity, and double-checked the order with the resident afterwards.

The nurse, instead of hanging one bag of mag-sulfate and another of I forget what, hung two bags of mag-sulfate, one of which she slammed into the patient over a minute, instead of slow-infusing over 12 hours.

The woman told the nurse she didn’t feel right, and the nurse poo-pooed it. I happened to be walking by, and stopped in to see what was up. There they were, two bags hanging, both marked in a bright red warning label. We called for the fast response team.

They, and my team, got there in time and took over, but she still went into respiratory depression and ended up in the ICU.

We all make mistakes, some of which are dangerous. I’ve absolutely made my fair share. I’ve missed diagnoses, or tried to save patients from a trip to the ER and they’ve ended up in the ER anyway, just later. As long as you recognize your mistake and make an effort to improve afterwards, and it wasn’t too neglectful / egregious, I understand.

But I reamed the nurse when I overheard her laughing about the incident like she hadn’t just almost killed someone. I don’t know what she thought, getting told off by a rotating student, but I was pissed at the time.

EDIT: ICU, not ER.

12. Get some sleep, y’all.

My parents are nurses. They knew a doc who’d been on a 36 hour shift. Patient came in with a punctured lung (I think) and the doc had to collapse the lung to fix whatever was wrong with it.

Through tiredness he collapsed the wrong lung, and the patient died. Doc ended up killing himself after being fired.

Don’t burn yourself out.

11. You never forget them.

Doctor here. I assume we mean medical errors and not general life decisions. No comment on life decisions. For medical error, I will not use a throwaway because I strongly think we should feel free to disclose our mistakes in order to improve quality and learn from each other.

My first week of my intern year (year one outside of medical school, when you’re on call overnight and all that, AKA “Season One of Scrubs”), everyone “signs out” their team’s patients to the doctor on call overnight. So that doctor (intern, with an upper-level resident also present overnight to supervise) is covering many patients they hardly know, maybe 60 or more. The situation was that a patient with dementia, unable to really communicate with people and clearly ‘not there’ but conscious, arrived from a nursing home with I think some agitation as the original complaint.

Basic labs ordered in the ER show the kidney function is worse than usual, which could be due to many things, but what really MUST be distinguished is between ‘not enough blood pumped forward to the kidneys and rest of the body’ (e.g. heart is failing and it’s backing up into the lungs) VS ‘not enough liquid in the blood TO flow’ (e.g. due to vomiting a lot or something). This is critical to distinguish because for the first you give medicine to make them pee out the extra liquid, and in the second you give more fluid. Either treatment for the opposite problem is catastrophic. Fortunately it’s usually easy to distinguish ‘wet’ from ‘dry’, based on listening to heart and lungs, chest x-ray (is there ‘congestion’ evidence?), blood pressure and heart rate (tend to drop BP and raise heart rate upon going from laying down to standing positions if you’re too ‘dry’), looking at neck veins while sitting up at an angle (they bulge if too ‘wet’), and so on. This patient was unable to cooperate with exam, answer questions, and the X-ray was sort of borderline (unchanged from the last x-ray maybe several weeks ago). My resident instructed me to sign out the patient with instructions to continue a 500mL saline inflow, then re-assess to see whether the patient looked more ‘wet’ or less ‘dry’. I signed this out, and forgot to make the order to stop the saline after 500mL, so it ended up running slowly in all night. The intern on call (also first week as doctor) forgot to re-assess at all or shut off the saline if it had been noticed because so busy with new admissions. We’d also ordered 3 sets of ‘heart enzymes’ meant to diagnose a heart attack, one reason for a patient suddenly getting ‘wet’ (i.e. heart pump failure), since the EKG was not interpretable (had a pacemaker which makes it impossible to tell). Lab fucked up too, because hospital policy was that if the first set of ‘heart enzymes’ was negative, apparently the 2nd and 3rd sets, each traditionally spaced 6-8hrs later to catch a heart attack if it starts to evolve and become detectable by blood test, were both cancelled.

I came in and first thing in the morning checked on this patient, who was screaming things nobody could understand and the nurses had chalked up to dementia and agitation. I checked the labs and saw the second and third heart enzymes hadn’t been done. I went to the bedside and saw the IV fluids still running. I immediately ran to the overnight intern, who said things had been so busy and nobody had called to notify that things were wrong. We stopped the fluids, immediately got a heart enzyme test, learned this patient was by now having a massive heart attack made much worse by the addition of IV fluids all night to this frail failing pump. I can’t get the screams out of my head, and cried a lot and was pretty depressed for a few weeks at least after this. The patient died because the status ended up being decided as not to resuscitate based on what the nursing home had on file, although no family members were known at all. This patient was totally alone, and spent the last night of their life in physician-induced agony. But I acknowledge the failure of two interns, the nurses, and the lab. Ultimately the blame fell on the lab and I think someone was fired, but I made clear to everyone that I felt to blame and wanted quality improvements made to prevent future errors, or at least catch them early if they happen. That’s I think the best you can do when you make a mistake.

There’s a Scrubs episode where as I recall at the end there’s a brief scene where the ghosts of dead patients representing medical errors follow around the physicians like little trains. It’s very poignant, but I can’t find the clip. That’s what it’s like though.

10. Terribly sorry, but I’m a member of the family now.

Not a big mistake but definitely awkward at the time. I was gluing up a lac on a 14yo girls forehead. Anyone who has used dermabond before knows that stuff can be runny and bonds very quickly. I glued my glove to her face. Her mum was in the room, and I had to turn to her and say “Im sorry, I’ve just glued my glove to her face”

9. That’s a doozy.

I’m a nurse, but I was working in the ER when a guy came in for a scratch on his neck and “feeling drowsy”. We start the usual workups and this dude’s blood pressure TANKED. We scrambled, but he was dead within 10 minutes of walking through the door. Turns out the “scratch” was an exit wound of a .22 caliber rifle round. The guy didn’t even know he’d been shot. When the coroner’s report came back, we found that he’d been shot in the leg and the bullet tracked through his torso shredding everything in between. There was really nothing we could’ve done, but that was a serious “what the fuck just happened” moment.

8. She doesn’t blame you, but…

As a very young doctor in training I misdiagnosed a woman with epilepsy. Some years prior she had sustained a gunshot wound to the frontal area, damaging the underside of one of her frontal lobes and severing an optic nerve to one of her eyes, as well as some of the muscles that rotated that eyeball. Surgery saved her life but the frontal lobe was scarred and the eye was blinded and always pointed down and at an angle away from her nose.

A few years after that she began having spells of a bizarre sensation, altered awareness, a pounding in the chest, and she had to sit down, stop what she was doing, and couldn’t speak. These were odd spells and I assumed she had developed frontal lobe epilepsy from the scar on her brain. Increasing doses of anti-seizure drugs seemed to work initially, but then the spells came back.

A couple years after my diagnosis her endocrinologist, who treated her for diabetes mellitus, checked a thyroid. It was super-high. The spells were manifestations of hyperthyroidism. She drank the radioactive iodine cocktail which ablated her thyroid, got on thyroid replacement therapy, and felt well thereafter. No permanent harm done and she was able to come off the anti epilepsy drugs.

She was obese – not the typical skinny hyperthyroid patient – and if she developed thyroid eye disease, I couldn’t tell because her one eye was already so messed up. I see how I screwed it up. but in retrospect I have never been sure what I could have done differently, except test her thyroid at the outset of treatment. Hence, a lot of patients – thousands – have had their thyroid checked by me since then. Every so often I pick up an abnormality and it gets treated.

The lady was an employee of the hospital where I trained and I ran into her one day;she gave me a hug and let me know how this had all gone down. She made a point of wanting me to know she didn’t blame me “because I always seemed to care about her and what happened to her.”

I think about her, and how I screwed up her diagnosis and set back her care, almost every day. I am a much better diagnostician now but I always remember this case and it reminds me not to get cocky or be too sure that my working diagnosis is correct.

7. Talk about high stress.

PharmD here. Couple different quick stories.

Heard of a pharmacist who filled a fentanyl patch incorrectly and the dose was so high that the patient went into severe respiratory depression and died. They’re still practicing.

Worked with another pharmacist back in the mid 2000’s when I was still a tech who filled a script for Prozac solution (concentrated it is 20mg per mL. Average adult dose is 20 mg.) instead of 1 mL once daily he filled it for one teaspoonful (5 mL). The child got serotonin syndrome and almost died. He is no longer working to my knowledge.

6. Take a closer look.

Someone else tragically lost their life years ago but the incident saved my sister’s life about 10 years later.

Several years ago, my sister and I were in a car accident. I had visible injuries, she did not and was walking around without any problems, so we thought. Nine days later, she was preparing dinner, began to feel ill, vomited and then passed out. She was taken by ambulance to the hospital emergency and after talking to my brother-in-law for only a couple of minutes, he rushed my sister into surgery and removed her spleen immediately, it had ruptured in the accident but was a slow bleed.

My sister was in ICU for a couple of weeks but survived and is in good health today. Later, the admitting trauma surgeon said he recognized what was happening because of a mistake his college professor told the class she made as a surgeon years earlier.

A teenage boy had fallen from a cliff and hit rocks below, other than being bruised he was fine so did not seek medical help. Seven days later he was brought unconscious into ER, where the college professor was working as a surgeon at the time. She and her team were not able to quickly identify his symptoms of a ruptured spleen that had happened 7 days ago. The teenage boy died about an hour later.

She was always sure to share this particular incident with her students, thus saving my sister’s life when one of her former students (my sister’s doctor) showed up to class that day!

5. I mean at least he lived.

I missed a gunshot wound once. A guy was dumped off at the ER covered in blood after a rap concert. We were all focused on a gunshot wound with an arterial bleed that was distracting. The nurse placed the blood pressure cuff over the gun shot wound on the arm. We all missed it because the blood pressure cuff slowed the bleeding.

I was doing the secondary assessment when we rolled the patient, and I still missed it.

We didn’t find it till the chest x-ray. The bullet came of rest in the posterior portion of the thoracic wall without significant trauma to major organs.

The patient lived. But I still feel like I fucked up big time.

4. Sometimes messing up plays in someone’s favor.

This thread is pretty depressing, so i’ll lighten it up a bit. A few months ago, I accidentally ran a creatinine test on a patient when a comp metabolic wasn’t ordered. It turns out that the guy was in renal failure, and no one knew. He was about to go in for surgery ( I believe it was a bypass, but could be wrong), but I got the results in in time to stop them from putting him under. Shit could have been messy. I’m glad I screwed up, and I’m sure he has no idea that he could have died.

3. It just slipped out.

Not me, but my mom. She just retired as an ob/gyn and she told me about a time early on in her career when, while not a real medical mistake, she still almost ruined the operation. She was performing a c-section I think, and she dropped her scalpel on the floor. Before she could think, she blurted out “oh shit” as a reaction. The mother, thinking something was wrong with the baby, started panicking. It took a team of nurses, the husband, and the mother of the patient to calm her down.

Edit: This was very early in her career, and she practiced for another 25 years without major incident.

2. As simple as that.

My grandmother has had diabetes for about 20 years, and takes a handful of meds to help control it. About 10 years ago, she developed a persistent cough. It wasn’t bad, she said it felt like a constant tickle in the back of her throat.

She went to her doctor to find out what was going on, and he ordered a battery of tests concerned that she was developing pneumonia, lung cancer, etc. All the tests came back negative, so he prescribed a cocktail of pills to help combat it. Over the span of 5 years, she had tried about 35 different meds and none helped.

One day when she went it for a routine check-up, her normal doc was out and she saw one of the on-call residents. He looked at the barrage of pills she was on and asked why. When she explained, he replied, “Oh, the cough is a side effect of this one particular drug you’re on to regulate your insulin. If we change you to this other one, it will go away.”

1. Something you never want to see.

As an ICU nurse, I’ve seen the decisions of some Doctors result in death. Families often times don’t know, but it happens more than you’d think. It usually happens on very sick patients that ultimately would have died within 6 months or so anyway, though.

Procedural wise, I have seen a physician kill a patient by puncturing their heart while placing a pleural chest tube. It was basically a freak thing as apparently the patient had recently had cardiothoracic surgery and the heart adhered within the cavity at an odd position. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he came to the realization of what had happened. You rarely see people accidentally kill someone in such a direct way. Heartbreaking.

This isn’t making my distrust of doctors any better?

Are you a doctor? Has a doctor made a mistake with you? Tell us the story!

The post 15 Doctors Admit the Biggest Mistakes They’ve Ever Made in Their Careers appeared first on UberFacts.

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