Hospital Stories.

[Drix D'Zanth]

Well, some of you know I'm on my way to becoming a full fledged physician. And evblen less of you know that I have been working as an ER Tech at the local hospital during the summers for the experience, and money for college. I?ve traded my fair share of stories with people I talk to every day and figure maybe it would be fun to trade stories on OB, so.. here?s my attempt.

Do you have any unique, interesting, good, bad, horrific, hilarious experiences involving hospitals or medicine in general? Here?s your opportunity to joke/vent/share them.

Here?s a few of my ER stories (I?ll save some of the best for last):

-I?ve seen 5 abulances come in during the night shift when we were pretty understaffed, they were all involved in the exact same auto accident so the injuries were pretty horrific. The most interesting part of the night is that all 5 lived. (we had to send 2 to emergency cardio surgery)

-I?ve seen a few chests cracked open? not for the queasy, that?s for sure. Basically they saw apart the sternum and it pops right open, you can see all the parts in there moving. The guy lived, too (a rarity when they need to do that).

Funny: - I was working in triage (where they ***** ER patients before admitting them) and a little boy walked up to registration. When the registration clerk asked for the chief complaint (the clerk was still in the orientation phase, really new. Note this.) the kid vomited all over the desk and floor. The clerk ?claimed? he saw blood in the vomit. Well he freaked out and called a ?code blue?. A code blue is basically a cardiac arrest, so about 6 nurses, 2 staff doctors, myself and another tech came running out to see what was going on (wheeling a stretcher, cardiac defibulator [shocking thingy] and everything) to see a little boy staring up at them. The little boy looks at the nearest nurse and whined ?my tummy hurts?. We teased that clerk for a good week afterwards.

[Brasil]

Drix, remember, you asked for it, lol.

[spoiler]The night was April 1, 2002. I say "night" because it was probably after midnight. Yes, April 1st. I know, I know. April Fool's Day. April 1st was probably the most significant night/morning of my life. The topic that I'm replying to here is about Hospital Stories, so the cause of my hospital (ER) visit is inconsequential. I'll just say I did something very foolish whilst driving an automobile.

The Emergency Room is an alien place. Very few people, without actually having been admitted there, or worked there at length, realize just how otherworldly the ER is.

After my crash, I was rushed to a local hospital, into the ER, with pretty heavy gauze wrapped over my forehead, preventing me from scratching my left eye, as there probably was glass in there and as we are all aware of, scratching a glass-infiltrated eye will do nothing but wreck your eyeball. I'm brought into the ER, and placed on a simple hospital bed.

After a few seconds, a nurse hurries in...an old black female nurse. Normally, I don't have a problem with anybody, especially old black women, but when said old black female nurse starts preaching to me, in her Southern accent, warning me of the dangers of Hell and the punishment for suicide, I get a bit pissed, lol. But, I can't say anything for a rebuttal, because it wouldn't have been Kosher. So, I keep my mouth shut. Grin and bear it, as they say.

After this horridly annoying woman is done with her religious self-puffing, she leaves. I don't even remember her doing anything helpful regarding any medical care...I just remember the preaching and that's it.

She leaves and in walks another nurse who was going to draw some blood. Here's where I start freaking out. I can't take needles, at all. They scare me half-to-death. Honest truth. Considering all that I went through up to that point, and what I'd experience after that point, a simple blood test was nothing. Yet, I came close to hyperventilating, which apparently would have altered the results of the blood test, giving the appearance that I was on drugs. Not a good thing, to say the least. I managed to get myself under control a little bit, but it was really the nurse and my parents who got me to calm down.

After the blood is drawn, another nurse enters, this time to stitch my eyes up, I think. You'd be amazed just how much blood can come out of a simple gash on the eyelid, eyebrow, or nose. I laid there, half seeing the fluorescent lights clearly, and the upper half through a murky haze of gauze, then the gauze was removed, and the nurse warns me, "Okay, now I'm going to inject some [insert name of novocaine-type agent here] into your eyelid. It's going to dull the sensations there so I can get those wounds closed."

We all know what novocaine in the gums feels like. We're all aware of the weird sensation afterwards, when we can't feel our chin and such, but it's something else when that numbness is spreading over your eye socket and cheek bones. There wasn't any pain when I felt the needle go back and forth; I really couldn't feel anything except the tickle as the stitching tugged through my eyelid.

After I'm stitched up, I'm told I can get up to wash myself off. The gauze is now removed, so I can see...sort of. I stand up, a bit unsteadily, and more or less walk in the vague direction of a bathroom, with my dad close behind me. I reach the bathroom, and flip on the light. Keep in mind, that the last time I saw myself in a mirror was a few hours prior, when I was cleaning the bathrooms at Boston Market. I flip on the light switch.

I realized one thing there. There is such a thing as a walking corpse.

My clothes--my Boston Market uniform, the shirt of which is normally a forest green, is stained a deep crimson. There is absolutely no hint of green anymore.

My pants, normally dark blue, are spotted bright red.

My navy blue sweater jacket can't be seen for the blood and dead leaves, which have also intermingled themselves into my hair.

My hair is usually a dark brown; it was bordering on rust-colored.

An entire half of my face was red. Some of it was sticky; some of it was dried. Some of it was somewhere in between.[/spoiler]

I think I'll end my post there.

[Raiha]

[COLOR=MediumTurquoise]So there I was, with a broken collar bone, sitting in the waiting room and watching bad sitcoms. It'd been an hour since my dad drove me to the hospital and I was bored. And in pain. And kind of in a sort of fog. When they asked me how the pain was on a scale of 1-10 I said:

"....gah?"

Anyway they had me wait in a room that involved a box of needles [sitting right next to me] and a Defibrillator [also sitting right next to me]. Then I heard the wailing and retching of the children in the next room and started bawling like a baby. ....two hours pass.

A man and a nurse come in. The man sits on the bed next to me while the nurse [male] sews up his hand, which was diced with a box cutter. The nurse gives him a speech about how important family and education is. Then the man with the diced hand calmly informs him that he's the father of two girls, has a beautiful wife, and works as an engineer.

In the third hour I was asked if I was pregnant, if my father was my husband, and if I was on the Pill. Let us all remember that I am, at this point, 15. Repeat this scenario, only in the x-ray room. With a much younger technician. A much hotter technician.

He tells me to lie flat on my back. I said:

"Haha, you're not funny."

He made me do it anyway. I felt something shift in my shoulder. Clavicle didn't like it. I didn't either. Then, he took a few shots, I sat around, and cursed him in all foreign tongues. Next I waited.

In the fifth hour the doctor came back and said there was not much he could do besides brace it and write me a perscription for Vicoden. I snatched the paper and fled. ....mostly because they had already tried to give me some with stale crackers and nasty milk. ....and my stomach had revolted, empty though it was.

I spent the rest of the evening heavily drugged, wishing for a gun, and wondering what the hell it was with me, rollerblading, and my dog that had resulted in my current situation. .....I concluded that I needed to spend more time in front of the computer instead of outside. And I also reasoned that if I had been horribly bleeding as well as sporting a broken collar bone, I would have been treated much faster.[/COLOR]

[ChibiHorsewoman]

[color=darkviolet]I'm afraid mine aren't nearly as good as any of yours...give me a month and I'll have a real good one. Maybe even one involving a C-section.


So far my best one is I was on this medication back when I was nine or ten. The stuff was supposed to be kind of rough on your heart so every two weeks I had to go in for some thing where they stuck suction cups to my chest and monitor the rythm.

Well, the technition who was doing the test on me this one time didn't do it right, but he didn't know it. So after the first time he ripped the suction cups off of my chest and I had these red spots on me. Then I had to go back and have it done all over again and the technition slapped the stuff back on my chest and after the test was done correctly he ripped them off again. I looked like a dalmation

Yeah I know, not bloody and gory, but hey, prior to next month the closest I've come to stitches was when I was 3 and stepped on a peice of broken glass. The ER guy only gave me a buttefly bandadge.

Actually, I think I have a slightly better one than the above two stories.

Back after christmas in 2000 my now mother-in-law had a grand maul seizure. That was some scary stuff...but not the whole story. My husband and his battle buddy were up here on Christmas Exodus (the military has strange names for things) well, we were all in ER and Kyle (Lincoln's BB) starts coughing real bad so someone from emergancy decided to check both of them. Turns out that they both had broncitis. [/color]

[BlueYoshi]

[color=teal]My seven year old cousin broke her arm and was listed to sit in the waiting room with me and my brother until further notice. She kills time by screaming and jumping around while speaking her stupid first language just to annoy me. My face starts to glow red and my left eye starts twitching inconsistently. I have a seizure and fall to the ground. I get rushed into the infirmary, instead, I die. The end.[/color]

[Eli]

I remember breaking my wrist while playing football on the school playground (3rd grade). The ball snapped my hand backwards as it hit. That was amusing, since I couldn't move my fingers n' stuff. The doctor seemed to have a problem with stating the obvious when I visited him.

"Hm, it seems you have a broken wrist."

Gee, thanks. I would've never guessed. :rolleyes:

But anywho, there was this other time when I was attacked by my ex. He n' his friends were arrested n' crap, and I was taken to the hospital by my friend. After passing out, I wake up in a hospital room to see my arms, legs, and thigh stitched up. Then I saw my friend waving her hand in my face, calling out my full name and teasing me. She told me how I had slept for nearly three days and all. Fun fun.

Whelp, that's basically the biggest injuries of my life. *Shrugs*

[Corey]

[size=1][i]September Thirteenth of 2003, circa 12:05 pm[/i]
The minivan I was riding in is struck by a white pickup from the left side. We are in the right side of an eastbound highway with no median strip. Our minivan loses control and crosses the median. The cruisecontrol being engaged, my mother with leg disabilities is unable to slow the car down. We slam into a Lincoln Navigator at about 60. He is also going about 60. Several injuries occur, but no deaths (Drix, you'll appreciate just how rare that is. Six people in a headon crash at a total of 120 mph with no deaths whatsoever).

A series of extremely depressing and lifeshattering events occured in the next few minutes, including [spoiler]hearing the screams of my mother who suffered a total of a dozen breaks in both of her legs as she is pulled from the twisted hunk of metal and plastic that used to be our minivan by paramedics that couldn't seem to be able to find the morphine, the cries of my sister as the sits there with a shattered upper mouth (months of braces and reconstuctivce dental surgery follow), and the thoughts that tumble from my mind as I keep thinking "It's just a dream, wake up Corey. Wake up. It's not fun anymore. Just wake up..."[/spoiler]

I was transported to the ER and there I layed for five hours, not knowing if any of my five family members were ok or not. After I gave my statement to the cop, I was given my glasses to put back on. When I did, I found that my vision was horribly impared. Everything was extremely spotty (not something that was there before). It turns out that when we crashed, my head hit the side window I was next to hard enough to shatter it without any outside trauma. I had a medium concussion and damage to my visual cortex that is never going to heal. The spottyness has gotten better, but it's not gone.

Imagine the five people you are closest to. Now imagine not knowing if they're alive or dead for five hours. Imagine the emotional stress you'd go through.

Now fastforward twentyfour hours [spoiler]when you see your mother in another ER with giant rods screwed into her leg bones because they're not going to cast her shattered legs. They want to do surgery, but before they go in there and put the bones together one shattered piece at a time, they need an OR. And all of those are currently BUSY! So imagine what it feels like to see your mother in a drugged haze, barely realizing who you are, with gigantic traction rods in her body.[/spoiler]

Go ahead and try. I'm sure many of you will fall far short...

EDIT- I just re-read what I wrote... Sorry if that offended anyone. Some wounds don't heal. I guess I needed to vent...[/size]

[Raiha]

[COLOR=Purple][SIZE=1][FONT=Palatino Linotype]Pacific Imaging: May 2003

I am 17. I started my finals for my junior year and am surviving the horror of high school life, destructive relationships with boyfriends that turn into rapists, and otherwise braved the perils of it all when I remember that I have had a lump in my right breast since I hit puberty. I ignored it, then I decided to see a doctor on impulse.

My doctor sends me to the aforementioned X-ray radiation therapy place to get a ultrasound and mammogram. I'm 17. I don't want a mammogram. Mammograms are for women 40 and over. I don't want an ultrasound. Ultrasounds are for pregnant women and weirdoes. I don't want to hear that the lump is growing, vascular, and admit that it's been secreting a yellow liquid for years. But I especially don't want to learn that I have one year left before it goes malignant and takes over my body. The mammogram was one slow pain-fest. The pain was dull, achy, it just dragged on. The nurse said to me while tightening up the plastic plates that were squishing my chest:

"Tell me when it hurts." She smiles blithely.

"Now," I manage to squeak.

"Okay." She tightens it a few more turns and then says,

"Don't breathe."

Click. WHRRRRRRRR. Click.

"You can breathe now." I exhale and whimper to myself. This is a nightmare. This isn't happening. I can't have breast cancer. I'm 17. I don't want to die. My grandma had it and she didn't die. What if it comes back and she dies? What If my mom gets it and she dies? What if I die? What if I die?

Outpatient Clinic, Washington Memorial Hospital. First day of Summer Break. 2003.

"Hi D'Ann. Ready to get cut open?" A tall, good looking black man leans down and smiles at me. I look at him through a haze of tears. Mostly tears of fear and denial.

"....do you get paid to be annoying?" He grins and squeezes my arm to find a vein.

"Yep. Do you like needles?" I stare at the ceiling. I hate my life.

Poke. ...prod.... Poke.

"OW!" I look down. Something is sticking in my hand. Something is sticking in my hand. A needle. TWO NEEDLES?!? I go into conniptions.

"Okay, now that we've got that taken care of, we'll get you some Valium." He walks off.

"You're going to dope me up. Wait. Dope? Drugs? ....is this legal?" It's amazing. I've finally gotten some good news. They're going to make me a happy Raiha. Ecstatic even. Nah, that's stretching it. He comes back.

"I'm sorry, we seem to be out of Valium. We've got some knock off stuff right here for you that'll do the same thing." I don't even acknowledge this.....then I crack and say:

"Will it hurt?" My eyes get big. I am a lump. A gibbering idiot. A wuss.

"Oh yes, terribly." I utter a moan, then feel, to my great surprise, exquisitely happy. He lied. I didn't feel a damn thing. And then, for some reason, there's this purple haze collecting around my vision. I look up. My anesthesiologist looks very much like Jimi Hendrix. I sing the song. He shakes his head. Or is that his head? It's hard to tell. I see an afro. Or a guitar.

They wheel me down the hall, then they move me magically onto something flat with bright lights. I see that I'm in a crucifixion position and they're ...strapping me down maybe? It's hard to tell, every thing's purple and really really bright.

"Is this legal? Are you going to crucify me?" I hear some laughter. Or is it simply a roar of applause? Hard to tell. Someone's prodding my face. Or is it my boob? I can't tell. But I am sooooooo happy.

"Oh yes, it'll be horrible." There's a bunch of pretty white people, and Jimi Hendrix too. That didn't make any sense.

"...Am I talking too much? Just slap me." I feel so happy it isn't right.

"Oh we can't slap you, we'd get fired." One pretty white face seems to be having a great time.

"So you want to slap me?" I feel very comfortable. Like I'm about to sleep. Sleep. That'd be nice.

"Great honey, what'd you give her?" I probably gave them all a blank look. But then, they probably weren't looking at me. Were they?

"Hey Raiha, how are you doing?" Something tall and fuzzy has just walked into the room. In retrospect, I think it was my boob specialist.

".....huh?" ....BLACK.

I wake up. I wish I didn't. My breast aches. I don't' move. A nurse walks over and gives me some pills. I meekly swallow them then meekly throw up. Oh yes, that's right. I don't have anything to throw up. Somehow, magically, I make it into the recovery room. I have no idea what I'm doing here. I should be asleep. And nothing should be hurting this bad. What is it with these people? I'm 17. I'm not in the mood for this stupidity.

I go home, I move on, I don't touch my aching chest, or those painkillers they keep shoving at me. Then my boob specialist [the tall fuzzy thing] takes off the bandages and I see 12 titanium staples lodged in my right nipple. So much for my perky pretty little size 32As. They're massacred. Broken. Screwed up. So much for nursing a child. That's out the window too. With all these pleasant thoughts running through my head, a shy and competent nurse plucks them out one by one. I bleed. I say...I feel faint. Then I remember fainting is too white for words. Then I save them in a little baggie and go about my business of having fun. The Darvocet is still in a pill box in the medicine cabinet and has probably lost its potency. I never took any of them. .....what's the moral of the story?

Don't do drugs.[/FONT][/SIZE][/COLOR]

[Mord_sith]

wow that is tradgic ((Sp)) well i realy dont have a story like that but there was this one time me and my sister (we were about 7,8 (my sister) ) and we were playing sea diving. well we didnt have a sea in out back yard so we were jumping off a trailer and i thought i would be smart and crawl up the lip of it and jump off. well i dont really remember what happened after that but suddenly i was hurtling towards the ground a shooting pain flew up my arm.

my dad and mum ran outside when they heard me screaming and dad bundled me into the car and away we went to the hospital.

i waited for like 2 hours then sniffing and snivleing my way into x-ray and they then had to try out 101 diffrent ways to put my arm and cause me as much pain as possible.

it turned out that i had a broken arm and i got a red (cast but i wanted a yellow one) ((dads choice)) and noone was allowed to sign it and then i wasnt even allowed to keep it after it came off

[MarkAnthony]

About 3 years ago I was in Quarantine after being bit (possibly stung) repeatedly around my upper leg and...erm... other areas, whilst I was abroad swimming, it caused my body to have a huge reaction and the whole area swelled up.
It was sorted after being pumped full of drugs for a week but it was funny (and scary) watching people come in dressed like someone who works in a nuclear power plant.
On a lighter note I was checked out by a nice looking young female nurse, and because I was swelled up I was like 'yeah its always that big' xD


Another story; My dad and my uncle still swear they saw the grim reaper or some spectre when they were in the hospital and literally ended up running away after walking away apparently had no effect, im not sure of the full story because my dads generally not a believer in things paranormal, but it did shake him up.

[Gavin]

[SIZE=1]Well I've got not gruesome stories like those that have been give but I might as well give the ones that I experienced. As part of my previous High School's curriculum for Fourth Year we had to do two one-week placements for Work-Experience thanks to a friend of the family I got to do my second placement in my local hospital. It was arranged that I'd observe and in cases work in each of the main sections of the hospital, Physiotherapy, Cardiology, Hospital Laboratory, X-Ray and Ultrasound.

Anyway I started off the Monday of the week in Physiotherapy and was introduced to everyone before getting a Lab-coat and told to go watch one of the physiotherapists working. We got to Med-Ward 3 which is the newest ward in the hospital and go to work, in the space of I'd say 45 minutes I helped perform physiotherapy on maybe 6 people with bed-sores, not pleasant stuff but it felt good to help people. I remember just before we were about to finish up for lunch an old man in a bed across from where I wasd sitting called out Doctor looking at me, I felt embarrassed at first but the guy I was working with gave me a pat on the back and told me I was made for the job.

I don't have any stories from the Lab as I was forced to sit and do nothing most of the time except read Medical Journals which although fascinating didn?t make up for the lack of "work experience". My work in Cardiology or perhaps they could be described as escapades due to their comic nature was one of the most fun parts of my work. I remember we were working with an E.K.G. machine taking head readings for the guys back in Cardiology to examine and diagnose off of, anyway there was this one particular patient and the small patches that we attach the leads for the machine to wouldn't read his heart. Now this guy had a lot of hair cover which made it difficult for the patches to stick so we ended up having to rip them off, I was standing at the E.K.G console with the guy's son and we were in fits of laughter as he yelped at the patches having to be ripped off. If memory serves we went through about 30 of those patches before we got a proper reading, I was fit to drop after laughing so much.

When we were in the X-Ray department I was responsible for feeding files into the computer for each person who was to use the X-Ray machine. While I was there just after lunch I remember a young kid no more than ten was brought in for an X-Ray on his hand, he'd been playing Hurling and taken a shot with the sliotar to hand (the equivalent of a shot from a base-ball after being hit by the bat). His fingers were bent back completely and I remember having to calm doing the kind while we took the X-Rays on his hand, he was lucky in the fact there was no permanent damage but I remember it freaked me out a little.

Ultrasound was just weird, it was like X-Ray except I didn't have a clue what I was looking at on the monitor, the girl I was working with was saying things like "There's the heart and there's the lungs" and I was like "Oh right I see..." though quietly I was like "what the hell am I looking at ?". I remember that just as I signed off for my last day in X-Ray and Ultrasound there was a guy on a gurney in the hall waiting to go into Ultrasound, I was told I could head off since I wasn't need so I went off. The following day we had to get the same guy's E.K.G. and I walked in and found out he'd died during the night, it was one of the worst feelings I'd ever had. I knew I couldn't have done anything but I still felt like **** for ages.

Well that's the extent of my stories...[/SIZE]

[Panda]

I have many, many stories, both funny and frightening from veterinary medicine, but I will stick to the human ER stories. I am a walking insurance agents nightmare. I've broken several bones, had a finger amputated and several cuts that required numerous sutures. Today, I am going to share an embarassing story.

When I was 14 years old I had a severe allergic reaction to some medication. While in the emergency room with my father the ER doc was asking me questions. The ones you expect to hear. Have you had a reaction like this before? What medications are you currently taking....then he asked me if I was sexually active! My poor father fell out of his chair! I am sure I turned bright red from the embarassment. The answer was no, but still when you are 14 and with your father that is really not a question you want someone asking you. :laugh:

[Vash IDK]

I have so many horrible experiences with doctors. But I'm only going to share one. And the worst. It doesn't end happy.

My Aunt was overweight, and lately, she had been having these pains in her stomach. She went to the doctor for help, and he told her she needed to put herself on a better diet. Well, knowing she was overweight, she knew he was probably right. So she did everything right. She ate better, she walked more, but the pain wasn't going away. In fact, it was getting worse. She returned to the doctor, but she was told that there was nothing he could do for her because she was so fat. Well, she wasn't the aggressive type, so she didn't complain anymore. But we found out later she was still in pain. We finally made her go to a gynocologist, (hope I spelled that right ;) ) where she found she had Ovarian cancer, and it had spread everywhere. She said that if the first doctor had run some tests earlier, they would have caught it sooner. Her cancer spread, and when they brought her in for surgery, they found that she had lost so much weight on the diet. the weight she had was because of the cancer filling her with fluids. They had JARS full about 4 I believe filled with fluid. And when we saw her, she was 110 lbs. She went in for chemo, but we were too late to save her. She died fighting for her life. And we could hav saved her if we brought her to a gynocologist sooner. She died at home because she was sick of doctors. And that was the worst night in the world. I still remember holding her hand as she tried to talk to me. But she didn't have the strength to speak. My mother woke up later that night to her dead, and blood was spilled everywhere. She had bled after she died. It was the worst thing to see. And I can't say I can ever trust doctors again. At least without getting a second person's opinion.