Doctors and nurses are trained to be calm under pressure and keep their cool when lives are on the line. They witness pain, suffering and lives cut short, often on a daily basis. And when the shift is done, many are expected to go home to their own families with their emotions intact.
But even the most seasoned medical professionals have experienced cases that cut through the clinical detachment like a hot knife through butter: haunting and heartbreaking scenes and stories that will live with them for the rest of their lives.
Perhaps it’s a “what if?” or a diagnosis that came way too late for an innocent, little girl. Maybe it involves the emotional weight of hearing a mother’s blood-curdling screams after being told that both her twins didn’t make it. It could be the sadness of witnessing an elderly person passing away with no one at their side, or the helplessness that lingers long after the room is empty. Whatever the reason, doctors and nurses are left with emotional scars that can’t just be stitched up quickly in surgery.
Someone recently asked medical professionals, “What is the one case from your career that still haunts you to this day?” and some of the replies might leave you heartbroken. Others could send chills down your spine.
Bored Panda has put together a list of the top stories for you to scroll through while you ponder your own immortality. We also explore how nurses and doctors cope with the daily trauma that they face. You’ll find that info between the images.
#1
I was a nurse at an assisted living facility during covid. We had the whole place locked down for over two years (no family or visitors allowed). One resident in particular was a ray of sunshine and adored by all staff and residents alike. She was slightly delayed mentally, not a ton, like lived in a group home most of her life, but mostly for reasons like needing help paying bills and applying for jobs and whatnot. This meant that she was probably the youngest one there (late 60s) and physically in great health. Her childlike innocence and humor really kept the place upbeat. Then we hit the covid lock downs and she was absolutely miserable and cried a lot. Every day, she would ask when she would get to see her family. It was heartbreaking to have to tell her everytime that it would be awhile yet. She went through the whole lock down without ever leaving (except for occasional appointments) or seeing her family.
The day the lockdown lifted, she was the happiest person I’ve ever seen. She could finally leave to see her family. She got dressed up for the first time since the lockdown started, and made sure everyone in the facility, including residents, knew that she was finally going to go have dinner with her family. We sent her off with a smile.
The next day, we found out that at the very dinner that she waited two years for, she had choked and passed away. The facility felt lifeless for awhile after that.
Image source: Present_Ride_3845, freepik
#2
I had a patient whom I nursed for 11 months. He had cancer that eventually spread. He was in the same room, the same bed, for 11 months. I was his nurse 3 or 4 days a week for those 11 months. I got to know him, his wife, his children.
He finally died at about one day at about 10am. It took me and his wife two hours to pack up all the things he had accumulated in that room over those 11 months. It took another hour for housekeeping to clean his room.
An hour before my shift ended, I admitted a new patient into his room.
That was the day I finally understood what happens after we die. We clean the bed and admit a new patient. .
Image source: Thenumberthirtyseven, The Yuri Arcurs Collection
#3
I’m a dentist, so not a real doctor, but…
There comes a patient with swelling and pain on the lower jaw on a place with no teeth. I examine him, make an incision, drain the pus, antibiotic and OPG (orthopantomogram). There’s this impacted wisdom tooth – we extract it, everything fine. 9 days later he calls me, he’s still bleeding (didn’t even mention it for the whole 9 days!), heard a pop. Turns out he fractured his mandible. So CBCT (scanner) and something’s fishy. I get biopsy – tumor. Metastatic from his lungs (according to the doctors), his whole body was lit up on the PET scan.
I guess he has a few months to live. I feel pretty bad. There’s nothing I could have done but being part of the whole process was really stressful. That happened last month, so it’s still very quite fresh.
Image source: BGDaemon, prostock-studio
#4
I have a few that haunt me in the horrible way, so how about one that haunts me in the lol wtf way.
So this older lady comes in with a general complaint of illness. Nurse gets her sat down in the room and starts asking her questions. The lady says, “Well, I have branches growing out of me down there.”
Long silence. The nurse asks some clarifying questions and eventually has to type into the medical record, “chief complaint, branches growing out of v****a.”
My friend, the NP, went in and eventually found out that this woman had a vaginal prolapse several weeks ago, and one of her neighbors, upon hearing of her woes, suggested stuffing some potatoes up into the hole as some sort of folk remedy.
And there those potatoes had remained for weeks in a nice dark, damp location, which meant they obviously started sprouting. Thus the “branches.”
Potatoes were removed, and she was given a non-potato treatment for vaginal prolapse and told not to stuff potatoes up the nethers again.
Image source: MissionApostate, beststudio
#5
My doctors answer would be:
27-year-old female, was previously never diagnosed with anything, not even a broken leg. Started to complaining about feeling wrong in her body, constantly constantly so tired, she could barely keep awake, while she was cooking dinner. Her hair is falling out, she got black dots flashing for her eyes, and she’s constantly feeling a bit unwell, like in the beginning of a cold. Besides from this, she feels nauseous.
The patient got too small kids at home.
The patient have now contacted the doctor numerous times, and walked out the clinic with the words “ are you sure this is not something in your head?” you’re absolutely fine.
Fast forward a couple of months, the patient returns with a lump in her breast.
She gets an ultra scan. Again, she’s told nothing wrong.
At this time the patient is starting to feel very embarrassed when she calls her doctor, who is visibly irritated at her.
Now it’s nine months since she had the ultra scan, and she now feels a new lump in her breast.
She returns to the doctor, and demands to go to another clinic.
Six days after, she lays on the table, getting scanned and so that she got stage four breast cancer, three lumps in her breast, and it’s spread to the lymph nodes.
Luckily, I am still here today. 10 years has passed.
Thanks to myself, and my stubbornness!
If I did not return to the doctor again and again, my children would not have known me.
Sorry for the incorrect spelling or grammar, English is my second language.
Image source: iminlovewiththe
#6
When I worked in the ICU in my 20’s, there was a 32 year old mom of three with bone cancer that she had been fighting for a while. She was dying, so she had gone to Mexico for some experimental treatment, which did nothing and she came back worse. Her family was very religious and was continually pressuring her to fight because “it would be sinful to give up, and what would her daughters think that she didn’t do everything to stay with them?!?” She was in so much pain, the amount of narcotics she took in an hour would have killed me if I took it over the span of a day. The cancer was so bad that you could feel the tumors when you touched her and her skin would sometimes break open and bleed. She was in and out of the unit for about a year, and her family (husband and parents) was pressuring her to keep going with futile treatment. She was alone most of the time with us, in horrible pain, while her family visited in between living their lives. She was offered support to talk with her family if she wanted to change her mind about her care, but she didn’t want to go against them. Her husband had flown states away to attend a religious conference and her parents were out of town with her kids when she started imminently dying. The family tried to get home in time but she died with only us nurses at her side. When I turned 33, I thought about how I’m older than she ever got to be. I’m in my 40’s now and am still thinking of her. The way she died was cruel and it didn’t have to be.
Image source: Friedpina, freepik
#7
NICU nurse.
22 weeks is the age of viability (some places, including ours, have tried 21 weeks and had a success here and there) but this kid was a couple days old and a 23 weeker. Was stable and without any drips, intubated on a special vent for micros, and when I got report just slightly had oxygen a little out of range.
Time of d**th was called 10 hours later on the nose. Kid had gone massively septic and wouldn’t respond to pressors, fluid, antibiotics, etc. I had heard of sepsis in newborns that can be quick like that from older nurses but I hadn’t seen it yet.
We’d gotten the baby baptized per family wishes about 15 mins before the end came, despite the fact we still were doing everything to prevent it. I broke down after we called it and gave the kid to mom to spend the last few moments.
Came back to bedside a few mins later after I got my c**p together (shoutout to my coworkers who held it down so I could step away) and cried again when I saw him alone in the isolette. I played him some lullabies and dressed him in a tiny crochet blanket and hat and brought him to a private room with his parents.
I’ll never forget this child. He’s the only one who has passed that was MY patient, my assignment for the shift. And I struggled for months with anxiety afterwards any time I had a patient with lower oxygen or blood pressure because I had come to the cruel realization that sometimes your best just isn’t good enough.
Image source: Ecstatic_Letter_5003, EyeEm
#8
Christmas Eve night in ER . EMS calls with 2 school age burn victims. Arrived with 7yo twins that fell asleep under the Christmas tree waiting for Santa. Tree caught fire. Resuscitation was futile. Their pj’s had melted into what little flesh there was left. I can still hear that mother’s scream of despair and grief. That was 17 years ago and I think about them every year.
Image source: AmbassadorSad1157, margonikolskaya
#9
I’m not a nurse or Dr but I’m a phlebotomist at a hospital that has a lot of psych floors and the ER is like 75% psych related. D**g o*****ses (intentional s*****e attempts and accidental o*****ses), mental health emergencies, drunk/high patients, s*****e attempts, psychotic episodes, self harm, etc. I spend a lot of time on the weekends and on overnight shifts in the ER.
One day a patient came in, he was from an adult group home. He had COPD and tried to take his own life by overdosing on lithium. It completely f****d his neurological system. He was in so much pain but couldn’t verbalize it, couldn’t stop moving and shaking, was so confused and scared. I was there to draw his blood while his lungs were being suctioned and he was absolutely panicking. Trying to rip it out of his mouth, trying to rip out his IV. He had to be restrained. It was terrifying and heartbreaking to watch.
Had another o******e once that stuck with me for a long time. She was so young and no one knew what she took, she wasn’t found right away. A family member had called for a welfare check hours after she took whatever she took. She was awake but couldn’t talk despite clearly trying. I was only there for about 20 mins while they worked on her and I waited to get blood work, and then another 10 or 15 shortly after when I came back, and her condition deteriorated rapidly. Bruises started appearing on her all over, her limbs started turning purple. They put a catheter in her and her urine changed from normal to straight blood. It looked like her kidneys or liver was shutting down rapidly. They tried to sedate her but it didn’t work. Her body was shaking uncontrollably like she had neurological damage and she kept trying to tell everyone something but couldn’t get actual words out, and looked so scared. Her blood was flowing in such a weird way once I got the blood work, I’ve never seen blood flow like that before.
They had to intubate her without the sedation working and I can only imagine how scary and painful it was for her. The only words she got out clearly was the most pained “oh my god”. It gave me nightmares for weeks and I broke down crying on the drive home later that day.
Image source: Ordinary_Cattle, stefamerpik
#10
Nurse, had too many to count the worst ever
1. 2 year old who had been beaten within an inch of their life and dumped by someone who ran away afterwards and provided no info, survived but catastrophic life altering brain injury.
2. 16yo with fatigue studying for exams turns out they had liver cancer that metastasised to bones and lungs, died 3 weeks later terrified during the process.
3. Spontaneous second trimester m*******age in the toilets while I was in there with her.
4. Voluntary assisted dying patient I cared for as a new graduate nurse, looked after them for 6 weeks before they made the call to take the medication.
Image source: SoylatteRN, Drazen Zigic
#11
My ICU patient who was brain dead, waiting for the rest of her family to join so we could extubate. Every time her husband would come to her side she would lift her hands up off the bed without the average posturing forms in the most unusual way. I couldn’t recreate the responses when I tried and had a terrible feeling about him. Found out he was charged with the m*rder.
Image source: PumbaKahula, Anna Tolipova
#12
I was a labor and delivery nurse. Called to the ER stat. Some rich guy driving his laboring wife to the hospital like a bat out of hell in a Porsche. He was driving at least 100 mph when he tangled with a semi truck. The woman was killed on impact, and the infant survived but was in serious distress. Emergency c-section in ER to save baby. He did survive with severe impairments due to hypoxia. The worst part came with the woman’s post mortem. She was dilated to 2. He had all the time in the world to get her to the hospital driving like a normal human.
Image source: Lglo0301, wirestock
#13
2 cases tied together, same family. A little girl, G, was unrestrained in the front seat of mom’s car when it crashed. Mom was found to be at fault. G broke her neck. Paralyzed neck down. Trach, vent, feeding tube, straight cath, yet still alert, talking, learning, growing. 2 years later a boy, K, was unrestrained in the front seat of his mother’s car when it crashed. Mom was found to be at fault. K broke his neck, paralyzed from the neck down. Trach, vent, feeding tube, still alert, talking, learning, growing. These 2 moms are sisters that live in the same town. I met the boy as an infant when i was caring for the girl. I am angry about the first tragedy, i am beyond f-ing disgusted about the second.
Image source: nosyNurse
#14
I gut came into my ER with an “eye infection.” He was a hermit, living under a bridge and was not able to give me a good history. He just said it had been “leaking pus” for a while. I asked him to remove his homemade bandage and he revealed a probable squamous cell cancer. It had eaten all of the soft tissue of the lids. I was looking at the shriveled grape of his deflated globe sitting on the bare, eroded and necrotic bones of his orbit.
Image source: New_Section_9374, user25451090
#15
A mid 20s guy who was dying from the flu. Probably had only a couple more days left, we had him on every intervention there is. He was type one diabetic, but was unable to afford insulin. He was buying it from a veterinary supply store (the cheapest he could find) and still only using it about every 3 days when his sugars would get to the over 300 range.
That guy would probably still be alive today if we had reasonable health insurance in this country and could afford to keep his diabetes in check. It really was the turning point in my prioritization of universal Healthcare in a political candidate.
Image source: slippery_when_wet
#16
When I was in residency I went down to the ED for a trauma to intubate a guy who had been hit by a car. He was in his early 20s and a motorcyclist who was the victim of a hit and run. He had a severe head injury and came in posturing with an irregular gasping breathing pattern and was bleeding internally somewhere so blood kept sputtering from his mouth every time he exhaled.
I was at the head of the bed holding his Cspine while they did the initial assessment then we intubated him. Because of where I was, I was covered in blood from his breathing and I can still picture his face vividly. I saw a lot of traumas so that by itself may not have really affected me, but for some reason as I was heading back upstairs from the trauma bay I thought he probably has a Facebook based on his age (this was a few years ago). I found him pretty easily and his profile picture was him with his girlfriend and his family and I realized that none of them probably knew what had happened to him yet. He ended up dying later that night.
Image source: StrebLab
#17
Child a***e, shaken baby cases, “the I just left my baby with this guy I’ve been dating for 3 days” scenarios. Once there was clearly a boot print where the baby had been stomped, they didn’t make it…..those haunt me and at one point in my career I started drinking heavily to cope. After almost 30 years I had to step back from a level 1 trauma center and do routine things. I stuck it out longer than most but it eventually got too much to bear.
Image source: intothewoods76
#18
We had an old guy who fell at home and was laying there a few days before someone found him. No family, no living will or advanced directives that anybody could find. He was covered in pressure sores from being on the floor when he came in. His teeth were very badly rotten and then he lost a few during intubation. His mouth was a bloody gory mess. Definitely contributed to his poor nutritional status which made his skin so weak. Anyway he was severely septic and in respiratory failure, and he had nobody to speak for him. He was trying to rip everything out so his hands were in restraints. He was lucid enough to resist being cleaned and turned and to look absolutely miserable and in pain at all times. Ive never seen a persons mouth so wide open for so long. We have to do oral care every four hours to prevent pneumonia and he would shake so hard from the pain no matter how gentle we were. His sores weren’t healing despite being on a special bed and being immobile made him swell and weep fluid from everywhere. Eventually he died. I think about him a lot. This poor old guy who fell at home and then spent his last weeks tied to a bed being tortured by his caregivers because he had no family or documents to guide his care. It was obvious he wanted to be palliative but he couldn’t communicate and there was no legal way to deescalate care. He had a coworker who visited at first but he couldn’t handle it anymore and stopped showing up, I can’t even blame him.
If you or your loved ones have any medical care documents like a DNR or otherwise, please put a copy on the fridge in a labeled envelope. EMTs will always look there for such things and if they don’t find them then having them doesn’t matter. .
Image source: StevenAssantisFoot, DC Studio
#19
Trauma nurse here. The thing that has been giving me nightmares lately is very final destination. I have a lot of other things burned into my mind but this is fresh. I don’t share the really bad stuff, that’s locked away in a box and I don’t want to dig anything up.
Person was driving their car on the highway. Trailer hitch came through the windshield, contacted the patient’s skull, crushing it. Patient lived with a severe TBI.
So basically they were minding their own business and got hit in the face with a hitch at a high rate of speed. It crushed in the skull leaving them with bone fragments, meningitis, required plastic surgery. It’s bad.
Image source: Sometime_after_dark, The Yuri Arcurs Collection
#20
70 something old patient had a craniotomy (removed a part of the skull to relieve pressure on the brain) from an Intracranial hemorrhage.
Sometimes they have to be left out for a long time, to let the swelling go down. Usually people have to wear helmets because the brain is essentially exposed underneath the skin (no bone) until the bone is replaced.
Well, this patient got into a disagreement with their doctor over something and decided not to return to the hospital to get the bone replaced.
For 4 years.
This stubborn “just rub some dirt on it” “I’m fine I don’t need no doctor tellin me what to do” person just decided to live 4 years doing God knows what without part of their skull because they disagreed with their doctor.
By the time they came back in to the hospital, it was too late and there had been too much infection/ damage to the residual skin and bone that none of the surgeons would touch it.
TLDR; LISTEN TO YOUR NERUOSURGEONS! !
Image source: PaperCutsAndPolicy
#21
I’m an OR nurse. Young woman 20 yo came in with ruptured spleen. She was Jehovah witness and she and her family refused blood products. The surgeon tried so hard to fix her spleen before she ran out of blood. They pumped her so full of normal saline and lactated ringers that eventually the bleeding stopped and it was all just fluid. It was so hard to watch a young woman die before my eyes and know she could’ve been saved. This was 20 years ago. I think about it all the time.
Image source: NeeOfChalais, pingpongchaphoto
#22
I’m a psychologist so I don’t know if I count for what you’re looking for but I actually have a Psy D so I’m definitely a doctor.
During my residency we had a frequent flyer on the ward. It seemed like she came in every few weeks on average. She had pretty bad paranoid delusions and the medication would help but then she’d stop taking it. It was a pretty vicious cycle TBH. She needed full-time hospitalization in my opinion but it wasn’t my call. I realized that I hadn’t seen her on the ward in a few months towards the end of my residency and I asked the nurses about her. It turns out her delusions had gotten the better of her and she’d st*bbed her mom and little sister before harming herself. Both survived but she didn’t survive her self inflicted injuries.
I’ve always felt like if I’d pushed harder for her to be committed a little harder than I did that she might still be alive and we could’ve avoided the whole st*bbing her mom and sister situation. I know that I wasn’t in a position of power here, I was just a resident, but I feel like I should’ve pushed harder.
***Edit*** I’m humbled by the traction this has gotten and fascinated by where the discussion in the comments is going to go.
Image source: invisiblyold
#23
Nurse.
Im assuming you want bad cases. So here we go.
Im on orientation for icu. We got 2 icu patients. One of which was going to be transferred out the icu cause doing better.
Well we get a call that a new pt is coming and they are still actively coding the pt. Still doing arrythmia pushes and potential asystoles on monitor. Cool.
My preceptor says “ok you got these 2 patients i trust you, ill handle this burning hot pt and we will stay next to eachother if you need anything” cool.
I check my monitor and see my pt (the transfer) now has 2 pacermarks per beat whereas before pt was only 1. I go in the room just to check on pt, pt isnt responding. I do painful stimulus with yelling pt name, pt doesnt wake. I look up i hear alarms blaring, the montior showed no heartbeats just pacermarks.
The pacer failed couldnt revive her rhythm and since i was smart enough to check i could immediately start compressions. At the same time the crashing pt arrives who is now asystole as well.
The doctor was pissed “i cant be in both codes” so ER doctor arrives and does my code. The pt died. We had zero idea wtf caused it. Just sudden boom dead. Still lingers in my mind years later, as such i always tell my coworkers abit about my pts so they know oncase im busy what is happening so they can hopefully catch something.
I warn new nurses too that s**t happens nothing you can do but try your best.
Image source: Thefreezer700
#24
IM/PEDS still in training, 24h in the PICU, about 10pm we get a 5yo patient not seen for 17 minutes by parents found at the bottom of the in ground family pool. The patient was revived but did end up dying days later. Get home next morning and my wife and kids are swimming in the neighbors pool. Too tired and too much for me just broke down. It still bothers me and that was a decade ago. It’s always going to be the dead kids but that is the one that gets me the worst.
Image source: GibbsMalinowski
#25
During my psych rotation in med school we admitted a woman whose family contacted police because they were concerned that she was s******l. There were enough concerning signs that she was a danger to herself that she was involuntarily admitted to the psych hospital.
She was there for three weeks, the whole time denying that she wanted to harm herself. I saw her almost every day while she was there. After three weeks there wasn’t enough medico-legally to keep her involuntarily committed any longer, although her family was still concerned.
Within a few days of being discharged she killed her two young daughters and died by s*****e. I don’t know if hearing that news is the worst I’ve ever felt in my career, but it was the first time I got that gut punch of grief from a patient interaction, so it sticks with me.
Image source: maggied82
#26
Haunting (as in I’ll carry this with me for the rest of my career), but in a good way:
When I was a medical student, I had a patient come in with a full blown stroke – hemiplegia, aphasia, facial droop, etc. The stroke fellow I was with showed me how to draw up and push tPA (a “clot buster” medication), and allowed me to administer the d**g.
Fast forward a few days, and this patient had recovered nearly all of their function – some residual weakness, but fully able to converse and articulate themselves. As she was getting discharged, she looked at me and said – “You know what? You’ve been coming in and seeing me every morning for the past few days. You were the first face I saw in the emergency room, and now you’re the last face I’m seeing as I get ready to leave. I’ll never forget you.” She gave me the sweetest, most heartfelt hug.
She’s probably the reason why I’m happy and content going into the specialty I’m going into.
Image source: VorianAtreides
#27
Man,there are so many.
I work in obgyn and a relatively fresh case is a 35yo mum with 2 kids who was pregnant with her 3rd. She’d had long term reflux and vomiting, had an endoscopy the year before that was normal. When she gets pregnant, the vomiting gets do bad she can’t eat anything and she’s losing weight.
Initially it is treated as just severe morning sickness…but then someone does a scan and they find a thickening in her top stomach sphincter.
She gets a biopsy, and it’s cancer. A rare, aggressive one.
She has to make the choice to have chemo while pregnant and chance extreme preterm birth, after which she will likely die because her prognosis is so poor, leaving her husband with two kids and a third extreme premmie.
She chooses to terminate.
The kicker?
On her scope the year before there had been cancer on a biopsy. Nobody had followed up the results.
Image source: Dr_OTL
#28
Nurse here. I had a patient who had fallen and landed chest down onto a fence. Multiple rib fractures, sternal fracture. Constant chest pain due to their injuries. They were supposed to discharge the next day.
They complained about the chest pain overnight, but it wasn’t anything new for them. They’ve been receiving narcotics because the pain had been ongoing and pretty severe at times. However, they mentioned feeling anxious overnight and restless, couldn’t sleep. Anxiety also wasn’t new for them though, per my report. I did my last round at 6:30am and they were finally asleep. I literally remember thinking, “look how peaceful they look”. and quietly left the room.
By 8am after I had left my shift they coded, and it was a bad one. A long code with chest tubes placed, loss of IV access during the code, multiple IOs, the whole thing. I woke up to return to work and someone had texted me. Young person with kids, gone like that. I felt the guilt of knowing I was the last one to spend 12 hours with them.
Makes me wonder if I investigated their anxiety more, questioned their chest pain harder, would it have made a difference. I don’t know.
Image source: thediamonddoe
#29
Pressure injury on a neglected person. The family was supposedly caring for this person at home. The pressure injury was so deep and horrible that you could see the lower spine and hardware attached to the spine from previous spinal surgeries. The wound smelled like d**th. Person d**d.
Image source: FoolhardyBastard
#30
I’m an ER doctor. I once took care of a 40-something year old who came in to the ED after suffering a cardiac arrest. Per EMS, he was BBQ in his backyard with his family and kids and then just collapsed. I ran that code for over an hour without success. Had to talk to his wife and young kids that we couldn’t bring him back. He had no medical history. Not sure what the original cause was.
The traumas and freak accidents don’t really haunt me. It’s the sudden unexpected tragedies that do.
Image source: SwornFossil
#31
During Covid times, I had a patient in the ICU with very bad pneumonia not caused by Covid. She needed ECMO, but our hospital could not support it at the time, and all other hospitals were too full to accept a transfer. We did everything we could for her, but on my first assessment one day, I found her pupil blown. Stat CT showed a massive stroke. I was in my early 30s and she was exactly 1 month younger than me. I remember watching her husband and mom come to the bedside and cry over her, and suddenly I saw myself in the bed and my husband and mom in the room. They made the decision to transition to comfort care, and I watched her die. I’ll never forget her. She was one of the victims of Covid that never even had the disease.
Image source: grandma_cant_fly
#32
A woman who was a quadriplegic from infecting her cervical arteries and trached. Her son had her conserved and he was the one who had say whether she had any procedures/code status. Every day I took care of her she would mouth “let me die” over and over again. The son would tell us she didn’t know what she was saying and so we kept doing invasive procedures, dialysis, and multiple surgeries. It was horrible and I ended up leaving for a desk job because of how bad I felt. I’ll never ever forget the look on her face mouthing those words.
Image source: Ekluutna
#33
When I was working in the ICU, a woman in her 30s came in after being found down by her kids. Imaging showed a ruptured brain aneurysm which led to an anoxic brain injury. She had no family in the country other than her kids, the oldest being only 11 years old. DHR obviously had to get involved and social worker/hospital chaplain came up to help break the news that their mom would not recover. Hearing those children scream for their mother, not knowing if they would stay together… I think about it often.
Image source: silentsnoop_
#34
Obligatory not a doctor, but.
I work in mental health and before my current job I was in an inpatient unit. Once a month we had a barbecue for patients and staff, it’s usually a really fun day because it’s something different and breaks up the monotony. I was in the client kitchen handing out food along with a few other staff members when a patient came in to grab his juice out of the fridge. He was not a big talker, possibly due to his schizophrenia and autism diagnosis, so when he didn’t say anything that wasn’t a cause for concern. Suddenly he starts shuffling and it’s like he got stuck in the fridge. My workmates go to help him manoeuvre out of the fridge when suddenly he turned blue and collapsed. That’s when we realised he was choking. I remember making the call for the emergency team and slamming my duress. Our nurses and doctors were so wonderful and responded so quickly, but unfortunately the food was too impacted and too far down his throat for them to save him. He died on the floor of our tiny kitchen that I used to bake cookies and cupcakes with patients.
I had done so much work in supervision and therapy because I was getting a lot of intrusive thoughts about witnessing someone self-harming or trying to s*****e. I did not prepare to watch someone choke to d**th on a sausage in a bun. I think about his nana and how she would visit most days even though she was 82. She held so much hope for his recovery from his recent decline. I found out he had a daughter who had never met him. He was only a couple of years older than me, not even 40 yet. Even though I’m not medical the what ifs haunted me for a while. Not an experience I’m in a hurry to repeat.
Image source: grumpypotato17
#35
RN here. I worked on an oncology floor and got report on a comfort care patient who was actively dying. On assessment he was showing clear signs of distress, and I was surprised to see he didn’t have a continuous pain pump as most of our comfort care people would have. As I was wrapping the assessment with plans to contact the MD for pain meds, he reached out to me, like for a hug. I only stayed with him briefly because I wanted to get him pain relief asap. I didn’t think d**th was imminent; I thought I’d be caring for him all shift. In the 30 minutes it took me to go find a provider and get orders, this man died all alone. This was over a decade ago and I still wish I had just stayed by his side, given him a hug, and made sure he didn’t die alone.
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#36
New born baby with multiple chromosomal abnormalities that were not compatible with life. Palliative care was chosen and baby lived just short of 2 weeks. This was all very sad. But what sticks with me is that the baby’s mother was a 15 year old girl who had been r***d and impregnated by her own father. Just horrible all around.
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#37
I don’t know about haunting me for life but here’s one I’ve never forgotten. I worked as a CNA in a dementia unit.We had a wheelchair bound gentleman who started pulling the fire alarm set into the wall of the hallway by his room. Because this was a nursing home, every time that alarm was set off the fire department responded… quickly. Our gentleman started pulling it several times a day and often a few times in the evening as well, all day, every day. It didn’t take long for the fire department to lose any sense of humor they might have had about the situation and start leveling fines on the facility. Progressively bigger ones as time passed and our friend continued his trick in spite of numerous attempts to stop him. The staff was written up and upper management was going apes**t.We just didn’t have enough staff to have someone constantly monitor a single patient. Finally, someone thought to ask this gentleman WHY he was pulling the fire alarm. His reply was astonishing… he pointed to the dammed thing and very reasonably explained “ it says PULL “. It did, in big red letters three inches high. A simple piece of masking tape over the instructive word solved a huge problem. People with dementia aren’t exactly themselves anymore but they’re certainly far from stupid.
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#38
MH worker: worked with an adult who’s “parents” tortured her as a child. Like, literally physically and s*xually t*rtured her. She was impregnated several times by family members, and beaten until she m***arried, all by the age of 15. She managed to run away but then experienced homelessness and the traumas that come with that.
I am in the trauma field and I work with many others with similar stories. I see some of the darkest corners of humanity on a daily basis. I love a quote from Mr. Rogers that says “when something scared me, my mom would tell me to look for the helpers. There are always people who are helping.” It helps keep me sane to know that, even though humanity can be dark, there are people willing to help.
Edit to add: many folks I work with now are doing exceptionally well. They have homes, loving families of their own, and treatment that is working for them. That is also what keeps me hopeful.
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#39
Worked in developing country. Only surgeon in the hospital. Operated on a 6 month old who had been r***d. I will never forget that.
Took my time. Arrived too late back to the ER to save the rapist who had been attacked by the family. Not too sorry about that.
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#40
I did my medical training in India around 25 years ago. We final year trainees were “demonstrated” hydrophobia in a 17 year old male patient who had irreversible rabies. The consultant then stepped out to tell the mother to take him home. Her son would die in 72 hours, nothing could be done. I will never forget her agonized wail of shock and anguish.
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#41
I sat a 1:1 with our retired psychiatrist admitted with dementia/AMS.
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#42
4 year old run over by car. Patient came in alive, carried in his dad’s arms, as it happened down the block from the hospital. Didn’t make it.
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#43
Lost a lot of patients as a bedside nurse. Many are memorable, but none really haunt me any more. I now work outpatient and recently had someone who was fairly young die because we couldn’t get their inhalers or CPAP covered by insurance and they couldn’t afford them. That one will stay with me for a while. She didn’t have to die.
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#44
I’m not a doctor, but I was on the medical emergency team at a local hospital. We responded to codes for already admitted patients. I was performing CPR on an old frail woman. Her heart was not functioning. After a minute or so of compressions she woke up during CPR. I stopped compressing and she would pass out. She had no heart rhythm. I started compressions again and she woke up again. At some point she grabbed my hands and said stop. It shocked me and the doctor. The doctor looked at me and nodded his head. I stepped back and let her die. That was 30 years ago, and I can still see her face. I will never forget her.
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#45
Not a doctor but psychotherapist: I had a patient who lost basically his whole family in a few months due to several diseases/accidents that were not connected with each other. His wife, both parents and his daughter all died in less than half a year. In my field I deal with loss and grief often but I’ve never seen somebody so lost and devastated. There’s a certain grade of cruelness in this life that’s just not explainable and the simple thought of how fragile everything can be shocked me deeply. What haunted me in a good way is the absurd strength this person had. I often think about him when I have to face negative things in my private life. Him being able to get help and live on often turns things in perspective for me.
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#46
I’m a Peds Emergency Medicine doc. We see…a lot. Child a***e. Horrible accidents. Cruel diseases. Stupid decisions leading to life altering consequences. The worst are just senseless d**ths that shouldn’t have happened, but did.
I had a young teen brought in by ambulance in full cardiac arrest. She was in gym class, and had some trouble breathing. She had wheezed once as a child, but hadn’t used an inhaler in well over a decade. She was an athlete, in amazing physical shape. The school called an ambulance and she was struggling to breath when they arrived. Lights and sirens en route to the ED, but before they arrived, she vomited and then aspirated (breathed the vomit back in) and her heart stopped. CPR in progress on arrival. My resident doctor intubated her (breathing tube), and the ET tube just filled up with vomit. We did everything, and her heart just never moved. I will never forget the look on the resident’s face when he asked me if there was anything else we could do. There wasn’t. She died. A completely healthy teenager with zero medical issues kissed her family goodbye one morning and they next saw her dead on a ED stretcher.
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#47
PICU nurse here. Had a kid, 10 yrs old or so, who was properly restrained, but had fallen asleep in the back seat, his neck relaxed and his head tilted forward like kids do when they fall asleep sitting up. The car was t-boned and his head whiplashed in a way that “internally decapitated” him—neck broke, spine severed. EMS got there early enough to intubate him and keep him alive. I had him his second day in the unit when they knew the extent of his injuries. He had no sedation, no pain meds, not a single drip infusing to keep him intubated because he wasn’t going to be able to self-extubate because he was completely paralyzed and without feeling from the base of his skull down. But the kid’s brain was 100% ok. So there’s this kid, intubated, aware, and his eyes communicated how f*****g terrified he was. This is MY biggest fear—to be paralyzed and intubated and 100% aware of everything but unable to move or communicate in any way. He had to blink once for no, twice for yes, but that doesn’t come close to conveying everything he wanted to say, ask, or do.
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#48
Not a doctor but a radiation therapist. One of my patients was a 6 year old nonverbal autistic boy with leukemia. He had to be sedated for a procedure and panicked when the anesthesiologist approached him with a needle. After several moments of struggling against her, she was able to sedate him and he slumped over in his wheelchair. His father lifted his limp body from the chair and tearfully carried him to the table, wordlessly crying as he looked at his unconscious son. I will never forget the look of absolute despair and defeat on that man’s face. As the little boy looked like he was dead, I just knew that this man was thinking that he might be seeing a heartbreaking preview of the future.
Image source: Nyctut
#49
Not a doc, but I was a paramedic at the time. The first person I did CPR on was an elderly lady with bad osteoporosis. I broke her sternum free of her rib cage with the first compression. It didn’t make a sound, but I can still feel the gentle crepitus sensation on my hands and arms.
Since become a RN, now a NP. I worked in a Pediatric ICU for many years, including transport. I have so many stories that are common place in EMS and ICUs, but would disturb everyone else.
Like carrying a deceased baby (wrapped in a shroud) to the morgue. Although wrapped in plastic and cold, it was still a baby. I still bounced it in my arms like you would a baby, even though the child had passed.
I’ll stop now and go curl up in the corner and wait for the PTSD to find me….
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#50
Speaking on behalf of my cousin. She’s semi-new. She’s been doing it for a little over a year as a RN (registered nurse).
She told me this once.
Huge trigger warning. If you’re sensitive DONT READ ON.
She was in a children’s hospital. Paramedics brought in a baby, about 18 months according to her. The kid, we’ll call her Jessica, we’ll call my cousin Annie.
Jessica had a crushed skull, torn a**s, huge damage to her vajayjay (privates), severely underweight, severe brain damage and a lot of trauma to her body.
Jessica spent the night in the hospital. She wasn’t expected to live much longer because of the damage so they didn’t bother with surgery because she would’ve died on the table.
She died about a few days or a week later, as predicted. She died due to her injuries.
Annie later found out Jessica had been r***d *multiple times*, head hit against the wall multiple times because she wouldn’t stop crying, starved and a****d. Her mother didn’t care and even joined.
Annie had a 6 month old son at the time. She requested a few days off, which was accepted. She has nightmares about this almost every night. She attends therapy. She never forgot this.
Annie hates talking about this. Therapy has been helping her a lot. She isn’t quitting her job because she wants to help people. Her son is now 2 and doing good.
The parents did get a call to CPS. The other kids were taken. The parents are now in jail for a***e, homicide, and a few other charges for all of their kids. They had 3 kids.
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#51
Not a doctor but I watched a cancer patient with extremely slow-growing tumors in her brain and in her bones. Everywhere there was a met in her bone caused the pain of a broken bone and they just kept growing and growing. The ones in her brain made her suffer hallucinations and lose touch with reality. She was begging for d**th for months before she lost the ability to communicate such a complex thought and it was months after that that she finally d**d.
Image source: Styro20
#52
Nurse here.
I work hospice and it can be very hard sometimes but mostly I love it. I have 2 patients that I will never forget.
1st was a 29 years old with breast cancer that had spread everywhere. She had multiple young kids and at the time I was 2 years younger than her. I got to know her well and help her prepare her kids for what is happening. I was an emotional wreck each day. Her last few days she was terrified. I ended up staying with her for 8 hours a days to help maintain her anxiety and pain. The last day she was so calm and I was able to leave the house earlier. I felt guilty because her case was really f*****g with me head so I wanted to leave to get a mental break. I had only been gone for an hour before I got a call from her mother and I will never forget the sounds I heard. The patient was screaming out that she doesn’t want to go yet and her mother was begging me to come back. I sped back to her house, but she passed before I got there. And she looked so scared. This one hurt me the most because my job is to make d**th a peaceful, dignified thing. Her family watched her scream and bash around while she took her last breaths. I will never forget this.
2nd was a patient who was the absolute sweetest. He had cerebral palsy and had a lot of developmental delays. He didn’t have a full time caregiver but we were working with social workers to get some more help in the house. He was thriving with the new caregivers helping him and was actually potentially going to get discharged from hospice because he was no longer declining. I remember getting the call from his new caregiver that when she got to the house that morning he was dead. It was most likely a stroke. But when I got there to start the d**th pronouncement and postmortem care, he looked off. Like his skin felt different. I went to turn his body to bathe the backside and all of his skin stayed behind on the bed. From his head down to the back of his feet. I cannot get the image out of my head of his completely skinned back. I have never seen that before or since.
I have so many more from my ICU days and my labor and delivery days but those are the two that stick with me the most.
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#53
A 16-year old girl came in to the clinic with her mom complaining of persistent mild asthma. The symptoms and pulmonary function testing didn’t quite sound/look like asthma. Blood tests revealed pretty advanced lymphoma. This was probably 20+ years ago. I still think about that poor girl.
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#54
We had a 20 something OD. He thought he was using norco but it had f***anyl in it. He was found down, no oxygen to his brain so he was pretty much dead. His parents come to the bedside, there’s obviously something going on between the mother and father. The father has accepted his son’s d**th and the the mother says “I want a second opinion”. Well I felt obligated to ask “does his father want this?” The mother goes out to the waiting room and tells the father. The father RUNS into the unit and is screaming “I will not have her parade our son’s dead body around this f*****g county so she can feel better about what she did to him!!”. The father reveals that the mother was attempting to sell their son on the internet for d***s when he was a child. She drugged him with benadryl. The FBI was involved, and she was incarcerated for most of the boys life. She got out, continued d**g use, and influenced her son to start using. Later, the father said he looked through the boys phone and said the d**g dealers location was shared with the phone. He asked me ethically if I would report him to the police. I said yes, that dealer could k**l other people’s children. It was heart breaking. The patient was an organ donor and he saved three lives.
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#55
Nurse here. Guy came in complaining that he wanted us to give him something to help him stop sweating. He said he had seen a doctor a few days prior for a sore throat, was diagnosed with strep and given antibiotics, but he was profusely sweaty and it was bugging him. He did not look great – skin was pale/slightly gray in tone, vitals were a bit off, so we brought him back and ran some blood work. His white cell count was the highest I’ve ever seen (>300) and the doctor was like “he has leukemia for sure.” We transferred him to a hospital with a higher level of care and we received word that a few hours later he had coded and died. I was so shocked because it happened so suddenly. He was not old, maybe in his 40s.
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#56
Homeless guy gets wheeled in with a blanket covering his legs. Flatlines on the monitor so RN got up to do chest compressions and another took off the blanket. Maggots on rotting legs. CPR while maggots flew in the air. After the event, we were still finding maggots in the room vents for days.
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#57
Medic here. Had a group of kids break into a paper factory and started playing go karts with the forklifts which had keys in them still for some reason. Lift gets hit, topples, the canopy fell onto the kids head, crushing him.
PD was there prior to us arriving and had to tell us to walk carefully as there were pieces of his head all over the ground because it shattered. The more people who arrived in scene you started to hear a crunch here or there from small skull pieces.
Some sounds you don’t forget.
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#58
The entirety of the COVID ICU experience.
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#59
Not a doctor, but I heard this story from the EMTs after the fact. They were very shaken up about it and said it was one of the scariest things they’d seen in a way that was different from the horrific car crashes and whatnot.
My friend (F23) was home from college on winter break and randomly passed out in her shower. Her dad came running up the stairs as soon as he heard the crash, but she was already conscious by the time he entered the bathroom. He started to call 911 but my friend argued that it was unnecessary since she was already awake, and that he should just drive her to the hospital. Her dad thought about it for a second, but ultimately decided to call 911 since she had never passed out before and he was worried. My friend got dressed while they waited for the ambulance.
Two minutes later an ambulance and a fire truck get there and my friend, probably out of embarrassment, starts telling the paramedics/EMTs she’s fine, and there’s no reason to ride in the ambulance to the hospital when her dad can drive her instead. A few people seem to somewhat agree with her, but one of the paramedics says, “Look, we’re already here, we’ve got the stretcher ready to go, let’s just take you to the hospital. We won’t run the lights or siren, your dad can drive right behind us, but I’d rather you come with us.” She agrees, they load her up, and her dad starts following the ambulance in his car just like they discussed.
According to her dad, they were sitting at an intersection halfway to the hospital when all of a sudden the lights and sirens turn on and the ambulance absolutely books it through the red light. He gets this awful, awful feeling of dread. When they get to the hospital, my friend is DOA.
From what the EMTs said, my friend was happily chatting away with them the whole ride. Then, mid-sentence, her eyes rolled back and she just… died. Of course they started CPR but they couldn’t bring her back. Autopsy determined it was a TIA (transient ischemic attack).
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#60
This isn’t a haunting, but more of a serious reality check. I am a pathologist so I routinely see the absolute worst that nature and humans can do to the human body and have been, in many cases, desensitized because I’ve seen so much.
Perhaps physicians aren’t the best way to relate to the public on this question. I’ve seen virtually every single way humans can die- s***ides, burns, electrocution, plane crashes, m*rder, russian-roulette, and even bee stings.
In the hospital I routinely slice into organs that were once part of the original whole of the person. Sometimes horrifically so: eyes, jaws, genitals, etc.
I’m reminded of a forensic pathologist who was giving a press conference during Sandy Hook and was asked a question to the effect if it was the “worst” he has ever seen. His response may have seemed cold but I agreed. As I recall, he very carefully stated that he did not have the same sensibilities as most people, but having said that, yes, it’s a fairly notable crime. It’s not a complete psychological split, but these are people literally elbow deep in humans daily.
So none of it is the “worst” to me. They are all bad.
A couple things I can reflect about this that do psychologically trouble me though, which maybe is more idiosyncratic.
We don’t often see patients face to face, we see biopsy material and make diagnoses.
I don’t usually have a problem making life altering diagnoses. However, sometimes electronic medical records will have a small picture of the patient for identification purposes when the chart is pulled up.
I admit that, in certain cases I absolutely freeze and feel a great deal of sorrow when I see their picture putting a lively face the story. In that moment I know that they are forever changed and I probably know it before anyone else. It’s awful enough feeling that I won’t want to look at a photo if I can avoid it.
The other thing that really gets to me are any kind of amputation, particularly in young patients. Sometimes the legs come in with nail polish or tattoos and I begin to just get an awful feeling of how horribly unlucky they are and how b******t life is.
My two cents.
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#61
Child a***e cases or kids dying is pretty brutal. I’m glad I only see adults now.
There was a 12 year old who was scream crying while we were trying to resuscitate her dad. He ultimately died from ARDS due to COVID; unvaccinated and this was 9-10 months after the vaccine came out. I had a lot of nightmares from those times because it was so much d**th in such a short period of time.
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#62
Obligatory “I was a PSW instead of doctor” but anyways. I was visiting a lady in early winter of 2018 I had seen maybe 4 or 5 times prior, and it was approaching her bedtime. She had dementia and would go over her nightly steps a couple times over forgetting they were done already, otherwise a very vibrant, chatty lady. She was very vocal about how she felt as well, from her lovely breakfast to her insufferable oxygen line.
I began feeling uneasy when I got there and found she hadn’t left for her room from the tv lounge (easy one way path, something she hadn’t forgot prior). I asked her if she’d like to go to bed and her first response was “I don’t know, I don’t feel like it, am I on the way out?” At first I didn’t know what she meant, so I helped her up and sat her on her walker. She did not want to walk with it today and seemed labored when moving. I called for a staff member of the building (I was a traveling psw) and noted her difference in demeanor and the lady said she had just arrived an hour or so prior and had no notes of odd behavior. By the time we got her to her room she had no energy to move from her walker to her bed, and she said “Do I need an ambulance? Am I on my way out the door?” Now I’m bugging out internally. “What do you mean? Would you like me to call you an ambulance? How are you feeling?”
The remainder of my visit was sitting with her and comforting what I felt was a completely lucid woman wondering if she’s feeling her first instances of bodily shutdown. When the ambulance arrived her heart rate was up but no other immediate symptoms. She gave the most heartfelt goodbye to another older woman in the lobby who had come to see who was getting hauled by the ambulance, and all that other lady could say was “Don’t be silly, you’ll come back, and I’ll be right here (name).” V never came back and died three or four hours later that night, I got a work email mentioning her services were discontinued due to her passing. All through the hallway to the lobby, and then as they wheeled her out; “Am I a goner? Am I on my way out the door?” She knew. Dementia or not, she still knew.
Image source: Phantasmai
#63
Car wreck, ejected from the vehicle. I’m at the head of the bed in my trauma gear anticipating putting a tube down his throat when EMS arrives. Smells like gasoline but otherwise not a scratch on him. I’m the one talking to him.
“Hey man, tons of things going on all at once. Stay calm and answer me. What’s your name?”
“I CAN’T BREATHE”
Announce to the room that airway is intact. Listen to his lungs and they’re clear and good on both sides. Announce his breathing is intact. Other members of the team are doing the rest of the very unremarkable assessment.
“I CAN’T BREATHE! I CAN’T BREATHE!”
Ultrasound of his abdomen looking for internal bleeding looks fine. Can’t get a good look at his heart.
His eyes roll back and his heart slows down quickly. Not good. He codes, compressions start, I tube him and get him on the ventilator. Trauma surgeon slices the guy wide open and identifies the problem – the right side of his heart was ruptured open by the blunt force of the wreck. Not survivable. The ultrasound has gone on the heart first ever since. Needle decompression wouldn’t have made a difference in his case, but it might on the next one.
Wear a seatbelt.
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#64
I’m not a doctor but I work in the medical field specifically Medical Lab Scientist (often under appreciated field). I watched a 7 year old die because doctors argued with each other. Not the doctors at our hospital but the doctors at the hospital the child needed to go to because they had the equipment and ability to save her where our hospital did not. The sound the mother made and the look on the fathers face was haunting. Never seen our doctor so angry before.
Had a daughter thank me when I came to collect blood. She said “they’re finally listening mom.” Daughter told me her mom is usually super thin only about 110 lbs normally but after having surgery to remove part of her lower lobe of lung, her stomach has been bloating. Poor lady looked to be about 8 months pregnant. Only thing ordered was a Basic (chemistry panel), so I draw extra tubes for blood bank and hematology just in case. Got back to the lab, spun the chem tube down, and realized this lady was bleeding out. For reference a full tube should be half red cells and half plasma/serum when spun down so it’s easily visible to experienced techs/scientist when someone has a low hemoglobin. I called the doctor to inform her she might really want to check this patients hemoglobin. She blew me off. Ordered a Arterial Blood Gas (ABG) instead. I go up there and get the ABG and the daughter is arguing with nurses about their lack of response to her mother. I ran the hemoglobin offline, it was a 4.3 g/dL (for reference low normal is 12.5 for women). I try again to tell this doctor that she should really order a HGB. I go up a third time but this time the patient is coding. Patient bled to d**th due to complications of her surgery.
Working blood bank and had a resident try to override safety policies by cheating the system by demanding 4 units uncrossmatched blood be sent to the OR STAT. Only OR and ED could have units tubed to them with basically no questions asked. Our OR rarely asked for blood and never for uncrossmatched for non-trauma patients. If they asked, an artery was hit and you give them what they need. Doing the safety read off and coworker comes over to tell me that doctor and patient isn’t in OR, they’re on the floor. I made OR send the blood back and started investigating why this patient needed that much uncrossmatched blood. Blood bank was a regulator for all blood products. We had a protocol to follow. If the patient didn’t meet requirements for the blood, we tried to take it through with the doctor about why the blood was needed. Usually if blood bank questions your need, doctors will question the need and will often cancel the order. If they don’t and they still couldn’t give a valid reason, we would get the pathologist involved. The patient he order all this blood on had a 12.3 HGB. Normal for men is 13 and women 12.5. We don’t start giving blood until they reach a 6 to 8 depending on the patient. Needless to say this doesn’t qualify. I call and was told the patient has a GI bleed. I inform them that their labs do not indicate a GI bleed as the patient is holding steady at 12-13 HGB for the last 24 hours. I also ask are they referring to the correct patient (misidentification is common unfortunately). No it’s the right patient and he is actively bleeding and needs 4 units of RBC. I get the pathologist involved who has full access to the patients charts (more than I need/do) and she agrees with me. Resident insists this patient needs all this blood. At this point I’ve completed the type and screen and have crossmatched four units but before I give him any, I get the medical director involved. Medical director also agrees with the pathologist and I, but the resident comes down to our blood bank and basically argues with the medical director. Medical director can not convince him this amount of blood is not needed. Instead he at least convinces him to do the 1:1 ratio of blood and plasma. I had to give him 2 units of RBCs and 2 units of Plasma. I end up spending a good hour writing up the doctor on our safety reporting system. I got a call 3 hours later from our lead blood banker asking what the hell happened that I was reported as having detrimentally harmed a patient by delaying life saving blood. I told her what happened and gave her the case number from my report. Resident’s report conflicted with my report. Patient died and autopsy revealed that he died from a Transfusion Associated Cardio Overload (TACO); they basically gave the patient a heart attack because they gave him too many blood products too quickly. Here’s the kicker; patient had a nosebleed that wouldn’t stop. Panicked over a nose bleed.
I have more similar stories but basically I’ve seen arrogance k**l more people than anything else.
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#65
I’m a CVT so I work in the cath lab. I was a student at the time. This lady came in for a routine cath. She was around 40-50. She was very nervous and told us about her dinner plans with her kids. We get started and everything is going well until she jumps up almost off the table and yells “I don’t want to do this anymore”. We’re already inside her heart and there’s catheters in her arteries we don’t want her to pull out so we have to pull her back down and restrain her for her safety. Anyway, about 30 seconds later her heart stops beating. We looked for dissection/perforation from her arteries to down her aorta and nothing. Every single thing looked normal. She died and didn’t get to have dinner with her kids. They denied an autopsy so nobody knows exactly what happened.
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#66
I’m a speech therapist. I had a patient literally die on me during my evaluation.
She was a 100+ year old lady who came in from a nursing home. I was in her room to evaluate her swallow. Literally a couple minutes prior she was talking to me, requesting something to drink, and even helped me and the nurse to scoot herself up in bed.
After a couple sips of juice and bites of applesauce she became unresponsive and closed her eyes. I called her name and touched her to try to wake her.
I noticed she didn’t seem to be breathing.
Then she opened her eyes, gasped for a breath of air, then went out again. She repeated this a couple of times.
Three things always stuck out for me when I recall that event. The first one was how it just kind of reminded me of a computer trying to reboot up but failing.
The second part, once I realized what was happening, was my immediate though of “…oh no. Don’t do that please. I’m gonna get in trouble.” Luckily, family was mercuful enough to have her code status as DNR/DNI so when I ran to grab her nurse we didn’t have to call a code blue or try to resuscitate her. The nurse called the family to let them know she was actively dying.
The third thing was just how quickly and relatively peacefully her d**th happened. She went from here one minute to gone within less than half an hour. There was no pain, fear, or rallying. Her body just gave out. It seemed like a nice way to go for somebody in the hospital.
It’s weird to think that I’ve given people their last sips of liquid/bites of food before they leave this world. In her case it was applesauce and cranberry juice. I hope it made her last few conscious minutes a little enjoyable.
Image source: a_chewy_hamster
#67
Was working as a PCT in the ER while going through school to become a paramedic. Patient came in because his tumor was bothering him. The tumor was a massive, i’m talking larger than a football sized tumor that was growing on the outside of his neck. Patient had been declining medical treatment for some time attempting to heal it with natural remedies since they couldn’t take it off surgically due to being too vascular. I remember starting his IV and getting a whiff of that sickly/sweet smell of decaying flesh. His tumor was rotting. When I looked at it I could see maggots crawling in it and around it. The RN that night irrigated it and pulled two suction canisters worth of water and maggots out of all the holes they had created. He spent a day or two in our obs unit and would frequently go on walks around the unit until we had to ask him to stay in his room because other patients were complaining of the trail of smell he would leave when walking by their room.
He died at a neighboring facility when he went for a scan, when he went to lay down on the table the tumor ripped off and he bled out very quickly.
My skin still crawls picturing those maggots feasting off a man who was still very much alive.
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#68
ER nurse here. A patient who had a very minor heart procedure for an irregular heart rate developed a very rare complication. The procedure they did was an ablation. This is preformed when an electrical pathway that has formed on the heart needs to be eliminated because it is causing an irregular HR. The procedure leaves a small area of scar tissue on the heart. As this particular patient’s scar tissue was healing, a fistula, or tunnel, slowly stared to develop between his esophagus and heart. Once the fistula was completely formed, he began pumping blood into his esophagus rather than to his heart or lungs. There was very little we could do once we discovered what was going on.
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#69
Icu nurse here, had a patient try to k**l herself twice. after the second time she had cpr done in the field for 20+ minutes, ended up intubated, we all basically had really low hopes for her. not only if she would survive extubation but the long term neurological damage. 2 weeks went by and she had no damage, walking and talking fine, brain mri and ct was clear. this is RARE. absolutely unbelievable and lucky. when i left she was planning her next s*****e. she had children, a partner, good financials. survived two s*****e attempts requiring icu admissions. survived 20 minutes of cpr with basically no problems. still wanted to k**l herself.
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#70
The 36 year old woman who had 4 kids, dying of breast cancer.
Heartbreaking to see her in that hospital bed when her husband and kids came to visit. The husband knew she was dying, the oldest, who was 10, knew, but the younger kids were not old enough to understand mommy wasn’t going to come home.
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#71
This happened last year.
I was posted in NICU. (It is an ICU for sick babies)
A senior told me to take this one baby to meet her mother. Her mother was also admitted in another ICU. She was very sick but recovering. I was on my way when the Mother’s sister told me that the mother feels pretty disheartened and I should motivate her a little. I studied all her charts and file upon reaching and they were just all right.
I made the mother meet her baby for the first time. She was happy and then I proceeded with motivating her and telling her she will be fine and out of the hospital soon. I calmed her and the family down.
I came back the next morning and got to know she passed that previous night.
Gut wrenching. Came across her sister later, just could not meet her eyes.
I unintentionally gave someone false hope, still hurts.
EDIT: Thank you for all the kind words. You guys really made me see the silver lining in this.
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#72
My dad had a kid flown into the ER in his early years. Caught in the crossfire of a g*ng sh**ting. The kid didn’t make it and he had no time to process it because he had more calls in the hospital.
I rarely saw him break down but he told me that’s when he realized how hard it will be.
To do everything possible to save someone and they simply die. But you have no time to process it because someone else is screaming down the hall for help.
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#73
I wasn’t the doctor nor the patient in this situation but I was in grade 2 at the time, my older sister was in the hospital due to having to have her appendix removed. It was after school on a Thursday and my parents and I went to visit her, next to the bed my sister was in there was a empty one, and next to the empty one was another bed that a old woman was resting in. My parents were talking to the doctors and I was just standing near my mom looking around. I could see something moving in the corner of my eye and it was the old woman waving at me, and once I looked at her she gestured for me to go to her. I was a bit hesitant since I was very shy when i was younger but I went over anyways.
We exchanged hellos and she was smiling and complimenting me, but she was very drawn to my hair, she asked me if I could untie the pony tail I had in my hair and i did so, she told me many stories about how my when she was younger she had “beautiful springy doodly” hair like I did. She told me that the best way to manage curly hair was to put them into two braids when you go to bed. After us chatting and her playing with my hair me being the curious child I was I asked her why she was in the hospital, she said that she had a flesh eating disease, and she most likely wasn’t going to go on for very long. I tried to reassure her saying that when she’s out of the hospital we could bake a cake together and she said that she’d love that, but as predicted she didn’t make it very long after that. The next time I we went to visit my sister, which was that on a Wednesday almost a week after our last visit she sadly passed away. I still think about that old woman to this day, I cry over her sometimes. I only knew this woman for about 20 minutes but it’s just so gut wrenching for me. I hope one day we get to make that cake together like I promised.
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#74
I saw a man in his 40s who d**d a painful, horrible d**th of metastatic cancer after refusing treatment in favor of “natural” remedies.
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#75
Ultrasound tech here.
I was brand new in the field and called up to do a venous scan of a leg for dvt. No problem, I go up to the floor and start trying to do my thing. Patient is uncomfortable but cooperative at the start but I can’t see anything, the veins are all shadowed out — this is NOT normal for an extremity. I start thinking it’s my inadequate imaging to blame so I call my coworker up to help. I start seeing actual bubbles zinging across my screen through the veins and really have no idea what’s happening. My coworker gets there, patient has gone from uncomfortable to in so much pain they’ve maxed out the amount of morphine you can safely give to someone.
We keep trying to scan but even my coworker who’d been doing this for 15 years can’t get images, everything is still so foggy. She sees the bubbles but can’t explain what they are either. Finally we are asked to leave the room because they’re going to rush the patient to emergency surgery. From what I heard they opened up the leg, the infection spread instantly and the patient died on the table. It was a form of aggressive gas gangrene.
In 24 hours someone went from fine, minor injury, writhing in pain, to dead. Still blows my mind to this day.
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#76
Not “to a patient”, but “by a patient”. Came into the ER – drunk and messed up for minor interventions on account of bruising and lacerations to the head and face. His friends/whoevers came in later – questioned us because we kept him under observation – bashed the c**p out of my senior attending, the security, and some junior doctors using metal rods, because apparently “we wanted to keep him to make money” – this was at a free government-run hospital. Left that hospital – took a break from medicine on the whole – and at a better, more secure place currently. Glad we weren’t shot.
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#77
ICU hospital doc here. Lots of horror stories of accidents, bad disease, sad losses, etc. But the most memorable was when a sick lady in the ICU stayed awake repeatedly yelling “GET OUT!” to nothing in particular. Finally she fell asleep, but the next day asked for a new room. Said she was tired of sharing her bed with the other patient. There was no other patient in the room, just her. She then described an elderly man, white hair, raspy voice, very tall, who kept pushing her over to one side of the bed. I f*****g s**t you not, a patient with that description died in that room the day before. We moved her to another room and not one of us went in that room for the rest of the day.
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#78
Prenatal genetic counselor, so probably not what you’re looking for but immediately thought of a case of mine when I read the title so wanted to share.
Disclaimer: Due to the rare nature of the case I can’t give too many details so I don’t dox myself or the patient.
In the first year of my career I saw a couple who are pregnant with their third child. Sweetest people you’d ever meet and so excited for their pregnancy. First child perfectly healthy, second child died at
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#79
There was a patient bought in from a immigration camp (I’m in Australia) can’t remember why. But he was under police watch, had X2 at the door. On the day he was due for discharge he managed to get into the roof in the bathroom (police were supposed to watch him at all times but didn’t go into the bathroom this day), he crawled around for a while and ended up falling through the roof not far from his room. He fall onto the hoist machine and really injured himself. God I felt his desperation. Hope he got to immigrate.
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#80
Not a doctor. I was visiting my friend in the hills and we go longboarding. He brings his college friend and we b*mb this huge hill. The dude is a noob and totally eats it almost immediately. He try’s to stop himself from falling and dislocated his knee. We get him in the car and rush to a 24hr clinic. He’s given huge amounts of ketamine and he yelling I’m dead I’m dead and a bunch of other crazy s**t. His leg is bent horribly and you can see the bone. The doctor tries to wrestle the bone back in the socket but it just keeps popping out again. They try 3 or so times before they put this vice like tool around his leg but even that fails. The whole time the kid is going bonkers and doctors are visibly distressed. They said they needed to pop it back in or the whole leg would die. His ankle is a balloon at this point. They never get it in and an ambulance takes him to a real hospital. Me and my friend are in that room watching them the whole time. My friend was doing bio major with intent to follow his father’s footsteps and become a doctor. He looked sick during the ordeal. I was actually very intrigued and grateful I got to see the whole thing up close. We dont really talk about it but he decided not to be a doctor lol. The kid turned out just fine. I guess the hospital has better doctors.
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