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I did a clinical and had a woman come in a couple weeks after her wedding with multiple contusions, broken ribs and a face so swollen she wouldn’t have been identified if she wasn’t brought in by a family member. Turns out the husband honestly believed that once she became his wife she become his actually property and servant and beat her for not agreeing to take up all the household chores.
11yr old girl brought by paramedics to ER with CPR in progress for asthmatic attack. She didn't make it. The mom's scream was worse than any other mom's scream because she just lost 7yr son the week before in a car crash. Devastating.
The ER physician realizing that the young man he was trying to save in a motorcycle accident with no helmet was his son
Hospitals can be like real-life soap operas. We chatted with Dr. Alka Pradhan, a Mumbai-based doc with over 31 years in the game, to get the scoop on what *not* to do if you want to stay out of the ER. Spoiler: it’s mostly about common sense — but you’d be surprised how many folks skip it.
An old lady who wasn’t allowed to be with her husband while he died. This was during covid. I still remember her cries and pleading. They were married for over 50 years.
A feeble elderly person left alone with the family’s big dogs for weeks. Dogs proceeded to eat the limbs of the elderly person for days until they were found. Person lost most of their limbs and was no longer verbal due to the trauma. Some things are worse than death.
Been in radiology since 2004. I hope nothing tops the early COVID pandemic. Scary times. And seeing the lungs of all the patients and thinking you could be next. Not having enough ventilators. Not having enough PPE. It was awful.
First up, helmets aren’t just for cool points! Dr. Pradhan says riding e-bikes or scooters without one is a fast track to serious ouch. Low speed? Doesn’t matter. One slip and it's bye-bye brain cells.
seeing a gunman come in trying to finish the job, and watching all the people in the ER scramble to get behind anything that might block the bullets that were flying, grabbing every child and adult they could on the way to get them to safety too. I wasn't there when it happened, but we watched the security footage the next morning. I'll never forget seeing nurses and the chaplain shielding children they didn't know with their own bodies, without a moment's hesitation.
Having to draw blood on two Jane doe’s [who passed] in a car accident and unzipping the body bag to see two of my family members in them. One was a child.
school aged child had a seizure at school, principal was with them until guardians could arrive and when the kid fully woke up he begged the nurse to let him go because his parents couldn't know he was still possessed. loud bawling sobs.
Love animals? Same here. But heads up: stray pets can be little germ factories. Bites can get nasty fast because of all the bacteria they carry. Wash it, get it checked, or risk turning your bite into a big problem.
We caught a trafficker with a kid under 15. He was arrested. They poor girl was emotionally nonexistent. She genuinely didn't care that she was free. No emotion. Haunts my dreams. She was so broken.
25 years in ER. Stay off motorcycles. Do NOT pour gasoline on a fire. Wear a seat belt, keep your feet on the floor, and keep all limbs inside the windows. None of these caused the worst thing I've seen, which I still won't talk about, but still good advice.
Ever had a balloon pop right at your face? Dr. P warns balloon bits flying into eyes can be a real pain – literally! It’s more common than you think, so maybe keep the safety glasses handy for your next party.
Uber driver drove herself to the ER after being shot 8x by her passenger. Ran into triage screaming “I’m dying, don’t let me die, I have a baby at home” and then collapsed. She was right, she died. And we couldn’t bring her back.
8 month pregnant women shot by her husband. They brought her in dead, ER docs sliced her open like ive never seen before and pulled the baby out. We revived the baby but he died a few hours later. It was a horrifying scene.
My homeless patient said his foot went numb. We took off his boot and his foot came with the boot.
Choking? Yeah, it’s way scarier than that weird cough you get. Dr. Pradhan stresses: if you feel that, don’t just pretend everything’s fine — get help pronto or it could get nasty, fast.
Babies [passed] accidentally by unsafe sleep practices. “I didn’t think it would happen to us” on repeat every single time.
Woman who was shot in a road rage after she accidentally cut a car off. Her 2 babies age 5 and 3 were in the car. She was pregnant with her 3rd. She was about 22. We distracted her girls while they called TOD.
Woman run over by a drunk driver who drove up into the grass while she was standing at a playground.. she was fully eviscerated, basically split in half, still with a faint pulse for the first few mins she was in the ED, and her 7 yr old twin boys saw the whole thing.. I think of their faces every day
Burns from kitchen mishaps don’t always look serious but they definitely *are*. Steam, hot oil, boiling water — all sneaky culprits. Quick splash of cool water and maybe a bandage could save you a whole lot of pain.
Woman impaled by tree thru the abdomen after crashing. Tree went thru her and out the back of the car seat. EMS brought her still strapped into the seat of her car. That seat sat in our department for almost a month before someone finally did away with it.
Young patient in his 40s with a severed artery from a chiropractor cervical adjustment. His WIFE was the ER doc that had to pronounce his death 🥺 I was in nursing school. NEVER ALLOW A CERVICAL ADJUSTMENT!!!
A patient drove himself to the hospital from his farm. Said I fell out of the tractor and “I’m pretty sure my head isn’t attached” it wasn’t. He was internally decapitated. He has like 2 inches of space between the base of his skull and his next vertebrae. We were scared to sneeze near him in case he flinched
Sharing is caring, but not when it comes to meds. Doc says taking someone else's prescription can spell disaster because what works for them might wreck you. Keep your pills to yourself, folks.
3 children deceased from a house fire. The oldest child was found with her arms over the top of the smaller babies trying to cover them. They were all put in the same body bag, bodies had fused together. Still have flashbacks of that
Not a nurse but EMS. Hearing the screams of a family burning alive inside a fire of 7 after a man set his own house on fire in order to unalive his mother, wife, himself and their kids. He survived. I have never really spoken of it. I still hear the babies in my sleep.
In the ER during nursing school, they wheeled in twin 3mo old babies in cardiac arrest from carbon monoxide poisoning, we had to help with compressions, neither of the babies made it and the mother and father collapsed to the floor screaming at the top of their lungs it was the most horrifying sound, our clinical instructor let us go home early
At the end of the day, a little common sense and safety go a loooong way to keeping those ER visits for real emergencies. Dr. P sums it up: most ER story horrors could’ve been avoided with just a bit of care.
someone who was ejected from a car and landed on a stop sign, and was cut in half by the stop sign
My mom was a ER RN and she said there was a mom that put boiling water on her toddler, but the worst part was that the toddler was crying and asking for his mom in the ER
A 7 month old came in with young mom and dad. Her neck was scrunched down and she just kept crying like she was in pain. Told the ER doc “idc about the radiation you need to scan that baby from waist up and I’m calling CPS right now”. C3 cervical spine fracture, T2 thoracic spine fracture, and 2 broken ribs. Father later admitted he was trying to unalive her.
Hearing these wild ER tales reminds us how life’s fragile and sometimes downright crazy. So yeah, stay safe, pay attention, and keep that helmet on — your future self will thank you.
Not even gruesome but we had a STEMI who was pretty young. I believe 38. He coded 6 times. Every time he came back he was VERY aware he was going to die. He asked for us to let his brother in the room. In between coding him he told his brother how to take care of his wife and kids he was leaving behind. He made his brother promise never to abandon them. Once they were done talking he coded again and died. I will never think of that man or his family without crying.
Attempt [to take his life] with hunting pew pew. Awake, alert, just no face (jaw, nose, eyes, tongue, etc). He answered with thumbs up or down. He was my age. This was a year after my uncle did the same and passed. Seeing it was traumatizing
Pregnant woman who had her carotid slit by her best friends boyfriend bc she was trying to protect the best friend. I listened to her babies heart rate thru the entire surgery and while she was intubated in the ICU. Kept telling her to hold on. Always wondered if she made it and how she was.
A little girl came in screaming at the top of her lungs, very raspy, sounded like stridor at first, around 6yr, gasping for air. You hear the code, a nurse doing cpr covered in blood. Little girls dad stabbed her multiple times because of his schizophrenic episode.
Motorcycle accidents always top…..but the worst was the repetitive pack mules that were kids. They would have their abdomen cut open, the substances placed inside in a baggy and a rough sew up of the opening. Then have them cross the border and meet the correspondent who would then cut the substance out and leave the kids bleeding out. Or the baggies would rupture inside the cavity and cause some serious damage that resulted in expiration. I usually was the one on these cases due to my fluency in Spanish and that kids always opened up easily to me. It’s what ultimately made me have to leave nursing……I wasn’t able to separate myself from the situations.
a little girl crying for her dad, after she was found in the woods cold and rainy, he left her there.
1st person on the scene of a mass casualty incident. one woman's face got scraped off and she was awake still and it was horrific its been 25 years it was like a horror movie I still see her staring up at me as I braced her neck
not ER, but I got my CNA whenever I was 16 in high school and during our clinicals, we came across a man who had been neglected by his family for so long that he had a bed sore in his back that was so deep you could see his spine…
woman escaped her burning trailer but went back in to save her dogs. sustained 95% TBSA burns. when we transferred her to the life flight stretcher her scalp came off, her hands had degloved, and her calf was emulsified
A woman's fingers got caught and were mangled in heavy machinery at a meat packing plant. While in the ED, I held a sheet in front of her face, while also stroking her hair, so she wouldn't look at her hand, as staff worked on her
Massive GI bleed. Transfused 40 u blood to that man that night aand he was maxed out on 4 pressors. He walked out 3 days later but I was terrified I was going to lose him all night
Not ED but head and neck oncology - tumor eroding through skin. Exposed jaw bone, tendons, muscles. I think about my former patients all the time.
We had a kid come in that had wrecked his motorcycle on a gravel road at a high rate of speed. His airway was full of gravel, as were many places on his body. He wasn’t wearing many clothes as it was summer. No helmet either. He barely survived. It was horrific hearing him scream through the gravel in his throat. I can still hear that one.
We were laughing with a patient because we thought he had jello/pudding all over him. Turns out it was his friend's brain (they were in a car crash)
An elderly woman came in and had fallen 3 days prior. She landed in a sitting position with her legs under her but couldn't get up. She was like that for 3 days. She heard a neighbor outside and was able to yell. She was so thankful to have been found and at the hospital. Her blood was pooled in her legs, dehydrated, but she was in good spirits. She passed the next day
We had a 14yr old girl, frequent flyer for mental health. We had seen her more than usual in the preceding 2 weeks and she was adamant the voices were getting dark. they'd do a 72 hour old and send her home. Then she came in under police guard because the voices told her to [hurt] her Mum and dog, and she did. Her brother sat with her all night trying to calm her. My heart just absolutely shattered. I walked away from ED not long after.
my mom was a ER nurse in Wyoming and she told me she had to work on a little girl that was in a bouncy house and the wind blew the bouncy house into the ferris wheel gears and she was basically cut in half
Airplane crash victim, paramedics had to bring them in bc they had a faint pulse. Nothing could ever prepare me for that sight.
Someone with a stab wound in his stomach screaming for help and a nurse saying he needed to be quiet and wait his turn. And this is just one of the stories. Ohio healthcare is a joke.
Guy working out in his home gym had a barbell fall on his face and his wife drove him to the er when he uncovered his face both eyes were popping out of his face. He was flown to a level 1 and lost both his eyes
I had to do CPR on a mother as they did a crash C-section in the trauma room to save the baby…then we had to run a code on the baby
Not the ER but urgent care and mostly wounds. Chainsaw to the thigh, arterial bleed from an industrial fan blade, unresponsive 6m old with obvious hydrocephalus that had never been worked up, my heel met a rock while jet skiing at 60 mph
Not ER but EMS. Young boy who tried to commit with a crossbow. Bolt went through his skull. We had to cut the end of the arrow in order to intubate and work on him. He survived but I can still hear his mother's screams and picture everything.
Just getting off my shift and had grandparents rushing in to the ER covered in blood holding there grandson who's foot was run over by a lawnmower
My uncle is a firefighter he was called to a motorcycle accident, and was told to find the helmet, when he picked up the helmet the man’s head was still inside it, his body was 20 foot away from the helmet…
The bottom of someones foot being degloved basically from driving barefoot and then slamming on the brakes. I could see every tendon in the bottom of their foot as i walked by their room. Ive never driven barefoot again
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