We all handle pain differently. Some take it like champs, others, well not so much. These ER doctors and nurses share just how much pain they've seen and how their patients have dealt with it.
Alcohol Does Wonders
“I had a patient with an open tibfib fracture (the bones in the lower leg sticking out and below that it looks like jelly) trying to walk away apparently unaware of how bad his leg was. Of course he was incredibly drunk at the time” Source
Hiding The Pain
“A friend told me an old boy came in with a large laceration on his arm. Suturing it up took over an hour, but can be quite fun as you can chat to the patients. My friend was engrossed talking to him about his experiences in the Second World War and really enjoyed treating him. The old chap was in good spirits throughout and told him lots of interesting stories about his time behind enemy lines or in trenches in Flanders.
After he put the last stitch in, my friend started clearing up and found the local anaesthetic bottle, unopened. He realised he’d not put any local in at all and yet the guy didn’t once flinch leave aside complain. When asked why he didn’t say anything, he just said “oh I thought that’s how it’s supposed to feel. I didn’t mind. Lovely chatting to you”, then walked out.
Don’t make ’em how they used to” Source
What A Champ
My intern year in residency, I saw a 17 year old kid who, when while playing hockey, tried to stop a puck with a gloved hand. It struck his finger tip, injuring the base of his nail, causing a significant deformity. His nail bed needed repair, which requires first removing the nail. That is done by “bluntly dissecting” (read: separating) the nail from the tissue below it. If your stomach didn’t turn reading that and imagining it, congratulations, you have no soul.
Typically, we use a numbing agent to eliminate sensation to the entire finger using something called a “digital block.” I put it in. After ten minutes, he still felt me touching his finger tip. I tried putting some around the nail. He still felt everything. His mother said his father actually had a similar thing – lidocaine didn’t work on him. I offered him a different numbing medicine (we can inject benadryl in that case) or even knocking him out. He looked at me in the eyes and said “doc, just take it off.”
“Without anything??” “Yeah, it’s fine. They fix our cuts without numbing medicine.”
“But it’s gonna hurt a lot. I have to scrape…” “I know”
So I went at it. He grabbed a towel with his other hand and I went to work. 45 minutes later, the nail was off, he was repaired, and I replaced the nail in its rightful place. The kid didn’t even make a noise” Source
I Ain’t Dying
“Fire/Medic here. Farmers seem to be tough. One time a guy pulled into the front ramp. Got out of his truck and walked up HOLDING HIS SEVERED FOREARM, in his other arm! Get him in the truck, take off. Along the way he states he lived down the road and wanted to get to us quickly. When asked why he didn’t call 9-1-1 he replied “I just cut my arm, I ain’t dying”. Also had a battle of the bulge vet tell me he didn’t need a blanket.. ItI was a tech in the ER when the EMTs brought in an elderly woman with what they said was a sprained ankle. She had slipped while mopping a floor at work and her coworker had called it in. Turned out she had broken both of the bones in the lower part of her leg, but was sweetly chatting with us. I was impressed as soon as I saw the xrays. EMTs had no idea and had splinted her ankle over where her bones were broken was -7 with windchill” Source
A Sweet Little Thing
“I was a tech in the ER when the EMTs brought in an elderly woman with what they said was a sprained ankle. She had slipped while mopping a floor at work and her coworker had called it in. Turned out she had broken both of the bones in the lower part of her leg, but was sweetly chatting with us. I was impressed as soon as I saw the xrays. EMTs had no idea and had splinted her ankle over where her bones were broken” Source
One Tough Girl
“My goddaughter was born very prematurely, requiring a major open heart surgery at two weeks old. We were told by her docs that since she’d gone through so much surgical trauma the first few weeks of her life, as a neonate, her pain receptors/nerve endings would not develop normally. They gave us the example that if she put her hand on a hot stove as a kid, she would have sustained a severe burn before feeling any pain whatsoever. She never cried as a kid when she got shots/fell down/banged into things, even when it was enough to draw blood – I suspect her medical history was the cause” Source
Takin’ It Like A Champ
“Radiographer here – as a student I met a patient who was a typical “little old lady”, she came in with far too many shopping bags and walked extremely slowly. She’d been sent by her GP because she’d fallen getting out of the bath a few weeks previous. So we brought her in and took the first image (AP pelvis if you were wondering) and her pelvis was absolutely ruined! Turns out she had slipped and fallen with one leg in and one leg out of the bath and taken the whole fall on her… vagina. Not wanting to cause a fuss this woman had ignored the pain and carried on her life as normal for weeks! Long enough for the fractures to be fairly healed, albeit in a strange way not really resembling a pelvis much anymore”Source
One Rugged Logger
“A grizzled logger came in after his leg was crushed between two logs. I could barely make out the anatomy. I told him that I’d ask the nurse to get him some strong pain meds, he told me as long as he didn’t think about it, it didn’t hurt and turned down the meds. I literally told him, “Sir, I salute you but the nurse does have the meds if you want them.” The CT of his knee/upper shin looked like an advanced 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle. My ortho doc took him right to the OR so we didn’t have to put a temporary plaster splint on him in the ED. Later, after he was admitted, I asked the nurse if she gave him any of the pain meds, she said no. That man is a f—— champion. In general, if a logger comes to the ED, I take their complaints very seriously.
A little off the subject, but if you tell me you “usually have a high pain tolerance”, it means you don’t have a high pain tolerance” Source
Ain’t Nothin’ To It
“I went to the er with my younger brother after a ski accident. My brother fell on his back off quite a big drop, causing his sternum split open. A few runs later he said he was sure something was wrong with his chest so we eventually got to the er. The doctor was shocked that he was able to continue skiing after it, and that he wasn’t writhing in pain when it was touched. My brothers explanation was “Yeah it hurts, but I cant do anything about it” Source
A Finger Problem
“5 year old child with a severed finger, half hanging off, cool as a cucumber and not even upset. Mum was in hysterics” Source
One Tough Cookie
“Nurse here: while in school, I had a 7 year old girl who had broke her hip by getting ‘bounced’ off a trampoline. They lived a few hours out of town and when it happened, they knew she was hurt, but not how bad, so her parents put her in the back of the truck and hauled her, for 45+ minutes to their local hospital. She got there, they did x-rays and found it was waaaay too bad for them to treat and that she needed to come to us. They rushed the family out, without anything for pain for this little one, for another hour plus ride to our ER. This girl didn’t shed a tear!!! She was hands down the toughest patient I’ve ever had!
Had a 19 year old do the same while skateboarding and I had to pull him out of the car while another nurse held his leg in place. Some people will amaze you with their strength and braveness” Source
There’s Two Types Of People
“Patients in a sickle cell crisis. I’ve pushed up to 14 mg of Dilaudid, one-two milligrams at a time, into these patients without a resulting change in vital signs or mentation.
However, I’ve also seen young men competing in rodeos who have been stomped by a bull a few times come in with broken ribs and a pneumothorax saying, “It’s just a scratch” and declining pain medications” Source
Without A Peep
“I am a radiographer in an ER. We frequently have to move patients with broken bones to get our pictures.
The elderly have a surprisingly high pain tolerance. I’ve seen elderly patients move limbs with obvious breaks to accommodate our needs without a peep.
People with the least pain tolerance seem to be the younger crowd, ranging from 15-30. They whine and wail from the slightest touch. And more often than not, the ones with no breaks whine and scream the most” Source
Better Off Unsaid
“He had an older Marine that came in, reason being stiff neck and nausea. Does his normal workup, rules out C spine injury, decides to test for meningitis. Tells the guy to touch his chin to his chest, turn left, turn right, look up. Nothing. Tells the guy to stand on his toes, and drop onto his heels, and the guy nearly collapses and then vomits on the floor. Doc asks:
“Didn’t it hurt when you touched your chin to your chest?”
Marine replies: “Yes it f—–‘ hurt, but what does that have to do with it?”
“I’m your doctor, you’re supposed to tell me when something is wrong.”
The Marine just looked at him with a slightly blank look on his face, and said, “Oh. Sorry doc, won’t happen again” Source
In No Hurry
“I’m an oncology nurse. My patients have some of the highest pain tolerances I have ever seen. They literally have tumors taking over entire cavities in their bodies. Huge massess pressing on places that aren’t supposed to be pressed on and literally eroding through their skin and they will ask me for pain meds “when I have a second”. It amazes me” Source
In A Matter Of Seconds
“54 year old guy comes in with a heart attack keeps telling us he’s fine. He looked SICK. When we begin switching out the EMT’s monitors for our own on his chest, he says, “don’t worry about that, it is my elbow that is the problem.” Not 2 seconds after he finished that sentence, he was dead.
Luckily we were able to revive him. I kept track of his case while he was upstairs, and he left the hospital alive and without any neurological deficits. feels good” Source
Denying The Medicine
“When I was working as a student in the ER, we got a call about a transient male being brought after being attacked by 3 large pit bulls. I wasn’t prepared for what I saw. The poor guy was just all gorey. His nose and ears were bitten off. He had a large flap in the back of his skull that revealed what looked like his skull (probably wasn’t, but that’s what student me thought). He had skin flaps everywhere, deep wounds and was just covered in blood. I tried not to cringe when I took his blood pressure. When he was stable, the ER physician wanted to medicate him, and the guy said “No morphine for me, thanks. I’m not in any pain. Besides, that stuff is addicting” I’ll never forget him” Source
Balls Of Steel
“I had a patient who was on his motorcycle with his child and was hit in an intersection by a drunk driver running a red light. Fortunately, it was right in front of the ER. The guy and kid get thrown off the bike. The guy got up, ran to his kid and picked him up, and walked in the front door of the ER, maybe a block away. He got sent to me (xray) pretty quick and no pain meds had set in yet. He was taking the minor positioning I had to do like a champ and didn’t really do more than flinch. I quickly saw he had a mid shaft femur fracture in one leg and the other legs tibia and fibula were completely shattered right above the ankle. And he had a calcaneous fracture and dislocated AC joint as well. Adrenaline can give you balls of steel.
Also, just last night, I had a cop with BOTH shoulders dislocated during an altercation… Yet he managed to get up, relocate his right shoulder, and taze the guy twice before his shoulder dislocated again. He was in pain but not anywhere near enough for me to think both shoulders were out. He’s gonna need his moms help for a while” Source
Superman!
“I work side by side with an ER doctor. I saw an 8 year old boy come in with a compound fracture to his left humerous (upper arm). First thing I noticed was him strolling in, not a tear or grimace on his face, blood pooring down his arm and a bloody rag held down near his elbow. First thing I thought was he probably had a decent laceration to his arm. Pretty tough, but nothing too impressive.
I get into the room and see that the rag was removed…and holy s—, thats a bone sticking out of his arm. How the h— is this kid not balling (and how the h— did he just walk in to the ER, barely cradling his arm?). Right then I knew this kid was tough. Little did I know that he was about to become superman.
So, I’m sitting there admiring this gruesome wound and listening to his back story. Apparently the kid was out with a friend riding a four wheeler when they accidentally drove into a ditch and flipped the vehicle. Kid was thrown and the quad rolled over his arm. This was about 4 miles out in the middle of nowhere over bumpy dirt trails. So of course he just jumps on the quad and rides the 4 miles back to his house with a bone sticking from his arm. Then has his dad just leisurely drives him the 30 minutes into town to the hospital and strolls on in. Best part: when the doctor said that they needed an X-ray of the arm, he just casually asks, “before you move it, can I get a little pain medication, it sorta hurts.” Most bada– 8 year old I have ever seen” Source
A Stark Contrast
“I had a patient, 60 something male, who had three of his fingers mostly amputated by a snow blower at about the level of the second knuckle. He came in with his fingers hanging from skin flaps and was totally stoic. Not only was he a zero out of ten for pain, his vitals were rock steady. No alteration in heart rate or blood pressure. He kept joking around about it… “Ah just cut em off, they’ll grow back.” This guy remained a zero out of ten for THE ENTIRE TIME even when they “just cut em off…” His biggest concern was getting out of the ER in time to watch a football game.
STARK CONTRAST are the patients I get who scream bloody murder and cry when the blood pressure cuff is pumped up on their arm. Grown adults. Are you kidding me?? Also screaming and crying is only going to make your BP go up causing that cuff to squeeze tighter and tighter” Source
Bloody Footprints
“I’m a paramedic, and I had one pt that blew my mind with her pain tolerance. We walked up on scene to bloody foot prints. They were normal prints except that one side was more of a drag. Like ; ; ; ; ; was what her prints looked like. She had rolled her her ankle at a restaurant, and had her tibia bust right through her leg. And she was F—— WALKING ON THE BONE! She had driven all the way home when her neighbor called 911.
Now the craziest thing was that she rated her pain at a 0/10. Just insane” Source