People in the home-health field see their fair share of crazy, sketchy, and downright disturbing events over the course of their careers. Whether they are in-home nurses, paramedics, or people who provide clients with medical equipment, these folks see people at their lowest moments. These are just a few of their stories.
The Dead Guy Got To See It All
“I go on a house call to pick up a recently deceased guy. It’s me and the funeral director who is 6 feet and 250 lbs of muscle. A lot of times, when someone is on home care, they will get the hospital bed installed in the living room or front most room because it can’t fit through any of the interior doors. It’s just a thing.
We get to the house. It’s small, older, not in great shape. The family meets us outside, and we all go in to assess the location of the pick up. Hospital bed in the living room. Usually this makes it easy and is no problem. This living room was probably 8 feet by 12 feet, and the bed is in the middle. It’s gonna be a tight squeeze. One of the few decorations is a life-size cardboard cut out of a Hooters babe, just front and center. The wife and four sons are all there too.
We tote the cot in and have to wedge it in. There’s maybe a foot between us and the front door. Also, dead guy is a big boy, like 300 lbs big. The four sons offer to help, and we are like ‘yes please.’ So I take control of the guy’s head so he doesn’t smack it on his way over. I’m leaning over the cot, and the other five people get ready to pull/shove him into the cot.
The sons are big and strong. The director and four sons had three times as much power as we needed to do this job. We do the 1-2-3 GO and they straight up shove his face into my chest (I’m a woman btw). I’m in a suit and I’m covered to my collarbones but they shoved this dead guy’s face full force into me. I immediately hear the sons laughing and I’m mortified.
Now they are also crying. The wife is crying, but the sons are laughing and crying. One of the sons says, ‘Ahhh, just like dad, getting one last show.’
I just tell the director I need to grab the clip board and run out of the house as respectfully as I can.”
Tales From The Fire
“Firefighter here. It’s amazing how many people apologize for the house being a mess when you’re there for something minor, everything from very clean to hoarders apologize for the mess. Two funny stories come to mind.
Dispatched to a fire in a bar. Around 9 am, the bar is closed. Upstairs was a boarding house. Just a small room, small bathroom, and a closet in each unit. I was tasked with clearing the upstairs (going room to room knocking, and if no answer, forcing the door to check for any trapped victims). Getting down toward the end of the hallway there was only light smoke, so you could see pretty well. So I force this door, and there was more adult videos than at an adult book store. Posters on the walls, mountains of old magazines, everything from Playboy to some really raunchy ones. Piles of VHS tapes and DVDs. There was just enough room to walk through the unit between the piles. Opened the closet (looking for people — especially kids or some intellectually disabled people may hide under a bed, in a closet or bathtub when they’re scared), and it was floor to ceiling magazines. The bathroom didn’t have any piles, but the walls were covered in posters. I was amazed.
The second one, we were dispatched to an apartment fire. Small building, four apartments — one left and one right on each side of the staircase on the two floors. The fire was in a lower level apartment and extended into the hallway and up the stairs. After the fire was knocked down, we were doing some overhaul. The lady in one of the upstairs apartments left her door wide open so her cat could get out. Don’t ever do this. The fire in the stairs caused the heavy smoke to rise right into her apartment. So no fire damage, but everything was blackened (the apartment across the hall with the door closed had very little damage for comparison). We found the cat when someone stepped on its lifeless body. The thing died of smoke inhalation. We figured we’d bring the cat outside so the lady didn’t have to find it like that. When we picked it up, the carpet underneath was BRIGHT WHITE. The cat must have died early and its body prevented the smoke from blackening the carpet under it. So there was this bright white obviously cat-shaped silhouette on the floor right in this lady’s living room. It looked like something out of a cartoon.”
They Couldn’t Believe The Kids’ Condition
“I am an ABA therapist — I work with children who have autism. I did in-home therapy with my last client for just over a year. He was an adorable six-year-old, the eldest of three boys, and his mom was a young single parent. They were a very low income family — the mom worked at Walmart and catered pot-infused ‘soul food’ on the side.
They lived in a tiny, extremely cluttered condo. There were toys, clothes, baking/cooking materials, and all sorts of other nonsense everywhere. There were both kinds of ‘roaches’ scattered about the floor.
The youngest boy was 3 years old and was still being potty trained. His mom insisted on keeping his training potty in a caged corner in the living room, where my client and I did therapy. You could not sit in that room without enduring the overwhelming smell of urine and feces. There was fecal matter smeared on the walls near the training potty, as well as stains on the carpet.
The carpeting we sat on during therapy was sticky from God knows what. We couldn’t sit on the couch because it was stacked with clothes and other nonsense — it took me a while to realize it was even a couch.
The boys showered maybe once a week — if that. The walls were also covered in something sticky, and the upstairs smelled like pot ALL THE TIME. The boys didn’t even have real beds; their mom took sleeping bags and put them on top of a lineup of like three to four milk crates. She slept on a blowup mattress. It was pretty sad.
The toys these kids had were all outdated and very dirty, but they were never hesitant to put them in their mouths or play with them. They were more interested in playing with things they shouldn’t have access to, such as scissors, butter knives, or glass cups.
Unfortunately, the family had their autism services revoked after my client’s one-year evaluation because, despite his living situation, I had made enough progress with him over the course of a year for the insurance company to determine that he was not autistic, and that he simply had a learning disability.
I truly hope that family is doing better, although I highly doubt it. The mom was all about her children — she just wasn’t very clean, and she made poor decisions to try to make ends meet. She was young — 28 years old, only four years my senior. It was just a very sad situation. I did my best to take my client and his brothers on ‘field trips’ to get them out of the house because the living circumstances were just so unbearable. I miss those kids dearly every day.”
It Just Kept Getting Worse
“I used to work in wheelchair transport and dealt with people in the most unique way, in my view, because they needed help but were not inherently in a bad place. As I would tell many trainees ‘these people are not at their rock bottom or in a traumatic event, however they are mostly not far removed from one.’
So because of this job, I picked people up from anywhere and everywhere, mostly hospitals, and took them wherever they needed to go, mostly home. Well, I have three stories out of this.
1) Picked up an older guy from the hospital and took him home. Not weird when I initially pick him up, obviously a lively old man with the nurses which is normal. Get him into my van and start driving, find out he is a former programmer for the government and that he retired in early 2010, so I ask him some computer questions. No big deal he answers them and recommends some stuff to me. No big deal. Get him home and help him to his personal power chair, and he thanks me and rolls around towards his computer, shakes the mouse and checks to see if it’s working properly. Then he turns around to talk to me and I begin to talk back.
But my eyes wander, slightly, towards the computer. And notice a couple of paragraphs and story like set up. So I read it while talking to him. It’s a graphic novel, no big deal right? Nope, it’s about a guy who wants to assault 14-year-olds, no preference, and the details on that one page alone were horrific. I got out of there, he tried to ask for my number so he could help me find a good computer, so I gave him a fake one (a Pizza Hut number I had saved on my phone) and left as fast as I could.
2) Picked a lady up at the hospital to take her home; she lived by herself, in a house that was falling apart, no electricity in half the house, no heat, no AC, and covered in dog and cat feces. Her room was the closest I’ve ever came to seeing rock bottom. Her bed was a disaster, destroyed floor was covered in trash and fecal matter, and the smell killed me.
She asked for help with getting comfortable in her chair, not uncommon and I couldn’t blame her, so I obliged and went to get her blanket off her bed. When I moved it, a smell unique to death hit me, it was her cat. She had been in the hospital for three weeks believing her daughter was going to take care of her animals, but she didn’t. I cleaned it up, threw it away, told her I’m sorry but I had to go, and left. The worst I have ever felt for any patient I have ever dealt with. Still wonder if she is okay now.
3) This is my favorite for many reasons such as he was one of my first patients, he was legitimately awesome to deal with later on, and it was unique in two ways — A) the patient could walk, and B) the patient was being picked up from his home and was going to the hospital.
So I roll up to the house and knock on the door. An older lady, his wife, answers and tells me he was taking a nap, but she would be right back. No problem, so I sit in the wheelchair (it was required to use on all patients regardless of ability to walk or not) and wait in the front entryway of their house. She comes back and says, ‘He is awake if you want to come get him.’
So I follow her around the corner to see a 62-year-old man refusing to wear anything, not even a robe, because, ‘I want to be comfortable and I’m only comfortable with nothing on.’
He showed it all, and he didn’t care. It took me 15 minutes to at least get him to wear a robe, which he then refused to tie up. Drove him to the hospital he was going to and helped him into his room and bed, where he promptly tossed his robe and bared it all again before he laid down in his bed. I left not long after, and while walking out, his nurse walked in, a female, young, good-looking, and he proceeded to turn into a crazy old man. I knew the nurse, and she played him up and down, and I was dying laughing by the time I got out of ear shot. I would deal with him four more times, in a much more clothed setting.
The image is burnt into my mind. It’s strange how I remember his attitude towards being in his birthday suit as nothing more than normal, while I was sitting there thinking in my mind ‘what have I gotten myself into.’
I remember every moment, and it haunts me.”
“Do Not Go Back To That House”
“I work for children services, and actually just yesterday my supervisor told me a story about the worst situation she’s ever seen in her 20 years.
She went on a home visit and the home was a single wide. She said the second she stepped in the home, she had the most uneasy feeling she’s ever had. The mother and an aunt were the ones in the home at the time, and my supervisor said they were very friendly, welcoming, and cooperative. But she still had this intuitive feeling that she shouldn’t be there. It was the middle of summer and there were no air conditioners except for a window unit in the front room, so they had sheets hanging up in the hallway to keep the cold air up front. Or so my supervisor thought. Policy and training teaches us that we must ask to see the entire home for every visit, and since she was kind of new at that point she was typically a by-the-book kind of person. But she said she could not get over this feeling, so she left without asking to see the rest of the house.
Flash forward three days when she gets a call from her supervisor who told her ‘do not go back to that house.’ So my supervisor asked why…
Apparently, the morning of the home visit, the mother and the aunt had killed somebody in the home, and the sheet was covering a massive blood splatter and the body was in the back room.”
The Cry Of Assault Wasn’t Even The Worst Part
“I have been on some creepy and depressing calls.
One particular call that I remember was getting dispatched to a 96-year-old female with bleeding. It was almost 6 am, and when we entered the residence, the woman was yelling, ‘He attacked me’ over and over again.
Finally, the story came out that she had gone outside to get her paper, and some guy had emerged and followed her inside, attacked her, stole all her medications, and then fled.
I can’t give away too many details, but I certainly believed what she was saying.
We were trying to convince her to go to the ER, and she was adamant that she would not go. We kept pressing her, and then she said, ‘My son’s funeral is in four hours! I can’t miss it.’
That moment really hit me hard. Never followed up with it.”
They Couldn’t Figure Out Why He Didn’t Want Them In His House
“I used to deliver oxygen to people’s homes. Saw plenty of weird things. Lots of hoarders, but this one took the cake. He didn’t want to let us into his house, but I had to do a home safety assessment before I could set up the equipment. He was anxious about letting me in because his house was a mess. He kept telling me about his messy house.
Come to find out, it wasn’t just messy. It was filled with 200 chickens. He was proud of his show chickens and wouldn’t let them live in a barn or coop. The smell was unbearable. Other than that, he was a super nice guy.”
One Of The Worst Places They Had Ever Seen
“I work as a delivery technician for a medical supply company, and we contract out through the local VA. We mostly deal with older veterans, so I’ve unfortunately seen a lot.
Multiple times you walk into a place and the patients have absolutely no clothes on. One guy was lying in bed, totally bare, not covered up, spread eagle, just trying to chat with me like it’s the most normal thing ever.
So many just nasty places that I’ve lost count at this point. It’s very common to go into a place where they have multiple pets, and they just don’t clean up after them. Dog poop and urine everywhere. Roaches crawling around on everything.
There is one guy we have to go out to every so often who literally just craps and pees in his power wheelchair. The smell from his apartment is so bad, you can literally smell it as you start down the hallway. We picked his chair up one time to do some work on it, and feces was caked onto it in places that didn’t even seem possible. I always felt bad for this guy because he’s actually a really cool dude, but man it’s disgusting.
This one didn’t happen to me, but my buddy at work. He was setting up a hospital bed in the living room of this guy’s house. The dude was sitting in a recliner, covered up. He randomly stood up and was, of course, bare from the waist down. He walks over to a bedside commode, sits down, and proceeds to defecate about 10 feet away from where my buddy is setting up the bed.
Finally, one place that is easily top five worst places I’ve ever seen. It’s a rundown, filthy looking trailer. Trash littered all throughout the yard, front porch looks like it’s ready to collapse. Driving up to this place, you’d swear it was abandoned, but nope. Walked inside and counted at least five little dogs with little piles of poop EVERYWHERE. You can see where the dogs had peed all over everything. The smell was just awful. There were at least five people living in this small trailer. The patient was an old guy. I felt absolutely terrible for him. Completely bedridden, paralyzed, and looked like he was on death’s doorstep. Having to lay there, right in the living room, surrounded by all this nastiness. But of course they had one of the biggest TVs I’ve ever seen up close. Priorities, right?”
How Long Had He Been In Bed?
“I was an EMT that worked in a small town where I was living for a year abroad. We received a dispatch call from a woman who hadn’t seen her elderly neighbor for about two weeks and suspected he had locked himself in his house. We arrived at the scene and the fire department was already there and had entered through a window to unlock the door from the inside. He came out and notified us that we should be prepared for what he described as a ‘really bad smell.’
We put on surgical masks and put deodorant under our noses. We were not prepared enough. This elderly senile man had not gotten up from his bed for two weeks straight. In that time, he had accumulated urine and fecal matter all over his bed and person, as well as two weeks worth of smoke. His clothes were matted to his skin and we had to cut them off so we could hook him up to the EKG and get an IV drip going because he was severely dehydrated.
As soon as we cut his shirt off, the smell escalated from a 10 to a 20. After bringing him to the hospital, we had to completely disinfect the entire ambulance and send a sanitation team back to the house to deal with that bedroom.”
What Were They Going To Tell The Kid?
“We were called to a mobile home fire in a neighboring town. By the time we arrived, the center of the trailer was gone — the roof was sitting on the refrigerator. There were supposed to be two residents, so we went in with two, two-man teams. Other team went left, we went right.
We rounded the wall into the living room, the chief leading, and found the male resident. There was not much left but a charred torso. The chief radioed it in, and we completed our half of the search, then exited.
The other team found the female resident, in similar but not as bad condition.
The only door to the home was in the kitchen, where the fire started, so they were trapped. He likely was asleep on the sofa, and was overcome almost immediately. She had been trying to get out through a window.
Their 6-year-old son had stayed at his grandparents’ that night. They had to explain that his parents and his home were all gone.”
About The Blood
“Paramedic here. We were called to a guy blacked out on his own doorstep — we turned up and gave him a shake; nothing seriously wrong, just too much to drink. He lets himself into the house, apologizes for the lack of lights and tells us that there are some candles in the living room, if we’ll just follow him.
I head down the dark corridor behind him, while my partner flicks on a flashlight.
There is blood everywhere. On the floor in pools, there are soaked towels lying around, there are hand prints and smears down the walls. The patient is blithely continuing on down the corridor to the living room; I can see what is clearly a kid’s room at the end of the corridor (Disney princess wallpaper, doll’s house).
I say to my partner, ‘I’m going in there, if he comes out of the living room, yell, and we’ll run for it.’
While I’m in the kid’s room (no dismembered kid, thankfully), I hear my partner talking to someone else — out of one of the other bedrooms comes a woman wearing only a very short t-shirt; her legs are covered in blood. She tells us she’s been having ‘a bad period’ for a few weeks now, and isn’t sure whether she should see a doctor.
Yes, lady. Yes, you should see a doctor. Get in the ambulance, we’ll take you there. And then we’re going to go and shower.”