It's hard for someone to imagine the things a nurse goes through. We may not hear their stories often, but that doesn't mean they don't have a couple doozies to share with the public. Here, we look at some of the horror stories nurses have from their lives on the job.
(Content has been edited for clarity.)
Surprise Suitcase
“One time when I was working at the hospital, I saw an elderly lady come in with her medication bottles. She had them in an old carry-on suitcase with a floral decoration reminiscent of the 1960s. It smelled musty.
We settled the patient into her room, and after a bit decided to attend to the charting and opened the old suitcase at the nurse’s station. A cascade of roaches emerged from the case and scurried all over the counter. That happened years ago, and I still remember it vividly.
We admitted her to the hospital and made sure a safety and health inspection was done at her home before she could leave. We ended up contacting her children, who were unaware that her ability to keep up with her housework had deteriorated, and she was moved into a nursing home until her house was cleaned up.”
Line In The Sand
“As a nurse, I can’t handle burns.
I saw a toddler who had pulled a pot of boiling water over on herself and had burns covering her whole body. She was screaming and the nurses had to hold her down while they tended to her burns.
I also saw a teenage girl who also had burns over her entire body from a cooking accident. She was sobbing as the nurses were treating her, and I felt like joining her.”
It’s Just A Broken Leg
“One night, one of my teachers was in the ER, and this lady comes in complaining of leg pains. Now, she had a cast on the leg, for it had been broken. So they decide to cut off the cast.
Turns out, the last had broken her leg almost a year before, and the cast was still on. Taking the cast off, they saw exposed bone.”
The Swamps of Dagobah
One night I got to the hospital and we were dealing with ‘perirectal abscess.’ Needless to say, our entire crew was less than thrilled. I went down to the Emergency Room to transport the patient, and the only thing the ER nurse said as she handed me the chart was, ‘Have fun with this one.’
My patient was a 314-pound Indigenous woman who barely fit on the stretcher. She was rolling frantically side to side, moaning in pain, pulling at her clothes, and muttering prayers. I could barely get her name out of her after a few minutes of questioning, so after I confirmed her identity and what we were working on, I figured it was best just to get her to the anesthesiologist so we could knock her out and get this circus started.
She continued her theatrics the entire 10-minute ride to the hospital, nearly falling off the surgical table as we were trying to put her under anesthetic.
The surgical team was not exactly wet behind the ears. I’d been working in healthcare for several years already, mostly psych and medical settings. I’ve watched an 88-year-old man tear a one-inch-diameter catheter balloon out of himself while screaming, ‘You’ll never make me talk!’ I’ve been attacked by an HIV-positive racist. I’ve seen some things. The other nurse had been in the O.R. as a trauma specialist for over ten years; the anesthesiologist had done a residency at a Level 1 trauma center. The surgeon was ex-Army and averaged about eight words and two facial expressions a week. None of us expected what was about to happen next.
We got the lady off to sleep, put her into the stirrups, and I began washing off the rectal area. It was red and inflamed, but it was all pretty standard. Her chart had noted that she’d been injecting IV narcotics through her perineum, so this was obviously an infection from dirty needles or bad substances. But overall, it didn’t seem to warrant her repeated cries of, ‘Oh Jesus, kill me now.’
The surgeon steps up with a scalpel, sinks just the tip in, and at the exact same moment, the patient had a muscle twitch in her diaphragm, and just like that, things went downhill.
Unbeknownst to us, the infection had actually tunneled nearly a foot into her abdomen, creating a vast cavern of fluids that had seeped outside of her colon. This godforsaken mixture came rocketing out of that little incision. We all wear waterproof gowns, face masks, gloves, hats, the works — all of which were as helpful was rainboots against a firehose. The bed was in the middle of the room, an easy seven feet from the nearest wall, but by the time we were done, I was still finding bits of flesh pasted against the back wall.
As the surgeon continued to advance his blade, the torrent just continued. The patient kept seizing against the ventilator (not uncommon in surgery), and with every muscle contraction, she shot more of this brackish gray-brown fluid out onto the floor until. Within minutes, it was seeping into the other nurse’s shoes. I was nearly twelve feet away, jaw dropped open within my surgical mask, watching the second nurse dry-heaving and the surgeon standing on tip-toes to keep this stuff from soaking his socks any further.
The smell hit them first. ‘Oh god, I just threw up in my mask!’ The other nurse was out, she tore off her mask and sprinted out of the room, shoulders still heaving. Then it hit me, mouth still wide open, not able to believe the volume of fluid this woman’s body contained. I couldn’t breathe, my lungs simply refused to pull in any more of that stuff. The anesthesiologist went down next. He was an ex-NCAA D1 tailback, but his six-foot-two frame kept shaking as he threw open the door to the O.R. suite in an attempt to get more air in, letting me glimpse the second nurse still throwing up in the sinks outside the door.
In all operating rooms, everywhere in the world, regardless of socialized or privatized, secular or religious, big or small, there is one thing the same: somewhere, there is a bottle of peppermint concentrate. Everyone in the department knows where it is, everyone knows what it is for, and everyone prays to their gods they never have to use it. In times like this, we rub it on the inside of our masks to keep the outside smells at bay long enough to finish the procedure and shower off.
I sprinted to our central supply, ripping open the drawer where this vial of ambrosia was kept and was greeted by an empty box. The bottle had been emptied and not replaced. Somewhere out there was a godless jerk who had used the last of the peppermint oil, and not replaced a single drop of it. To this day, if I figure out who it was, I’ll kill them.
I darted back into the room with the next best thing I can find — a vial of Mastisol, which is an adhesive rub we use sometimes for bandaging. It’s not as good as peppermint, but considering that over one-third of the floor was now thoroughly coated in what could easily be mistaken for a combination of bovine after-birth and maple syrup, we were out of options.
I started rubbing as much of the Mastisol as I could get on the inside of my mask, just glad to be smelling anything else. The anesthesiologist grabbed the vial next, dowsing the front of his mask in it so he could stand next to his machines long enough to make sure this woman didn’t die on the table.
By this time, the smell had permeated out of our O.R. suite, and down the 40-foot hallway to the front desk, where the other nurse still sat, eyes bloodshot and watery, clenching her stomach desperately.
I stepped back into the O.R. suite, not wanting to leave the surgeon by himself in case he genuinely needed help. It was like one of those overly-artistic representations of a zombie apocalypse you see on fan-forums. Here’s this one guy, in blue surgical garb, standing nearly ankle deep in lumps of dead tissue, fecal matter, and several liters of syrupy infection. He was performing surgery in the swamps of Dagobah, except the swamps had just come out of this woman and there was no Yoda. He and I didn’t say a word for the next 10 minutes as he scraped the inside of the abscess until all the dead tissue was out. The front of his gown was a gruesome mixture of brown and red, his eyes squinted against the stinging vapors originating directly in front of him. I finished my required paperwork as quickly as I could, helped him stuff the recently-vacated opening full of gauze, taped this woman’s buttocks closed to hold the dressing for as long as possible, woke her up, and immediately shipped off to the recovery ward.
As we left the locker room, the surgeon and I looked at each other, and he said the only negative sentence I heard him utter in two and a half years of working together: ‘That was bad.’
The next morning the entire department (a fairly large floor within the hospital) still smelled. The housekeepers told me later that it took them nearly an hour to suction up all of the fluid and debris left behind. The O.R. suite itself was closed off and quarantined for two more days just to let the smell clear out.
I laugh when I hear new recruits talk about the worst thing they’ve seen. You ain’t seen nothin’, kid.”
We’ll Bring Her Ourselves, Thank You
“I saw a terrible situation once when I was working in the ER.
An older lady, with a history of reconstructive surgery to her ankle, twisted her ankle and went down. The family realized she needed medical attention, but instead of calling EMS, they decided to put her in the back seat of the family car.
She couldn’t stand, so the family picked her up and moved her. Nobody supported the ankle, so a closed fracture soon became an open fracture with the bone sticking through and the foot hanging off the end of the leg. The family still didn’t reevaluate at this point. They just slid her into the back seat of the family Taurus and wrapped a towel around the ankle to soak up the blood.
They drove up to the walk-in entrance of our emergency room and sent someone inside to get help moving the lady from the back seat of the car to the hospital. Now, we have to figure out how to get an elderly lady, who probably weighs about 275 pounds, is too weak to move, and whose foot is hanging off of her leg, out of the back seat of the car.
She wasn’t sitting up, just lying stretched across the back seat. It was too cramped for a backboard, so we had to physically drag her out. We wind up opening both doors, and we had an aide at one side of the car basically making sure that her foot didn’t tear off. On the other side of the car, there was room for someone else who had the lucky job of pulling 275 pounds of dead weight (so to speak) out of a very small area with minimal assistance.
Somehow, we got her out of the back seat and into the ER. Her blood pressure was in the tank, and of course, she had nothing in terms of veins, but we managed to get an 18 in her, get some fluids going, take an x-ray, and get her transferred out to the local trauma hospital.
I have no idea if she kept the foot or not. The patient maintained feeling in the foot throughout the ordeal, which is a good thing, and our doctor was optimistic, but I have my doubts.
For the laypeople reading this, don’t move an injured person unless you absolutely have to. If the family had called an ambulance from the beginning, all of this could have been avoided. The EMS crew would have applied a splint in the field and safely transported her to the appropriate hospital.”
Makeshift Reattachment
“I’m not a nurse, but I was a CNA and telemetry technician for many years. I floated from my ‘home unit’ of medical neurology to the ER at least once or twice a month when they were short.
We had a man drive himself to the hospital because he was having delusions, and decided it would be a good idea to cut off his own member. According to him, after said removal, he regretted the decision. To remedy the problem, he stuck a pencil through the severed member, stuck it back on the stump, and attempted to superglue the whole thing back together.
He tried for a while, and then when it didn’t work drove on over to the ER. He said that God had told him that if she completed this act as a sacrifice, he would stop global warming. I guess it was a noble reason for him to do it, and the next night when I returned to work, he had been admitted to my home unit and was one of my patients. Yay.
He was a difficult patient to have for the next month because we couldn’t seem to find a combination of medication to stop his delusions. When he was lucid, he was a well-spoken, kind, intelligent man. But, you could have a good conversation with him, leave the room for five minutes, and come back to a man screaming that he was going to do horrible things to you in graphic detail. He ended up having to be restrained. He escaped the restraints one night while I was working, knocked a nurse unconscious, and broke her nose. At that point, it was decided that he was ‘well’ enough and the hospital pressed charges on him for the assault, and he was taken by the police to jail.
They were able, by some huge miracle, to reattach it to him. They didn’t know if it would ever be ‘fully functional’ again, but he could go to the washroom.”
What Probably Seemed Like A Smart Idea
“One night, three guys were rushed in with serious burns all over their bodies. My brother, who was the ER nurse, admitted them, and it turned out these guys were huffing gas inside of their car, and one of them decided to light a smoke. It didn’t go so well.”
Recalling A Difficult Patient
“I worked for three weeks on the heart problem station (HPS).
After five days we got a new patient who was old and weak. He couldn’t even move without crying and screaming. The worst part was that he couldn’t remember how he got there, so he tried to escape without thinking about his medical condition.
He almost fell out of his bed, which would have broken multiple bones for sure, but I managed to save him. We could hear him screaming from the whole station. It was horrible to listen to.”
Hook On The Wall
“I’m in the ER a lot for work, and I’ve seen some bad cases.
My worst one was a 6-year-old girl who was sleeping in her mom’s bed. Her mom had a hook on the wall that she used to keep her cell phone charger on to keep it off the ground. The little girl rolled over and fell off the bed. Her cheek caught the hook and it ripped her cheek all the way up to her ear, like the Joker.
The girl wasn’t crying too much and looked like she was in bad shock. They eventually called in a plastic surgeon and he stitched it up. The wound was horrifying though.”
A Few Gruesome Tales
“I’m a nurse and I don’t even know where to start!
Recently, we had a gentleman come into the ER with the initial complaint of ‘deep sleep concern.’ At triage, he started off by emphasizing that he sleeps incredibly deeply. When we pressed further, the patient said that he had left some Q-tips out on his bed. While in his ‘deep sleep’ and rolling around in bed, somehow multiple Q-tips ended up lodged in his urethra. I’m not talking one or two either. There were 11 non-lubricated Q-tips in total. It took a few hours but we pulled them all out.
Another incident that comes to mind relates to an early morning beverage. A young male, in his 20s, came in by EMS with what seemed like excited delirium/potential substance use. After a struggle, we were able to restrain the patient. Hours went by and all tests were negative.
By early morning the patient was pleasant and cooperative. As there were no further tests to obtain and the patient seemed at his baseline, we elected to remove his restraints. The patient got up and ran to the nearest sink. The patient began stuffing paper towels into the sink, plugging the drain and filled it with water. He then began aggressively giving himself a treat. After finishing, the patient used his hand to scoop the water into his mouth and proceeded to run out the back ambulance bay.”
Some Of The Worst Cases
“I worked as a scribe in an emergency room (following a physician around into all of the rooms to chart for them).
We once had a young guy come in who had taken some performance enhancement substances. His girlfriend had rolled over right after and passed out, and the guy was stuck there. After about five hours, he decided he wanted to try to fix it himself, so he went and got SEWING NEEDLES and stuck them in his member, apparently to try to drain it. Obviously, that didn’t help so now he’s stuck with a happy member and two needles sticking out of it like little antennas. Long story short, he ended up driving himself to the ED and waddling in with his pants down, crying. I’m a girl, but I had major sympathy pains for him.
Another time, we had a young couple and their friend come in so the girlfriend could get checked for a sore throat and their friend decided to ‘get checked for a stomach ache.’ Turns out, he wanted an STI screen, and lo and behold, he had one. That’s when he told someone that the girl had been cheating on her boyfriend with him, but we couldn’t say anything to the girl OR her boyfriend because of patient confidentiality.
Finally, we had a husband and wife come in one day to find out the wife had miscarried their child. They took her upstairs to deliver their deceased baby and the husband, who was a veteran, started having stress-induced flashbacks/PTSD breakdown and lost it. To add to it, I guess he had a suspected case of tuberculosis. With suspected TB, you have to be quarantined in a room until they verify your status. So he was locked in one of our ED rooms, out of his mind destroying the place, while his wife was upstairs alone miscarrying their child. I came home that night and cried for hours because the look on the guy’s face when they told him they couldn’t let him go be with his wife just destroyed me.”
A Pretty Shameless Dog
“This didn’t happen in the ER, but it’s a case of serious neurotrauma.
I once had a woman come in who had either fainted or had a seizure. During her fall, she hit her head on a metal table which gave her a nasty scalp laceration.
So, the paramedics arrived and noticed that she was missing a five-inch diameter piece of her scalp. They were looking around and couldn’t find it anywhere. In walks her small dog, licking his lips with blood all around his mouth. They said either she was scalped by the table or that the dog ate it directly from her head.”
Bad Decisions
“When I was in nursing school, a family of a patient was sneaking him smokes during his stay in the hospital. The staff became suspicious because of the obvious smell of smoke in the patient’s room.
Well, oh dear, this gentleman was also on oxygen. I’m not sure of the extent of his injuries. If I remember correctly, I think it was second degree and third-degree burns.”
A Special Hiding Place
“A nurse friend of mine dodged two rocks thrown at her from a patient who pulled them out of herself.
When asked why she had rocks in her private parts, the patient said it’s her purse.”
When A Patient Refuses Care
“I had a dude come in a few days ago complaining of leg pain. He was diabetic and had a toe amputated one month prior. He was homeless and didn’t go to any of his follow up care.
I peeled off the soiled bandage on his foot and it was worse than you could imagine. The dude refused to believe it, refused care, and was also blind. We wound up admitting him to psych so we could care for it.”
Alaskan Streaking
“My mom is a mental health therapist and does evaluations at the ER at night sometimes. One time, all of the security folks jumped up and ran down the same hall at the same time. Less than a minute or so later, a naked, clearly under-the-influence person ran past the entrance, which was made entirely of windows, and was tackled and restrained by the security guards.
This was in February in Alaska.”