People Who Work In The ER Or A&E Are Recalling The Ridiculous Things They’ve Seen People Come In For
by Benjamin Dzialdowski · BuzzFeedThe emergency department, or A&E, is an arena that sees many things. Distress, disaster, but also absurdity and things that are a bit out of the ordinary.
Well, recently, NotAMartianWithCovid asked r/AskReddit, "ER workers of Reddit, what is the most ridiculous reason someone has come to the ER?" So we thought we'd share the top responses.
One user rightfully made the point that even if the reason sounds silly, if you think you should go the emergency department at a hospital, then definitely go!
"For what it's worth, there are patients who come to the ED with a story that is objectively a little funny. Like, 'My friend told me this poisonous plant was poisonous, so I rubbed it on my face, and now my eyes are swollen shut.' But they still had a good reason to come to the ED."
"There are times when the patient themselves insists they don't need to be in the ED, and that nothing is wrong with them, yet it turns out they tried to throw themselves into traffic immediately beforehand.
There are times when people have been to eight doctors ten times in the last month for the same complaint, and have been told either it's nothing or that it is something that will take time to diagnose, with no clear immediate solution. Yet they are back in the ED because they want 'answers' they haven't received so far. And yet a small percentage of those people actually do have something serious that has been missed.
So, in my years in the ED, I have come to believe, and to teach, that there is no such thing as a ridiculous reason to come to the ED. If you're worried, and you want an evaluation, and you don't mind a wait or a hallway bed, we're open 24/7.
What's ridiculous is patients who come to the ED and have expectations completely out of proportion to the purpose of an ED, and who, even once our abilities and recommendations are explained, choose to be hostile or even violent towards our staff. That's ridiculous."
1. "A man came to triage holding a Dunkin’ Donuts bag and demanded we test a sandwich for poison."
"He said that he had eaten the sandwich from there twice in the last month and both times he got sick (stomach ache, nausea). He was convinced the store was poisoning his food. So he went back and bought another sandwich as 'evidence'. To be clear, he was not sick that day; he had last eaten the sandwich days before.
I tried to explain to him that we are not a CSI lab and cannot test miscellaneous objects for poison, and there’s not much we can do for him if he isn’t sick today. He insisted on getting triaged anyway. He waited hours for a doctor to tell him the same thing, and that if the same sandwich keeps making him sick, then he should probably just not eat that sandwich. He stormed out, cursing at all of us.
Edit: He had no other signs of mental illness, and you can’t force someone to get a psych eval just because they believe something weird."
2. "He almost got bit by a dog. Almost."
"The dog snapped at him and missed. He felt that warranted an ER visit."
3. "One time, a girl came in with darkening blue hands. Everyone was thinking it was some sort of circulatory problem, and some tests were run. But as she nervously rubbed her hands on her knees over and over again while we were speaking, I realised what it was. I asked her to wash her hands real quick, and then suddenly they were no longer blue. It was dye from her jeans — both the outside and the inside of the pockets. We all had a good laugh."
4. "Two litre mountain dew bottle 1/3 of the way up a dudes ass."
5. "A elderly man came in the ED with his wife. He told her he was constipated they did an x-ray and the perfect outline of an old spice bottle was in his butt and he couldn’t get it out and his wife never found out she just thought he was constipated."
6. "Not ER, but L&D triage."
"Patient is late preterm and an OR nurse at our hospital. She comes to L&D saying she’s bleeding. We immediately take her back, go into a triage room.
Ask her the other emergency questions and she responds negatively. I ask how much she’s been bleeding. She says quite a bit but it seems to be slowing down. I ask her to undress from the waist down and give her a pad to sit on. The patient looks confused and says, 'why do I have to do that?' I explain to her it’s to see how much bleeding is on the pad and she finally says, 'I’m not bleeding from ‘down there!’ It’s my nose. Here’s all my tissues.'
She then pulls out a few tissues with spots of blood on them and I’m literally standing there trying not to laugh my butt off that this girl came to L&D triage for a nose bleed. The worst part was that she was also a nurse!!!"
7. "Bit by pet baby alligator. Brought alligator with him. Wanted it tested for rabies."
"Pennsylvania in the 80s. Back in the 1900s even a small child could buy a black market reptile at a flea market."
8. "Dry hands. During winter. One of the nurses was kind enough to give him a small pump of hand moisturiser and sent him off to a shop."
9. "Some guy's cylinder got stuck in an M&M tube."
10. "Patient was from a country that didn’t routinely consume apples. She had eaten the whole apple while visiting, core and all. She presented to the ED because she ate two apple seeds and was afraid, after a Google search, she may have arsenic poisoning."
11. "Had an older lady come once to 'check in' because she was told she could rent a hospital room during a storm if she was scared. I’ve had a patient come by ambulance once for a stubbed toe. Her family followed the ambulance in their car. When I questioned why she didn’t just arrive in the car instead of calling an ambulance, she said it was because she thought it might be broken."
12. "We have a frequent flyer. She has been hospitalized 14 times this year for swallowing objects. Girly has no gag reflex. She has swallowed a straw, croc charms, forks, a pen, an expo marker, flip-flop, and the handle of a fork. I see her name pop up and I feel dread."
13. "A man took an ambulance to request that we laser off his stretch marks. After being told no and getting grilled on his misuse of resources, he immediately requested that EMS drive him back to his house. They were pretty mad, lol."
14. "1) They were picking their nose, and it lightly started bleeding, just enough to be noticeable on their finger when they pulled it out. No nose bleed afterwards. They came in to get it checked out... Three days later."
"2) They had a wooden fence post that they had whittled into an oversized wooden dildo.... It got stuck. The doctor they wanted to take out was on vacation.... They decided they would come back in a week to get it out. They left AMA and came back in a week."
15. "I had a woman drag two 15 year old girls to the ER screaming she wanted them examined to see if they had sex because she caught them sneaking back into the house at 1AM. One of them wasn’t even her child."
16. "Scratch on the forehead. Wanted me to call plastics from our sister hospital to urgently assess her.>> I told her, 'Not a chance.' It was so superficial it would be gone in a couple of days. She hit the roof, so I put a very special scar-preventing wound dressing (wink, wink) on her less-than-a-paper-cut scratch, and she walked out all smug and happy."
17. "Paramedic, this is what I've heard."
"'I was at the hospital last night and forgot my wallet so I want a ride back to pick it up'
'I was diagnosed with strep yesterday and my throat still hurts'
'I was diagnosed with pneumonia, haven't started my antibiotics, and I'm still sick'
'I've had gastro for three hours and still feel sick'.
18. "A guy came in carrying a 2L Pepsi and a large pizza."
"He came up to triage saying he needed to see a doctor because he had 'multiple lawsuits' in the works and needed to show his lawyer that a doctor had seen him. He said he didn't even need an examination, just a paper saying a doctor had seen him. It was explained that he'd probably be waiting 8+ hours and would need an actual medical issue. He asked if a doctor could pop out to the waiting room and quickly just chat with him. We said no. He agreed to wait, then left after 15 minutes."
H/T to NotAMartianWithCovid and r/AskReddit for having the discussion!
Additional thumbnail credits: Ajr_images / Getty Images/iStockphoto