Most surprising/shocking/interesting thing you've seen

Published

What's the most surprising/shocking/interesting CC/presentation/wound/injury/whatever you've seen at work (without violating HIPAA).

Let's try to keep it real and not write a book per comment. :eek:

Specializes in PDN; Burn; Phone triage.

Older lady with sudden onset extreme agitation, confusion, physically very abusive...she came to our unit after having been in and out of geri psych units and nursing homes for a year post behavior changes. Several facilities.

She had a pressure ulcer that extended from her mid-lower back and had eaten away through all of her buttocks. All the way to bone in some spots. We measured this in feet. And it went completely missed in its various stages through 5 or 6 different facilities. She had been dc'd from geri psych to a nursing home who didn't realize the extent (this was a completely open, gaping wound) for several days.

Every time our docs would convince her son to just make her palliative, med would come by with new tests to find the root of her sudden onset confusion/agitation. Why even at this point? Hopefully she finally died in whatever LTACH we sent her to.

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Specializes in Trauma, Teaching.

We had an older teen stabbed in the heart; open chest in the ER, cardiac surgeon happened to be in the building late; pumped 17 liters of fluids (saline and blood) through the rapid infuser, most of it went straight out the hole onto the floor. Clamps on the hole in the chest sticking out and flipping back and forth with each beat. Clamp stopped, and we slammed in calcium, watched the clamp start moving again. Surgeon sewed the hole shut, then he went to OR to clean up and close. Kid survived! Did well.

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Specializes in Psych.

One of my first days in the OR as a CNA, they were doing an organ harvest (sorry, I know the organ donor network doesn't like that term), & somebody didn't secure the body to the table & it fell off, chest open etc. It took about 7 of us to get it back onto the table intact.

That same week, there was a 12-yr-old girl who died on the table from an MVC. I shouldn't have looked in, but I did & i can picture it in my mind as clear as day. I don't know why they didn't a) cover the window to the OR or b) cover her up. I don't want to know what a sutured chest of a child looks like :(

It never gets easier. You just get stronger.

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Specializes in CCU, SICU, CVSICU, Precepting & Teaching.
That same EXACT thing happened to me, except my windshield miraculously did not break. It actually bounced off my windshield and went flying over my car. Scared the bejeebers out of me, though.

When I was in nursing school, late for Clinical, I passed a guy towing a boat trailer going a bit over the speed limit. (Actually, I was going quite a bit over the speed limit.) I'd been following him for awhile, and I have no idea what possessed me to pass him at that particular moment. But just as I drew abreast of the tow vehicle, the boat on the trailer slipped sideways, and then flew off, striking the windshield of the car directly behind. (That would have been ME had I not suddenly decided to pass.) Both the driver and the passenger were killed. I NEVER stay behind anyone towing a boat . . . or a pick up with an open load.

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Specializes in Education.

Abcesses from IM heroin. It's amazing how much pus can build up in there, and then you start squeezing it all out.

Abcess that was nearly the size of the patient's abdomen.

Hey, my hospital isn't a trauma center. We get a lot of psychs and drug users.

From my medic days: nearly complete amputation. I'm surprised that the vasculature and nerves were still intact; that's how much trauma was put onto the limb. Open fractures, partial degloving.

And a sad one. Kid suffered major head trauma the day before their birthday. In their front yard. I can still hear the mother's screams, and that was well over a decade ago.

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Specializes in SICU, trauma, neuro.
I had a man with necrotizing fasciitis on his gentials. I literally held this man's hand as he screamed to his death. It was one of the worst days for as a nursr.

I've seen this more often than I'd like to think about, because I happen to work somewhere w/ a hyperbaric chamber. All of mine have been intubated and sedated, and on a hefty fentanyl gtt, though.

How horrible for your patient, and for having to witness that. I'm sure you were a comfort to him, even though you couldn't take his pain away. Hugs!!

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Specializes in SICU, trauma, neuro.
That same EXACT thing happened to me, except my windshield miraculously did not break. It actually bounced off my windshield and went flying over my car. Scared the bejeebers out of me, though.

When I was 20 I was driving home from my 3-11 CNA shift. I lived in rural WI. I hit a deer with my Honda Civic. :eek: For a second I thought I was going to meet my maker, as I saw that buck flying at my windshield, but it never even cracked. The car was totaled, but the windshield stayed intact.

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Specializes in SICU, trauma, neuro.

GSWs to the face.

This one traumatic amputation of the foot...the foot looked like it had been snapped off. The tibia extending several inches from the stump, and the foot itself hanging on by some skin. They did manage to reattach it.

I've had a couple of self-immolations when floating to the burn unit. Of all the ways to attempt suicide, they chose self-immolation??!?! That's got to be a special level of mental illness.

At my first job, I took care of a lot of major ENT surgical pts. The oral and facial CAs were horrendous. I always wondered how much of their faces had to be removed, before considering palliative care? One woman literally would wear a pillow case over her head while ambulating in the hall, because she didn't want to scare anyone. She'd lost her eyes, nose, part of her frontal bone, and her maxilla.

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Specializes in Psych.
And a sad one. Kid suffered major head trauma the day before their birthday. In their front yard. I can still hear the mother's screams, and that was well over a decade ago.

That's horribly haunting.

It never gets easier. You just get stronger.

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Specializes in Education.
That's horribly haunting.

It never gets easier. You just get stronger.

It...certainly put a few things into perspective for me.

However. That experience also made it so that I can better handle unexpected deaths and talking with/breaking the news to families. Death is also the one thing that I flat out refuse to joke about.

Well, unless it's Death the character. Pratchett, Sandman, Marvel...

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A lot of things I could share would violate HIPAA, and its too bad because I have some great experiences in the PICU with Level 1 trauma.

I can share that I've done leech therapy twice! Not something I ever expected to do or learned in nursing school.

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And that is precisely why I avoid driving behind any vehicle with an open load of stuff regardless of how well secured it appears to be. I am trying to drill that into my son's brain as he is currently learning to drive. People will transport the craziest things without securing them properly.

Many years ago I was driving in the lane next to a painter's pickup truck with many loose items in the back. I was way behind it, too, at least 50 yards. I had purposely started to ease back and away from it about a mile earlier. The next thing I know, an empty large paint bucket (one of those large plastic ones that holds many gallons) flew out of the truck, landed right in front of my car, and then bounced entirely over my car! It never hit me and landed harmlessly in the emergency lane. Scary!

Years later my husband and I drove under a freeway bridge and the windshield suddenly popped and cracked, but didn't break. Turns out some kids were dropping rocks off of the bridge and others were hurt. The police got them.

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