What are some of the craziest things you have seen that patients' stupidity have caused themselves? Here's a few I have taken care of:
1. Patient with a fungal infection in his brain. Cause: snorting cocaine.
2. Patient with knee infection cultured to reveal E. coli. She had knee surgery and after being discharged, she wanted back in the hospital for stronger narcotics. So, she rubbed feces in the wound knowing it would cause infection. Yep, she actually admitted to this...after being confronted with lab results.
3. Patient whose with occupation as a stripper. A man, claiming to be able to safely inject saline into the breasts of the strippers for a cheap breast enhancement. The patient ended up with a nasty infection and ended up losing a breast. The doctor had to do reconstruction in several phases. In trying to save the nipple, he attached it to the abdomen until the final surgery, where it was put back where it belonged.
Specializes in Community Health, Med-Surg, Home Health.
My mother, who was a CNA told me that she walked through the emergency room and saw about 20 doctors looking at this xray with rapt interest. She noted that it looked like a stick a ball, somehow. Later when she returned, she saw that there were different doctors (again, a large number) staring at this thing and taking notes, talking rapidly. This time, my mother recognized a doctor and asked him what the commotion was. He told her that a patient stuck an entire basketball trophy up is orifice, that the only thing left out was the platform it stood on. This patient ripped his whole abdominal cavity out, and what my mother actually was seeing in the xray was the hook-shot...the arm holding the basketball. Went past the diaphragm. My God...what a field day!
A Bart Simpson doll up the orifice. It was the best Xray I've ever seen. You could see his hair and arms open wide , like he was yelling ' get me out of here!"
A Bart Simpson doll up the orifice. It was the best Xray I've ever seen. You could see his hair and arms open wide , like he was yelling ' get me out of here!"
I almost blew my tea all over my computer! THAT is just too funny!
Had a guy come up tho the triage window doing the dance, with blood spatters of the front of his pants. Said he was cleaning his gun and it went off in his lap. Funny how the hole was through and through the shaft, no wound to the sac or thighs. Just as if someone had stretched it out and shot through it. hmmmm:monkeydance:
God I am not even an ER nurse and non of this is new to me. Guess I have been doing this too long. Sorry I can't top anything I have seen here nor can I express surprise over any of it it is all to simular to things I have seen first hand.
in a detox center... syringe taped btw 17yo's buttocks to try and smuggle in (found in a "why is your bottom beeping" moment with the metal detector), a repeat offender old enough to be my father who had a piece of his syringe break off in his arm that ortho was unable to retrieve in two separate procedures, a baggie of klonopin wrapped in someone's hair bun to augment her detox meds...
in homecare, a quadraplegic patient ... when i went to get his prefilled mediplanner, monday was full of maryjuana seeds. same patient actually conducted drug deal on the phone with me still in the home. um... could that wait please?
This guy wants to get rid of a mole in his yard. So he dropped a stick of dynamite in the hole, put a board over it and then stood on the board. Lost his legs.
This other guy tried to fix the jam in his wood chipper. Yep... stood on top of it and jumped up and down. Wiered though.. didn't lose any legs but had a huge I mean HUGE wound from his flank down his leg. Lucky he was a very fat guy.
Then there is the lady that packed her leg in dry ice (took a lot of pain meds to deal with the pain). Her wish came true when she had to have it amputated, and then would go to amputee support group and cheerfully talk about her (self inflicted) amp with the poor accident victims. Sad.. she really was a sick woman.
Had a guy a few weeks ago who decided to make his own sex toy with a brand new toilet bowl brush with one of those rubber handles...he came to the ER with the bristles sticking out his bum...he stuck it in, and couldn't get it out, so he panicked and called 911...that was interesting...he was really embarrassed.
I've had loads of patients in psych who've stuck all kinds of things in various body cavities to try to smuggle them onto the unit...crack pipes, razor blades, cigarettes, lighters...you name it, and I've found it lodged in some person's bum.
Had a girl who'd had surgery but didn't want to go back to the state mental hospital, so she'd keep pulling her abdominal wound open. We had to put her on 1:1 observation until the wound healed up. She'd swallowed 34 tacks in order to have that lovely surgery in the first place.
The creepiest one involved a guy who was hearing voices quoting the Bible to him...kept saying 'If thine own eye offends thee, then pluck it out'...so he did, right in our seclusion room...he kept repeating the phrase so he was on 1:1 while in seclusion, and the tech and I saw him reach up and we went for him, but he pulled it right out before we could get to him...guy never made a sound...
pagandeva2000, LPN
7,984 Posts
Sigh...looks like he was not on the job...