Stupid People Award

Tweety, BSN, RN · Sep 30, 2004

Yep. Gotta give the prize to her. Good one.

talaxandra · Sep 30, 2004

Now, now - this is how miraculous miracle breakthroughs are made in medicine. Just because 'accepted wisdom' is that battery acid is corrosive and not something you should have anywhere near your body... I'm sorry, I can't keep a straight face any longer!

So, enquiring minds want to know: exactly how much worse did she make her situation?

Marie_LPN, RN, LPN, RN · Sep 30, 2004

A runner-up would have to be the guy who put VapoRub on his member, thinking it would give his girlfriend something to rave about. Luckily she was a little wiser, although she did show up in the ER with him.

trauma_junkie1 · Sep 30, 2004

How about the truck driver whose wife suggested he put a lug nut from his truck on his member in order to increase his stamina. Went on fine, then.....well, things swell up. Wouldn't come off. Spent 2 hours at home cutting through one face with a Dremel, then, instead of going to the opposite face, he went to the next one. After another hour, he realized that this was going to take forever.

Urology cut it off (the lug nut, not his member!) with a bit stronger saw. :-)

I knew an ER doc once who said he had seen MANY cases of self-circumcision gone wrong (can it go right?). He used to say, "I won't even try to cut my own hair, but...whatever."

boulergirl, CNA · Sep 30, 2004

Have any of you heard of "The Darwin Awards"? There's even a book out about this. Basically there are people out there who are determined to knock themselves out of the gene pool through their own stupidity. One nurse told her story about a guy who came to the hospital because he got an egg stuck up his butt and tried to fish after it with a coat hanger. (His wife was away at work and he was looking for a way to service himself. This makes no sense.) He died after ripping up his insides with that coat hanger and the unboiled egg, which had cracked in his rectum. EWWWWW......... :eek:

hipab4hands · Sep 30, 2004

The winner goes to the lady with a "broken tooth"...treating herself with battery acid "to numb the area"

I think I may have a runner up:)

Alcoholic ran out of money to buy his choice of beverage, decided to go to the local morturary, and broke in. He decided to steal embalming fluid and have his nightly drinking binge with it.

The guy did survive.

LPNalmost! · Sep 30, 2004

Not nearly as devastating as previous posts, but still funny and a true story: A friend of mine decided to get kinky with his wife. They wanted to try Ben-wah balls but didn't have any, so he went to the "shop" and got a few ball bearings. Inserted the ball bearings into her "you-know-what" where they immediately got lost. After several hours of "fishing" with a large magnet (again from the shop!), all of the ball bearings were recovered.

I think I may have a runner up:)
Alcoholic ran out of money to buy his choice of beverage, decided to go to the local morturary, and broke in. He decided to steal embalming fluid and have his nightly drinking binge with it.
The guy did survive.

Still Riding · Oct 2, 2004

I think i now have a winner...

Not personal experience, but a guy my brother works with decided he wanted "smooth balls", and decided that nair would be the best choice. but instead of nair for intamate areas he decided that he would use nair for men.

Well nair for men is a little stronger than some of the different nairs. well he puts it on his balls and it starts to burn (SURPRISE) but he thought it was a normal feeling, and left it on for 5 of the 6 minutes. well to make the story short he ended up in the ER with second degree burns on his balls.

Appearantly it is very sensitive to have second degree burns on your balls, and hard to walk.

do I have a winner?

Long Term Care Columnist / Guide · Oct 2, 2004

DING DING DING!! We have a winner!! :chuckle

Here's another stupid-person tale from the annals of my own ER: A couple of months ago, during a full moon (surprise, surprise), a guy came in bleeding profusely from his genital area and screaming in agony. Seems he had just broken up with his girlfriend, and he'd decided that sex was just too much of an issue for him to deal with, so he'd calmly sliced open his scrotum with a hunting knife and attempted to remove the testicles.

Well, he discovered rather quickly that there is a whole new world of pain that a relationship gone bad just can't match. His neighbors heard him howling and called 911, and by the time the ambulance brought him to the ER he was about half out of his mind with the pain. So they gave the poor devil some Versed and sewed him back up........and when it was all over he said "Thanks, I feel better now" and left! No psych consult, no overnight observation, no follow-up......apparently he got his anguish out of his system, and we've never heard from him again. :rolleyes:

babynurselsa, RN · Oct 2, 2004

Recently we had a pt that checked in for his Hemorhoids. The wait in the WR was too long for him so he went home and tried to cut them off with a razor blade...... Needless to say he came back directly.

Around the same time I also had a pt who tried to pop what he thought was a pimple on his scrotum. Actually it ended up being a small hematocele. Then he couldn't get the bleeding to stop. He remebered having a similar problem in another location years earlier that the Dr. cauterized. So yes he gets out the handy dandy soldering iron. Well that didn't work either and he needed to go to work so he took one og those little black heavy duty paper clip things and clamped it until he was done working, then he came in to be seen.

lapappey · Oct 2, 2004

Not as bad as some of the above, but ...

Had a kid (teenager) c/o "I swallowed a pill box full of pills [narcotics]." No, not a pill box's worth of pills, but a metal box with pills inside it. He was running from the cops or something, didn't want to be found with it. Surgeon says that they're probably going to have to do a huge laparatomy ... and they go. Manage to get the foreign body out with I believe an esophagoscope. Kid wakes up in the PACU, and I mean wide awake, checks his belly to see if there's an incision, there is none ... so he promptly asks for the pills back. No dice, buddy. Pt-"Then you're going to be seeing me again real soon, seeing as it's not my #@$%."