What was the MOST BIZARRE thing a pt has been brought to ER for (and lived to tell)?

Altra, BSN, RN · Nov 17, 2006

Female patient about to be arrested (I don't remember what for) who attempted to not add possession of paraphernalia to her charges. She placed her crack pipe in an area of her anatomy where it definitely did not belong, experienced pain, and removed it. The pipe did damage on the way in & on the way out ... she went to the OR.

The claim of a suicide attempt by swallowing broken pieces of a light bulb. CXR was negative.

UKRNinUSA, RN · Nov 17, 2006

A construction worker that came in to the ER with a sudden onset of jaw pain. We xrayed his jaw and lo and behold we found the culprit. A 4 inch nail that had entered thru the roof of his mouth (courtesy of a nailgun) and lodged in his brain. Boy did the xray tech get a shock!

JentheRN05, RN · Nov 17, 2006

Don't know this story personally, second hand. But in nursing school we had to do a skit on one thing or another and our group chose HIPPA.

Anyway - the story was supposed to be a true one that one of our classmates had experienced while being an EMT in ILL.

911 called for abdominal pain. Got there and brought the woman into ER with severe abdominal pain. Lower abdominal pain that is. Asking the normal questions to a female patient. 'LMP, regular or spotty, so on...'

In the course of an exam (for whatever reason) the woman forgot to mention she had stuck a sweet potato up where it didn't belong. The woman ended up being septic and dying from it. I guess the smell was something that will never be forgotten.

Just a suggestion, vegetables, no matter what they look like, do NOT belong in those places.

TazziRN, RN · Nov 17, 2006

That I've experienced: a young man brought in after being stabbed in the back. He complained of diff breathing and extreme pain on insp. AP chest was negative, sats were good, not bleeding out. We shipped him out since we did not have a surgeon and he obviously needed surgery. A friend of mine who works there called me later that night: they couldn't figure out the problem either, until someone suggested a lateral chest. The blade had broken off the handle and had lodged in his chest, with the blade resting up against his lung.

I heard about this one: a couple had decided to get frisky with some toys...in the literal sense.......he stuck a tonka toy figure where it shouldn't have gone and neither one could get it out. Went to the ER, doc did a speculum exam. When he opened the bill and looked in he saw the toy's smiley face looking right at him. He wrote up a fake delivery report, complete with Apgars. Mean? Maybe, but it gave the staff a laugh.

BabyRN2Be · Nov 17, 2006

I heard about this one: a couple had decided to get frisky with some toys...in the literal sense.......he stuck a tonka toy figure where it shouldn't have gone and neither one could get it out. Went to the ER, doc did a speculum exam. When he opened the bill and looked in he saw the toy's smiley face looking right at him. He wrote up a fake delivery report, complete with Apgars. Mean? Maybe, but it gave the staff a laugh.

:rotfl: I would LOVE to see that delivery report.

bill4745, RN · Nov 19, 2006

A guy came in with an electric toothbrush up his rear, which we verified by x-ray. What was crazy was that he expected us to believe that he was changing a ightbulb in his bathroom and slipped and fell on the toothbrush - sure, I always change ligtbulbs nude, & I usually put my toothbrush on the floor when I am done brushing my teeth. Do these people think we are idiots?

lozza81 · Nov 19, 2006

We had an 80 year old male come in with PR bleeding and pain after attempting to use a vibrator, vibrator was about 30cms long, lol.

One of our regular psych patients, actually I should say two coz they're twins they always come in after putting mcdonalds happy meal toys and subway toys where they shouldn't go, xrays always look pretty funny.

25 year old man, came in with a vibrator stuck in his rectum, had to go to theatre, funny thing is that he asked for the batteries back as they were rechargeables.

The sweetest thing tho, 2 year old had swallowed a heart pendant, chest xray looked like he had to hearts as the pendant was sitting over his heart, lol

LydiaNN · Nov 19, 2006

Anyone catch the show on Discovery when a brand new ER resident, first day on the job, treated a 14 year old patient who was moving with extreme caution and unable to speak? Turned out she's bulimic and was using a fork to facilitate emesis, and it had fallen down her throat.

Ruby Vee, BSN · Nov 19, 2006

i've told this story before, but it's a good one.

my friend was a brand new er intern. the desk faced the sliding glass doors to the parking lot, and he was sitting there chatting with the nurses. it was a dark, stormy night -- no really! thunder and lightning, raining sideways 'cause of the wind. as he looked out the door, a stroke of lightning lit up the parking lot, and he saw the most bizarre sight -- a man approaching the er carrying a limp woman in his arms, and with what looked like an axe blade sticking out of his head.

it was an axe.

seems that it was a poor, rural area, and many of the locals still heated with wood. the guy had been splitting wood before the storm started, hoping to have enough wood in the house to last through the night. as he was splitting wood, the axe head flew off the handle and struck him in the head. (that's one explanation -- the other is that he was practicing throwing an axe and it hit something hard, flew back and hit him in the head. i was never sure which one was the truth.) anyway, the poor guy now has an axe blade embedded in his head.

he went into the kitchen where his wife was, hoping to ask her to drive him to the er. she took one look at him, complete with axe blade and blood, shrieked and fainted. he couldn't leave her there like that, so he picked her up, carried her out to the car, and drove them both to the er.

turns out the blade was embedded right between to two lobes of the brain, and miraculously didn't hit anything vital. the blade was surgically removed, and the guy went home, reasonably intact. his wife was fine, too.

so al told me, anyway, and he's not known for making stuff up!

TazziRN, RN · Nov 19, 2006

Another one, in the vein of the foreign body stories: a young man brought in by ambulance one morning with a cucumber where it wasn't intended by nature to be. Could not extract it in the ER so the GI doc was consulted. He decided to take the pt to the OR and remove it under scope, and he planned to take him after about an hour. Pt asked if he could sit on the potty and try to push it out. We agreed, although we didn't think he would be able to since he'd tried that for several hours at home. My tech and I closed the door so he would have privacy and we were getting the surgery pack together when all of a sudden we heard a loud thump. We both stared at each other in shock and went running in the room. Pt was sitting with his legs apart, looking down between them at the very LARGE cucumber in the pot!

Believe it or not, he followed instructions and returned the next day for a followup H&H!

allnurses Guide · Nov 19, 2006

We had a construction worker get somebody really PO'd at him; they held him down and shot him in the head with a nail gun. He just walked in, talking and in NAD. Long nail (5+ inches) into the skull, but missed anything vital.

Not long after, we saw on the news that someone from California had multiple nails in his skull!