In the emergency healthcare sector, crazy stuff happens all of the time. Whether it be miracle recoveries or heroic, life saving actions, being part of the paramedic service is never a dull experience. Here at Brook Hi Vis we sell a vast amount of medical PPE and workwear, so it was only right that the next blog produced for your viewing pleasure was based on the exploits of those NHS workers who slave away day and night to make sure the public is kept in good health. So, without further a do I would like to introduce you to this weeks blog – Medical Miracles: 10 crazy emergency stories. (If you enjoy this content, why not take a look at the product that fuelled the idea for it? The link is at the end of the post.) Enjoy your read!
1
Medical Miracles: Get Off My Boot!
“My cousin was training for her nurse diploma at the time at a local hospital. So there is this old guy (70-80) coming in the ER with a big wound on his leg and he had to go for surgery. My cousin tried to prepare him for the surgery and asked him to remove his boots and clothes, so he can change into proper clothing. The old guy started yelling and cursing because he didn’t want to get his boots off. Several doctors came by to calm him and he started to fight them too. After some time when he calmed down they injected him some anaesthetic in order to remove his boots without him flipping over. It turns out he was ashamed to take them off because he had his nails painted red.”
2
Medical Miracles: New Friends
“Not ER, but once I took care of the same 2 patients for 3 days in a row, and they were separated only with a curtain. On the third day the nice old man gets distraught and goes “Nurse! Nurse! I’m so worried I haven’t had a bowel movement in 3 days!!” I go “what do you mean? You just had one yesterday.” And he relaxes and smiles and says “oh, I guess I forgot.” From behind the curtain my other patient yells “I REMEMBER!!!”
3
Medical Miracles: Blissful Ignorance
“I am an ER doc. I once had a 20 year old and his girlfriend come in at 2 am freaking out becuase “something had tore his throat open”. He seemed fine. No blood. Breathing fine. I had him open his mouth, saw nothing. So didn’t want him to lose confidence in me, clearly something had happened, so I’m looking, and looking….there is nothing wrong with this kids throat. Finally I say look, it seems ok…what do you feel or see? “I dont feel it but LOOK ITS RIGHT THERE”. WHERE??? Looking, looking. It was his uvula. Somehow this kid had gotten to the age of 20 without ever noticing his uvula. Girlfriend was also horrified….I told them it was normal. Did not believe me. So I told them I was about to blow their minds and showed him his girlfriends uvula. Minds blown, another life saved in the ER.”
4
Medical Miracles: Make Him Tall-ER!
“It was 3am and I’d been on duty in the Emergency since 8am. I was exhausted. A well dressed man came in with his 8 year old, healthy looking, son. I asked him what was the problem. He said, “Well, I was at a wedding and it occurred to me that my son is a little short. Can you give him something right now to make him taller?”
5
Medical Miracles: Tooth(ear)che
“My brother had lost a baby tooth. He was lying on the couch watching TV playing with the tooth in his fingers above his head. He dropped the tooth and it fell directly into his ear canal. After trying to get it out himself with his fingers he only pushed it deeper in. My father took him to the hospital to get it extracted. The doctor said he had never seen a case of a tooth lodged into an ear canal.”
6
Medical Miracles: The Patch
“The doctor prescribed a patient oestrogen patches and told her to stick one patch on herself every other day. At the next follow-up she said she didn’t like the patches because she’d been “running out of space.” I didn’t think to clarify to her that she should have been placing a new patch and removing the one from yesterday each day. Very amusing. She indeed was covered in sticky patches.”
7
Medical Miracles: Can’t Breathe
“I was working in a rural hospital once and patients would push a button at the back ER door that would ring a bell at the nurses station. When the bell rang you would ask the person who it was and what they needed over an intercom. One particular night the bell rang at the nurses station and the nurse answered “Can I help you?” The urgent reply was “Ma’am you have to help us my wife cannot breathe!” Needless to say all the night nurses went flying to the back at break neck speed grabbing the ER doc on the way only to find a man and his little wife standing there calmly at the ER door. The nurse out of breath and scooping the wife into a wheel chair said “sir I thought I heard you to say your wife could not breathe?” “Yes ma’am her nose has been stopped up all day and she cannot breathe.”
8
Medical Miracles: Grandad Got Game
“A 72-year-old patient was admitted due to kidney stones and eventually ended up with a catheter. Everyone noticed that he had tons of visitors, all of whom were blonde females under the age of 35. One of the nurses made a comment about how nice it was that his granddaughters were visiting him, at which point he laughed and said, ‘Granddaughters? Those babes are from OkCupid!’ Not sure why he thought that a date in the hospital watching him pee in a bag was particularly romantic, but I do hope that he landed a second date in the end.”
9
Medical Miracles: You Can’t Park There!
“One night when I was working my fourth grave yard shift in a row, one of the nurses had just gotten a call from local law enforcement that they were bringing in a patient for medical clearance before he went to jail. When they arrived, we placed him in a trauma room…turns out, the guy caught his wife with another man and he drove his car through the guy’s house. I’m talking about going in one side and driving through every single room. By some miracle he didn’t even have a scratch!”
10
Medical Miracles: Gator Wrestle
“This is my friend’s dad’s favorite story (He was an ER doc): There was a frat house that had a pet alligator in a large aquarium. (I’m sure this was against their university’s policy, but that’s besides the point.) One drunken frat boy for whatever reason decided to get in the tank with the gator naked. The gator apparently didn’t take too well to this and bit him in a rather sensitive area. He was too embarrassed to explain the source of his injury to a doctor so he waited three days and by then it had become infected. I believe the guy now qualifies for a Darwin Award…”
We owe a lot to our medical workers. They need nerves of steel, lots of kindness and patience longer than the great wall of China! We would like to thank all our medical workers for their dedication to keeping us alive and out of trouble. If you want to read more crazy ER stories then please click here. If you want to browse the medical PPE section that inspired this blog then please click here. Thankyou for taking the time out of your day to read this weeks post, stay tuned for more amazing tales and crazy stories in the coming weeks!