“Pulling Down His Socks": 30 Most Terrifying Things Nurses Have Witnessed On The Job

Lab guy here. Responded to assist in the ER when a 5–6-year-old boy was pulled from the irrigation canal he was swimming in during our first heat wave of the summer. Was unobserved and suspected of being under for a total of 7–9 minutes, completely blue and unresponsive to stimuli.
We worked on that kid for about 4 hours and finally got a weak pulse. I kept him on the monitor for the remainder of my shift, and he also got fluids, warming blankets, and oxygen. I left for the night before I knew the final disposition. He came in 2 weeks later with his family, running up and down the hallway, everyone getting big hugs and gratitude for helping to save his life. I am thankful I got to be part of that miracle. I'm pretty secluded back in my department and away from direct patient care, so I know it's serious if I get called down to assist.

Lady with sores and foul smelling discharge coming from her vagina. We spent days trying to figure out what had happened, labs sent, no infections, swabs clear.. it was an enigma.

Until I caught her douching her vagina with bleach. She thought that’s how you kept it clean.

Sex education is important guys!

Labor nurse here! 36 year old female patient who had been diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer in her 8th week of pregnancy. Her and her husband had been trying for a baby for 10 years. Was advised to terminate the pregnancy to pursue aggressive treatment, of course she refused. Was induced at 32 weeks and her entire abdomen was overcome with malignant tumors by this time. The cancer had also spread to her lungs and bones. Baby was born, sent to NICU and mom was sent home on hospice. She died 3 weeks later. Baby is doing fine today and just turned a year old.

Had a nice older gentleman patient who was tachycardic, but all his labs were normal. He seemed like he took fairly good care of himself, was a little disheveled but he dressed nice and had nice shoes. We initially couldn't find anything wrong with him, but he had a peculiar odor to him that seasoned nurses would get suspicious of. I asked him if he had any infections on his body that he knew of, and he said "no", but I wanted to do a thorough check, so we took off all his clothes, and he was fine, until I got down to his feet.

He was wearing an old pair of socks, and as I peeled them down, literally the skin around his foot came off with the sock. I was essentially degloving his foot. It was so vile, I couldn't even get down more than a couple inches. It was raw flesh under those socks. The wound odor was so strong, I knew then that his feet were the source. He probably hadn't changed his socks in several months. He ended up being admitted and given lots of antibiotics and wound care.

The memory of pulling down his socks will haunt me forever.

ER RN here. This, so far, is the only death I've experienced from work that I've lost a significant amount of sleep over. 24 year old male walks, again walks, into the ER with complaints of flu-like symptoms for the past 3 days. He had decided to come in that day because he started to develop a "rash" throughout his body that he was unfamiliar with. Sadly this rash was actually the result of a failed battle with bacterial meningitis, causing him to bleed internally and externally. By the time we got him back into the ER, he started crying blood and the terror in his eyes was palpable. He went downhill fast. His lucidity diminished with his blood pressure and the last thing he said before succumbing to pulse less V-tach was something about his mother that we could not make out. You could see his consciousness fade from his eyes as we started compressions. The code lasted close to an hour. At first we could still keep his oxygen levels up with mechanical ventilation, defibrillation, and medication, but blood was filling his airways faster than it could be suctioned out. He was bleeding to fast for any medications or fluids to keep his blood pressure up. He died soaked in blood and nearly unrecognizable due to his now almost uniformly purple skin and swollen face. We later found out that he was studying neurobiology, had a devoted girlfriend that was for all intense and purposes a fiancee, a large family, and many friends. He was an athlete who lived healthy. He had beautiful curly hair. This made the death tragic in a way that you just don't experience when a 80+ year old dies. It made the unanswered pleads to God for help that had been sent echoing around the room by his family all the more bitter. I helped drag and push him into a body bag.

I once worked as a security guard at a hospital. We had this very old man turn up at the emergency room in an equally old pickup truck driven by what looked like a 12-year-old. The old man opened his door, stepped out, and stood up.
There were V-shaped cuts in his jeans that were absolutely blood-soaked from the knees down. He asked for a wheelchair. I ran and got him one. As he was sitting down, he explained that he was working on his lawn mower, and it had started somehow and fell across his knees. He said he needed his kneecaps 'put back in,' reached into his pants pocket, and showed them to me. Darndest thing I've ever seen!

So, so many to choose from. I’m gonna go with the homeless guy that came to our hospital with an abdominal abscess (basically a hole in his abdomen). We were trying to clean his wound and assess the damage, and when we reached inside his wound, we started finding money. He nonchalantly stated that he kept his money tucked in there, to protect it from being stolen.

Did a short stint in mental health. Had an 18ish year old come in. Had been found in the fetal position covered in s**t and naked in her bedroom by police. She'd basically been locked in there by her parents for years (most of her life). She kept asking for her mum cause she didn't know how to do anything. Her mother was still trying to control her from prison.

My father worked in ER at the beginning of his nursing career, and he said one of the hardest things he had experienced was a young man who shot himself in the face, but he was still alive.
All that was left was the back of his neck/bottom part of his skull. The man died a short time later, but could you imagine seeing something like that?
God bless nurses, they truly deal with so much.

We had a guy come into the ER from a nursing home. According to report, he asked the staff for a glass of water. When he didn't receive it quickly enough, his rational response was to start eating his fingers. By the time he got to us he had eaten all 10 of his fingertips away. Bone was definitely visible. There was still flesh stuck in his teeth and on his sheets. That's a sight I won't forget anytime soon.

A man was discharged from a mental health facility a few days prior. He went home and built a gun in his garage out of pipes. He proceeded to shoot himself in the chest. His wife called EMS. He was talking when he came into the ED. He asked for water because he was thirsty. This is usually the first sign someone isn't going to make it. The CT scan showed there was a bullet in the heart. He was rushed into my OR.

The trauma surgeon split the ribs and was feeling around for where the bullet went. Meanwhile, the front desk is trying to get ahold of the cardiovascular surgeon on call. He's out of town and says to call one of his partners. The first partner is also out of town, the second and third are both an hour away at other hospitals.

The trauma surgeon finds a hole in the left ventricle. I am able to get ahold of another surgeon who isn't on call but is 20 minutes away. He says the patient needs to get on bypass if there's any chance, but he'll probably end up dying anyway. Anesthesia is on a massive transfusion protocol, but his vitals are not improving. The surgeon opens the pericardium and it sounds like a water balloon hitting the pavement. In an instant, a liter of crimson colored blood pours out of the drapes and onto the floor. Anesthesia calls out there's no pulse. Another liter and a half pour from the drapes. We now know where all the blood went.

The next 2 hours include filling out paperwork and calling the medical examiner. I have to speak to the widow and his mother about signing the forms for the ME. His death will have to be investigated by the county. I still have to get the meat wagon from the morgue and put him on ice. My shift ended three hours prior, but it's my death in my OR so I'm responsible for all the details and paperwork.

This one isn't as emotionally tough as the 12 year old who crashed a side by side on a co-worker's property. He was declared brain dead the next morning. The staff lined the halls for an honor walk as his bed rolled by to the OR for an organ procurement. As the father of two young boys myself, I broke down and cried as the mother said goodbye. She adjusted his blanket to keep him warm and kept telling him, "it'll be ok. I'll see you later. It'll be ok.".

Doc not nurse.
Probably resuscitation efforts on a 20 year old who died of diabetes. All I could think about was that he had clearly just got a haircut for the new term at uni as I broke all his ribs.

The other was another diabetic chap (64years old) who’d already lost one leg and had been putting off amputation of the other. He came in profoundly unwell with a white cold dead foot. I spent 10 hours overnight trying to stabilise him for transfer to a hospital where they could amputate it. I couldn’t, he was too unwell. I asked him multiple times to let me call a friend (no family) for him, but he declined. Intensive care declined to take him. In the morning we told him we weren’t going to be able to do anything for him, and he kept saying “so then what next?”. The conversation was excruciating. He wasn’t getting it. Eventually the consultant said “you’re going to slip away”, the patient said “I’m going to die?!” And the fear in his eyes made me want to vomit. He then quietly asked me to call his friend. He died 5 hours later.

Happy story: 98 yo man comes in with terrible heart rhythm (VT) and dropping blood pressure. Had a DNAR and daughter said he wouldn’t want to have cardioversion (electric shock paddles thing you’ll have seen on tv). He’s conscious and awake. I am giving him a medicine that might work, might not. I ask him what he needs, and he looks at me with a single tear coming from his eye and says “I know I’m dying” in that case, I say, what do you need? He wanted a sip of beer. This is at 4 am. We managed to get him his beverage. He took a sip, closed his eyes, and his heart went back into sinus rhythm and he was saved.

Not a nurse but a nursing assistant. I was pulled to the ER one night to help with a patient being brought in by ambulance. We’re a small hospital with only one ER nurse. Anyway, we knew this patient was going to be a mess after hearing from the medics that she had been on her floor for weeks. Her husband (who didn’t live with her) had been bringing her food but otherwise left her laying there. The medics had to literally scrape her off the floor with the help of a shovel. She was a rather large lady, and you can’t imagine the sores on her backside from laying there in her own filth for a month. We of course started cleaning her up right away, and it shocked me all the trash I pulled out of her folds. She even had a pop bottle lid in one fold that had carved a wound in her skin.

A Royal Marine, not long back from Belize, came into Casualty at the hospital I work at. He had a 'cyst' swollen on the back of his neck. The guy was in agony. 3 local anaesthetic injections later, the doc attempted to lance the thing and it moved. He peeled off the top layer of skin to reveal a massive larvae wriggling underneath. About the size of a 50p. It popped out without any problems and was huge when it was unravelled. The hole in the marines neck was clean, amazingly. Great example of a host.

Posting one more that I just remembered: 20 year old patient in for a motorcycle accident sans helmet. Kid "survived" but was never going to be NOT a vegetable living off of 15 different tubes ever again; he literally lost too much brain tissue. That kinda stuff is par for the course in a level 1trauma center. What was hard was watching his parents stay in his room in shifts, documenting every little twitch and spasm and reporting it to us as a sign that he was "waking up", only to have to be gently told (after assessing of course) that it's just spasms with no conscious thought. They would also happily keep telling us about the welcome home party they had planned for him, and making jokes that they're never letting him buy a bike again. One day they started visiting less and less, and eventually stopped coming at all. Finally, they made him a dnr. He was their only child.

The worst smelling thing was a homeless man who came in with what looked like moon boots on his feet except they were surgical boots that he placed foam around and duck tape. They hadn't been removed for about 3 months. He was also diabetic and had ulcers on his feet. We had to cut them off to be able to see what was happening. The smell permeated the entire emergency room. To top it off maggots were just falling off his feet and wiggling on the ground. He was yelling down the hall and rude to everyone but me and would only let me take care of him. He ended up refusing care and insisted that we tape his shoes back on and let him leave. Management finally said we could and we sent him off.

Saddest stories are the kids. 6 year old shot by a drive by and was being coded by the time she arrived. She didn't make it and hearing the mother hear the news and screaming from down the hall will stick with me forever.

Happy story a teenage was out drinking with friends and they accidentally ran him over. We thought he had no brain activity and was going to be a donor. (He was transferred from another hospital.) We run some tests and he is able to squeeze fingers and respond some. He went to surgery and then ICU and was discharged a week later and his mom found me one day before he left and I was so relieved for the family.

Not mine but my mom was a night shift ER nurse before I was born and this is what she told me was one of her worst (but in a long and convoluted way, best) nights.

So one night they bring in this dude on something, they don't know what exactly but he's going buckwild. They leave him restrained and alone in one area of the hospital to work the d**g out and hopefully be manageable by dawn. Eventually my mom goes on a break to eat because it'd been a slow night and she was hungry. She got her food out of the break room in the area of the hospital the previously mentioned d**g guy was and eats in there.

Eventually she smells something burning, goes outside to check on what it is, turns out m**********r had a lighter he wiggled out of his pocket and began to burn off the restraints. She knows she can't stop him at this point so she runs to the doors to alert security. In some twisted horror movie series of events, the doors are locked up but she sees someone at a desk on the other side. Too late, d**g man's now freed himself and is going to start chasing my mom.

She out runs him and manages to bang on the door once she makes a lap around the area. Not enough time to get helped this lap, she runs off again still being pursued by the maniac she's locked up with. Third times the charm, she's far enough ahead of him and the doors are unlocked and ready for her. By this point the cops have already arrived and two officers go through the doors to restrain him and take him in, the third talks to her and comforts her.

That officer was the man she later marries and has a child with. Eventually she also later divorces him but still considered it a great night because it lead to the existence of her child, me!

Tl;dr- Mom got chased around a hospital wing by a [addict] and when the cops showed up she met the man who became my dad.

Not a nurse but a medical assistant. Was my first day on the job at an urgent care and was asked to assist with an abscess drainage. I said sure. Walk into the room, the patient is laying on the bed with her legs in stirrups. NBD, just assumed the abscess was on her inner thigh maybe. WRONG! She had TWO (2) abscesses, one on each side of her labia, each about the size of dates. So the doctor cuts into the first one. Now usually with abscesses, you cut it open and blood and pus drains out. This one though.....She cut it open and a green fluid the consistency of molasses started to leak out. The smell was so terrible, but I could not react as the patient could see my face and I did not want to embarrass her any more so than she already was having vaginal abscesses drained and all. When the draining slowed down, the doctor literally started pulling on it, basically roping it out of the wound. After packing the drained abscesses I had to bandage her up. After the patient left I was congratulated by my coworkers for keeping composure, especially for it having been the first procedure on my first day! I loved that job and miss it every day, I don’t really miss the craziness, that made my job interesting and fun.

When I was a junior neurosurgery resident, I was called to the ED for a 30-ish-year-old male who ran his motorcycle head-first into a telephone pole while intoxicated. No helmet.
His face was smashed beyond recognition. (I have no idea how the medics got him intubated in the field.) But when I saw him in the trauma bay, he had a frontal open skull fracture down to his orbit. We took him to the OR right away to decompress him. After 2 cranial operations and 3 months in the hospital, he went home.

I was friends with a guy who was an ER nurse in a neighborhood with a lot of gang violence. One night, they get a gang member who was shot and in pretty bad shape, but still alive.
My friend left the room to go grab something, and when he came back, there was a guy dressed in a clown suit with a shotgun up his sleeve. As he raises his arm to shoot the gang member, security tackled the guy and arrested him.