Members of the ‘Ask Reddit’ community recently discussed such sights afterone userasked them about it. The redditor wanted to know what things they’ve seen in a hospital waiting room, and fellow netizens covered nearly any and every scenario there is. Scroll down to find their answers on the list below, but be aware that some descriptions can get pretty visual.
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I work as a nurse in the emergency, I’ve seen some crazy things. But on a lighter note, while security was busy doing two separate take downs an old guy dressed up like Santa unzipped his backpack and started handing out beers to everyone in the waiting room
I was doing an IT job in a hospital when I saw a dude who’d put the front tyre of his motorcycle into a pot hole and gone over the handlebars. He’d hit the ground hands first and both of his arms had compound fractures with bones sticking out. He was doing that scream, inhale, scream again thing. It was super intense. The ER doctor pumped intramuscular ketamine into both arms and he calmed RIGHT down. They put a loop of rope around his wrist, and one person held his shoulder and the other person pulled the rope to get his bones back on the inside. The dude looked at his bones going back into his skin super calmly and said in a spacey tone “wow! That’s really interesting.”This was maybe 2001. I still remember it vividly.
A doctor going from patient to patient asking them health questions, symptoms and so on. She did this for an hour until there was a code white announcement. 2 orderly’s and a 2 security guards surrounded her and hauled her off. She was not a doctor after all..
A panicked guy sitting with his girlfriend, holding a ziplock bag with the tip of one of his fingers inside.Her: “What are you going to do?”Him: “Well I’m NOT going to be a chef.”
I watched a robot filing cabinet press the elevator button and guide itself to a different area of the hospital.
This just happened a couple of weeks ago. I was in the ER waiting room and there seem to be a lot of commotion over an elderly Asian woman who was sitting there with a large suitcase. Apparently her family just dropped her off there and she had no where to go. She was not ill and did not need medical attention. They abandoned her.They just left her like an unwanted puppy at the shelter. One of the saddest things I’ve seen.
I was sitting in the ER waiting room and this young couple comes in. The man pushing his girlfriend in a wheel chair. She’s barely conscious, slumped over and pale. As the boyfriend is checking her in, she wakes ups and Exorcist-style projectile vomits onto the floor. Nurses rush her back. The boyfriend then sits down and not a minute passes before out of nowhere he does the same! Everyone waiting slapped masks on real quick once that happened.
When I was roughly 11 years old, my parents and I ended up in the emergency room of one of the larger hospitals in the city due to a family emergency. This was my first experience in a city emergency room and it was much more chaotic than the country ERs (obviously).However, mom and dad needed to speak with the medical professionals without a precocious 11-year-old listening, so my dad instructed me to sit in the waiting/triage area and he vaguely gestured behind me.I sat down in the red triage area, trying to stay in view of the hallway so my parents could find me, and then looked up to observe my surroundings.Across from me was a 30-something man, his swollen face is bloodied as well as his clothing and his entire head is bandaged – wrapped tightly around his forehead to the back, and over and under his chin. A rather large butcher knife is protruding from the left side of his head, with the handle pointed straight to the ceiling and the blade edge facing away from me. The knife is firmly wrapped to the side of his head, and I’m guessing, keeping his ear in place. I can also see fresh blood slowly wicking through the bandages.The man is sitting with his legs crossed and is casually reading a magazine. The knife wobbled slightly as he turned his face from page to page and he seemed particularly unconcerned there is a knife stuck in his head. I don’t recall much thought processes regarding this situation, other than a flood of questions that I was holding back.Dad came around the corner to collect me and followed my fascinated stare, jumped slightly at the sight of the stabbed man and hauled me out of there pretty quick.Thus, my first introduction to a city ER in a sketchy part of town.
Once upon a time i was waiting on news of a friend who’d been in an accident.I saw a guy (about early twenties) come in with him mom because he’d fallen off of his roof and dislocated his shoulder. After about an hour of waiting his mom just says “f**k it! this is taking too long!” and legit began to google how to reset a shoulder.After about 5 mins of research, she took off her belt, folded it up and told him to bite down on it. She then proceeded to violently shove her son’s shoulder back into the socket while he naturally screamed in agony.Security and nurses rush over to see what the commotion is and more or less need to pull her off of him. Security sits her down and the nurses take the poor kid and get him treated.
When I was a kid, waiting in casualty with my mum because I got in some scrape. The guy say opposite us had a real life broadsword stuck in his foot. He’d been working in some old stately home and a suit of armour toppled over and the sword impaled his foot. It was all bandaged up and not obviously bleeding. So he was just sat there, cool as, waiting for his turn, holding this massive sword lodged in his foot.
I’ll never forget it. I went to the ER with a kidney stone and there was an old couple sitting across from me probably in their 60’s or 70’s. The lady was bickering to the man complaining about how long they’ve been there. The only thing is that this woman was completely purple. Like all of her face and head was this dark purple. She didn’t appear to be in any pain but my f**k was she ever purple.
Fell off my bike and fractured both bones in my wrist, while at camp. While in the waiting room a boy and girl both in Wendy’s outfits, boy holding a very bloody towel around his hand and her holding a bag full of ice and something bloody. I kid you not his line was, “so after they reattach my finger, do you wanna grab a bite to eat?” Then a bunch of cops come in escorting a man in full prison jumpsuit with the arm and leg cuffs bleeding profusely from his head. Quite the crazy experience!
When I was in my early 20’s I had a nasty staph infection I caught at work. Eventually I ended up having surgery because I was this close to losing part of my ankle tendon due to several pockets being right on it and the doctor basically rushing me into surgery unexpectedly. Before all of this though, the Air Force in its infinite wisdom decided they couldn’t treat me on base and would just send me to the ER downtown however many times it would take to have them give me antibiotics to clear it up. Why, I don’t know, but tax dollars at work right?Anyway one day I’m in there waiting to be seen when this older farmer looking guy walks right up to the front desk holding a small yeti style cup. This was before Yeti became big but that’s what it looked like.“Hey Ron” said the nurse"Hey Pearl" said the farmer"Brought your lunch today?" asked the nurse"Nope, it’s just my fingers" replied the farmer as he then held up his other hand that he had previously tucked away in his coat, wrapped in bloody rags. “Damn machine got me again"And that’s when I realized that 1) There are some really tough dudes out there who can lose multiple fingers and drive themselves to the hospital in the same calm manner they would have going through the McDonalds drive thru and 2) Whatever machines he was operating, I would like to never be closer than 100' to them in my life.
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Like 20 years ago waiting in the ER I see a guy dressed up as a full Monkey being wheeled on a stretcher past a large doorway and then 3 other monkeys following him. They were performers from the Live Lion King Show at Animal Kingdom.
Girl trying to get admitted to the mental health unit, turns out her boyfriend was a patient. She didn’t get admitted, she wasn’t happy about it but she left. Next thing we know there’s a car doing donuts just outside of the ER entrance, she was throwing things out the window and screaming “am I crazy enough now?” She ends up driving around to the other side of the hospital and driving right through some sliding glass doors. She’s lucky she didn’t [unalive] someone, another 10 feet and she would have crashed over a railing and into the cafeteria below, where staff was napping on a couch. Definitely got carted away, but not to where she wanted to go.
My moms favorite ER story (she spent a lot of time there with my dad as he fought drug and alcohol addiction on top of health issues) is when they were in an ER that was kind of an open concept, with just curtains for visual privacy. A couple beds in, there was a woman just moaning and screaming in pain. When the doctors went to see her and tell her what was wrong, the woman was moaning so loudly they had to yell “YOU ARE LITERALLY FULL OF POOP!” loud enough for the whole department to hear. The woman promptly quieted down.
I was like??? 13? I think? I forget why I was in the ER but I remember not feeling good at all. My hometown is a small rural Ohio town, great hospital but long wait times in the ER. So I had been there for about an hour and a half. My mom went to the bathroom and right after she left a lady was wheeled in in a wheelchair. Rather obese woman with a very thick leg (looking back now I know it was Lymphedema) and I remember her leg looked like it was leaking fluid? The person who wheeled her in went to window to start the check in process and the woman was grumbling about her leg itching. She bent over in the wheelchair, reached down, and her leg split. Liquid and what looked like fat busted out of her thigh and she screamed. And like she had every right to that s**t looked like it was agonizing. Immediately some nurses came out and whipped her into the back. When my mom came back asking what had happened I didn’t even tell her just, “I think we might be waiting a bit longer mom.” I guess it’s very rare, but apparently if you’re not taking care of your lymphedema properly it can happen.
I was in the ER waiting room for a possible broken hand when I was in high school. There were a group of frat guys from the local college that were drunk off their aes trying to get their buddy seen for a really bad cut in the meat between his thumb and index fingers. I was in the waiting room for at least half an hour before I got seen and the whole time I was there the guy with the cut was squeezing the sides of his cut to make it open and close like a mouth and he did a whole comedy routine for his buddies in the waiting room like it was a ventriloquists dummy. Really gross but f***g hilarious.
my appendix burst, and this was during covid so all the beds were full. I ended up in the waiting room with an IV drip and was gown’d up waiting for surgery. A guy comes in, absolutely smacked out of his mind and immediately starts pissing on the chairs. A nurse tells him to stop and he horks a loogie in her face. He then turns to me and starts speedbagging my IV like Rocky lol Security rushed in, scooped me up and tackled the guy. Ngl I’ve always wanted to punch an IV bag I was jealous
Watched a guy fake passing out so he didn’t have to wait, since there were a lot of people waiting. A*****e winked at me as he was wheeled back on a gurney.
I took an employee with kidney stones to the ER one time. While sitting in the waiting room, a guy came in with chest pains. He was taken back for immediate treatment. And then came the rest of his crew. He had been at a potluck picnic when it happened. And they brought the whole dang thing to the hospital. Like 40 people with casserole dishes and meat trays and such. Only disappointing thing was they didn’t invite me to eat.
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not as a patient, but my job was in the emergency room. one day a man with an OPEN HEAD WOUND (his head was literally crushed) got up from the couch, wandered to the toilet, locked himself in there, and then started smoking, because the smell of cigarettes was throughout the entire department. there were blood trails on his way… me and my friend, realizing the f****d up situation, first tried to peacefully persuade him to leave, but it didn’t work. they called the security. there was a lot of screaming and stuff. I literally had to break down the door. when the door was broken down, we found him sitting on the toilet with a cigarette in his mouth. absolutely everything was in the blood and his feces
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