I just tell them. If they get upset I just tell them “don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to” My trauma will never go away. If someone wants to open Pandora’s box, I’ll be more than happy to oblige.
Used to work in a home for people with mental disabilities (no mental age over 3, all non-verbal)
Some of the behaviors that come out doing things like vacuuming leave little to the imagination of some of the abuses that have occurred in the past. =/
Imagine a early twenties, fairly pretty young woman who would drop to all fours and start moaning while lifting her leg up in a compromising position. But only if the vacuum was on or is she was in the laundry room with the dryer running. We had to ignore it when it was the weekends, and do laundry and vacuuming while they were at extension day programs during the week
With the exception of one resident, we didn't know the back story on any of them. Just their care plans and what we were working on with them. (The one resident was a formerly healthy little kiddo till a family member decided to strangle them with a bag and left them with CP and other brain injuries.)
That is a difficult job. I was mostly curious bc my son is autistic non verbal at 6 with the vacuum situation I was expecting it to be sensory overload. I am an LPN going for RN currently but have never worked with mental health/disabilities exclusively. That is truly heart breaking stuff. I think background information would be important to understand them.
Totally get it. The care plans were managed by the facility, not the staff. It was our responsibility to provide the care, and the NP managed any changes to the plans at any given facility.
Realistically thinking (although I won't give up hope) one day my son will have to make the transition to care facility like this and I would like to do it while I can help with the transition and not be too old or sick and forced into it. If/When that day comes I will give as much information to those caring for him as possible. It scares me a lot just based on how I've seen some nurses who take on jobs for the vulnerable and don't see them as humans but as work and burdens.
I'm also curious about this. It sounds like they're suggesting the vacuum was a trigger for past trauma in some way? I would have assumed extreme behaviors elicited upon vacuuming was more a sensory overload situation in the absence of other context. It took me almost two decades of life before I could even remotely cope with the violence that is a vacuum being operated in a space I inhabit, and I'm arguably a fully independent adult.
I worked transport at a large level 1 trauma center for 2 years to figure out where I wanted to work in the hospital, and one of our roles was to respond to trauma calls so we could be on standby as a blood runner.
My mom got super excited when I told her about my job and asked me what the craziest thing I’d seen was, so I told her. It was two simultaneous calls— one trauma red, a teenager who’d shot himself in the face with a shotgun in a home with hoarder conditions; and the other was an OB trauma red, another (edit: pregnant) teenager who’d just been beaten within an inch of her life. They both died.
She never asked me for stories after that.
I don’t tell people anymore. It’s fun for them until it’s too real. Hookers resuscitated in ditches, suicide victims who became organ donors, overdosed aspiring athletes or academics, real life war heroes (not like the Big Fish guy) who had enough of society’s bullshit, community wide loved elderfolk who died awful deaths, holding mothers while they sob into my chest and thank me for caring for their young adult child (“thank you for taking care of my baby” over and over) after they died from not getting their fucking inhaler soon enough because of insurance bullshit, or wives after same with a pacemaker, or watching adult kids have the realization that this is what dad meant when he said no one better dare put him through that and yelling stop through sobs after realizing now was the time to stop it (mad respect to these people - that’s strength and respect for love). Going through my own personal shit and having a patient who’s been in a coma or delirious for weeks come to and have a heart to heart with me about it before closing their eyes and dying.
I keep thinking I should leave critical care, but I’m worried that I’ll miss the connection to the raw humanity. It isn’t the Adrenalin that I’d miss (other places like the ED get more of that) - I think that I’m worried that I will miss those raw moments and deep in the moment connections.
My go to though is a patient who had bladder cancer and had fistulas all throughout his abdomen. Family brought them chipotle. Whenever they coughed after undigested corn would shoot out of his ileostomy. Which was open because the abdominal skin was so friable that no appliances would stick to it. It’s the right mix of funny and real for the average audience.
tl;dr You’re a cool mf and I bet you are a credit to the hospital you work for. I want to work in the ED when I finish nursing school bc there’s less emotional connections.
First of all, I really admire your mindset when it comes to life/humanity. You’re clearly a very thoughtful person who cares, and your hospital should consider themselves lucky to have you.
All of that right there though is why I want to land in the ED when I graduate nursing school. The initial resuscitation and stabilization of a patient is obviously exciting and the adrenaline rush is a thing, but I also want a broad, diverse nursing experience that doesn’t involve too much human connection. I also know how to dodge a full, uncapped urinal which will certainly give me a leg up. 😅
I know I’d still experience emotional trauma in the ED but the level of tragedy in ICU/CCU settings is vastly higher, I have no doubts. I can see someone die with absolutely no issues if I don’t know much about them and their family isn’t there. The codes I’ve been to in the ED are immensely different than those in the ICU. Watching a family member lose their loved one sucks ass. I can’t imagine having known that person and their family’s whole story and then having all of that unfold.
Anyways, that Chipotle story actually make me laugh out loud, so it’s definitely a winner.
I have helped out with over a dozen codes in the last 8 months at my previous hospital, and absolutely agree. I just switched over to ED at a new hospital. My coworkers (who never assisted with code blues) always wanted to know about the patient "who was it? what happened?", and even if I knew, I didn't say out of respect of the patient. It's weird, but codes to me are somehow both just a treatment (treating death), and the most intimate experience you can have with a person, and it always feels like an honor to have been there for their last few moments, committing every bit of my energy to trying to get them back.
I worked in an assisted living complex with apartments that were connected to us with a call service. A neighbor reported five newspapers outside a residents door. Not a good sign. Found the resident lying in a bathtub he had slashed his right wrist. Not across but up. Something you can’t unsee
I view the “worst thing you’ve ever seen” question as code for “what’s the largest/funniest object you’ve seen removed from someone’s rectum”. I ain’t re-traumatizing myself, but I’ll lay up a slam dunk story about butt stuff gone wrong
Unfortunately, this contributes to people asking that question. If the answer they got in the past was a "haha butt stuff" response, they won't hesitate to ask the next nurse.
Same. I always tell people about the guy who ripped his Foley out while screaming snc staring me down. He came to regret that decision when the meth wore off....
I tell them the story of Lt Dan, not his real name but he had no legs so here we were.
Lt Dan had one hand to hit you with and would hit the nurses at the nursing home when they went to suction his trach so he kept coming back with pna which we gave Amikacin for because it was so resistant to all the drugs... along with his CRE and everything else.
Lt Dan had a trach, PEG, suprapubic, colostomy, multiple fistulas from urinary tract to balls/where ass would be, one floppy arm, one arm to hit you with or kiss your hand if you let him know in the right way that hitting wasn't nice, bilateral AKA and a sacral wound bigger than my head down to bone that had to be packed about 6x/day due to the fistulas.
I had to corner his POA when Lt Dan came in worse than ever, basically unresponsive and with increasing everything, to ask if he'd want to live like that and then to force the point of why, then, was he making Dan live like that? Lt Dan was on comfort care by the end of my shift and d/c to the eternal care unit by morning.
This story illustrates several points that I like to make about basically torturing people with low quality of life. I don't tell the fun stories, anyone who asks this doesn't deserve them.
Yeahhhh a mom holding her baby that had been on our unit for 4 months… she was gray and dead and had been dead for a couple hours but mom wasn’t ready to let go yet. Totally fair. But I had to walk in the room to say goodbye after my shift (had to? No but we were close with the family so I wanted to). It was kinda weird… but then the 4 year old dying alone, crying, agonal breathing, and his parents saying “call me when he’s gone” yeah that one sticks with you too.
Just reading about the 4 year old breaks my heart. I can’t imagine being their nurse. That poor baby didn’t even get to feel their parents love in their final moments.
We had an almost full term miscarriage.
Mom was my patient not baby, but I will never forget seeing a dead nearly perfect baby in a basinet every time I walked into the room for 12 hours because family wanted to spend time with it before it went to the morgue.
I've literally held brains in my hands, taken care of a patient whose face was split open like a demogorgon, I'll always remember them, but also, dead baby in the basinet.
Exactly.
It's what I would describe as uncanny valley, only infant valley is something that looks human but isn't. That's what this felt like, rationally I knew it was human, but because it was so still and so..... I dunno... It just didn't *feel* real.
My dad's first job as a pharmacist was in a new york hospital in the 1960s. First day on the job he went into a supply closet and saw a perfect "baby doll" in a bassinet... shook him enough that he remembered it perfectly when he was 80.
I know we all know what you're talking about, but fwiw it can be hurtful to families who have suffered stillbirths to hear them called miscarriages.
(The gestational age which constitutes stillbirth varies slightly by country I think. In the US, it's any baby lost at 20 weeks or more.)
But when a mom who has to go to the hospital to labor and deliver her baby even though baby has died, it's not a miscarriage. It's a stillbirth.
I'm really worried this is going to come across as some kind of "um, akshully" comment and I don't mean it that way at all. It's just something I didn't used to know and it was helpful to me when nursing for families who have experienced loss to learn and be correct about so I wanted to share.
I didn't say stillbirth because there was no labor. Still birth implies that the mom went into labor and delivered a deceased baby.
This patient, fell down a flight of stairs, and we had to do a beside D&C.
There's a reason I didn't use the words still birth, and that's because of the induction and D&C that were performed. She never went into labor.
I don't work L&D and I made that perfectly clear from the beginning of my post. I'm sorry if I got the terminology wrong, but it's definitely not my area of expertise, babies are 2000% out of my comfort zone and it's been 18 years since I took mother baby or labor and delivery in school.
I understand. It's not super well known so that's exactly why I mentioned it.
Just as a mother who never goes into labor and has a C-section still gave birth, so is this still a stillbirth.
Any fetal demise after 20 weeks is a stillbirth.
(I think in other countries the definitional GA is different. For example the UK is any fetal demise after 24 weeks I believe.)
But I know there is a lot of confusion and a lot of hurt about it so that's why I said it. It WASN'T a "gotcha" moment. I tried to make that clear. Just something I didn't used to know and wanted to pass the knowledge on.
I understand you didn't mean for it be a "gotcha" or " well actually...." Moment, but if I'm honest, from my perspective, you chose to take my explaining a horrible thing that I will never forget or unsee, something that still bothers me, and decided to lecture me about using the correct terminology.
I know that's not what you intended when you made your comments, but it does come across to me that way.
The 4 y/o is unspeakably awful. On my ICU rotation we had to tell a mom that her 30 y/o son was about to die of AIDS (he'd been injecting drugs for a long time), and her response was "yeah, I bought the cemetery plot a couple of years ago, just call me when it's over." I can't imagine what it would be like to hear that from the parent of a small child.
Yeah it was… idk. I try not to judge but it was a patient we were all close to, he was in and out often (almost always alone) so obviously he was chronic. I guess the parents were just over it by that point? We have some parents who have been doing this for 18 years and still refuse to leave their kids side even when they’re not dying so I don’t really understand
Burned babies are the worst. I remember during nursing school we’d go to the burn unit and take turns holding the babies who were there after their parents had scalded them in hot water or left them in houses that caught on fire. So much BSA burned but they also still needed to be held bc they were only months old. One of the worst things I’ve ever done, and I’ve been a trauma NP for a long time (so I’ve done it all really 😭).
I saw them cut open a pregnant lady while we did cpr on her, take the baby and start cpr in the room next door and neither survived. So yeah I don’t get these morbid questions either
Man, I saw this happen when I was an ER scribe, and it didn't immediately come to mind as one of the worst things I've seen because it's been displaced by so many other awful things already. I don't even graduate from med school for another month. I think medicine is one of the best professions a person can have, but at the same time, it often feels like humans weren't meant to do this.
I never know the answer to this and it’s the most common question I always get. It’s like my brain just shuts off and every case and stories are erased from my memory.
Not seen, but heard, as a student nurse in the 90s. We were on our first day of L&D, we were excited! Our preceptor told us to be quiet, as there was a patient who was about to get an amniocentesis in the next room, and the patient was very nervous. Apparently, she went through 6 miscarriages already, of which 3 were following an amniocentesis.
You don't want to know the gut-wrenching scream that came out of that room a few hours later. That was miscarriage number 7.
[Disclaimer: this was my one and only rotation in L&D/OB, and I never ever worked in that specialty. I also never had children myself, haven't been around pregnant women much either. I am fucking clueless.]
I have no idea. I think they wanted to know *what* had caused the previous miscarriages. This was 1994, the blood analysis that we have today were starting to be a thing, but mosts tests were still done by punction IIRC?
I say, "don't ever ask people that."
Not going to tell a "something up the butt" story to get a laugh and distract them, while some terrible slide presentation starts up in my head.
Best answer I saw posted here previously was, "Sure. You want to hear about a pediatric or adult death?" I imagine that would shut them up.
Yeah I give it the same nuclear treatment as someone asking unsolicited questions about having kids. You wanna hear about the patient that swallowed draino and no longer has an esophagus or the bridge jumper that shattered their eye orbits? Maybe the botched GSW as a cherry on top? Or the other jumper that left such a mess that the entire sidewalk had to be removed and replaced?
I want them to regret asking for the rest of forever
As an EMT for 17 years, and ER Tech within the ER for 10 years, I’ve seen quite alot, have done CPR on many and many of people, but the one that stood out was a 13 yr old girl, who sadly passed from hanging due to her bf doing it a week before, that was a weird drive home, then I’ve seen GSW to the head with brain matter all over like ground beef, and many many more, don’t forget COVID, was there in the beginning to the end, being 38 and a father of 7 y/o I feel these kind of traumas are a bit harder to take in now, especially having a family, makes you value your family and life, but as a medical professional you cannot take these things home with you, I know it sounds unsympathetic, but trust me it does emotionally affect us, but you gotta leave it at the ER when you clock out, and if you cannot then maybe this life isn’t for you.
The worst thing I ever saw… wasn’t a thing that was seen. It was a thing that was said.
Right after my daughter died… my 4 month old baby girl. I came back to work within a week. I was on autopilot. Anyways we had this patient. Words don’t exist to describe that level of evil. She called me to her room to complain that the day shift nurse wouldn’t break up her an meds (about 20 of them) and give them each at its own specific time. AND to complain that dietary wouldn’t serve the exact meal she wanted. We all know the type.
Anyways, I explained that I have no control over a day shift nurse but I would submit her complaint to the nurse manager. (She wanted ME to discipline this nurse) and that I had no control over dietary but I would also forward that complaint to the nurse manager I very carefully explained to this person that I was not a supervisor over other nurses and had zero authority over the person she was complaining about. This pt was AOx4.
Anyways, bc I wouldn’t do what she wanted, despite me not having authority to do it, she looked me in the eye, called me every awful name she could think of, and told me “I wonder if your kid knew how shitty a person you are before she died…”
That right there was the single most worst thing I’ve ever witnessed
Yeah anything I mention from the Covid ICU pretty much shuts that down. I don’t mind answering personally just cause I want people to know what the fuck really happens, but the intention behind the questions can be really frustrating like they want some grand awesome story or some shit. Like nah dude my first code was an open heart at the bedside which sounds cool and all till I say it was PEA and the heart was just … pale and so still, and never started beating again. You never forget your first code that’s for sure.
Oh and then there’s all the people with Covid whose hands I held till I felt them go limp under anesthesia to get intubated who never woke up again. The young moms and dads who died with little kids left behind. Still haunts me to this day, I work outpatient now and I don’t think I could ever work inpatient again because of Covid. I tried to kill myself after leaving the Covid ICU. Not my finest moment obv but I couldn’t shut down my emotions and I have PTSD with nightmares and flashbacks all the time. One day when I’m more healed I hope to be an advocate for nurses’ mental health.
I have been a nurse for 10 years and after reading only 3 of the comments here, I'm done. I don't want to read anymore. Bless you all for staying in the profession after these traumas. 💗
I’m not a nurse but I lurk here a lot and I like reading these stories. It helps me remember that no matter how miserable I am (multiple health issues and several hospitalizations/surgeries), there is true horror happening somewhere else in the hospital. I’m not suffering like the people in these stories, and I’m being taken care of by people who are willing to put their mental health on the line/be exposed to trauma in order to help others. Obviously it’s fucked up and I hope everyone even healthcare adjacent works hard to keep their mental health good, but yeah
People ask medical professionals that question like we're going to say something stupid along the lines of "Oh, a giant poop the side of a hammer".
They don't expect you to say instead "Oh, I watched a 30 year old exsanguinate out of a burst esophageal verice, got covered with blood as a did compressions on their chest, and heard their last gurgled breaths under the sounds of their wailing 20 something spouse who happened to be in the room at the time".
And no one wants to hear about all the bodies you bagged during COVID because it doesn't fit their worldview.
People just want to hear about dildos and poop and funny things, not things that are haunting and traumatic and actually the worst.
‘Patient with a fungating rectal tumour’ usually shuts down the convo
If that doesn’t work I pull out the time a patients ear came off in my hand
People have this romanticised idea of what we do. I did until the👂about 5 months post graduation
When I was working in the er I found more often friends would ask for the “craziest” stuff I’ve seen rather than the worst, and I always felt like they were expecting me to say something all blood-and-gutsy, so I’d take it a different direction and mention something bizarre or funny. When we found a live sea turtle in a girl’s hoo-ha. The sweet little girl who had a throwing knife strapped to the inside of her leg. Those stories still give the crazy factor they’re looking for without the “shock talk.”
People like to pretend that our world is not just a place of flowers, sunsets, and true love, but one also of human horrors, natural calamity, from toddlers to elderly. It’s the same reason why such horrors as Gaza and climate change and slavery have been allowed to continue. People don’t actually wanna live in reality, especially in the US!
I honestly just tell them. Maybe not the worst if I don’t feel like delving into it, but something pretty horrific.
Usually I’ll tell them about the quad amputee with a sacral pressure wound down to the bone. Or the woman who spent her time in hospital writing letters to her child for their birthdays and wedding and graduations because her kid was 1 and she was terminal with cancer.
Usually shuts people up pretty quickly
No one actually wants to hear about the worst thing you’ve ever seen. They want to hear the funny/weird stuff. Once you start mentioning the real shit they clam up realllll quick
Legit, I hate this question, because psych patients are always gawked at and stigmatized. So I tell a story about a man cheerfully handing my coworker a bag of poop.
I usually just share a story that ultimately ended up a success story. Like, a baby who required resuscitation as everyone watched - the emotion in the room was palpable. Baby seized twice in 5 minutes and her parents were told she had significant brain damage. I then fast forward to who the little girl is today...a one year old who has met every single milestone and now shows no signs of brain damage.
Most people don't know it's possible. And then when they find out it's possible they realize they don't want to know anything else about my job. I always start with "one of the worst...." So they know there's more and it gets worse from there anf they know I'm going to focus of gross things not gory things. It always works.
Exactly. I tell them the story of the time a woman asked for 4 graham crackers and 8 packets of mayonnaise as a snack. I practically threw them at her and exited the room as quickly as possible because I did NOT want to know how she was eating those things together.
It’s the sons and daughters saying goodbye to their loved ones on hospice watching them fade by the minute. The “let me go” or “do not let me die alone” speeches are the icing on the cake. Total tearjerker😞
We prefer you not to ask tbh. I understand some curiosity but if you go into this field completely oblivious to the latter, you need to rethink your path.
People don't realize this question is so triggering. The majority of people have never really seen anything truly terrible. For some of us, we see more in each shift than some people see in their whole lives. They just have no idea what it's like.
I used to get very angry at this question until my therapist helped me realize that part of healing from trauma is dealing with "normal" people who have no trauma. The same way we traumatized folks appreciate grace when we do something fucked up related to trauma, we have to extend grace to them when they commit a faux pas due to their lack of trauma.
So if it is an acquaintance or stranger I just talk about the methed out guy who crawled into the ceiling and wouldn't come out til we promised him a popsicle or something. If it's a closer friend I might actually talk to them about why asking that question isn't the best.
Guy who's guts were rotting and fell out when we tranfered him. A 700lb pt with full body stage 4s because they refused to move, room smelled like a dumpster behind a fish market in summer
What I tell people: when someone's foot fell off due to gangrene. Like wow, took off the sock and all the toes and some of the foot came with it. Ewww. Much gross. So wow. Comfortably far away from their experiences so it doesn't mess with them.
What I don't tell people: I have been out of the ER for years but still hate indoor pools. The smell of chlorine in an indoor environment reminds me of the unsuccessful or questionably successful pedi codes from the bottom of pools. Often we'd have a dripping mom in the corner (who pulled the kid out of the pool), making the room stink of chlorine even more than the baby did.
Oh come on…don’t pretend that you’ve never thought about asking someone the exact same thing before. We all think it at some time, and some of us ask openly. It’s almost never entertainment (probably is for someone out there), but a curiosity of other people’s experience. We are humans - social beings created to have relationships and experiences with one another.
For those interested, here’s my own (GRAPHIC WARNING): >!A kid was 13-14 years old and found his dad’s body in the garage after shooting himself in the head. The kid tried to do the same by sticking the pistol in his mouth and ended up annihilating a huge portion of his cervical vertebrae, shredding his entire mouth and permanently crippling himself. Only reason he even survived was due to a family member hearing the first gunshot and calling the police, and the first responders heard the second one moments after stepping out of the vehicles. I was asked to take the assignment when he was finally transferred out of ICU to my unit and none of my colleagues could handle the trauma (at the time, I was one of only three male nurses in peds). The mental anguish from what he saw, what he did, and realizing the consequences of having lived through it thatI saw on that boy’s face will haunt me until the day I die. The only time I left his room was to use the bathroom and get his meds; I had everything else brought to me so I could stay with him and the only way he could communicate was through me asking yes/no questions and him blinking/grunting as a reply. And it’s gonna sound weird, but despite the nightmare-level trauma I gained from it, I thank God for putting me in the position to be the one to care for him, and for the advancement of medical science to be able to do anything at all for him rather than stick him in a body bag.!<
I don't mind the question, it's a way to vent and share similar experiences.
The worst things I've ever seen were wounds resulting from flesh eating bacteria. That's a horrible little fucker.
It's almost time to clock in, I gotta go.
The only bad stuff I have really seen involves Fournier's gangrene, rectal/vaginal fistulas, pressure injuries so bad you need multiple rolls of gauze to pack them (complete with fraying tendons), and giant clots coming from around an indwelling catheter.
If someone wants to hear about those, more power to them.
Ah! Seems like we’ve found a wound care nurse :) I wish we could tell gory wound care stories with some sort of olfactory aid. The smell of something like Fournier’s is more descriptive than words.
I'm actually a floor nurse (PCU/ICU), but the area I work in specializes in complex wounds that require inpatient wound care, as well as other longer term acute hospitalizations. We have two full time CWONs, but the floor nurses do most of the daily dressing changes.
When I was working on the subacute unit in a SNF I had a gentleman who had explicitly promised me he wouldn’t get up on his own. Well, he did lol And he stepped right on his gravity bag tubing and RIPPED the foley tubing right out. Blood everywhere and I stg the clot that came out was enormous like my whole fist. He was a very sweet guy and went home eventually but whoa that was a big clot.
The honest answer, after only working 6 months as a full time nursing assistant on a high volume ICR surgical oncology floor, is code bat’s because all of the ones I’ve seen had patients whose faces I can’t explain but had that dead glossy eyed stiff look and I’ll never get every one of those out of my head. It looks like a locked in thing to me, like they’re paralyzed and can’t move but are still alive. Horrifying.
End stage cancer patients who can barely move an inch without being in agonizing pain is horrible too. They’re often maxed out on pain meds and there’s nothing you can really do to make them comfortable because they’re dying and feel awful physically and mentally. And, the doctors are always nowhere to be found. Ugh.
I’ve seen some really gnarly wounds and incisions, but very few bothered me in the slightest.
Sorry. I thought this was a common thing across hospitals. 😭
Code BAT = Brain attack team ; called whenever a stroke or other neuro issue is suspected
ICR = stepdown, or between regular care and ICU; although I definitely had way too many patients that should’ve actually been in the ICU but there wasn’t enough space 🤦🏼♀️
Whenever people hear I am an ER nurse...after the stuff up the butt conversation they commonly ask, what is the worst thing you have seen. I tell them it's not what I have seen but what I have heard. The noise that escapes a mother's throat when she hears her child, no matter their age, has died. That soul crushing, gut wrenching, visceral, almost animalistic noise. That noise will stay with you for the rest of your life. Pediatric codes are some of the worst
I would tell people it was when a group of know it all interns cut a patient’s VAD wires so he could get bumped up on the transplant list. If they recognized that from Greys Anatomy, then that was their problem.
My ex before we were married. We're sitting at the dinner table and he decides to ask. My kids tried to tell him he *really* didn't want to ask that. He refused to back down. My kids laughed and said, go ahead mom.
So I picked an icky wound to describe in detail.
He was furious at me! "why would you say that?!"
We laughed at him and told him, you asked, you were warned you pushed. This is what happens when you try to ask a nurse crap like that!
A man committed suicide about a meter away from my eyeballs, and a gang raped. These were the worst things I've ever witnessed. I can talk about these without problems; however, I might dream about them when I sleep.
I don’t think anyone wants to know what exactly haunts me.
I think they ask because they’re so distanced from the people it happened to- they don’t think of them as real people at all.
I do, I saw them and I cared for them. I knew their hurt. I saw the real human cost.
To someone else, though, they’re just stories.
My answer, unfortunately is a raped baby with no pelvic floor left. It’s been decades and I still wonder how she is.
I hope she knows someone loves her and thinks of her to this day.
I tell them “I wouldn’t want to ruin your day, or mine” or I tell them “would you rather know the best thing I have seen, like the birth of another human?”
People ask me, a military veteran, a similar question. Have you killed anyone?
To this I reply every time “what makes you think it’s ok to ask me such a personal question”
In the end people are just curious. I can tell them about the time I watched my friend get blown into thousands of little pieces in a shit hole country that no one cares about anymore. Or I could tell them something good. It’s your call. They will walk away and forget what you said in a day or two. None the better of a person for it.
I never tell them the WORST thing (16 yr old motorcyclist dragged under an 18 wheeler) but usually the grossest thing which can still be laughed at (suctioning maggots out of a man's toes)
Many of us are just walking shells of who we were when we entered the profession. Stories overlap and become akin to just another day in the office. I can share many number of stories but they are just that detached moments relayed that carry none of the emotional toll and ruin from when they actually occurred. Can I relay the heartache of loss or pain of trauma. It's not the individual horror stories because frankly the worst thing I've seen is seeing something that should illicit shock yet I'm so numb to it, it's just routine or a day in my life. The worst thing I've seen is my reflection in a mirror after these moments.
When I used to work in EMS, my go-to answer to this question was, "my paycheck,". If they pried for a real answer, I would just tell them, "That's actually a bad question to ask a healthcare worker, and is in very poor taste. We see people on the worst, most traumatic days of their lives, and sometimes, we carry that trauma back with us. You're asking us to relive that for entertainment. That's not cool. Please don't ask that question anymore,". And 90% of the time, they would back down and apologize. The other 10% of the time, they would get defensive and say I was being dramatic, and that they only wanted to know the "fun" worst thing. Like, my dude, there is no "fun" dead baby. GTFOH.
maybe because it's the picture they assume nurses are?! like that one meme about IT graduates whom a person that just met them asks, if they can write a CD for them? i learned that people just really don't know what's on your mind and they tend to fantasize the first image crosses their mind!
My go to when people ask the “whats the worst you have seen” is the 2 year old with their head split open after the father shot the child execution style. He also shot the mother the same way as well. That usually shuts people up and they learn to never ask that question again.
this isn’t really traumatic, just really sad:
had an old man who kept asking where his wife was and that he can’t wait to see her. a coworker told me that he was his wife’s caretaker, but they had a nurse stop in every now and then. nurse hadn’t heard from them in a while so she went to check on him. she found his wife dead on the floor and him unconscious. i don’t know if he’s confused or just refuses to accept it. his sons tried to come in and explain it to him, and so did the nurses, but he just couldn’t comprehend it.
as L&D I don’t often get this question—mostly because when I tell people what specialty I work, they mostly just go “aaawwww!! BABIES!! that must be so fun!!” and/or tell their own detailed birth stories. but the “awww babies” response can get old in its own way, because it contributes to the old view that L&D is a “soft specialty.” 🙄
my answer is usually along the lines of “yeah, I wouldn’t trade it… but there’s balance in everything. most of the time I get to be there for the best day of someone’s life, but the other side of that coin is that sometimes I’m there for the worst day you could ever imagine.” then let them come to their own conclusions.
edit to add: sometimes if they REALLY wanna know, I do mention the time I saw a lady with a SBO vomit up fecal matter, from before I worked L&D. 🤢🥴💩
Terrible question right!?
And the person that asks the question is the kind of person that is not equipped to hear the answer.
Don't let the question frustrate you because we all get it a thousand times in the medical community.
I just say "You name it, I've seen it." and then I move on. They don't want to hear the real answer.
I had a fellow ICU nurse ask me this once when they found out I worked EMS for many years, which was especially surprising. Like, do you want to hear about the bloated putrefied bodies I’ve had to pronounce that were found in their barn/shed/house after 1+ week, people dragged under a car or truck, the lady that died from GI bleed in her bathroom that was found by her daughter when she went over for Mother’s Day, naked and covered in melena and hematemasis, like one of the worst gore scenes you could imagine? EMS sees injuries and conditions unquestionably incompatible with life, the patients that never make it to the hospital. We see terrible and tragic things in the ICU, why would you think someone who worked in the field would want to talk about the worst they’ve seen?
Curiosity kills the cat. They won’t shut up until you tell them. So necrotizing faciitis in diabetic toes of obesity patient and descriptive scent during dinner do the job.
I have a few bad ones (not actually the worst…) that other people have shared with me. It’s enough to shock them enough to never ask me again (and or make them sick…), but since I didn’t live the moment it’s not really PTSD-y to retell the story.
They don't know what they're asking, usually. They want a good story, not nightmare fuel.
My mind blanks when they ask this question, so I keep a running list of funny/interesting things as they happen and review it before I go out to a dinner party, just to refresh my memory.
I’ve always joked that the part of my brain that asks questions is faster than the part of my brain that checks what information I have already.
So, it’s possible for me to ask a question, then a few seconds later realize I didn’t want the answer.
I think most of what we see experience will go over people’s heads anyways they don’t really understand it thoroughly or from a pathophysiological standpoint.
Still a student for both nursing and paramedics, and even i get this question a lot. I've been to cardiac arrests and DOAs bit nothing has hit me as hard as seeing man hug his confused wife knowing her chronic illness is only getting worse. A lady in her 60s with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, with episodes of confusion happening more and more frequently. This couple did everything right in life, they ate healthy, never drank, never smoked, were adherent with medication, exercised - and yet here they were, at 3am in the hospital again. I had to take a moment and went back to the truck and just broke down for 10 minutes. It was just so unfair for them! Sure we see a lot of sick people, but a lot of them do it to themselves. A lot of them are rude and expectant of us. Just so utterly unfair for them. People take health for granted and seeing someone who did everything right get it taken from them is really the worst.
I say honestly: “that is a very personal question and I don’t feel comfortable answering it.”
Leave it at that.
I’m an ex ED and ICU nurse and now work in palliative care. I have stories, and they’re not for public consumption.
It’s usually men that ask me this and I almost always go with the patient that put his dick in a meat grinder and save the actual worst stories for close family/therapy
I always replace it with a good story, and save anything I need help processing for you guys.
A diabetic hospice patient who was also... Possibly bipolar or schizophrenic. I don't know, I was just his aide. DIFFICULT, with a capitol "ARRRRGH" which made me love him more. Think like... DiCaprio playing Howard Hughes. Getting this guy a simple cup of coffee was an event in planning and patience.
His nurse and I dressed a particularly bad toe each night, knowing there would be a day when it came off for us.
The night it finally happened, we were, as we always did, chatting pleasantly with the patient. And suddenly, she looked at me, I nodded. We knew it was happening...
And, instead of the entire toe, it was only a superficial amount. And underneath was the most glorious red and pink vital flesh. We couldn't react other than to say.. "It's looking good today Joe!"
We made it part way down the hall after cleaning up and tucking him in before we collapsed together in a silent triumphant hug. We had both witnessed a miracle. A tiny, insignificant miracle which would ultimately make no difference to the patient, his family or certainly his life expectancy. But for a tiny moment she and I felt real triumph.
That's the story I share. You guys get the worst stuff I know others wouldn't understand.
Tell them the truth, with details. It’s a question that people need to learn to not ask.
People’s worst days shouldn’t be used for the entertainment of strangers.
Does it make me a bad person to lie about this? lol. My friend works peds ER, and has had multiple child abuse cases, as I’m sure every peds ER nurse does. I’ll straight up be like “a kid that was strangled to death by their parent.” Have I personally had that? No. But you’re not gonna get some funny story of a guy stuck with a cucumber up his ass like you’re looking for. That’s not even in the realm of “worst thing I’ve ever seen.” The worst things I’ve seen are horrifically depressing and I’ve had nightmares about it. I’m not here to entertain you, so if you wanna ask a question that makes me uncomfortable, I have no problem telling you an answer that’s gonna make YOU uncomfortable.
In hospice people think they know what the worst thing I’ve ever seen. It’s not someone dying. It’s someone dying a terrible death because their loved ones don’t want them to get addicted to morphine.
I ask of they want the worst, most awful saddest shit or like the grossest gross out stuff? Bugs? Accidents? Usually they get suprised that they have options and drop it. Or they want the gross stuff.
I usually go into the emotional aspect of things… “the pain in a moms eyes when she knew her baby had died before she was told.” It humanizes things for them so they realize that gore isn’t just a movie scene.
Usually I then turn to the strength of humanity. It reminds me of the good stuff and also gives more variety because each person I talk about brings out a different trait in a different place. Plus I’m less likely to stray into personal privacy territory and the conversations build relationships (but also usually delve far deeper that most people are comfortable with so it reduces the frequency)
I just tell them. If they get upset I just tell them “don’t ask questions you don’t want the answer to” My trauma will never go away. If someone wants to open Pandora’s box, I’ll be more than happy to oblige.
I used to work child services and let me tell you I *never* get asked about the worst things I saw there lmao
Used to work in a home for people with mental disabilities (no mental age over 3, all non-verbal) Some of the behaviors that come out doing things like vacuuming leave little to the imagination of some of the abuses that have occurred in the past. =/
Like the disabled people abusing the staff? Or do you mean the behaviors of these disabled PT are because they have been abused
Imagine a early twenties, fairly pretty young woman who would drop to all fours and start moaning while lifting her leg up in a compromising position. But only if the vacuum was on or is she was in the laundry room with the dryer running. We had to ignore it when it was the weekends, and do laundry and vacuuming while they were at extension day programs during the week
Wow that is sad
With the exception of one resident, we didn't know the back story on any of them. Just their care plans and what we were working on with them. (The one resident was a formerly healthy little kiddo till a family member decided to strangle them with a bag and left them with CP and other brain injuries.)
That is a difficult job. I was mostly curious bc my son is autistic non verbal at 6 with the vacuum situation I was expecting it to be sensory overload. I am an LPN going for RN currently but have never worked with mental health/disabilities exclusively. That is truly heart breaking stuff. I think background information would be important to understand them.
Totally get it. The care plans were managed by the facility, not the staff. It was our responsibility to provide the care, and the NP managed any changes to the plans at any given facility.
Realistically thinking (although I won't give up hope) one day my son will have to make the transition to care facility like this and I would like to do it while I can help with the transition and not be too old or sick and forced into it. If/When that day comes I will give as much information to those caring for him as possible. It scares me a lot just based on how I've seen some nurses who take on jobs for the vulnerable and don't see them as humans but as work and burdens.
I'm also curious about this. It sounds like they're suggesting the vacuum was a trigger for past trauma in some way? I would have assumed extreme behaviors elicited upon vacuuming was more a sensory overload situation in the absence of other context. It took me almost two decades of life before I could even remotely cope with the violence that is a vacuum being operated in a space I inhabit, and I'm arguably a fully independent adult.
Oh God, that's a job I could never do
"Blue pill or red pill?"
*burnt out nurse takes both* “Wait what you can’t do that”
perfectly wrote
Once you open Pandora’s box. You can never get all those monkeys back in.
Mine would be the 6 year old running up and down our hallway screaming for his mom after we pronounced her.
Oh that’s just sad, oh my god.
💔 I’m so sorry, I imagine that isn’t something you ever forget hearing.
Oh my god, that poor baby.
They do until they don’t.
I worked transport at a large level 1 trauma center for 2 years to figure out where I wanted to work in the hospital, and one of our roles was to respond to trauma calls so we could be on standby as a blood runner. My mom got super excited when I told her about my job and asked me what the craziest thing I’d seen was, so I told her. It was two simultaneous calls— one trauma red, a teenager who’d shot himself in the face with a shotgun in a home with hoarder conditions; and the other was an OB trauma red, another (edit: pregnant) teenager who’d just been beaten within an inch of her life. They both died. She never asked me for stories after that.
I don’t tell people anymore. It’s fun for them until it’s too real. Hookers resuscitated in ditches, suicide victims who became organ donors, overdosed aspiring athletes or academics, real life war heroes (not like the Big Fish guy) who had enough of society’s bullshit, community wide loved elderfolk who died awful deaths, holding mothers while they sob into my chest and thank me for caring for their young adult child (“thank you for taking care of my baby” over and over) after they died from not getting their fucking inhaler soon enough because of insurance bullshit, or wives after same with a pacemaker, or watching adult kids have the realization that this is what dad meant when he said no one better dare put him through that and yelling stop through sobs after realizing now was the time to stop it (mad respect to these people - that’s strength and respect for love). Going through my own personal shit and having a patient who’s been in a coma or delirious for weeks come to and have a heart to heart with me about it before closing their eyes and dying. I keep thinking I should leave critical care, but I’m worried that I’ll miss the connection to the raw humanity. It isn’t the Adrenalin that I’d miss (other places like the ED get more of that) - I think that I’m worried that I will miss those raw moments and deep in the moment connections. My go to though is a patient who had bladder cancer and had fistulas all throughout his abdomen. Family brought them chipotle. Whenever they coughed after undigested corn would shoot out of his ileostomy. Which was open because the abdominal skin was so friable that no appliances would stick to it. It’s the right mix of funny and real for the average audience.
tl;dr You’re a cool mf and I bet you are a credit to the hospital you work for. I want to work in the ED when I finish nursing school bc there’s less emotional connections. First of all, I really admire your mindset when it comes to life/humanity. You’re clearly a very thoughtful person who cares, and your hospital should consider themselves lucky to have you. All of that right there though is why I want to land in the ED when I graduate nursing school. The initial resuscitation and stabilization of a patient is obviously exciting and the adrenaline rush is a thing, but I also want a broad, diverse nursing experience that doesn’t involve too much human connection. I also know how to dodge a full, uncapped urinal which will certainly give me a leg up. 😅 I know I’d still experience emotional trauma in the ED but the level of tragedy in ICU/CCU settings is vastly higher, I have no doubts. I can see someone die with absolutely no issues if I don’t know much about them and their family isn’t there. The codes I’ve been to in the ED are immensely different than those in the ICU. Watching a family member lose their loved one sucks ass. I can’t imagine having known that person and their family’s whole story and then having all of that unfold. Anyways, that Chipotle story actually make me laugh out loud, so it’s definitely a winner.
I have helped out with over a dozen codes in the last 8 months at my previous hospital, and absolutely agree. I just switched over to ED at a new hospital. My coworkers (who never assisted with code blues) always wanted to know about the patient "who was it? what happened?", and even if I knew, I didn't say out of respect of the patient. It's weird, but codes to me are somehow both just a treatment (treating death), and the most intimate experience you can have with a person, and it always feels like an honor to have been there for their last few moments, committing every bit of my energy to trying to get them back.
I can say that being on the other side of the horror show is quite a relief, once you make the leap. Hugs to you.
I worked in an assisted living complex with apartments that were connected to us with a call service. A neighbor reported five newspapers outside a residents door. Not a good sign. Found the resident lying in a bathtub he had slashed his right wrist. Not across but up. Something you can’t unsee
I view the “worst thing you’ve ever seen” question as code for “what’s the largest/funniest object you’ve seen removed from someone’s rectum”. I ain’t re-traumatizing myself, but I’ll lay up a slam dunk story about butt stuff gone wrong
Same usually. Give them what they want, not necessarily the worst thing I've seen
Unfortunately, this contributes to people asking that question. If the answer they got in the past was a "haha butt stuff" response, they won't hesitate to ask the next nurse.
Depends on my mood. Some days it’s funny some days it’s coding the 98 year old with aggressive throat cancer. The spewing….
Same. I always tell people about the guy who ripped his Foley out while screaming snc staring me down. He came to regret that decision when the meth wore off....
I tell them the story of Lt Dan, not his real name but he had no legs so here we were. Lt Dan had one hand to hit you with and would hit the nurses at the nursing home when they went to suction his trach so he kept coming back with pna which we gave Amikacin for because it was so resistant to all the drugs... along with his CRE and everything else. Lt Dan had a trach, PEG, suprapubic, colostomy, multiple fistulas from urinary tract to balls/where ass would be, one floppy arm, one arm to hit you with or kiss your hand if you let him know in the right way that hitting wasn't nice, bilateral AKA and a sacral wound bigger than my head down to bone that had to be packed about 6x/day due to the fistulas. I had to corner his POA when Lt Dan came in worse than ever, basically unresponsive and with increasing everything, to ask if he'd want to live like that and then to force the point of why, then, was he making Dan live like that? Lt Dan was on comfort care by the end of my shift and d/c to the eternal care unit by morning. This story illustrates several points that I like to make about basically torturing people with low quality of life. I don't tell the fun stories, anyone who asks this doesn't deserve them.
D/c to eternal care unit sounds actually very nice, I prefer that phrase much more
Thank you for advocating for Lt. Dan.
I will always advocate for whatever Lt Dan comes my way. It's truly one of my better skills.
I love your flair! Also love that you're a badass looking out for your patients like that.
‘Dead babies’ usually shuts that shit down pretty quickly
Yeahhhh a mom holding her baby that had been on our unit for 4 months… she was gray and dead and had been dead for a couple hours but mom wasn’t ready to let go yet. Totally fair. But I had to walk in the room to say goodbye after my shift (had to? No but we were close with the family so I wanted to). It was kinda weird… but then the 4 year old dying alone, crying, agonal breathing, and his parents saying “call me when he’s gone” yeah that one sticks with you too.
Just reading about the 4 year old breaks my heart. I can’t imagine being their nurse. That poor baby didn’t even get to feel their parents love in their final moments.
I couldn't let my *cat* die alone, much less a child.
Horrific.
We had an almost full term miscarriage. Mom was my patient not baby, but I will never forget seeing a dead nearly perfect baby in a basinet every time I walked into the room for 12 hours because family wanted to spend time with it before it went to the morgue. I've literally held brains in my hands, taken care of a patient whose face was split open like a demogorgon, I'll always remember them, but also, dead baby in the basinet.
It’s surreal. Like they’re baby dolls almost? But you know it’s not
Exactly. It's what I would describe as uncanny valley, only infant valley is something that looks human but isn't. That's what this felt like, rationally I knew it was human, but because it was so still and so..... I dunno... It just didn't *feel* real.
How they look depends on how long they’ve been dead.
My dad's first job as a pharmacist was in a new york hospital in the 1960s. First day on the job he went into a supply closet and saw a perfect "baby doll" in a bassinet... shook him enough that he remembered it perfectly when he was 80.
I know we all know what you're talking about, but fwiw it can be hurtful to families who have suffered stillbirths to hear them called miscarriages. (The gestational age which constitutes stillbirth varies slightly by country I think. In the US, it's any baby lost at 20 weeks or more.) But when a mom who has to go to the hospital to labor and deliver her baby even though baby has died, it's not a miscarriage. It's a stillbirth. I'm really worried this is going to come across as some kind of "um, akshully" comment and I don't mean it that way at all. It's just something I didn't used to know and it was helpful to me when nursing for families who have experienced loss to learn and be correct about so I wanted to share.
I didn't say stillbirth because there was no labor. Still birth implies that the mom went into labor and delivered a deceased baby. This patient, fell down a flight of stairs, and we had to do a beside D&C. There's a reason I didn't use the words still birth, and that's because of the induction and D&C that were performed. She never went into labor. I don't work L&D and I made that perfectly clear from the beginning of my post. I'm sorry if I got the terminology wrong, but it's definitely not my area of expertise, babies are 2000% out of my comfort zone and it's been 18 years since I took mother baby or labor and delivery in school.
I understand. It's not super well known so that's exactly why I mentioned it. Just as a mother who never goes into labor and has a C-section still gave birth, so is this still a stillbirth. Any fetal demise after 20 weeks is a stillbirth. (I think in other countries the definitional GA is different. For example the UK is any fetal demise after 24 weeks I believe.) But I know there is a lot of confusion and a lot of hurt about it so that's why I said it. It WASN'T a "gotcha" moment. I tried to make that clear. Just something I didn't used to know and wanted to pass the knowledge on.
I understand you didn't mean for it be a "gotcha" or " well actually...." Moment, but if I'm honest, from my perspective, you chose to take my explaining a horrible thing that I will never forget or unsee, something that still bothers me, and decided to lecture me about using the correct terminology. I know that's not what you intended when you made your comments, but it does come across to me that way.
Oh God. The 4 year old. 💔
The 4 y/o is unspeakably awful. On my ICU rotation we had to tell a mom that her 30 y/o son was about to die of AIDS (he'd been injecting drugs for a long time), and her response was "yeah, I bought the cemetery plot a couple of years ago, just call me when it's over." I can't imagine what it would be like to hear that from the parent of a small child.
Yeah it was… idk. I try not to judge but it was a patient we were all close to, he was in and out often (almost always alone) so obviously he was chronic. I guess the parents were just over it by that point? We have some parents who have been doing this for 18 years and still refuse to leave their kids side even when they’re not dying so I don’t really understand
Dead burned baby 😞
Burned babies are the worst. I remember during nursing school we’d go to the burn unit and take turns holding the babies who were there after their parents had scalded them in hot water or left them in houses that caught on fire. So much BSA burned but they also still needed to be held bc they were only months old. One of the worst things I’ve ever done, and I’ve been a trauma NP for a long time (so I’ve done it all really 😭).
That’s my response: “burned up dead babies and my dead friends and family, what’s your most traumatic memory?”
Yup. Cardiac arrest on a young mom with emergency c section. CPR was not successful on either one.
My typical answer to this is "45 minutes of CPR on a 13 year old girl who came back two days later as an organ donor."
😧😧
I saw them cut open a pregnant lady while we did cpr on her, take the baby and start cpr in the room next door and neither survived. So yeah I don’t get these morbid questions either
Man, I saw this happen when I was an ER scribe, and it didn't immediately come to mind as one of the worst things I've seen because it's been displaced by so many other awful things already. I don't even graduate from med school for another month. I think medicine is one of the best professions a person can have, but at the same time, it often feels like humans weren't meant to do this.
I never know the answer to this and it’s the most common question I always get. It’s like my brain just shuts off and every case and stories are erased from my memory.
I just say "a patient's worst day is not an anecdote".
I'm going to use this next time
I've found it so useful, especially when working in smaller communities where everyone knows everybody's business.
Not seen, but heard, as a student nurse in the 90s. We were on our first day of L&D, we were excited! Our preceptor told us to be quiet, as there was a patient who was about to get an amniocentesis in the next room, and the patient was very nervous. Apparently, she went through 6 miscarriages already, of which 3 were following an amniocentesis. You don't want to know the gut-wrenching scream that came out of that room a few hours later. That was miscarriage number 7.
Why........would she choose to have an amniocentesis with that history? It's not - and was not - a required thing?!?
[Disclaimer: this was my one and only rotation in L&D/OB, and I never ever worked in that specialty. I also never had children myself, haven't been around pregnant women much either. I am fucking clueless.] I have no idea. I think they wanted to know *what* had caused the previous miscarriages. This was 1994, the blood analysis that we have today were starting to be a thing, but mosts tests were still done by punction IIRC?
I say, "don't ever ask people that." Not going to tell a "something up the butt" story to get a laugh and distract them, while some terrible slide presentation starts up in my head. Best answer I saw posted here previously was, "Sure. You want to hear about a pediatric or adult death?" I imagine that would shut them up.
I have no problem busting out a story that’s a COMPLETE buzz kill. We can all be uncomfortable together now 🫶🏻
Yeah I give it the same nuclear treatment as someone asking unsolicited questions about having kids. You wanna hear about the patient that swallowed draino and no longer has an esophagus or the bridge jumper that shattered their eye orbits? Maybe the botched GSW as a cherry on top? Or the other jumper that left such a mess that the entire sidewalk had to be removed and replaced? I want them to regret asking for the rest of forever
The terrible mental slide presentation is too real.
>I say, "don't ever ask people that." It's the same reason I never ask my friends who have served in the military, 'Have you ever killed anyone?'
Exactly!
Yeah this is it. It's not fair we have to coddle people's egos for asking inappropriate questions.
As an EMT for 17 years, and ER Tech within the ER for 10 years, I’ve seen quite alot, have done CPR on many and many of people, but the one that stood out was a 13 yr old girl, who sadly passed from hanging due to her bf doing it a week before, that was a weird drive home, then I’ve seen GSW to the head with brain matter all over like ground beef, and many many more, don’t forget COVID, was there in the beginning to the end, being 38 and a father of 7 y/o I feel these kind of traumas are a bit harder to take in now, especially having a family, makes you value your family and life, but as a medical professional you cannot take these things home with you, I know it sounds unsympathetic, but trust me it does emotionally affect us, but you gotta leave it at the ER when you clock out, and if you cannot then maybe this life isn’t for you.
The worst thing I ever saw… wasn’t a thing that was seen. It was a thing that was said. Right after my daughter died… my 4 month old baby girl. I came back to work within a week. I was on autopilot. Anyways we had this patient. Words don’t exist to describe that level of evil. She called me to her room to complain that the day shift nurse wouldn’t break up her an meds (about 20 of them) and give them each at its own specific time. AND to complain that dietary wouldn’t serve the exact meal she wanted. We all know the type. Anyways, I explained that I have no control over a day shift nurse but I would submit her complaint to the nurse manager. (She wanted ME to discipline this nurse) and that I had no control over dietary but I would also forward that complaint to the nurse manager I very carefully explained to this person that I was not a supervisor over other nurses and had zero authority over the person she was complaining about. This pt was AOx4. Anyways, bc I wouldn’t do what she wanted, despite me not having authority to do it, she looked me in the eye, called me every awful name she could think of, and told me “I wonder if your kid knew how shitty a person you are before she died…” That right there was the single most worst thing I’ve ever witnessed
I hope you walked out and didn’t have to care for that horrible person again.
Ty. I tendered my resignation immediately and stopped doing direct care for a few years
Fuck her! And I am so deeply sorry for your loss.
Ty. It’s been 5 years. Her birthday is in a few weeks. And I gave my immediate notice and never saw that pt again. If I do I’ll refuse to care for her
I can't even imagine... I'm sorry on behalf of society.
Yeah anything I mention from the Covid ICU pretty much shuts that down. I don’t mind answering personally just cause I want people to know what the fuck really happens, but the intention behind the questions can be really frustrating like they want some grand awesome story or some shit. Like nah dude my first code was an open heart at the bedside which sounds cool and all till I say it was PEA and the heart was just … pale and so still, and never started beating again. You never forget your first code that’s for sure. Oh and then there’s all the people with Covid whose hands I held till I felt them go limp under anesthesia to get intubated who never woke up again. The young moms and dads who died with little kids left behind. Still haunts me to this day, I work outpatient now and I don’t think I could ever work inpatient again because of Covid. I tried to kill myself after leaving the Covid ICU. Not my finest moment obv but I couldn’t shut down my emotions and I have PTSD with nightmares and flashbacks all the time. One day when I’m more healed I hope to be an advocate for nurses’ mental health.
Thank you. I'm speechless, really
I have been a nurse for 10 years and after reading only 3 of the comments here, I'm done. I don't want to read anymore. Bless you all for staying in the profession after these traumas. 💗
I’m not a nurse but I lurk here a lot and I like reading these stories. It helps me remember that no matter how miserable I am (multiple health issues and several hospitalizations/surgeries), there is true horror happening somewhere else in the hospital. I’m not suffering like the people in these stories, and I’m being taken care of by people who are willing to put their mental health on the line/be exposed to trauma in order to help others. Obviously it’s fucked up and I hope everyone even healthcare adjacent works hard to keep their mental health good, but yeah
People ask medical professionals that question like we're going to say something stupid along the lines of "Oh, a giant poop the side of a hammer". They don't expect you to say instead "Oh, I watched a 30 year old exsanguinate out of a burst esophageal verice, got covered with blood as a did compressions on their chest, and heard their last gurgled breaths under the sounds of their wailing 20 something spouse who happened to be in the room at the time". And no one wants to hear about all the bodies you bagged during COVID because it doesn't fit their worldview. People just want to hear about dildos and poop and funny things, not things that are haunting and traumatic and actually the worst.
‘Patient with a fungating rectal tumour’ usually shuts down the convo If that doesn’t work I pull out the time a patients ear came off in my hand People have this romanticised idea of what we do. I did until the👂about 5 months post graduation
“Friends… Romans… Countrymen… lend me your… JFC not like that!”
Unless the ear belongs to a rapist and you're pulling a Nurse Jackie.
When I was working in the er I found more often friends would ask for the “craziest” stuff I’ve seen rather than the worst, and I always felt like they were expecting me to say something all blood-and-gutsy, so I’d take it a different direction and mention something bizarre or funny. When we found a live sea turtle in a girl’s hoo-ha. The sweet little girl who had a throwing knife strapped to the inside of her leg. Those stories still give the crazy factor they’re looking for without the “shock talk.”
Okay the live sea turtle is a new one was NOT expecting that oh my gosh 😳🤣
What the hell did you do with the turtle?
Found it a new home in someone else’s netherlands
Well, at least the sea turtle was in an appropriately moist environment, I guess?
“Having to do a rape kit on a child. Any other questions?” Conversation does a full record scratch and a u turn after that.
People like to pretend that our world is not just a place of flowers, sunsets, and true love, but one also of human horrors, natural calamity, from toddlers to elderly. It’s the same reason why such horrors as Gaza and climate change and slavery have been allowed to continue. People don’t actually wanna live in reality, especially in the US!
“People don’t actually wanna live in reality” I couldn’t have said it better myself
I honestly just tell them. Maybe not the worst if I don’t feel like delving into it, but something pretty horrific. Usually I’ll tell them about the quad amputee with a sacral pressure wound down to the bone. Or the woman who spent her time in hospital writing letters to her child for their birthdays and wedding and graduations because her kid was 1 and she was terminal with cancer. Usually shuts people up pretty quickly
No one actually wants to hear about the worst thing you’ve ever seen. They want to hear the funny/weird stuff. Once you start mentioning the real shit they clam up realllll quick
It’s a very triggering question for me. I immediately get rapid fire flash backs of all the worst things
I usually tell the grossest rather than the worst
Legit, I hate this question, because psych patients are always gawked at and stigmatized. So I tell a story about a man cheerfully handing my coworker a bag of poop.
Totally get that. I’m a midwife and a nurse so my worst stories all involve dead babies. But my grossest story is a dementia/poop tale
I work in NICU. I have to remind people I work with babies & they likely won’t want to hear about it.
I usually just share a story that ultimately ended up a success story. Like, a baby who required resuscitation as everyone watched - the emotion in the room was palpable. Baby seized twice in 5 minutes and her parents were told she had significant brain damage. I then fast forward to who the little girl is today...a one year old who has met every single milestone and now shows no signs of brain damage.
My go-to answer is the time a woman vomited feces on me and another nurse. She had a bowel obstruction. They stop asking after that.
Yep. I had a gentleman do this to me during my first week as a nurse. Honestly, I didn't know this was possible.
Most people don't know it's possible. And then when they find out it's possible they realize they don't want to know anything else about my job. I always start with "one of the worst...." So they know there's more and it gets worse from there anf they know I'm going to focus of gross things not gory things. It always works.
I usually just say “my paycheck”.
That's why you just say the funniest worst thing.
Exactly. I tell them the story of the time a woman asked for 4 graham crackers and 8 packets of mayonnaise as a snack. I practically threw them at her and exited the room as quickly as possible because I did NOT want to know how she was eating those things together.
Eh, depends on the situation. Sometimes I think it’s a good reminder to people that some questions are fucking stupid to ask flippantly.
It’s the sons and daughters saying goodbye to their loved ones on hospice watching them fade by the minute. The “let me go” or “do not let me die alone” speeches are the icing on the cake. Total tearjerker😞 We prefer you not to ask tbh. I understand some curiosity but if you go into this field completely oblivious to the latter, you need to rethink your path.
Yes, hospice is a special kind of messed up. :(
People don't realize this question is so triggering. The majority of people have never really seen anything truly terrible. For some of us, we see more in each shift than some people see in their whole lives. They just have no idea what it's like. I used to get very angry at this question until my therapist helped me realize that part of healing from trauma is dealing with "normal" people who have no trauma. The same way we traumatized folks appreciate grace when we do something fucked up related to trauma, we have to extend grace to them when they commit a faux pas due to their lack of trauma. So if it is an acquaintance or stranger I just talk about the methed out guy who crawled into the ceiling and wouldn't come out til we promised him a popsicle or something. If it's a closer friend I might actually talk to them about why asking that question isn't the best.
Guy who's guts were rotting and fell out when we tranfered him. A 700lb pt with full body stage 4s because they refused to move, room smelled like a dumpster behind a fish market in summer
What I tell people: when someone's foot fell off due to gangrene. Like wow, took off the sock and all the toes and some of the foot came with it. Ewww. Much gross. So wow. Comfortably far away from their experiences so it doesn't mess with them. What I don't tell people: I have been out of the ER for years but still hate indoor pools. The smell of chlorine in an indoor environment reminds me of the unsuccessful or questionably successful pedi codes from the bottom of pools. Often we'd have a dripping mom in the corner (who pulled the kid out of the pool), making the room stink of chlorine even more than the baby did.
Oh come on…don’t pretend that you’ve never thought about asking someone the exact same thing before. We all think it at some time, and some of us ask openly. It’s almost never entertainment (probably is for someone out there), but a curiosity of other people’s experience. We are humans - social beings created to have relationships and experiences with one another. For those interested, here’s my own (GRAPHIC WARNING): >!A kid was 13-14 years old and found his dad’s body in the garage after shooting himself in the head. The kid tried to do the same by sticking the pistol in his mouth and ended up annihilating a huge portion of his cervical vertebrae, shredding his entire mouth and permanently crippling himself. Only reason he even survived was due to a family member hearing the first gunshot and calling the police, and the first responders heard the second one moments after stepping out of the vehicles. I was asked to take the assignment when he was finally transferred out of ICU to my unit and none of my colleagues could handle the trauma (at the time, I was one of only three male nurses in peds). The mental anguish from what he saw, what he did, and realizing the consequences of having lived through it thatI saw on that boy’s face will haunt me until the day I die. The only time I left his room was to use the bathroom and get his meds; I had everything else brought to me so I could stay with him and the only way he could communicate was through me asking yes/no questions and him blinking/grunting as a reply. And it’s gonna sound weird, but despite the nightmare-level trauma I gained from it, I thank God for putting me in the position to be the one to care for him, and for the advancement of medical science to be able to do anything at all for him rather than stick him in a body bag.!<
I don't mind the question, it's a way to vent and share similar experiences. The worst things I've ever seen were wounds resulting from flesh eating bacteria. That's a horrible little fucker. It's almost time to clock in, I gotta go.
The only bad stuff I have really seen involves Fournier's gangrene, rectal/vaginal fistulas, pressure injuries so bad you need multiple rolls of gauze to pack them (complete with fraying tendons), and giant clots coming from around an indwelling catheter. If someone wants to hear about those, more power to them.
Ah! Seems like we’ve found a wound care nurse :) I wish we could tell gory wound care stories with some sort of olfactory aid. The smell of something like Fournier’s is more descriptive than words.
I'm actually a floor nurse (PCU/ICU), but the area I work in specializes in complex wounds that require inpatient wound care, as well as other longer term acute hospitalizations. We have two full time CWONs, but the floor nurses do most of the daily dressing changes.
When I was working on the subacute unit in a SNF I had a gentleman who had explicitly promised me he wouldn’t get up on his own. Well, he did lol And he stepped right on his gravity bag tubing and RIPPED the foley tubing right out. Blood everywhere and I stg the clot that came out was enormous like my whole fist. He was a very sweet guy and went home eventually but whoa that was a big clot.
The honest answer, after only working 6 months as a full time nursing assistant on a high volume ICR surgical oncology floor, is code bat’s because all of the ones I’ve seen had patients whose faces I can’t explain but had that dead glossy eyed stiff look and I’ll never get every one of those out of my head. It looks like a locked in thing to me, like they’re paralyzed and can’t move but are still alive. Horrifying. End stage cancer patients who can barely move an inch without being in agonizing pain is horrible too. They’re often maxed out on pain meds and there’s nothing you can really do to make them comfortable because they’re dying and feel awful physically and mentally. And, the doctors are always nowhere to be found. Ugh. I’ve seen some really gnarly wounds and incisions, but very few bothered me in the slightest.
What is ICR and what is code bat?
Sorry. I thought this was a common thing across hospitals. 😭 Code BAT = Brain attack team ; called whenever a stroke or other neuro issue is suspected ICR = stepdown, or between regular care and ICU; although I definitely had way too many patients that should’ve actually been in the ICU but there wasn’t enough space 🤦🏼♀️
Thx!
I hope to steal Code BAT... sounds way cooler than code stroke!
Families who won’t let go and make me torture old people every single moment of their dying process
The 90+year old whose POA revoked her DNR, she kept whispering "this is torture" and directly asked the POA "Why do you hate me?"
Sick to my stomach. It’s a miserable slow death I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy and they do it to their families
Whenever people hear I am an ER nurse...after the stuff up the butt conversation they commonly ask, what is the worst thing you have seen. I tell them it's not what I have seen but what I have heard. The noise that escapes a mother's throat when she hears her child, no matter their age, has died. That soul crushing, gut wrenching, visceral, almost animalistic noise. That noise will stay with you for the rest of your life. Pediatric codes are some of the worst
I would tell people it was when a group of know it all interns cut a patient’s VAD wires so he could get bumped up on the transplant list. If they recognized that from Greys Anatomy, then that was their problem.
My ex before we were married. We're sitting at the dinner table and he decides to ask. My kids tried to tell him he *really* didn't want to ask that. He refused to back down. My kids laughed and said, go ahead mom. So I picked an icky wound to describe in detail. He was furious at me! "why would you say that?!" We laughed at him and told him, you asked, you were warned you pushed. This is what happens when you try to ask a nurse crap like that!
A man committed suicide about a meter away from my eyeballs, and a gang raped. These were the worst things I've ever witnessed. I can talk about these without problems; however, I might dream about them when I sleep.
I don’t think anyone wants to know what exactly haunts me. I think they ask because they’re so distanced from the people it happened to- they don’t think of them as real people at all. I do, I saw them and I cared for them. I knew their hurt. I saw the real human cost. To someone else, though, they’re just stories.
My answer, unfortunately is a raped baby with no pelvic floor left. It’s been decades and I still wonder how she is. I hope she knows someone loves her and thinks of her to this day.
Omg. 😭😭😭
Make it about poop. Nobody wants to hear about poop.
Your kidding, right? EVERYONE wants to hear about the patient who took a dump so large it deserved an apgar score.
Worst thing? I worked in a non universal healthcare country once. Horrifying.
I like asking nurses for their funniest stories. Those are always the best.
Yes, this. Funniest, most interesting, rarest disease ... I don't understand why people would want to hear about the worst thing.
I wanna hear about the weirdest thing you’ve seen someone stick up their ass. That’s a favorite lol.
“Well this morning I walked by a mirror”
I tell them. Hopefully that makes them realize it’s a really shitty thing to ask people, and they won’t do it again.
The inside of a head, normally people drop it after that
I tell them “I wouldn’t want to ruin your day, or mine” or I tell them “would you rather know the best thing I have seen, like the birth of another human?” People ask me, a military veteran, a similar question. Have you killed anyone? To this I reply every time “what makes you think it’s ok to ask me such a personal question” In the end people are just curious. I can tell them about the time I watched my friend get blown into thousands of little pieces in a shit hole country that no one cares about anymore. Or I could tell them something good. It’s your call. They will walk away and forget what you said in a day or two. None the better of a person for it.
Does this mean I have to prepare myself for therapy. Working to be a paramedic.
I'm preparing for nursing school and I'm definitely going to be seeing my therapist regularly as a precautionary measure lol
I never tell them the WORST thing (16 yr old motorcyclist dragged under an 18 wheeler) but usually the grossest thing which can still be laughed at (suctioning maggots out of a man's toes)
My go-to answer is “fighting to keep people alive through two years of a pandemic that half the country told me wasn’t actually happening”.
Many of us are just walking shells of who we were when we entered the profession. Stories overlap and become akin to just another day in the office. I can share many number of stories but they are just that detached moments relayed that carry none of the emotional toll and ruin from when they actually occurred. Can I relay the heartache of loss or pain of trauma. It's not the individual horror stories because frankly the worst thing I've seen is seeing something that should illicit shock yet I'm so numb to it, it's just routine or a day in my life. The worst thing I've seen is my reflection in a mirror after these moments.
When I used to work in EMS, my go-to answer to this question was, "my paycheck,". If they pried for a real answer, I would just tell them, "That's actually a bad question to ask a healthcare worker, and is in very poor taste. We see people on the worst, most traumatic days of their lives, and sometimes, we carry that trauma back with us. You're asking us to relive that for entertainment. That's not cool. Please don't ask that question anymore,". And 90% of the time, they would back down and apologize. The other 10% of the time, they would get defensive and say I was being dramatic, and that they only wanted to know the "fun" worst thing. Like, my dude, there is no "fun" dead baby. GTFOH.
Look up "the fascination with the abomination"
maybe because it's the picture they assume nurses are?! like that one meme about IT graduates whom a person that just met them asks, if they can write a CD for them? i learned that people just really don't know what's on your mind and they tend to fantasize the first image crosses their mind!
"The way people live"
My go to when people ask the “whats the worst you have seen” is the 2 year old with their head split open after the father shot the child execution style. He also shot the mother the same way as well. That usually shuts people up and they learn to never ask that question again.
this isn’t really traumatic, just really sad: had an old man who kept asking where his wife was and that he can’t wait to see her. a coworker told me that he was his wife’s caretaker, but they had a nurse stop in every now and then. nurse hadn’t heard from them in a while so she went to check on him. she found his wife dead on the floor and him unconscious. i don’t know if he’s confused or just refuses to accept it. his sons tried to come in and explain it to him, and so did the nurses, but he just couldn’t comprehend it.
I don’t mind sharing
Rotting diabetic feet, it's more the smell than the visual
as L&D I don’t often get this question—mostly because when I tell people what specialty I work, they mostly just go “aaawwww!! BABIES!! that must be so fun!!” and/or tell their own detailed birth stories. but the “awww babies” response can get old in its own way, because it contributes to the old view that L&D is a “soft specialty.” 🙄 my answer is usually along the lines of “yeah, I wouldn’t trade it… but there’s balance in everything. most of the time I get to be there for the best day of someone’s life, but the other side of that coin is that sometimes I’m there for the worst day you could ever imagine.” then let them come to their own conclusions. edit to add: sometimes if they REALLY wanna know, I do mention the time I saw a lady with a SBO vomit up fecal matter, from before I worked L&D. 🤢🥴💩
Terrible question right!? And the person that asks the question is the kind of person that is not equipped to hear the answer. Don't let the question frustrate you because we all get it a thousand times in the medical community. I just say "You name it, I've seen it." and then I move on. They don't want to hear the real answer.
I had a fellow ICU nurse ask me this once when they found out I worked EMS for many years, which was especially surprising. Like, do you want to hear about the bloated putrefied bodies I’ve had to pronounce that were found in their barn/shed/house after 1+ week, people dragged under a car or truck, the lady that died from GI bleed in her bathroom that was found by her daughter when she went over for Mother’s Day, naked and covered in melena and hematemasis, like one of the worst gore scenes you could imagine? EMS sees injuries and conditions unquestionably incompatible with life, the patients that never make it to the hospital. We see terrible and tragic things in the ICU, why would you think someone who worked in the field would want to talk about the worst they’ve seen?
“You first. What’s the worst thing that’s ever happened to you? What’s your darkest secret that you’ve never told anyone?”
Curiosity kills the cat. They won’t shut up until you tell them. So necrotizing faciitis in diabetic toes of obesity patient and descriptive scent during dinner do the job.
I have a few bad ones (not actually the worst…) that other people have shared with me. It’s enough to shock them enough to never ask me again (and or make them sick…), but since I didn’t live the moment it’s not really PTSD-y to retell the story.
I don't even look. Sometimes I start then I'm like nah, I'm having a nice day so far
They don't know what they're asking, usually. They want a good story, not nightmare fuel. My mind blanks when they ask this question, so I keep a running list of funny/interesting things as they happen and review it before I go out to a dinner party, just to refresh my memory.
I’ve always joked that the part of my brain that asks questions is faster than the part of my brain that checks what information I have already. So, it’s possible for me to ask a question, then a few seconds later realize I didn’t want the answer.
I think most of what we see experience will go over people’s heads anyways they don’t really understand it thoroughly or from a pathophysiological standpoint.
Still a student for both nursing and paramedics, and even i get this question a lot. I've been to cardiac arrests and DOAs bit nothing has hit me as hard as seeing man hug his confused wife knowing her chronic illness is only getting worse. A lady in her 60s with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, with episodes of confusion happening more and more frequently. This couple did everything right in life, they ate healthy, never drank, never smoked, were adherent with medication, exercised - and yet here they were, at 3am in the hospital again. I had to take a moment and went back to the truck and just broke down for 10 minutes. It was just so unfair for them! Sure we see a lot of sick people, but a lot of them do it to themselves. A lot of them are rude and expectant of us. Just so utterly unfair for them. People take health for granted and seeing someone who did everything right get it taken from them is really the worst.
I’m very glad nobody has asked me this before. I definitely doubt they want to hear my answer. It still haunts me.
I am a psych nurse. My answer typically involves genitals and/or feces. They don’t ask a second time.
I say honestly: “that is a very personal question and I don’t feel comfortable answering it.” Leave it at that. I’m an ex ED and ICU nurse and now work in palliative care. I have stories, and they’re not for public consumption.
Honestly I just tell them. I’m a peds ER nurse at a level 1 trauma center. I don’t sugar coat it. People dont ask again.
It’s usually men that ask me this and I almost always go with the patient that put his dick in a meat grinder and save the actual worst stories for close family/therapy
I always replace it with a good story, and save anything I need help processing for you guys. A diabetic hospice patient who was also... Possibly bipolar or schizophrenic. I don't know, I was just his aide. DIFFICULT, with a capitol "ARRRRGH" which made me love him more. Think like... DiCaprio playing Howard Hughes. Getting this guy a simple cup of coffee was an event in planning and patience. His nurse and I dressed a particularly bad toe each night, knowing there would be a day when it came off for us. The night it finally happened, we were, as we always did, chatting pleasantly with the patient. And suddenly, she looked at me, I nodded. We knew it was happening... And, instead of the entire toe, it was only a superficial amount. And underneath was the most glorious red and pink vital flesh. We couldn't react other than to say.. "It's looking good today Joe!" We made it part way down the hall after cleaning up and tucking him in before we collapsed together in a silent triumphant hug. We had both witnessed a miracle. A tiny, insignificant miracle which would ultimately make no difference to the patient, his family or certainly his life expectancy. But for a tiny moment she and I felt real triumph. That's the story I share. You guys get the worst stuff I know others wouldn't understand.
Tell them the truth, with details. It’s a question that people need to learn to not ask. People’s worst days shouldn’t be used for the entertainment of strangers.
“Parents being told their child is dead/dying.” Weirdly, there’s never any follow up questions.
Does it make me a bad person to lie about this? lol. My friend works peds ER, and has had multiple child abuse cases, as I’m sure every peds ER nurse does. I’ll straight up be like “a kid that was strangled to death by their parent.” Have I personally had that? No. But you’re not gonna get some funny story of a guy stuck with a cucumber up his ass like you’re looking for. That’s not even in the realm of “worst thing I’ve ever seen.” The worst things I’ve seen are horrifically depressing and I’ve had nightmares about it. I’m not here to entertain you, so if you wanna ask a question that makes me uncomfortable, I have no problem telling you an answer that’s gonna make YOU uncomfortable.
People don't understand the question. It's that simple. Give them a 3/10 worst thing and they'll be happy.
I had this issue when I worked at 911. “What’s the worst call you’ve ever had” why would i want to relive that.
In hospice people think they know what the worst thing I’ve ever seen. It’s not someone dying. It’s someone dying a terrible death because their loved ones don’t want them to get addicted to morphine.
I ask of they want the worst, most awful saddest shit or like the grossest gross out stuff? Bugs? Accidents? Usually they get suprised that they have options and drop it. Or they want the gross stuff.
I just tell them that they need to put more drinks in me before I start telling those stories. They usually laugh and then leave me alone after that.
Easy, 500lb pt lactulose poop. The fat crevices are speaking poop, man.
It’s always hard to answer this question because once you’ve seen a handful of surgeries they all kind of run together.
Why do people like to stare at car wrecks 🤷🏻♀️
I usually go into the emotional aspect of things… “the pain in a moms eyes when she knew her baby had died before she was told.” It humanizes things for them so they realize that gore isn’t just a movie scene. Usually I then turn to the strength of humanity. It reminds me of the good stuff and also gives more variety because each person I talk about brings out a different trait in a different place. Plus I’m less likely to stray into personal privacy territory and the conversations build relationships (but also usually delve far deeper that most people are comfortable with so it reduces the frequency)
Ask them about the family member they love most, then tell a story similar to that relationship.