Hospitals aren’t usually the most fun places to be. However, every once in a while, something happens that makes it impossible not to laugh.
1. A Normal Nightly Stroll
I worked nights as an ER nurse. One night, about 20 minutes into my shift, a day nurse said nonchalantly, "Hey, there's a guy without any clothes on outside, I need you to help me get him". I laughed it off, thinking she was joking. She wasn’t.
Not too far out of the ambulance doors, there’s a guy, soaking wet, wearing absolutely nothing but a button-up shirt…which is unbuttoned. Then, it gets even weirder. He starts weaving back and forth, mumbling about a "plane crash". Also, we had no clue how he got so wet.
So, I run back inside to get way more help, and gloves, of course. It took six of us to get the dude into a wheelchair and into the ER. I gave him some medicine and warmed him up, which knocked him out after about ten minutes or so. He was tall and pretty well-built. He didn’t look like our usual late-night straggler.
His head CT and tox screen were negative, but he was still admitted for observation. That’s when we finally figured out what had happened to him. It turns out he had a cold so he took some cough syrup, then had his usual nightly couple of drinks. Then he went to walk his dog and blacked out, I guess.
He fell into a canal, which explained why he was soaking wet. Still unsure why he was talking about a plane crash though…or where his dog ended up.
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2. Hope Your Brain’s Okay
I don't remember this, but apparently I completely flipped out while recovering at the hosptial. I tore out my IV and a pic line that had been in my neck. The doctors and nurses got to me just as I was going for the drain tube coming out of my head, which had been placed there because I had just had brain surgery.
Blood was spraying around the room from the hole where the pic line was, and I was fighting them, calling them every name in the book. They ended up having to strap me to the bed for my own safety. As it turns out, I had a bad reaction to the anesthesia they used.
3. It’s All Fun And Games
My best friend spent a week in the hospital because her water broke and was having contractions one and a half months before her due date. Her husband's response to the whole thing was jaw-dropping. While she was there, her husband brought his whole computer gaming setup so he could play games while he was there with her.
I’m talking fancy keyboard, headset, and all the other bells and whistles. But that’s not the worst part. He was playing his games when the nurses or doctor would come in and ask her questions. He’d also be talking and yelling at whoever he was playing with while me and her family visited.
He’s most likely the reason she had their baby preterm, because of all of the stress he caused. He didn’t have a job and didn’t seem to care if he did or not. To this day I cannot believe what I witnessed and don’t understand how she could still be with him. I understand that being at the hospital forever isn’t the most fun thing ever but honestly.
4. Try To Find A Work/Life Balance
I'm a social worker who does psychiatric intake in an ER. Last week, I had to assess a patient with some serious issues. The remote controls to the televisions in the ER have a cord, similar to a phone, so patients don't walk off with them. When I walked into this guy’s room, I almost burst out laughing.
He was talking into the remote, like it was a phone. He goes, "I got someone in here who wants to talk to me, I’m going to have to call you back". Then he "hangs it up," and says, "Sorry about that, business call".
5. He Could Be An Internet Celebrity
I woke up after an operation and was full of rage, but so groggy from the anesthesia that I couldn’t move. For two hours I lay in recovery, fuming. Everything made me angry. There was a little girl in the bed opposite me, crying after her surgery and I hated her. I hated her so much, I used all the energy I had to flip her the bird. But that was just the tip of the iceberg.
A nurse came over and sat with me for a bit, just talking and holding my hand. I couldn’t move or speak to him but he made me angry as well. After a bit, he let go of my hand and I immediately flipped him off too. He just grabbed my hand again and held it until I eventually fell asleep. When I woke up, one of the nurses told me I looked like grumpy cat.
I’d spent the whole time in recovery glaring and growling at anybody who came near me (I don’t remember the growling bit) and that I’d flipped off quite a few people (I only remember the little girl and the nurse).
6. It’s a Hospital, Not A Gym
At seven years old, I developed aspiration pneumonia—but I walked away from with some seriously amusing stories. First of all, I came down with it after playing in a ball pit and vomiting from the smell of a very stinky kid. After several doctors telling my parents it was only a cold, it took me nearly dying for one doctor to realize something was actually wrong.
I then spent several weeks at childrens' hospital lying in bed, watching movies. I was getting antsy and ready to run around. Once my doctor gave the okay for me to get out of bed and stretch a bit, they allowed me to go to the media center they had for the children. They had it all.
Board games, paints, and the almighty Super Nintendo—my little heart was in hog heaven. All these activities were definitely fun, but I wanted more, much more. I wanted physical motion! Then I saw it, the perfect thing to jump over! The rope was just far enough off the ground and long enough, I knew I could make it.
Before anyone could stop me, I ran and LEAPED, totally clearing the other side before multiple hands lunged at me. I had jumped over an IV cord connected to another child.
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7. Life Is About Having Fun
I had an elderly patient with serious dementia—and one day he went missing. They couldn't find him anywhere. It was the middle of winter so of course, we were worried the old man would freeze. After two hours, he walks into the ward completely soaked and muddy with a huge grin on his face. When we asked him where he was, his answer was legendary.
He simply responded with, "I went sleigh riding".
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8. Save The Stories For Your Journal
I've been suffering from chronic pain issues for a while now and they decided to try and see what ketamine would do. It was a one-day treatment. I was supposed to show up in the morning, get the injection, get monitored, then go back home again. Easy, right? WRONG. The injection didn’t quite go as planned. I ended up with one blown vein and one poked tendon.
Finally, they got the IV in. The first few hours were okay until the ketamine got cranked up. I was texting with friends all the while and they were not impressed by my stories of how time is bending my vision and there are parallel worlds but I can still communicate with them if I want. The nurses didn’t seem to appreciate it either…
9. A Full Moon
I was struggling to breathe, and ended up in the ER. I had really bad asthma and all sorts of allergies including a very severe egg allergy. My mom was visiting to see how I was doing. I had been on oxygen all night with a bunch of meds, but my breathing was clearing up the next day. I was maybe only 7 at the time and this was the third time I’d been hospitalized.
The doctor is telling my mom how I'm doing…as I fly by with one foot on the wheeled IV stand and I'm pushing off on the floor with the other like it's a skateboard. My hospital gown was flapping in the wind behind me as I flew down the hall.
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10. Saved His Soul And His Life
My dad got in a motorcycle accident when he was 17 and had a collapsed lung that wouldn't heal after surgery. At one point they called in a priest because there was little hope he'd make it. My dad’s reaction was seriously disturbing.
He thought the priest was the devil and started yelling and thrashing about. However, this led to a chilling discovery: He'd dislodged a clogged drain in his bad lung, started bleeding, and they found that he had clots in there preventing the lung from healing.
He was told about it all afterward but all he remembers was seeing a tall, hooded figure and thought he was going somewhere bad.
11. Hopefully She Got Quicker Service
In 2011, my grandmother had a double knee replacement. While in recovery, she had to use the restroom. Stubborn to her core, she insisted on doing herself. Instead of calling for a nurse, that woman tried to get out of bed, failed, pulled her in-room phone off of the table to dial the ambulance, and told the dispatcher she was in the hospital and had fallen and couldn’t get up.
It happened a few hours after I’d visited when she had been telling me about the monkeys performing in a circus on her ceiling.
12. If You Don’t Have Anything Nice To Say
One time I was experiencing an adrenal crisis from stress. I was sweating really hard and started getting jittery. I was in pain and super irritable. When the nurse shift change happens and I go from having just a very laid back/hands-off nurse to a very sweet nurse who is the kind that dotes on people, I went into a spiral. And it was bad.
I full screamed that she was, “VERY NICE BUT I CANNOT DEAL WITH HER CURRENTLY” and threw my shoes across the room. I only vaguely remember this. All of this happened in the ER before we knew what was going on. When I finished with treatment, she returned.
I kept saying, "I'm SO sorry!!" She just laughed and said, "I thought it was hilarious that you kept yelling nice things about me".
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13. A Medical Marvel
When I was first in the hospital, it was about a year ago, I was there with critical skin damage from atopic eczema, one of the worst cases in the country. I had a severe infection all over my body, the torn skin caused me so much pain that it caused me hallucinations.
According to the doctors, it was a miracle that I survived because 3 out of 5 people in a similar case are said to go their own routes of numbing the pain or they succumb to infection. The doctors estimated that I would need to be treated for a month, and if that wasn't enough, I'd then go to specialty treatment under constant supervision. However, they were in for a surprise.
When I was 22 years old, after taking medication and being in bed, I recovered in six days. According to the doctors, I did something impossible.
14. It Started Out Fine
I went to the donation clinic, perfectly healthy, because I had decided to give blood. I thought it would be easy-peasy, but things didn't go as planned. Some new 18-year-old nurse hit my vein first try and everything starts flowing. I'm just sitting in a normal chair and I start feeling woozy, just as the nurse was leaving. I pass out.
Thankfully a nurse saw me pass out and basically caught me in time. I came to, passed out again, came to, passed out again, then they wheeled me to a bed. But that’s not the worst part. During the whole ordeal, I had wet my pants and had no change of clothes. I called my wife and she didn’t pick up. So I had to walk home with my pants completely wet.
When I walked in the front door, my wife was sitting enjoying a coffee and a biscuit.
15. A Little Privacy Please
I had to stay at the hospital for 10 days. While there, my ex texted me quite frequently, always checking in—but the trouble started when she began flirting with me and sending me seductive pictures. It was funny because when my heart rate would get too high, my monitor would start making noise so I’d have to calm down before a nurse came to check on me.
But then my ex sent videos, so I just disconnected the red sensor thing on my finger and had to have a private moment, hoping a nurse wouldn’t walk in trying to take my vitals or something. But little did I know, the sensor being off my finger also alerted the nurse to come in…Yeah, that was embarrassing.
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16. Ready To Go
A few hours after giving birth, my husband and I were enjoying our new baby and were getting ready to head home. Outside my room, we heard an argument between a patient and nurse. The patient yelled, "I want to leave NOW. Where's my baby?" The nurse calmly responded, "It's too soon after the birth. You can't leave yet".
The patient was insistent she was going to leave. What she said next made me freeze in my tracks. She said that if she couldn’t take her baby, she would take someone else's. I gave my husband a steely look and told him that if she came for our baby, she be in the hospital for a completely different reason.
I was filled with maternal protectiveness and would have fought off a grizzly bear if it came in. I rolled the bassinet to the far side of my bed and sort of crouched in a protective stance between the baby and the door. I heard the door begin to open and tensed up. That’s when the doctor walked in with a startled look on his face.
17. That’s Not How That Works
As a med student, I had asked a to collect all of her urine for a time period of 24 hours so we could run a specific test. When the woman comes the next day, she has four full liters of urine in the sample bottles the hospital gave her. My teacher then asks her how she could possibly have gotten that much in such a short time period. The woman's response was priceless.
She said, "Well, the bottles were not even half full so I asked my sister to help me fill them!"
18. But Did They Pass Their Test?
Four years ago, I burned myself out from studying so hard for an exam. My head was already hurting a lot, but then my vision went blurry and I faint. When I woke up, I was in the hospital and my father had a wound on his finger. I asked him, "How did you do that to yourself?" He looked me in the eyes and said, “I didn’t".
Apparently, when I passed out, I fell out of the chair, and when my parents came up to see what was happening I was having an epileptic seizure (we didn't know I was epileptic until then). My father had to put his finger in my mouth to get my tongue out of my throat because I was choking. It was pretty serious at the time but now every time he sees the scar he asks, “Remember when you bit me?”
19. It’s Called Fashion
I had tumors when I was a kid. I was one of those children that basically lived in the hospital. When coming out of one of my many surgeries, my entire world was different. I thought things were pink. Not everything, but random things, the sheets, the walls, everyone’s clothes, and my mum’s hair.
The first thing I said to my Mum was that I hated her hair that color. Her being used to my post-surgery ramblings just smiled and told me to have a nap and she will fix it.
20. Small But Scary
My mother had to have a hip replacement. I get a call from the hospital early in the morning: "You're going to have come in. We're having a difficult time controlling your mother". I rush down and there is my ninety-pounds-soaking-wet mom sitting in a wheelchair in the nursing station calling the nurse all sorts of terrible things.
My mom is 80 and deep down is a total nutter, but she usually hides it well; she comes across to most strangers as a sweet old granny. Apparently, she got herself out of the bed in a post-operative psychosis, on a freshly replaced hip, and started telling everyone off. They got her in a wheelchair, but she refused to get back in bed.
She saw me and told me, very loudly, that all the nurses were evil and trying to get her. She was not going back to her room. I had to get her a private room which she said she wasn't paying for because they forced her to take it. She didn't really come back around for about three days.
21. They Call It Self Care
During surgery, the anesthesiologist had a hard time putting me under for my ankle surgery, and then once I was under, I suddenly sat up and tried to get off the table. But that wasn't all. After I was wheeled into recovery, the nurse went to get some ice chips and when she came back to remove my breathing tube, I was sitting up in bed trying to remove it myself.
22. Frog Spawn Fiasco
A boy is admitted to a medical ward, but he's carrying a very large bowl of frog spawn?? Suddenly, he collapses and we need to put equipment on the bedside table top where the frog spawn is. So, me, being an idiot, took the bowl to the nearest place out of reach of toddlers. The child recovered eventually, but l forgot all about the frogspawn.
I placed it on a shelf in the laundry and storage area in the basement. A room full of racks of clothes, pyjamas, and dressing gowns full of lovely comfortable big pockets just the right size for the big fat frogs that had been eating their siblings. Have you any idea how many frogs can grow from one large two-gallon bowl of frogspawn?
They kept jumping out everywhere, croaking, and we had to catch every single one of them. I swear that as soon as we released them into the wild they kept coming back. And that was just the beginning. We also found two large snakes, and fortunately, l was able to get the porter to remove those.
I often wonder if we had left them all alone would the snakes have eaten those frogs? No doubt some child had smuggled in their baby pet snakes a long time ago. Warning: If you don’t want strange hospital experiences never work in a sick children’s hospital.
23. Wrong Idea, Right Result
Recently did a shift at a facility where they had combination call buttons and TV remotes which basically means there were lots of buttons. I went to answer a pleasantly confused elderly lady's call light. When I opened the door, I saw something I'll never forget: This adorable patient holding the TV remote up to her ear, saying, "Hello, I'd like to go to the bathroom please..."
24. Choices Were Made
There was one incident where two separate patients were brought into the ER, strapped to their beds. For some reason, one of them is allowed out of his restraints, as long as security remained at their bedside (or in this case, by the nurse's counter nearby). The patient started getting super upset and yelling awful criticisms about the hospital.
The security guard tries to reassure him that he is fine, but by the time the guard finishes his sentence, the patient is already running down the hall screaming. Security chases him down the hall and tackles him, holding him pinned until more guards came to help.
25. A Wild Ride
I was getting my gallbladder removed and a hernia fixed. It turned into my worst nightmare. I woke up in the middle of surgery. It was the most surreal experience ever. I couldn't exactly see because of the bright light, everything was like an over-exposed picture, and the people were just kind of shadows.
I wound up fighting off two nurses, pulled my breathing tube completely out, and tried to get up. That's when I realized my legs didn't work and panic set it. All I heard was the anesthesiologist say, "Hold on, I've got something that will help, count to..."
The next thing I remember was being in the bathroom peeing, turned around and my wife was standing there.
26. A Dog Day Afternoon
I was brought into the ER for an atrial flutter as a child. They tried a couple of different medications to stop it but none worked so they had to use a deregulator. This was nowhere near the first time they did this to me, but because it was so late at night, there wasn’t an anesthesiologist available to give me the good stuff.
So they gave me something different than usual to put me out. I was only under for a brief time, but my brain was on fire for the remainder of the evening. I was talking to my dog, playing fetch with him, petting him. We were having a blast playing in a field. Except I was still at the hospital. At night.
Apparently, I was making the motions of throwing the ball and petting him and everything.
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27. Hospitals Are Full Of Ghosts
I had a thing for elevators as a child because I lived in the countryside so elevators were like magical boxes to me. When I was in first grade, I got sick and was sent to the hospital. I was quite small for a first grader and I was skinny and pale. I was there for about a month. When I was finally allowed to leave, I had no interest in my regular clothes.
I had come to enjoy the freedom of the hospital gown. While my mom was filling out the paperwork, I went to the elevator and just stood inside and kept pressing buttons. I was just riding up and down. I've always wondered why no one came inside the elevator when I was riding it. I mean, whenever the door opened there were people but they didn't come in. Later, I realized why.
I guess at that time it never occurred to me that seeing a skinny and pale child alone in a hospital elevator would be terrifying.
28. I Would Be Dizzy Too
After successfully and cleanly breaking my ankle in three places, I was taken to a hospital and was operated on two weeks later. The night after the operation, I was left with a pain medication drip that required a button to activate it, but it could only be activated every five minutes.
When the nurses came in the morning to check on me, they could see how many times I had pressed the button (with and without it being activated). They were shocked. Apparently, I had pressed it a grand total of over 300 times, and had just been pressing it all night. I only remember being in bed with a lot of pain and clicking it shortly before passing out.
Either way, I was very dizzy the next morning.
29. At Least Someone Found It Funny
I had to have my wisdom teeth extracted. I've had a few shots to numb things, the IV is started, and I've been given laughing gas. I'm left with the rookie nurse while they wait for everything to kick in. I notice my IV is backing up and giggle it to the nurse. She sets to work trying to fix it. I continue to giggle at her while she tries to get it reset.
She is stabbing my arm more and more frantically trying to get it restarted. I'm now laughing at the point of physically shaking, which I'm sure isn't helping. Then, chaos breaks out. She jabs at my wrist and hits a major nerve. My arm seizes up and I start screaming at the top of my lungs. She passes out onto my legs and hits the floor.
Everyone comes rushing in while I'm still screaming. Another nurse pulls the needle out and I'm out like a light. Next thing I remember I'm loopy in the car ride home asking for some pudding and milkshakes.
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30. A Weird Reaction
I was recovering after deviated septum repair and every time I got up to pee, which was often, a nurse had to be present. It was the probably the most bizarre and embarrassing experience of my life.
So here I am, peeing in front of this nurse (who I'm sure did not care) then because moving made me nauseated, I would also vomit immediately following. I was just out there peeing and vomiting in front of everyone.
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31. Blocked Up
I was 17, on the hormonal pill for medical reasons, and it gave me a constipation episode that lasted three weeks, during which I simply forgot that humans need to poop. Cue to my mom learning about it and taking me to the ER, where they had me do an enema to see if it would work or if they needed to manually dis-impact me.
Thankfully, it got things going and I was able to leave with no additional procedures.
32. Stick To The Plan
In 2019, my dad got a vesicular infection. First, he went to a hospital that decided to not remove it and just clean all the nasty stuff around it. Less than two months later, he was feeling ill (fever, weakness, and pain). He realized the pain was coming from the vesicle, so he went to another hospital and had it removed.
This is where I come into the story, he forgot to bring spare socks and underwear to the hospital, so my stepmom asked me to go with her and drop him some off. The thing is, it was night time and visitations were already over. So we went into the emergency room, my stepmom was asked by the security guard at the front what was the issue and she immediately answered, “I have chest pain".
As soon as she said that, I knew that something was afoot. We were accepted into the ER, but it was pretty full and when she saw that she wasn’t getting called, she told me that she noticed what door the nurses were using to go inside of the hospital rooms. That’s when she grabbed my arm and literally took me with her inside.
I was petrified. Every doctor and nurse stared us down. But when we started passing security guards, my palms started sweating. A few minutes later, we found the stairs to go to my dad’s room. However, a nurse was walking down those stairs and asked us what we were doing there. My stepmom feigned chest pain again and told me to run.
The security guards had followed us into the stairwell and while the nurse was trying to assess my stepmom’s condition, the security guards were trying to escort us out. Long story short, my dad never got his things because we were banned from the hospital.
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33. Dr. Google Is Cheaper
One time, I had slept on my arm wrong and it became paralyzed. You know when you fall asleep in a weird position and when you wake up your arm is like rubber, but then in a few minutes, you get that tingly, pinprick feeling as the feeling comes back? Well, in my case, a terrifying thing happened.
The feeling did not come back. I learned from researching on my phone that this was likely “Saturday Night” syndrome. It happens when you sleep on your arm wrong and pinch a nerve (also called radial palsy). This particular hospital wanted to check me in and run a whole lot of (completely unnecessary) expensive tests to make sure I didn't have a stroke.
I was like, duh, I didn't have a stroke and this is unnecessary. But of course, they didn't listen. So I got up, gathered my things, and walked out of there while all the medical staff was yelling at me to stay put. I got a small brace for my arm from my pharmacist and a few weeks later I was fine.
I'm not interested in spending tens of thousands of dollars to conclude what I already knew.
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34. The Heart Wants What The Heart Wants
My nephew was in a medically-induced coma for over a month. When they were weaning him off the medication, he was a bit out of it. Unfortunately, he kept trying to escape, so they ended up strapping him to his bed. He managed to wriggle out of those so they put the escape-proof netting up.
Well, his brain just decided it was going to figure out how to escape that and he managed to get out. He ended up running around the hospital in his birthday suit for about 15 minutes until security could wrangle him back to his room. Luckily this was at about three in the morning so he wasn't terrorizing visitors.
35. The Feral Child
I had to get stitches in my lip and nose as a kid. When we got to the hospital, they wanted to do a local anesthetic on me with a needle and I was having none of it. I started fighting the nurses and the doctor. Then I tried to bite the doctor's face. But, since I was a small child, I was subdued quickly. They wrapped me in a blanket and held me down. But even that wasn't enough.
I kept shaking my head and tried to bite the doctor again, so he sprayed the anesthesia in my face. I don’t remember much after that. I just know I had trouble breathing and the nurses looked mortified. I did eventually get stitched up though.
36. Who Needs A Radio?
We had a man come into the ER after a car hit him. His CT shows he has a pretty significant head bleed. He's been drinking so this guy's just having a great time. We get him undressed and start trying to clean up when he bursts into song. He keeps going on with the same song for half an hour. But he didn’t stop there.
It got ten times better when a female nurse came in to help and he immediately stops singing and goes, "Hang on...I forgot the second verse". He sits for a few minutes and then goes right back at the same part he's been singing. That's probably the hardest I've tried to not laugh in my life.
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37. At Least He Doesn’t Forget
I sustained a TBI some years ago in a car wreck and was airlifted to the hospital. I don't remember the flight at all, but apparently, I was just punching at everyone on my way in and shouting obscene nonsense. During the next couple days, I kept saying the same thing over and over again—the last thing I could remember being told.
As in, someone would tell me not to get up, and I'd just tell my friends who came to see me that I'm sorry, I'm not allowed to get up. One of them told me that somebody else was coming to visit, and I apparently kept telling everyone that they were coming to visit, even after they'd visited.
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38. Careful Where You Sit
I was in high school, and I honestly can’t remember what crafty project I was working on, but it was on my bed—with clothing and sharp scissors. Somehow, the scissors got wrapped up in the clothes and ended up sticking up. Well, when I went to sit down on my bed, I felt a piercing pain.
I went to the bathroom, found blood, and fainted for the first time in my life, face-first, onto the floor. Luckily, the wound wasn’t too deep and didn’t puncture anything, but I now have a scar on my butt from the time I sat on scissors. Good times.
39. Just Trying To Help
I had to have my wisdom teeth extracted. At first, the procedure was going really smoothly—but halfway through, I woke up. The wild thing is, I specifically woke up because the nurses were discussing the new Star Wars movie at the time and were confused at where it landed in the timeline. So I tried to explain to them as I woke up.
They thought I was just awake for a second and told me to go back to sleep, but I didn’t. Instead, I soon realized all the medication had worn off and I don’t know why, but I didn’t tell them. So, I felt them pull the last two teeth they needed to pull and white-knuckled my chair to deal with the pain. It was the worst pain I’ve ever experienced.
When my parents were expecting me to act weird afterward, they were sorely disappointed when I exclaimed, “I am fully awake right now, put your camera away".
40. There Are Problems And There Are Solutions
During my last day of training, I responded to a life alert call. This could have been anything, firefighters had gotten there first but didn’t give us any updates. So we take everything from the truck just in case. We get into the apartment and there are firefighters frantically running around the kitchen that was surrounded by a baby gate.
We see the patient and she looked fine just sitting in a wheelchair, talking to the firefighters. We ask what was going on. The truth gave us all a good chuckle. A firefighter says to us that the patient is not allowed in the kitchen because she almost burned the house down, so that’s why there’s a baby gate to block her out. She lives with her son and he’s working today.
She wanted a piece of cake but couldn’t get to the kitchen, so she thought the most logical way of getting it was to press her life-alert button so that the firefighters could get it for her. So I’m standing there watching as the firefighters ask if she wanted ice cream with her cake and slicing it for her. I ask my field training officer what I write in the report.
He says to me, “Just say we were canceled by fire".
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41. Maybe It’s Karma
This is so embarrassing, I still can’t forget it. As a teenager I had my wisdom teeth removed at an outpatient surgical facility. After being checked in, I was told to strip down and put on the hospital pants and shirt they gave me, basically a set of hospital scrubs.
After the surgery, disaster struck. Apparently, coming off of anesthesia dramatically affected by behaviour. I became combative with the nurses and doctors. I was calling them awful names and trying to fight my way free which was totally out of character for me. So they pulled down my pants and jabbed me in the thigh with another sedative to put me back under.
A while later, I came to, totally calm this time. I was in a community recovery room with about fifteen other occupied beds. A nurse came over and had me drink some water and told me that they couldn’t release me until I peed to get some of the sedatives out of my system.
She helped me out of bed and began walking me to the bathroom when my pants fell to my ankles in front of the other patients. They never re-tied the waist string after the second shot. The other patients got a huge chuckle out of this and all began laughing.
There I was, a 14-year-old kid going through puberty and my first experience being undressed in front of someone else is a roomful of people laughing at my bits and pieces being on display.
42. Never Take Someone Else’s Seat
I was in the children's ward of a hospital getting treated for pneumonia, at six years old. I escaped my room and ran down to the waiting room of the ward. It was way more fun than my room, it had toys and sweet widescreen TV. I got there and promptly started beating up a little boy who had the audacity to sit in my favorite chair by the TV.
Eventually, someone noticed I was gone and my Dad and a nurse dragged me back. I escaped a few times but only got aggressive once. Something they gave me in the hospital made me act like a little psychopath. If you're out there little boy, just know that I'm very sorry I beat you up.
43. That’s Pretty Fast
Upon waking up from general anesthesia, I started babbling about the craziest things. I apparently felt it was important to convince everyone in the recovery room that the dog went 1,000 mph. I guess at first I was saying it in a conversational tone but quickly progressed to screaming at the top of my lungs. I made a nurse’s aide cry.
Eventually, they had to sedate me again. It’s something they try to avoid at all costs in patients waking up from general anesthesia but necessary in my case to avoid me injuring myself. I woke up again 30 minutes later and did not remember any of it. Unfortunately, it all took place before everyone had a video camera in their pocket.
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44. Patience Is A Virtue
I once accidentally peed on my doctor. I had an epidural while giving birth, and the doctor was being impatient and pushed aside the nurse who was getting ready to place my urinary catheter. She went to check me and asked me to push, and I did as she said. But that was a mistake...for her, at least.
One epidural plus no catheter equals pee fountain right over her shoulder and all down her front. I missed her face by inches. She was already not happy to be there and I think that was why she was so impatient. I kind of laughed at her because it was totally her fault since she knew I had an epidural and couldn't manage to wait for the nurse to finish with the catheter.
45. A Hospital Is Not The Place For That
While working my shift at the hospital, a man came in saying he had lodged some beads, or some sort of similar artifact inside of his body…from behind, if you catch my drift. So, routinely, they decided to get some x-rays to check on its progress the wrong way up through his digestive system. They took the patient through, got him scanned…but found nothing.
When confronted, the patient’s answer blew everyone away. He said that this had happened before and that the reason it wasn't showing up was that it was some sort of plastic and silicone hybrid that was difficult to see on the x-ray. So, the next step was to grab some gloves and manually search for it. The patient dropped his pants and they were underway.
After a couple of minutes of not finding anything, the doctor made a disturbing realization. He looked at the patient and saw that he was sweating and smiling. There was nothing in there.
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46. It Cost How Much?!
In my teen years, there was a day where I began experiencing some intense pain in my abominal area. My folks were starting to worry about me so they took me to the ER. They ran some tests and the whole lot. They ended up giving me some muscle relaxers since I was very tense. Then something happened that was completely out of my control.
I released a large amount of gas and afterward…I felt perfect. Everyone got a big laugh about it. My parents now refer to the incident as the $500 toot.
47. Always Look On The Bright Side
My four-year-old son had to stay at the hospital overnight for reasons I've forgotten. Somehow, it didn't make it to his chart that he has ADHD and was taking Ritalin at the time. I leave and they don't medicate him. He was mobile, wired, and unsupervised. When I came back, what they told me put me in an instant panic. They had LOST him.
He went on a total rampage. He made it up several floors, flushed his pajama top down the toilet for…reasons. He then managed to find a very senile old man and climbed into bed with him. When they finally found him he was watching the guy's TV and was eating his ice cream. They called me to come and get him early.
The staff looked like they really needed a nap. My son, however, had had a glorious time. He never did tell me why he flushed his pajamas, though.
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48. Maybe They Hated The Playing
I was 14 in the hospital for streptococcal pneumonia, up on the ninth floor of our local hospital. After about two weeks, I asked my mom to bring my Casio keyboard. So one day, I open the window and sat up in the window nook to play. The window would not open wide, but I let a leg hang out to feel the sunlight and wind for the first time in a while.
I played on the keyboard for a while and I looked across and there were all these people making horizontal motions with their arms and yelling something. I stopped playing and stuck my head out to listen. At that moment, they got substantially more excited. They were trying to tell me something, but I couldn't quite make it out. Then it clicked. They were screaming, "DON'T JUMP!"
In an instant, a group of nurses was in my room, telling me it's not worth it and that I was going to get better. I pulled my head and leg in from outside and told them that I did not plan on jumping. I shared that I was just up there to play music and feel the outside. They asked me to come down out of the window nook.
I complied with their request. Once out of the window, I got leather straps put on my feet and hands until my mother could get off work and get there. To this day, I think that I am the reason that the hospital windows will not open beyond a slither. Sorry folks. I just needed to feel the outside again.
49. Diverse New Friends
I was in the hospital for what I thought was a heart attack or complications from triple bypass surgery, which I had had the month before. I went to the hospital closest to me and kindly asked to be transferred back to the hospital that did my heart surgery. They obliged and I was transferred. They got me a room and I was all set up to sleep.
But then this random dude came into my room and asked me what my favorite type of music was. He was a younger guy wearing scrubs who I thought was just another nurse doing his rounds. Turns out, he and I had the same tastes in music and his favorite band was also my favorite band. He had a wrist tattoo with a symbol from the band’s 4th album that I thought was pretty cool.
We chatted for about a half-hour or so and then he said he had to be going. He made a note on the whiteboard at the end of my bed, listing my favorite band, and then said his goodbyes. On his way out he told me, “Everything looks good so far and you’ll be fine after this".
For some reason, that brought me some comfort since I hadn’t seen the doctor yet and I was having high anxiety, being less than a full month after my open-heart surgery. They let me leave the next day. I asked my morning nurse what that guy’s name was so I could do some detective work on social media and thank him for telling me exactly what I needed to hear at the time. Her answer made my blood run cold.
She said, "The only people that spoke to you were the night nurse, your doctor, and me". No one else had been in my room. So, I asked her who wrote my favorite band’s name on the board and she had no answer for that.
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50. What A Well-Mannered Fellow
I opened my eyes in the middle of my operation. Long story short, I am VERY tolerant to almost all anesthetics and they pumped a ton into me during the ER visit. But with all the problems I was in the emergency room for, I forgot to warn the surgery staff. I not only woke up, but I SAT up on the table and had a full-on conversation with the surgical team.
I have never seen six adults jump that high in my life. It freaked them out that I was that awake. Totally calm, I apologized for not warning them, thanked them since the pain was now gone, and asked if I could go home now. Problem was, they were not done. Luckily, they were mostly done and could finish with local anesthesia.
51. That’s Not How This Works
We had one woman come in and her chief complaint was constipation. Going into her chart, I saw that she had been previously given some suppositories to take, and in the triage note, she said her meds weren't working and she wanted some different ones. So the doctor is asking her questions, making sure nothing else is wrong, and they get to the part about the medication. Her reaction was unforgettable.
She says, "Well yeah, the pills I got last time were huge! I have to break them in half to swallow them!" And then we had to explain that suppositories are not meant to be eaten, and that was why her medication was not relieving her symptoms. She thought “Suppository” was the name of the medication, like Tylenol is for acetaminophen.
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52. Fifth Time’s A Charm
This teenage boy came in with a split philtrum all the way up to his nose. He was in a lot of pain. It turns out that he had been riding a four-wheeler without a helmet and smacked into a tree. But then we noticed something bizarre. He had on a hospital gown from another hospital. So it turns out he was at another hospital, got mad at the wait time, then his dad drove him here.
But that’s not the funniest part. On the gown were these little holes, about 4 or 5. I turned to his father and asked, "What is happening here??" His dad told me that he had put a smoke in his mouth while they drove to our hospital, and normally you can just hold it in your mouth. But since his philtrum was split, it couldn't support it, and it fell out.
It got a good chuckle out of everyone.
53. Maybe Next Time
I sat awake through an entire operation to remove a blood clot, I was not really sure if I was supposed to be awake or not. The pain was pretty uncomfortable, but not unbearable. Lots of sharp pains that made me wince. I listened to the anesthesiologist and nurse talk about their weekend the whole time… still unsure if I was supposed to be conscious.
When it was all done, I asked the anesthesiologist if I could be put under next time. She was like, “Oh sweetie, you were 100% under". Ummmm NO I wasn’t. My comeback was so perfect—it wiped the condescending smile right off her face. I explained to her what she did that weekend to a look of shock.
I explained my father and I always seem to have high tolerances to this sort of thing. She apologized profusely and ensured I would be completely out next time. I guess I should have said something during the procedure.
