I don't know how people in the medical field do it.
All that blood and bodily fluids, all day long.
I feel faint just thinking about it.
They say knowledge is power, especially when it comes to our health.
But some knowledge can be nightmarish.
And there is A LOT to know.
Our bodies are miracles, and they're gross.
But we have to be ready for anything.
The more you know, the longer you live.
Well, hopefully.
Redditor Beneficial_Cry2061 wanted everyone to share some off-putting medical knowledge, so they asked:
"What is a disturbing medical fact that not many people know?"
By Any Means
"We got to modern medicine by grave robbing, crime, and accidents. it wasn't always legal to be a doctor."
- AvocadoPizzaCat
Mr Bean Thumbs Up GIFGiphy
Sexy?
"There are so many wild things living in the microbiome of a human's skin."
"Demodex is a great example; little mites that live near human hair follicles."
"They look horrific, and they feed off of sebum, sweat, dead skin, etc."
"Many things are localized, too; the things living in your eyelash follicles are not the same as the ones living on your elbows. We're a whole universe, and even our skin is colonized by bizarre little f**kers."
"A lovely little quote I found online, about Demodex."
"'When you sleep, the mites come out of your skin’s pores, mate, then go back into your skin to lay eggs.'"
"Sexy."
- no0neiv
Meowww
"Cat scratch fever is real, and can be deadly. I know someone who spent 2 weeks in hospital from it and it was his cat."
- lespaulstrat2
"This happened to me a couple of years ago (I run a cat rescue)! Do not recommend!"
"I thought I had sprained my wrist and tweaked my shoulder from doing some yard work. A couple of days later I was in 10/10 pain from swollen lymph nodes in my neck and arm. I was hospitalized a couple of times within the first week, and three whopping doses of IV hydromorphone/Dilaudid didn’t relieve the agony. The nurses on my case were pretty freaked out when my pain score wouldn’t go down."
"It took me a few months to get full mobility back in my right arm. Those lymph nodes are still reactive and start throbbing if I get sick!"
- GiveMeBotulism
Smeared
"The man who developed the pap smear did so with the help of his wife, who received pap smears almost daily for 21 years."
"Volunteering as an experimental subject: For 21 years, Mary allowed her husband to sample her cervical cells and vaginal fluids almost daily, which he would then smear on glass slides and examine under a microscope."
- PerAsperaAdInfiri
"I love stories of old medicine. The first heart catheterization was self-administered. The young doctor who did it had an argument with his attending about the feasibility of it and made a nurse help him put a catheter in a vein in his arm and push it until it reached his heart. He then walked through the hospital to get an X-ray to prove he had done it."- mrichana
Cleanliness Not so Godly
"The first doctor to suggest hand washing before surgery was laughed at repeatedly by his colleagues."
- thedoc617"Much worse than that, actually: "Some doctors were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands and mocked him for it. In 1865, the increasingly outspoken Semmelweis allegedly suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to an asylum by his colleagues. In the asylum, he was beaten by the guards. He died 14 days later from a gangrenous wound on his right hand that may have been caused by the beating."
- madkinglouis
WTF?!?!
"Chainsaws were invented for childbirth."
- __Probably_Jesus__
"I learned about this while pregnant with my baby who would end up being 10lbs at birth, which made that information quite real and horrifying. I’m 5’2’’ with no hips and without modern medicine, I would’ve been ripped open and probably died."
- somethingold
INVASION
"That your immune system can go rogue and just randomly start eating things you need to stay alive when there are no foreign invaders to fight against."
"Yep. Shame on me for needing a functioning thyroid, my body would much rather just destroy it."
"Another autoimmune ‘fun’ (not so fun) fact: My son has Crohn’s disease, and the drugs he gets make him more likely to develop skin cancer. The medication turns off the same immune response that fights it. Same with Tuberculosis. He has to have TB tests regularly. Yet my insurance acts like he’s taking it for funsies."
- UnlikelyUnknown
Flesh
"Not a human example (probably), but sometimes cows, goats, and other animals get pregnant but instead of giving birth to a normal lamb/kid/calf it gives birth to an "amorphous globosus", a spherical mass of flesh with an outer layer of skin with hair or fur, and the inside a jumbled mess of guts and tissues and sometimes teeth. They never have brains or spinal cords though, so they're always stillborn and nonviable."
- Heroic-Forger
Just Chillin'
"When you get a kidney transplant, unless your original kidneys are diseased, they just LEAVE THE OLD ONES IN THERE. OLD DEAD KIDNEYS JUST CHILLING!!"
"Also- fallopian tubes are not connected to ovaries. they just float in the general direction of the ovaries and do their best to vacuum up eggs as they get popped out (kind of like a pimple bursting) out of ovary pores. so the eggs just get popped wherever and you gotta cross your toes and hope your weird little vacuum tubes are aiming right that day???"
- fleatsd
GIF by World Kidney DayGiphy
The Scoop
"When you have surgery and your organs have to be scooped out to access something else, they don’t put them back where they were. They just kinda put it all back in and our organs just shift back to where they were. I learned this fact when I went to stand up after having a C-section."
- hotmama1230
"That feeling of all your organs shifting after birth was such a strange sensation... It's crazy how it all just goes back to where it was supposed to be."
- shayter
Morning Routines
"The eyelash mite lives mainly on the human eyelash and is an 8-legged parasite that eats skin and oil. They stay hidden in the hair follicles during the day and emerge at night to eat, lay eggs, and excrete waste. And that is why you should wash your face in the morning."
- RandomNameGenFail003
O2 Issues
"Oxygen poisoning is a thing. Too much O2 in your body can kill you."
"But don't worry, you won't die from breathing too hard. It's mostly an issue for divers and other people who breathe pressurized breathing gases."
- 24benson
"It used to be a bigger issue for babies in incubators. In the 50s-60s, they pretty much only had the sealed-top incubators, so always pumped oxygen mix in - it takes a far lower amount to just do damage, particularly to a baby. I know of someone who was in an incubator with the oxygen set too high, who survived but was blinded."
- HeavenDraven
Luxury Bones
"The health of your teeth, or lack thereof, can cause heart disease. The bacteria that infect the gums and cause gingivitis and periodontitis also travel to blood vessels elsewhere in the body, where they cause blood vessel inflammation and damage."
"If you are diabetic and don't know it--or do, but have problems controlling your sugars, it can severely harm your teeth. On the flip side? Having bad teeth can severely affect your blood glucose as a diabetic. It can become a sh*tty cycle."
"And yes--mentioned earlier, but if you get an infected tooth, that infection can travel to the brain or blood very fast."
"And yet, teeth are still considered 'luxury bones,' with maintenance, cleaning, and dental care hardly ever being covered by insurance."
- Pinkatron2000
Errors
"A study by Johns Hopkins in 2016 cited that medical errors are probably the 3rd leading cause of death in the USA, following heart disease and cancer."
"Errors were: Wrong Diagnosis. Incorrect dosage or wrong meds. Surgery errors and the biggest, poor communication between staff."
"It is also thought that this study is also correct in the UK and EU."
- LegalAdviceHope
Well, I'm never going to sleep again.
I'm so glad I never applied to hospitals, even for admin work.