Hospitals are supposed to be places of healing and comfort.
Reddit user, u/After-Bullfrog5639, wanted to hear about your worst medical time when they asked:
What's your worst experience in a hospital?
Not everyone can have these experiences when you visit a hospital. Frankly, because not everyone in life is setting themselves up for these encounters.
There Are People There Every Day
"Working in one - RN - patient's can be mean, family members can be mean, doctors can be mean. They give me 6 patients and then expect me to spend a lot of time with each. I have 10 minutes per hour with each and if I have to cover for some one else I have 12, meaning 5 minutes with each per hour."
"People that are admitted are really, really sick and deserve more care - but I'm just the hired gun and it's not my fault that they think nurses can give 6 patients 30 minutes of care each in an hour. Going to private rooms makes it harder since you can no longer take care of 2 on same stop."
An Uncomfortable Confrontation
"The guy who slept with my first wife was a doctor at our regional hospital. When I found out about the affair I confronted him in the lobby of the hospital while very drunk. A brawl broke out and because of both my intoxication and his superior physical fitness he beat the sh-t out of me. I spent the next 24 hours in the same hospital and he took excellent care of me. I left him 5 stars on Google reviews because he's actually a great doctor. I hated the whole experience."
"No good way around this my dude, he dunked on you on a whole other level."
10 Days Of Pain
"Recovering from Scoliosis surgery in 2010 wasn't too bad in retrospect. Just had the pain"
"Heart surgery+pneumonia in that hospital+Impending Covid Lockdown was a completely different animal"
"My parents couldn't visit me that often. When they did, taking care of me was rough. There was an entire day being moved to and from a toilet by nurses after I wasn't backed up anymore. Didn't get Covid, but food did taste metallic for a while. Constant blood draws with a new f-cking needle, IVs that shifted too f-cking much. It was 10 days of hell"
"Still, it ended up being a surprisingly good year after recovery. Worked from home that summer and did a lot of personal writing and art projects. Movie reviews and videos, 3d modeling and animation, and stuff like that"
Drink More Water. (And Cannula = Arm Tube.)
"As a patient, being admitted for kidney stones was bad enough, but on my second night in hospital, I was woken up because my cannula was knocked out in my sleep and my bed was covered in blood. I usually sleep on my side but had to sleep on my back that night due to my cannula. I guess my muscle memory almost killed me lol."
"Even though I was an adult, Mum had been allowed to stay with me, and I wonder if I would have just bled out in my sleep if she wasn't there."
Nothing Hurts More Than Watching Your One-Year Old Struggle
"Watching my son (almost a year old at the time) being intubated for severe wheeze (since has been diagnosed with asthma but was too little then). Seeing 8 or so doctors and nurses just converge on his bed and hearing his screams while they try to get him sorted. Thankfully there was an amazing nurse or other staff member who moved us to a waiting area and made us tea and brought snacks. I'll never forget when she said "don't be afraid, you hear him yelling? He's strong and will be okay"
Something That Stays With You Forever
"6/7 years old with aggressive salmonella. A week at home with "the flu", a week at my local hospital, a week at the children's hospital to make sure my organs hasn't turned to mush. Being held down by 4 nurses and stripped so that they could put a catheter in. Fever so high that I hallucinated crickets in the walls. No one checked my IV line for a week, it wiggled and left a crater in my arm (the scar is still there)."
Surgery is an art form, requiring a steady hand and a focused mind. Take your eye off the ball for too long and you might miss something crucial.
Like how you're patient is waking up.
Go Back To Sleep
" Woke up during or right after surgery and couldnt move or breathe, but could hear the nurses chatting next to me. I was desperate to tell them I was suffocating but I was paralyzed and couldnt even open my eyes or twitch a finger. I guess I eventually passed out, and am still traumatized by the experience years later."
No. Seriously. Sleep.
"I woke up during surgery. They were inside my left lung doing some stuff and then i suddently woke up in a paniced way, breathing air theought my open cavity in my chest, sat up in the bed and then they pushed me down and filled me up again with the stuff that makes you go back to sleep."
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"Giving birth to my son because I had preeclampsia and had to be induced. I couldn't breathe during labor. because I had fluid in my lungs. They tried their best to keep the fluid off my lungs, but couldn't. I passed out after hours of pushing and had a c section I wasn't awake for. I woke up with a feeding tube, oxygen etc."
"I learn later that they had to shock my son after he came out. I went from ICU to a regular room. I was fine for a few days.. Went home after a week. I was home for a day. The next day in the middle of the day I felt bad, passed it off as anxiety I had fluid in my lungs again. I rushed to the E.R again and they discovered I had a leaky heart valve. I spent another 3 days in the hospital."
"My son is now 8 years old."
These are the visits no one wants to experience, the times when being somewhere with fluorescent lighting and that lingering smell of medicine and waxed floors isn't making the final encounter something easy.
The times when you have to say good-bye.
The Hardest Visits Of Your Life
"When I was a kid, my dad had epilepsy pretty bad, it'd hit him out of nowhere for no reason, sometimes just sitting on the couch, sometimes when he'd be driving and I'd have to grab the wheel to keep us on the road."
"When he finally got into Emory to have his brain surgery, he had to be taken off his meds so the doctors could get a full scope of how bad his seizures were, which were full on grand mal seizures, so at 13, maybe 14 I can't quite remember now, I had to take time off from school to take over for my stepmother, sit in the hospital room with my dad 24/7, and press a button anytime he had a seizure."
"Those were some of the worst days of my childhood that I try to repress but haunt me forever."
"In the long run though, my dad had a tumor removed from his right hemisphere, made a complete recovery, and only ever had less than a handful of seizures since."
Burned Into Your Brain
"Seeing my dead dad with the recusitation thing still in his mouth and his eyes a tiny bit open. That visual is burned into my brain."
The Hardest Good-Bye Ever
"Ten years old having to say goodbye to my mother as she was dying from cancer."
"I stand by you. Exactly the same happened to me when I was ten. Just that it was my dad. My condolences"
Two Different Good-Byes
"Seeing my mother on a hospital bed with a thousand tubes and wires sticking out of her, closely followed by seeing my mother on a hospital bed after she passed away."