I'm a certified klutz of the highest order. My family has threatened to encase me in bubble wrap because of my uncanny ability to injure myself.
But while my body frequently decides to do surprise gravity tests—just to make sure it's still working—I can't say anything bizarre has ever happened.
Other people, however...
Reddit user Nitrawastaken asked:
"What’s the weirdest thing you’ve ended up in the hospital for?"
Tattoo You
"I got a tattoo the entire length of the back of my calf. It was healing really well, when I accidentally ran the top third of the tattoo along the seat of a chair as I sat down."
"I have a very high tolerance for pain, but I audibly 'Aaaah!' when I did it. Despite my best efforts to medicate it, it got infected and turned into an abcess."
"The doctor having to lance and drain it was the second most painful thing I’ve dealt with, behind a toothache."
"Despite all of this, once everything was healed, there was no damage to the tattoo."
~ LoveThatDaddy
This Is Why The Box Says Not For Ears
"Was play wrestling with my ex girlfriend and then I thought we stopped."
"Started to clean my earwax with a q-tip and she didn't realize what I was doing and comes from behind and pushes me into the wall which jams the q-tip too deep and pierces my ear drum."
"Started bleeding immediately and ended up in the ER. Didn't end up being anything with lasting damage, but it was a weird feeling having my ear canal filled with dried blood."
"When it fully healed it all came out at once which strangely felt great."
~ ThaNotoriousBLT
Arachnid Attack
"Bitten by a brown recluse spider."
"First couple days it was just a bug bite. Little bumps and itchy."
"The third day the entire area started to swell. That evening I had a temperature of 104, but only 96 when I got to the hospital."
"The bite was on my right knee. By then, my entire leg was hot pink, and there was a large section of infection on my left thigh."
"They drained three vomit trays full of infected puss from my knee, and I could see bone through the abscess."
"I was in the hospital for a week. 1 star, would not recommend."
~ Calvinjamesscott
Frozen
"Total facial rictus and uncontrollable spasms to the point where my jaw was locking shut and I was foaming at the mouth and almost biting my tongue."
"It wasn’t a seizure but a result of being allergic to my new gastrointestinal meds. Husband rushed me to ER 'cuz my whole face was freezing up and ticking."
"They put me on a heavy drip of Benadryl and kept me for about 5 hours to get my muscles to stop working and relax."
"Had the worst jaw pain and headache for days after and even chipped a tooth."
~ Valuable_Treat16
Oops!
"I had a roomate that had a girlfriend named Ashley. She was so prone to self-injury that her nickname was Calamity Jane."
"In the year I lived there she:
"Tripped on the carpet and went face first into a wall corner."
"Turned on a gas stove burner and forgot to light it. She had enormous boobs and a short t-shirt, so the gas built up under her boobs."
"When she realized the burner wasn't lit, she hit the sparker, and WHOOSH!! Burned her stomach and the bottom of her shirt off."
"The list goes on."
"Every time I had to drive her to the hospital because neither of them had a car."
~ ssshield
Who Am I?
"Transient Global Amnesia."
"It was like my brain froze and had to reboot. Lasted 6 hours, then complete recovery as if nothing had ever happened."
"Utterly bizarre."
"Sometimes nothing causes it, but strong physical exertion (even vigorous sex) can lead to it or, in my case, immersion in cold water."
"I had to take a shower before going to work, but my significant other had forgotten to order heating oil, so it was a cold shower."
"After it, I got dressed, applied my makeup, and then—he told me this; I have no memory of it—walked into his home office and told him I thought I was having a stroke."
"Off to the ER we went!"
~ Entity417
Not What Coupon Cutting Means
"I managed a paper cut across my eyeball."
"Totally a freak accident."
"I was looking at a pizza coupon flier with a toddler on my lap. They hit the flier, which then flew up in just the right way to deliver a paper cut to my eyeball before it could blink."
"On the bright side, they put a cool dye in your eye like a black light and then shine it to see the cut and show you."
~ Just4TheSpamAndEggs
High Five
"I had to get the rabies series after a low-flying bat collided with my open hand as I was walking down a trail; for about a nanosecond I was holding the thing like a baseball."
"I didn’t feel anything besides the soft leathery feeling of the wings in the moment but woke up with a mysterious scratch on that hand that I didn’t remember having the day prior. The nurse on my work site didn’t think it was necessary, but my gut said better safe than sorry."
"Local ER doc was apparently a veteran where run-ins with bats are concerned and was like, 'Yeah, can’t tell you for sure whether a bat did that, but what I will say is that every bat scratch I’ve ever seen looked just like that'."
"I was known by my coworkers for the rest of my time there as 'that person who high-fived a bat,' which honestly kind of made the side effects of the shots worth it."
~ PangurBansCatnip
Terminator Beta Test
"I was kicked in the shin by a robot."
"It broke my skin enough that it required several stitches to close it."
~ No_Tamanegi
Squirrelly
"Back in 2019 I got bitten by a squirrel in North London."
~ TheCharizard95
"Superhero origin story?"
~ CoderJoe1
Do You Hear That?
"Had a cricket climb into my ear while I was sleeping."
"It got stuck and was biting my ear drum."
"10/10 pain, do not recommend."
"To be fair, at the time, I had a pet gecko that ate crickets, so I had a higher than-normal number of them around than most people."
~ saskford
No Vampirism, Though
"I reached into a washing machine and got bit by the bat that was sleeping in there."
"I had to have the rabies vaccine series."
~ Dogwhomper
"I think the weirdest part of this is that a bat decided to live in there."
~ Nearby-Complaint
It Was In The Script
"My balls just decided they wanted to twist around each other while I was at work one time."
"Venture Brothers is how I learned about it. Thank you, Dean Venture, for making me know I needed to go to the hospital."
~ Spaalone
The Gall
"Went to the ER because I thought I was having a gallbladder attack."
"They do a scan and find cancer on my right kidney. Plus, my gall bladder WAS turning gangrenous."
"It happened this April, and they took my right kidney and gall bladder. The cancer was ON the kidney, not in it, thank goodness. Had scans done in October, and no cancer had spread."
~ Labman007
A Fungus Among Us
"I cracked my pelvis and didn't realize it at one point, and the crack got a fungal infection, which grew the crack apart and wider. Pulled my leg out of the socket, couldn't walk."
"But in short, it was an infection in my bone. A bone infection. A fungal bone infection."
"Was hospitalized for two weeks while they tried figuring out what was happening, they wouldn't give me antibiotics because the fungal infection wasn't responding to the antibiotics tests so they didn't know what to give me."
"I had an up to 105.9 fever for 2 or 3 days, they had a priest and grief counselor come in and talk to me about dying, about losing the ability to walk if I lived. I was tripping my brains out on the fever and morphine."
"They biopsied and drained the infection pocket, and eventually, the culture came back identified as a fungus, and they knew what to give me."
"The fever and pain lifted immediately and the muscles holding my leg out of place loosened, popped the ball back into the socket like billiards balls clacking together."
"Got out, bed rest for a month until I could walk again, muscle relaxers, valium, codeine, crutches for another month, and things are generally fine now. For the first few years, I'd still have pain in that hip occasionally; it would sometimes 'get stuck' while moving it, and I'd have to rotate it back into place."
"I think it's fine now! This was in 2016, and I don't recall having any issues with it in any recent memory."
~ PK_Thundah
Was It Made By Acme?
"An anvil fell on my head, I'm not even kidding. I had a small 6-pound anvil up on a shelf, and I bumped the shelf, and the anvil fell off right onto my head."
"I felt fine at the time but after a while, got a bad headache and neck pain, so I went to the hospital, and I had pretty bad post-concussion syndrome. It threw off my balance and hand-eye coordination for a good month."
"Definitely the weirdest way I've ended up in a hospital."
~ RukaFawkes
I guess my oddest ER visit was for anaphylaxis.
Turns out I'm deathly allergic to prednisone. Prednisone is used to treat a number of different conditions, including severe allergies.
Without fail, every doctor who has looked at my medical chart since I made this discovery remarks on the fact I'm allergic to the leading treatment for allergies.
I just tell them I'm lucky like that.