Real-life scary, tragic and/or grossing experiences

[Ronja]

I wanted to Tigger real tight when I saw this and unload about some of the stuff I've seen when working as a nurse, but it did not seem fair to continue in that thread with stuff that most people are likely to find at least somewhat disturbing.

So you have been warned. This is not likely to turn out a nice or funny thread.

I once saw most of a family wiped out when a lorry drove over a car. I never again want to hear a person scream like that when they realise their whole life has been destroyed and their children are on fire.

That's truly fucking awful Tig.

It was. I couldn't do anything either. There was a nine-year-old girl who we eventually got out of the car to try CPR, which failed, and the only thing I remember about her is the hole in her face and her last lungful of cloudy breath in the winter sun. And the Christmas presents. It was Boxing Day. In fact .

Fuck.......

As Pappa said, truly awful that you had to witness that and respond to the situation. I will not even start to guess at the agony of the victims, that would be disrespectful IMO.

I truly hope that those who did burn got to die fast. I have worked in a hospital in my twenties, and the noise people make if they are conscious and they have 30 % or more of their skin missing - regardless of how much morphine they've been pumped with - is indescribable. And the smell... I don't exactly have nightmares about it, but I feel pretty horrid when I happen to come to think of it.

I've run out of a burning building in the middle of the night, without a scratch, when I was five months pregnant with our first child. I don't know if I would have had the courage and will needed to stay alive to give birth to her, if I had been burned.

[charlou]

Yes, a very tough and worthy subject.

[The Curious Squid]

The worst things I've seen all ended ok.

I was a first aider when I worked in the cinema and seemed to be the only one in the building whenever something serious happened, I've had to deal with an old man who had a heart attack, picked popcorn out of a man's mouth while he was having an epileptic fit (I could have gotten my fingers bitten off but he was chocking on it as well as the blood from his tongue) while his 5 year old son sat in tears beside me.

Nothing compared to the OP.

[Ronja]

The worst things I've seen all ended ok.
...
Nothing compared to the OP.

Paco, it's not a competition in any manner or shape. It's just a thread to unload. Trauma is trauma, and we cannot really measure it. There is no objective way to say what is worse: surviving from the Titanic, being life-threateningly beaten as a kid, seeing one's family killed in a car crash - there is no yardstick. All we can do is listen to each other, an offer our clumsy but sincere or - that's what friends are for, right?

So a big to you - you did what you could in a tough situation. So did Tigger. In your case the people involved just happened to be luckier. Life - not always pretty...

[Rum]

Well this is not something I have shared here before, but about twenty years ago I was leaving a cinema in the Midlands - small town and sort of pre-multiplex, so it was a town centre cinema. It was about 10.30 in the evening and as I turned a corner I heard a commotion down a side alley and when I looked there was a fight going on. I can still remember that it was oddly quiet. eople weren't screaming and shouting as one might expect.

I was alarmed but I was going to walk on and leave them to themselves, but then I noticed there were three or four guys (four it turned out) beating up one.

I really wanted to walk away but instead (I take no credit this was instinct)..I should 'what's going on'?

Someone shouted 'fuck off at me, but I walked towards the fight anyway.

I remember screaming at them 'leave the guy alone'! I got really close in fact and I was really really angry as well as terrified. I screamed so it hurt my throat.

I don't know if they had done what they intended to do and decided enough was enough or whether I had some impact, but they simply walked off, swearing and trying to seem cool, laughing and so on.

I went towards they guy. The guy they had been laying into turned out to be Lozz.

[Tigger]

I would never turn my back on anything I felt I could assist with. Although I've experienced a few "things" in my life, they've always been random events and not the ongoing trauma that presents to medical and emergency staff day in day out. I salute them. I wonder if I've had more than my fair share, but if I can help, then they can keep on coming. Er, I'd rather they didn't. Thanks for the thread.

[Ronja]

OK, now that the kid is firmly asleep... (I did not dare to start to think about this while I still might have needed to go back into Mommy mode).


The most bizarre and horrifying thing I ever saw when working as a nurse was a woman, brought in with 70 % of her skin burned, most of it second-degree burns, and some third-degree burns, too. She had been seriously sedated (a high dose of continuous IV morphine, among other things) but she was at least semi-conscious, and would not stop talking, pleading to see her beloved, wonderful boyfriend.


The catch? It was him who had - in yet another psychotic episode, brought on by alcohol mixed with drugs (possibly PCP) - poured gasoline on her and set her alight.


On the skin that had not been burned, she had multiple old scars from being burned with a clothes-iron. He had done that to her at least twice (some scars were old, some newer - the difference was visible even to an untrained eye). Yet she had gone back to him. I don't know if she lived, I was jumping posts then, filling in wherever and whenever a nurse was ill. I worked at this intensive care ward for a few days, and only came back after over two weeks. I've forgotten if I heard more about her then - it's possible I did not want to ask.

I witnessed this 23 years ago, which is exactly half my life thus far. I still cannot even begin to understand what could make anyone behave like she did. It made me question evolution for a while, as deliberately choosing to go back to very clear danger and excruciating pain seems like a seriously bad evolutionary trait.

I don't wonder actively anymore: I guess I've given up. Some things I just cannot understand. And I take some consolation from that both the boyfriend's and the victim's type of behavior are pretty rare.


Thanks for listening.

[Tigger]

All we can do on a forum is
But it's there.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

[Link]

I went towards they guy. The guy they had been laying into turned out to be Lozz.

What am I missing here?? Who's Lozz? Other than Lozzer I can't think who you'd mean and of course he wouldn't have been being beaten in an alley 20 years ago?

[Tigger]

I went towards they guy. The guy they had been laying into turned out to be Lozz.

What am I missing here?? Who's Lozz? Other than Lozzer I can't think who you'd mean and of course he wouldn't have been being beaten in an alley 20 years ago?

I was wondering that, but I was waiting for an edit of some sort ...

[Ronja]

I went towards they guy. The guy they had been laying into turned out to be Lozz.

What am I missing here?? Who's Lozz? Other than Lozzer I can't think who you'd mean and of course he wouldn't have been being beaten in an alley 20 years ago?

I was wondering that, but I was waiting for an edit of some sort ...

Me, too...

[floppit]

The worst thing I ever saw I didn't. I saw it start, I saw people pile in and I hid behind a curtain because I was scared I'd be thrown out. I heard. I rang my best friend while I sat on the floor by an empty bed, I told her I couldn't do this on my own and she could hear it too. She said she would come. What I'll never forget is them shouting at him, I was relieved but so many people were shouting at him - I know they weren't but they sounded angry and that hurt. I blew my cover, I shouted I love you a bit louder than them. They didn't throw me out.

The worst thing I ever saw was a horse that had disembowelled itself on a gatepost, not a fencepost, not a gate but a farm gatepost. The horse was hooked with his front end in a water filled ditch, it's hind legs barely touching the floor and his guts in the mud. He didn't die for ages - the vets surgery had only one humane destroyer which was miles away. It seemed like no-one came for ages. I was in the ditch grasping his nose to form a twitch to keep him from struggling as each time he did more bits of him fell on the floor, it also releases a mild dope and painkiller. I'd rigged his broken bridle so that our yard girl (she was 14, brave lass never left) could hold his head out the water - again because when it dipped he fought and when we held it up he dozed. Eventually we lost the fight to stop him fighting and my boss helped him by kicking down the then leaning post so that he lay flat. The vet that arrived had no gun. She went to use lethal injection but couldn't raise a vein so she slit his throat - he still fought very briefly, there was so little BP left the blood didn't spurt, it spilled like a large knocked over cup.

I've seen lots of animal stuff but the above was largely horrific because he just wouldn't die.

[Rum]

I went towards they guy. The guy they had been laying into turned out to be Lozz.

What am I missing here?? Who's Lozz? Other than Lozzer I can't think who you'd mean and of course he wouldn't have been being beaten in an alley 20 years ago?

I was wondering that, but I was waiting for an edit of some sort ...

Me, too...

Feeble attempt at joke which does not seem to have worked. Also inappropriate for this thread. My bad.

[Ronja]

Feeble attempt at joke which does not seem to have worked. Also inappropriate for this thread. My bad.

It's OK. Gallows / graveyard humor is a demanding sport, and can easily go wrong, at least for some of the audience. Good of you to realize your mistake early on.

You should have heard some of the things said in the ambulance drivers' / first responders' coffee room - I am glad no patient or family member ever came anywhere near that place. The crass vocabulary used for various conditions and the tasteless jokes were / are a way of surviving mentally, and they are usually not pretty. I have no shame for listening in / taking part, but I would not easily repeat them in a forum with as heterogeneous an audience as here.