“You’ll Never Guess Where They Found It”: 30 Wild Things Doctors Have Seen

When you walk into a hospital, you expect doctors to be prepared for anything. But even seasoned medical professionals get thrown off by some of the utterly bizarre cases that land in their emergency rooms. From unbelievable objects found where they shouldn’t be to downright strange patient confessions, these are the wildest stories doctors have lived to tell.

#1

Image source: TheSeattleite10, Suyash Mahar

A colleague of mine saw an obese woman in the ED for flank pain. Workup included a CT that showed a frog skeleton just outside the ribs. A second physical exam revealed a necrotic frog carcass between some fat rolls with very irritated surrounding skin. When asked about it, the patient said she and her obese husband were too large to have s*x in the usual fashion, so they would get in the pond behind the house whenever they wanted to have s*x.

#2

Image source: Ezekielshawn, Kaboompics.com

I saw a patient with endometriosis (lining of inner uterus cells) in her nose. Meaning that she would get epistaxis (bleeding from nose) every month or so related to her menstrual periods.

#3

Image source: anon, Jonathan Borba

A mummified foetus – I was working in Africa and the usually very stoic Congolese surgeons called me in to theatre, gagging – the patient was an elderly woman with a protruding abdominal mass. When they opened it, they found that it was a long, long dead mummified foetus which as a result of an ectopic pregnancy, had somehow managed to both wall off after it died and somehow avoid k*****g the mother. Her body had encapsulted the alien tissue and over the years, it had slowly eroded her anterior abdominal wall to the point where it finally caused her to have enough symptoms to get something done about it.

It was horrific and the smell was worse.

Happily, though, the patient survived the procedure and just left the surgical team with a .. memory.

#4

Image source: lord_wilmore, Anna Shvets

Young man comes in complaining of headache. I work in radiology.

We ask for history. Nothing to report, he says.

We scan his head. CT shows a bullet rattling loose inside his sphenoid sinus (kind of between the nasal cavity and the brain).

I asked the guy: “Have you ever been shot in the face?”

“Oh, yeah, I guess I forgot to mention that.”

To clarify, the guy had been shot in the face a few years earlier, never sought treatment for it. The bullet had somehow missed all the vital structures.

#5

Image source: WisteriaDreamer, MART PRODUCTION

Not really fitting with the question posed, but a medical oddity just the same. My Mother in law miscarried twice before she had my husband and his twin brother. She had some kind of cyst or protrusion in her uterus that once one of the previous fetus got to a certain week of growth, it would rub against the protrusion and rupture the sac…and the fetus would not be at a point of viability and would perish. So when she became pregnant with twins, she knew inevitably she would sadly lose them at that stage. The timeframe comes and goes, fetuses are still ok and growing normally. Comes time to have them (early as with twins) and lo and behold, not only are they in the same amniotic sac, but the other twin’s sac is around the one they shared. They were double bubbled. They had twin transfusion syndrome, so no one at the time had a moment to think about it (life or death emergency at that time) but the fact that they were double wrapped is more than likely the only reason they made it that far. Both survived the twin transfusion (very rare in the early 80s for one if not both to die.) Just an amazing story, I think.

#6

Image source: chocolate_on_toast, Anna Shvets

She isn’t dead, but this week i saw a patient with endometriosis in her lungs.

Somehow, womb-lining cells had travelled to her thorax and colonised on the lung. She previously had symptoms of coughing up blood while menstruating, but because the endometriosis was so severe, was on the pill to stop her periods entirely.

Then she came off it to have a baby, and after the birth, with her hormones all over the place, she developed two pulmonary embolisms (blood clots in the lung), and a few weeks after that, three successive pneumothorax (collapsed lung). The womb cells had tried to shed, and made a hole between the airways and the sac surrounding the lung, letting air escape.

She’s deciding now whether to let the surgeons cut out the part of her lung with the endometrial cells, to go back on the pill for life, or to have a full hysterectomy and remove her ovaries. Tough choice at 32.

#7

Image source: Aj409, Getty Images

Guy came in for an outpatient MRI of his cervical spine. On the form where it asks if he ever had any metal in his body (specifically asks if any injured by a metal object) he selected no. Same with a verbal questionnaire. Also we do a keyword search in the patients hard chart for the term foreign body incase it’s documented- nothing came up.

He lays down, and I start taking images while talking to him though the speaker. During one of the image sets- he starts pounding on the inside of the scanner and screaming. Figured he was claustrophobic- so I stop the machine and get him out. Immediately he jumps up and starts talking nonsense and runs into the wall,
screaming he needs to get away from the ‘ocean’. I call overhead for emergency room staff to come down and security as he’s flailing, continues screaming and running into the wall before we restrained him.

The staff rush down, and he’s talking a mile a minute and explaining how he is inside of the poster of the beach that covers the entire wall in the room he’s in, scared out of his mind and hallucinating. Security restrains him, and he’s taken down to get an X-ray of his skull. There was a BB in his frontal lobe. It had just enough ferrous metal left in it to travel a few millimeters in his brain. In the emergency department he kept trying to escape, and was very fast. While unrestrained he got up (somehow convinced the guard he was ‘better’). Patient bolted out of his room into the main hallway. A code was called for a lost patient. For over an hour nobody could find him, until a nurse looked into a large storage closet. Poor guy was found in a pool of blood. He crashed into a large mirror that was leaning on the wall, and had severe lacerations of his neck, face and arms. Efforts were made to transfuse him but it was too late. Still haunts me how a simple BB from 40 years earlier could do that. Discovered his brother accidentally shot him with a BB gun when they were kids.

#8

Image source: redandpurpleunicorns, Edson Junior

Not a doctor. I have a friend who has an AMAZING medical history.
Three types of DNA malformations.
He was conceived in his mother’s second much smaller womb. His mother didn’t know until she was almost due because the womb had nowhere to expand.
His ligament on his left leg wrapped around his calf instead of going down to his toes.
His left foot has two distinct forms of club foot.
He has spina bifida.
He has kleinfelters. (He isn’t XX female or XY male)
He was born with an extra vestigial kidney.
The stuff that protects your spine? His is 10 times stronger due to his weird DNA
He is missing a vertebrae. He had an experimental spinal surgery which was tried only 7/8 times/cases, he was the only one to walk afterwards.
He was given shots of testosterone as a teen to make him have a male puberty. Now many years later this has given him prostate cancer. Testosterone blockers have now meant his kleinfelters has decided he is woman and he now has b***s. He is okay with this since he is a magician that also does bearded lady gigs.
There’s probably more to his medical history, but that’s all I can genuinely remember right now.
He has been to patient/ doctor soirees where he walks around talking to doctors about how his existence disproves their medical theroems lol.

#9

Image source: harperjefferson, Tima Miroshnichenko

ER nurse; man comes in after a car accident, we do a brain scan for safety and find a 3 inch nail imbedded in his brain. Ask man about it, he says he has no idea. Admits he was once shot with a nail gun but HAD NO IDEA A NAIL HAD BEEN LODGED IN HIS HEAD. Had been there for well over 4 years.

#10

Image source: anon, pratik patel

I work as a statistician in a major hospital so I see and catalogue A LOT of weird things.

Worst thing id seen was someone come in complaining of leg pain and showing signs of septic shock. After examination dr orders scans and theres 2 metal rods (one in each leg) that weren’t on their file. Turns out the patient has been to SE Asia to get a height altering surgery and the ‘dr’ had used items youd pick up from the local hardware store to fix the bones after breaking.

After extensive surgery patient lost the lower part of one leg and was lucky to keep the 2nd.

#11

Image source: drushkey, Sora Shimazaki

Asked this to an emergency doctor friend of mine a while ago. Patient comes in complainjng of severe abdominal pain, nurses take vitals, ask questions etc. Eventually my friend sees her and, after a few questions, he has her lift her shirt.

The “severe abdominal pain” on the chart was in fact due to a gash so severe part of her intestines were sticking out of her. No one had noticed and she hadn’t thought to mention that her organs had started leaking out. In fact, she seemed just as surprised as he was.

#12

Image source: Chilleh-, Brittany Colette

Not me, but my dad is in ICU nurse, he was also a combat medic in Iraq from 2003-2004. He told me once they had this guy sedated because of all his injuries, and he saw something white coming out of the patients nose. My dad, thinking it was a booger, grabbed a tissue to wipe it away. Not a booger. He pulled it outwards and it turned out to be a huge foot and a half parasite that was trying to get out out of the dudes body, probably due to the antibiotics they had pumped him up with.

#13

Image source: lowclasswarrior, MART PRODUCTION

When I was an ultrasound student, a woman came in for her 20wk anatomy scan. It was right before Christmas. All her family was in town, and she was going to have a gender reveal. Her baby had anencephaly (absent brain), acrania (absent skull bones), omphalocele (herniation of the intestines into the cord), and a club foot. The Ob doc asked her if she wanted to be induced right then and there or wait until after the holidays. She chose to terminate her pregnancy immediately. I can’t even imagine how she was feeling. The baby looked like an alien.

#14

Image source: badwolfmommy, Павел Сорокин

My SIL is probably the strangest medical case I know. She’d been feeling “off” for a few months but couldn’t figure out why. One night she starts having really intense RLQ pain and goes to the ER. Everyone assumed appendicitis and took her to the OR. They open her up and her appendix is fine. Her colon, however, had a very large tumor in it. That’s not the strange part.
They send the tumor to the lab and confirm it’s a carcinoid tumor. Those are very rare in the first place, but her case was esp rare, as the doctors told her 99% of the time it’s found in elderly black men. She was a 17 year old white girl. She was treated for the cancer and has been cancer free for 14 years.

#15

Image source: anon, Tima Miroshnichenko

Undertaker here. Seen lots of abnormalities but afraid to be specific as it might give away the identities of the decedents as they are very specific. One that I can say is once I did a Autopsy on a person who had a history of various substance abuse. Upon opening him we found the inside lining of all of his organs to be bright turquoise blue. From his trachea down to his colon was bright blue. It was a weird but welcome break from the usual red and yellow.

#16

Image source: mctaylor241, Casper Nichols

One of our cadavers had two spinal cords, aka split spinal cord malformation.

Edit: just a first year med student here folks. Unfortunately it’s against our school’s policy for me to even take photographs, yet alone share them. One of our groups during our laminectomy (removing the back of your vertebra to expose spinal cord) lab, once they cut into the dura mater (the tissue that wraps around the spinal cord) noticed a spit cord in the in the thoracolumbar region, side-by-side. Our lead anatomist was very excited to see this and had the whole class come see. Apparently it’s not the most incredibly rare thing, but it is the weirdest anomaly I’ve seen thus far.

Edit 2: So a lot of people are mentioning Spina Bifida. From what I understand in my studies, that would be the result of bones in the spine not forming correctly. This was not what we saw. There were no signs of prior surgery or herniation of the meninges.

#17

Image source: JaFaRr9, Allison Saeng

In my anatomy lab, my groups’s cadaver had died from systemic complications of stage 4 lung cancer and when we got to the lungs they were two rock hard, necrotic blackened masses that looked nothing like the other cadaver’s pink and spongy lungs.

My anatomy prof took one lung out and wrung it resulting in this putrid black goo flowing out of the lung.

As he was draining the lung, he mentioned in an Indian accent

“This. This is what happens when you smoke”.

#18

Image source: Denncity, Mikhail Nilov

Not a pathologist but I work in a Coroner’s office. On more than one occasion we have directed a Post Mortem on someone who has died abroad, often due to heart-related issues. I once got a phone call from the pathologist after he had opened the body to examine the heart:

“This person died from a heart attack, yes?”
“Apparently so”
“You want me to examine the heart?”
“Yes please”
“…where is it?”

Some other countries routinely remove organs when they are determining a cause of death, then the body is embalmed and sent back to their home country. We still often have to confirm the cause of death, so I’ve spent a lot of my time chasing missing organs around the world…

#19

Pulled 5 carrots out of a 72 yo guy’s a*s 2 days ago. Each one was 8″+. He said his girlfriend put them up there to stimulate his prostate so he could achieve an erection. The funny thing is he failed to mention to her that he had his prostate removed some years ago.

Image source: BigODetroit

#20

Image source: Sire777, Ben

My dad had a patient that “slipped and fell” on a whole mayonnaise jar.

#21

Image source: butcher99, Polina Zimmerman

There is a great book out by Adam Kay. He talks about when he was a jr. Doctor. PRobably intern in the US and Canada. A lady come into emerg with severe burns in her v****a. She had stuffed christmas lights up and turned them on.
Gives new meaning to the phrase she put the christmas lights up herself.

#22

Image source: anon, Accuray

Medical student here.

This guy was one of the patients of our tutor. The patient was 30 years old and he was first time in the hospital with something more serious. They took CT scan of his chest and the doctor found he had kidney right next to his lung. Normal functioning kidney just hanging out in the chest area and the other kidney one was in its usual place. Cool.

#23

Not a medical professional but I have one. Bit of background info for clarity: I was born with a potentially fatal kidney condition and had a few close calls in my childhood. By time I reached my teens my doctors were really concerned that I would end up needing a kidney transplant before I even reached adulthood. Now my dad is a universal donor so he volunteered to go ahead and give me one of his if it would even give me a chance. Doctors were game and he had to get examined and stuff only to find something really odd and kinda upsetting for both of us.

Turns out that my dad was born with only one kidney. So that wasn’t happening. Lucky for me I ended up not needing a transplant anyways but my dad was really upset about that for a while.

Image source: its-a-me-a-Ren

#24

When I was working as an ICU nurse in San Diego, I took care of woman with Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease for a few days (the human version of mad cow disease). She was only 44 years old, lived in Mexico. Her husband was a butcher… and they owned a restaurant in Mexico. They had 3 daughters, 18-22, and were a really lovely family. It was really really sad. My heart broke for them. There was nothing that could be done.
My unit had a strict “no more than 2 visitors overnight” policy, even despite my pleas given the situation (she didn’t have much time left). So I did what I hope someone would do for me: I told the family the bad news of the policy, and then gave them the good news that I would be pretending they were obeying it as soon as my boss left. The family donated her brain to University of Wisconsin so they could study it.

Image source: recbeachbabe

#25

Image source: lscreativecrochet, MART PRODUCTION

Not a doctor, but my brother and I were the first for my mom’s doctor. My brother and I are twins, but I was born a month premature. My brother was actually a few days over due. My mom got pregnant with my brother and a month or so later she got pregnant with me. Her body released another egg despite her already being pregnant.

Because of the way we were conceived my brother shoved me up under our mom’s ribs.

Her heartbeat concealed mine, so a month before my brother’s due date the doctor finally realized that there were two of us. This was in 1985 ultrasounds weren’t nearly as good as they are now.

I’m female. Another sort of rare occurrence, and I was born breech. My mom told me that the doctor had to pull me out because I wasn’t coming out on my own. To add to my mom’s luck I was sucking my thumb and tore her quite a bit because the doctor didn’t realize my elbow was sticking up. Luckily for her though my brother had already been born.

#26

Image source: PyssDribbletts, Angela at English Wikipedia

I was a combat medic in the Army.

Not super super uncommon (about 1 in 10,000 people have it), but I had a buddy with situs inversus. All of his major internal organs were reversed (heart on the rights side instead of the left, for example). As soon as he got to the unit, it was the first thing he told me. Wanted to make sure if he got hurt I wasn’t curious as to why he had no heart, I guess.

#27

Image source: anon, MART PRODUCTION

My colleague was embalming an autopsied male and found two hairnets, numerous plastic tissue sample slides, a plastic urine container (with another person’s name on it) and over twenty seven latex gloves within his abdominal cavity…

#28

Image source: JobUpgrayDD, Bayu Prakosa

Sirenomelia (mermaid syndrome). Born about 5 months premature. She didn’t make it, and she was brought down to the pathology lab for examination.

#29

My sister eventually went to the Dr about a hard lump in her stomach which ended up being a cyst on her ovary. By the time they operated on her 2 months later she looked like she was full term pregnant.

Removed a 13kg cyst. Strangely, she doesn’t have PCOS, just the one, unlike me who has suffered they symptoms of it all my adult life. She lost an ovary but recovered well.

Image source: anon

#30

Image source: anon, Andrea Piacquadio

I worked in medicine as an X-ray tech/medical assistant. One day we had a patient come in complaining of a stomach ache. Considering the time of the year it wasn’t an abnormal complaint to have come in our family practice. So we run him through the normal test urinalysis, and an abdominal X-ray (KUB for those medically inclined). Well, he was a shorter fella so I had a lot of room on the film. This kind of X-ray is one large shot centered on your belly button, it’s mostly used to see how full of s**t you are.

I went to the dark room to process his film when something weird could be seen near his butt. There was definitely a lot of poop backed up but I couldn’t tell what was causing the blockage. I showed the doc the film and she busted out laughing. The doctor I worked with was usually stone-faced and serious about these kinds of things. So it was odd, we were all confused.

She asked me to go into the room with her while she asked him some questions. The first thing she asked him was what he shoved up his butt. I was so taken aback by this statement I almost missed what he said.

You see, this 40 year old man has diarrhea the week before and decided to shove a tampon up his butt to stop it. He tried to take it out but the string got caught, and then he “simply” forgot about it.

We had to remove it. It was disgusting, and I never did another procedure ever again.