Doctors Share The Scariest Thing A Patient Has Ever Said To Them

Being a doctor isn't for the faint of heart.

It requires an infinite amount of skill and intelligence, as well as a high tolerance for blood.

Not even mentioning the fact that in some extreme cases, doctors literally have people's lives in their hands.

Sometimes, however, the most frightening things doctors encounter don't happen in an operating room, but instead when they're simply talking to their patients.

Redditor GrimReap_07 was curious to hear the most terrifying things doctors ever heard from one of their patients, leading them to ask:

"Doctors, what’s is the scariest thing a patient has ever done/said?"

"Not a doctor, but a nurse."

"Once a psychotic schizophrenic patient got me."

"And it was because of how 'normal' she said it."

"Screaming_threatening to kill me and then sitting on the commode......and then calmly looking at me and says in the most normal and monotone voice."

"'I'm sorry, I know I'm not well and being mean to you'."

"'I'm in hell, and I don't know how to get out'."

"I will never forget that or how it made me feel."

"It's like she had a 10 second lapse of her manic episode to apologize and tell me how she felt."

"Made me super empathetic to my psych patients."- BassAssasin13

He Had No Idea...

"During my med school trauma surgery rotation, our 16-year-old patient said 'my stomach hurts' right before he was intubated for an exploratory laparotomy."

"He had gotten shot in his abdomen. Intra-op, we noted that the bullet tore a hole in his aorta."

"He didn’t make it."

"Such innocent last words to hear a kid say."

"He fully didn’t grasp his fate at the time."

"And understandably so."

"I will never forget it."- DiggiNotes

A Promise All Doctors Wish They Can Make, But Never Can...

"One of the most gut wrenching moments in my career was when I was treating a 9-year old boy who was the victim of significant blunt force trauma."

"He was unstable but awake and talking."

"With terror in his eyes he started thrashing around in his bed and screaming, 'Don’t let me die! I don’t want to die!'."

"It made us all nervous and tense."

"He went to the OR and survived but that was 5 years ago and I can still see his face."- Helpful_Intention_20

Lost In Translation...

"The scariest thing I ever heard working in healthcare was not from a patient, but a nurse who called me to report an outbreak of rabies at one of the nursing homes I worked in senior management for."

"I managed to stop myself freaking out for long enough to ask her the necessary questions."

"Thank goodness, English wasn't her first language and she'd got two words confused."

"Scabies."

"She meant scabies."- tiptoe_only

Heartbreaking

“'Doc, I can’t wait to have this baby!'"

"'We’ll finally have our baby girl!""

"'Now we can stop trying'.”

"When I was doing my final year of hospital rotations, I got called in to one of the OB ultrasound rooms by the attending."

"I was just about to leave since my shift had just ended, but decided to see the one last patient since we had such a good shift and I didn’t mind making another patient’s day."

"The attending points to the ultrasound and asks if I can see the heartbeat."

"I thought she was just quizzing me since I was a med student, and I was internally panicking since I couldn’t see it."

"I apologized for what I assumed was my lack of knowledge.'

"Turns out, I was called in to confirm lack of heartbeat on this 8-month-old baby in utero."

"They needed two doctors to confirm."

"I never wanted to be more wrong in my whole life."

"When I was left alone with the patient, she kept trying to convince herself that she was ok and that she had three other children to come home to."

"But you could tell how devastated she was."

'Then she said."

“'I guess I was right'."

"'This was gonna be my last baby'.”

"And then just walked out."

"I was on call the next day and ended up seeing her through pre-op, the delivery, and post-op."

"She’s one of the patients I will never forget."- kevindomitus

Not Even A Thinly Veiled Threat

"As a resident, a patient was super angry and signing his papers to leave Against Medical Advice."

"He looked at me and said, 'I know what time you sign out, and I know where you all leave the hospital'."

"Looked over my shoulder the entire walk home."- Unhappy-Order7950

Talk About A Nightmare

"Had a patient who had just had a major surgery throw himself out of bed because Freddy Krueger told him to do so."

"He was on a ketamine drip for pain management at the time."- ambulist

Out Of Their Hands

"As a resident working off-service, looked a woman dead in the eye before we were about to intubate her."

"She had the saddest look in her eyes and said 'don’t let me die'."

"She had awful esophageal and rectal varices that were never successfully treated and passed away that night in the OR."

"Still see it in my thoughts from time to time."- PharmCatUk

Sometimes You Know It's Your Time

"A patient once looked at me with a completely calm face and said, ‘I know you’re trying to help me, but I’m going to die today'."

"'I’ve made peace with it, and you can’t stop it'."- Creepy-Desk-468

Too Close For Comfort

"I’ve got one."

"I’m a psychiatrist with a distinct and relatively rare appearance."

"Because of this, I’ve spent my whole life hearing that I look like anyone with a vaguely similar skin tone or hair color, even when I didn’t see the resemblance."

"Fast forward to my intern year."

"A patient comes into the emergency department after being found severely hypothermic."

"So much so that he was initially pronounced dead."

"Miraculously, he was resuscitated, but his identity was unknown, and as he began recovering, he started displaying signs of psychosis."

"That’s when the primary team called in a psych consult, and I went to assess him."

"The moment I stepped into his room, I was taken aback."

"The man lying in the bed was a spitting image of me, except he looked like an alternate version of myself, one who had gone down a much darker path."

"His face was weathered, likely from drug use and homelessness, but the resemblance was unsettling."

"As I tried to gather details about his identity and psychiatric history, he locked eyes with me, his stare intense and unshakable, and said, 'I am you'.”

"That became his only response whenever he spoke to me."

"For three days, every time I interacted with him, all he would say was, 'I am you'.”

"Being a sleep-deprived intern, this messed with my head more than I’d like to admit."

"Seeing someone who looked eerily like me, who had literally been pronounced dead days earlier, repeating that phrase over and over. It freaked me out to say the least."

"After a few more days (and as he started coming down from meth-induced psychosis), I finally got through to him."

"I explained that he couldn’t be released as a John Doe and that we needed his identification."

"Eventually, he gave me his Social Security number."

"When we ran it, we discovered he had multiple out-of-state warrants."

"The whole experience shook me, and I definitely lost some sleep over it."

"Even now, it still sticks with me."- OaklandDers

Man's Best Friend... Till The End...

"One of my Uncles had stage 4 Pancreatic cancer."

"He was a tough guy and didn’t trust hospitals so he didn’t see a Doctor until it was way too late, despite being in debilitating pain."

"When he did, the prognosis was grim, he had maybe six weeks left and Pancreatic cancer is a painful way to die."

"He decided to get MAiD instead."

"Medical Assistance in Dying, which is legal in Canada."

"On the day we were all gathered around his bed, all the paperwork and permissions were sorted out, and the syringe of drugs was connected to his IV."

"He was heavily sedated, but he had to be the one to push the plunger, which he did with the help of his wife."

"He closed his eyes, and his breathing got very shallow and slowed down."

"After a few minute,s we thought he had passed."

"We were all standing around him, some saying goodbye, a lot of people were crying."

"About 10 minutes passed and people started to leave when suddenly, in a strong clear voice he said, 'Russell, wait for me', then he was gone."

"Nobody knew who Russell was, and it was kind of a mystery we talked about from time to time."

"Years later, his wife passed, and when his kids were going through her things, they found a very old photograph of him when he was maybe 5 years old."

"He was in a sandbox with a small dog, on the back of the picture in faded ink it read ‘Russell, 1944’."

"The thought that our pets that have gone before us meet us to help us cross over fills me with comfort."

"I hope it isn’t just a mind trying to make sense of a crazy time."- LOUDCO-HD

That Second Glance...

"Not really a patient who said it:"

"I was on a trauma shift (trauma surgeon), and got called in for a bad car accident."

"When I got there, they were doing CPR, and eventually we got her back, stable enough for a CT."

"Another trauma comes in during all this, turns out to be the husband of the trauma patient."

"My PA went to go survey the new patient."

"She came back white as a ghost."

"(Names changed) 'John just came in next door as the new trauma. I…I think that’s Emily'.”

"I looked at our patient who we just did CPR on, and almost fainted."

"I don’t recognize her until I smelled her perfume (she was so banged up she didn’t look like herself)."

"I almost threw up."

"Emily was another PA on our trauma team."

"She ended up passing a few days later from severe brain injury."

“'I think that’s Emily' will be forever burned on my brain, and among the top 3 reasons I don’t do trauma surgery anymore."-HealsWithKnife

They Saw It Coming

"'I can see death standing behind you'."

"Still haunts me and he passed away 2 days after."- Bikingimbiking

Disgusting... And Not Him...

"When I was a first-year nursing student, I was working in the hospital as a nursing extern (nurse's aide, pretty much), we had a patient who had some sort of mental disorder."

"Very odd guy but he was sweet."

"I remember a couple mornings going into his room to do his vitals for his nurse, and him telling me 'you’re the only one who’s nice to me… everyone doesn’t like me here'."

"I knew this was happening as I would hear the nurses talking about this man, sometimes for good reason, but nonetheless, not nice."

"Anyways, this patient had an ostomy (Google if u don’t know) and I as a first year nursing student I knew absolutely NOTHING about them."

"We were literally learning how to wash our hands in school at this point."

"I did however notice that his ostomy pouch was always empty and never collected waste."

"I thought this was odd."

"I would feel his stomach and look and he was extremely distended."

"I told his nurse multiple times throughout the week and was always made to feel stupid because they were 'already checking it'."

"Long story short."

"I come in my next shift, he had a blockage, the waste built up so much that he was puking it out of his mouth and ultimately chocked and suffocated on his own waste."

"He was a DNR and was very sick to begin with but it was not supposed to be this way."

"I think about him often and feel deep sadness when I think about how he felt abandoned at the hospital, and this was the outcome."- Fresh-Lie4732

Truly Terrifying

"I'm not a doctor but a nurse."

"This happened when I was still a CNA."

"Young women brought into the ER for behavioral issues."

"Family says she hasn't slept in weeks."

"She's weirdly quiet for a while, then starts biting herself on the wrist."

"We get violent restraints, and she goes ballistic."

"Like possession screaming, no words just growling and agony."

"Well, this goes on for a while, and she calms back down again."

"Even weirder negative for everything except CT."

"All of a sudden, the sitter screams, 'She got out!'"

"This lady ripped off violent restraints, pulling at her skin until it bleed."

"She immediately starts slamming her head into the ground."

"RN pulls her up and gets a sparta kick to the chest, and he falls backward through the door (tall dude)."

"I get scratched, the Dr gets punched, and the security gets it bit."

"Dr. knocks her out with a shot of the good stuff."

"We assume she's out for a while, so we breathe while we start the paperwork for injuries, but not even 5 minutes later, she wakes back up and starts screaming again."

"She does this all night, and she's too messed up to go to behavioral, so until she's stable, she's inpatient."

"Longest night of my life."

"Come in tomorrow, she's still there."

"She's too violent to go up to a unit even if there was room (covid times), and they still have no idea what's actually wrong with her beyond not sleeping, psychosis, and generally wasting away."

"After a few days of screaming and violence, she just goes glass-eyed. We get a feeding tube, but she just keeps wasting away and after 9 days dies."

"I took 8 months for our pathologist to figure out what she had. It was a rare prion disorder that can happen in an astronomically small percentage of synthetic opioid users can sometimes get."

"This is the closest thing I've ever seen to possession."- Correct_Doctor_1502

Countless doctors remain haunted by the patients who didn't survive operations or surgeries.

But it's words that tend to leave the most lasting impression.