Who doesn’t love a good horror story?
There’s nothing quite like the thrill that comes from hearing a truly terrifying tale
or spooky story.
But there’s one kind of horror story that’s almost too scary to contemplate- these horrible
but true medical horror stories just might be scarier than the most terrifying ghost
story or unsettling urban legend!
When it comes to medical horror stories, doctors are the ultimate source.
Even though they’ve seen it all, there are always stories that stick with them, especially
the most gruesome ones...
For one doctor, the most memorable horror story of his career happened decades ago when
he was still a resident, and it has stuck with him ever since.
One night, this young doctor was the on-call resident for the Intensive Care Unit.
ICU patients are very sick, and there’s a lot that can go wrong.
He was the only doctor in the entire hospital that night who could respond to emergencies.
It was just after 2a.m., and the young resident had been up since 6 a.m. the previous day,
so he decided to head to the on-call room to try and get in a quick nap.
He had just laid down and closed his eyes when his pager went off.
The resident knew that the ICU nurses were extremely good at their jobs and knew what
they were doing, and that they only called at night when they really needed help.
The resident rushed out of the on call room and ran into the ICU, where he found a patient
sitting up in bed, surrounded by nurses and holding a bucket that was half full of blood.
The patient looked oddly serene and peaceful, but every few seconds he would violently throw
up - and he wasn’t throwing up vomit tinged with a bit of blood - he was vomiting what
seemed like gallons of pure, red blood.
The resident knew immediately that the patient needed a central line, a larger type of IV
that would allow the doctor and nurses to give him badly-needed fluids.
The problem was, there was only one room in the ICU equipped to put in a central line.
The resident left the room at a run, confirmed with ICU staff that the other room was available,
and rushed back to the patient’s room to prepare to move him for the procedure.
He was gone no more than 3 minutes, but when he got back, the patient’s head was slumped
over the bucket, which was now near to overflowing with blood.
The patient was dead - in the few minutes that the resident was gone, the patient had
vomited himself to death.
The resident went on to have a long and successful career as a family doctor, but he never ever
forgot that night and the incredible amount of blood that had come out of the patient’s
mouth.
Doctors certainly have their fair share of medical horror stories, but experiencing a
medical horror story as a patient and being left to deal with the aftermath is a whole
new level of terror.
In 2016, at the Tokyo Medical University Hospital in Japan, a female patient was seriously injured
following the outbreak of a spontaneous fire in the operating room while she was on the
operating table.
Hospital administrators were understandably horrified, and vowed to get to the bottom
of the mysterious fire, but their investigations turned up nothing.
All of the operating equipment had been operating normally, there were no flammable materials
nearby, and even a committee of outside experts brought in by the hospital was at a loss to
explain how the fire started.
Finally, investigators determined what they believed had caused the mysterious fire - according
to their final report, the fire was caused by intestinal gasses.
That’s right - the fire was started by an ill-timed fart.
Investigators determined that the patient, who was having an operation on her cervix
that involved the surgeons using a special laser, had farted during the surgery, and
that the intestinal gasses that leaked from her body were ignited by the surgeon’s laser.
Once aflame, the fire quickly spread to the nearby surgical drapes, which burst into flames.
The unfortunate patient was left with severe burns in her nether regions.
The memory of combustible farts might be enough to turn some people off of surgery for life
- but what if a medical procedure actually stole your memory?
Going to the dentist is no treat, but for one British man, it was a true nightmare come
to life.
William, a devoted husband and father, was also a successful military man stationed in
Germany when he went in for what was supposed to be a routine root canal.
William’s trip to the dentist would end up being anything but routine.
As the dentist was in the middle of the procedure, inexplicably, William’s memory completely
disappeared.
The dentist performing the surgery didn’t notice anything was amiss until after the
procedure was done and William appeared confused and dazed.
The dentist’s office called William’s wife to come and get him, and he was rushed
to the hospital where he remained for a few days of observation.
Although some of his mental fog and confusion disappeared, his memory didn’t come back.
Though he could recall everything before the root canal perfectly, William was unable to
form new memories that would last longer than 90 minutes of anything after the procedure.
He remembers sitting down in the dentist’s chair and getting a shot of anesthetic in
his mouth, but after that - nothing.
Doctors were stumped to explain William’s memory loss.
They initially thought that a bad reaction to the anesthesia might have caused a brain
hemorrhage, but further tests couldn’t find any evidence to prove this theory.
William’s scans also weren’t typical for someone with anterograde amnesia, and a battery
of psychological assessments showed that he was otherwise emotionally healthy.
Though there have been other documented cases of spontaneous memory loss, no others have
occured in the dental chair, making William’s case truly unique.
William’s life today is a stark reminder of just how little we actually know about
how our memories work.
His wife created a special note in his smartphone titled “Read First Thing” for William
to read each morning to remind himself who he is, and where, and when.
He has to be reminded daily that his son and daughter, who he remembers as small children,
are now 18 and 21.
William’s case also shows how powerful emotion is in the formation of memories - the only
new memory he has made in the last 15 years is of the highly emotional death of his father.
He hopes he’ll one day be able to remember his children’s weddings and the births of
his grandchildren without a reminder, but for now, William’s internal clock is stuck
at 1:40pm on March 14th, 2005 - right in the middle of his fateful root canal.
Memory loss is not what you would expect to get out of dental surgery, but what if you
inherited the life-threatening illness of an organ donor?
When a 42 year old woman received a double lung transplant, she got more than just a
new lease on life - she also inherited something else from her organ donor.
Her transplant surgery went off without complications, her recovery went smoothly, and she was sent
home to adjust to life with her new lungs.
Nearly 7 months after the surgery, while the woman was attending a support group meeting
for transplant survivors, she helped herself to a peanut butter cookie.
Within moments she felt short of breath, lightheaded and itchy all over.
Soon, she was having trouble breathing and she was rushed to the hospital, where testing
confirmed that she had a severe, life-threatening allergy to peanuts.
In hindsight, the woman realized that she had had 3 other minor allergic reactions in
the months since her transplant surgery, she just didn’t recognize them as allergic reactions
since she’d never had issues with allergies before in her life.
It turned out, though, that her lung donor had had a peanut allergy - in fact, the 12
year old had died of anaphylactic shock after eating peanuts.
Experts aren’t sure exactly how an allergy can be transferred between donors and recipients,
but there have been a handful of other documented cases of transplant recipients inheriting
their donor’s allergies.
Inheriting a medical condition from a stranger is certainly bizarre, but what if the very
act of thinking could send you into violent seizures?!
In the 1980s, a 12 year old English-Canadian boy discovered the world’s greatest excuse
for not doing your homework - doing math caused him to have seizures.
His family first noticed something was off when they were playing cards - whenever the
boy was tallying up his hand or trying to calculate the score, he would be struck by
a seizure.
His parents took him to countless specialists to get to the bottom of their son’s strange
seizures, and further study revealed that the boy’s seizures were triggered whenever
he did certain types of math.
Whenever he tried to do some simple mental math, he would be blindsided by a seizure.
Strangely, certain types of math triggered seizures more often than others - multiplication
and division usually triggered a seizure, but addition and subtraction were usually
safe.
The boy’s doctors diagnosed him with epilepsia arithmetices, an incredibly rare condition
that only a handful of people have ever been diagnosed with.
No word on whether he got a doctor’s note to get out of math class...
Math-causing seizures are bad enough, but what if after the most blissful moments in
your life you suffered nothing but pure hell?
A study in the Netherlands in 2002 aimed to get to the bottom of a strange and understudied
affliction that was affecting a small percentage of men all over the world.
These men were struggling with a host of uncomfortable symptoms, from itchy hives and swollen, burning
eyes, to nausea, an upset stomach and fatigue, to a runny nose and even trouble breathing.
But the strangest thing about these symptoms was when they would strike - symptoms would
typically start within half an hour after the men had ejaculated.
Seeing an underserved need, researchers jumped into the search for answers.
Given the similarity between the men’s symptoms and the symptoms of an allergic reaction,
researchers wondered if the men might be allergic to something in their own bodies.
They gave allergy tests to 45 men in the study, pricking them with a needle dipped in a diluted
solution of the subject’s own semen.
90% of the men in the study reacted to the diluted solution, and the diagnosis of Post-Orgasmic
Illness Syndrome was born.
Sadly, there’s no cure for POIS, but a course of injections of the subject’s own semen
shows promise as an effective treatment, so there is hope.
Sometimes a good scare can be just what the doctor ordered, but these horrifying but true
medical horror stories just might be taking things too far.
You definitely don’t want to think about these stories before your next doctor’s
appointment!
If you thought this video was fascinating, be sure and check out our other videos, like
this one called “Woman Allergic to Water - This Is How She Lives”, or maybe you’ll
like this other video instead.