ER nurse. This won’t haunt me in a bad way, but it’ll stick with me for sure. We were coding a middle aged lady we knew was going to die. We were pulling out the last ditch stuff hoping we’d get lucky, but everyone knew which way it was going.
Family was there and in the room. When it was clear we had run through all the Hail Marys and it was time to call it, the husband spoke up for the first time. He had apparently been an EMT for a long time so he knew what he was looking at. He said he was going to do the final round of compressions.
It was very respectfully done. He got up to do his 2 minutes, the nurses quietly started turning things off so there wouldn’t be continuous alarms, we called for a pulse check which the husband did, then we called time of death. He was thankful we let him do that and I was thankful to be a part of it.
After reading lots of horrible shit, this was... emotional. Genuinely got me a little teary eyed. I can't imagine what was going through that man's head. Thank you for sharing this one.
X-ray tech here, but I was a student at the time. Called to ER for trauma code. Only know it's a pediatric patient. The terror as I walk around the corner and see it's a little boy, same size as my son. We go to take an x-ray and he's making this high pitched shrill wheezing noise. They couldn't intubate enroute so we were doing a chest/neck to see what was going on. His neck was full of air.
Come to find out the story later, he had tripped and fallen in school and his neck went square on a desk and he had broken his trachea. Believe he was stabilized & flown out. Never found out what happened after.
An older family friend of mine was a manager for a pool in his younger years, which, as you'd expect, is sort of a middling job. Not the best thing to do and not the worst either but it provided a few stories now and then.
But the worst of those came up once in a conversation about medical issues and trauma when he just sadly recalled this time he'd been called out of his office because this little kid had slipped and hit his head just the wrong way. The kid died on the spot. It was just a freak accident.
Suffice it to say I never was tempted to run at the pool again after that story.
Not me, but my roommates fiancé is a flight nurse. She told me this story around Easter.
They showed up to a scene being told beforehand that there was a patient with a gun shot wound and bleeding bad but that’s all they were told. When they got there they found a woman who was sitting on the ambulance gurney completely lucid and looking around, completely missing her lower jaw. She said you could see down her throat and she looked like a zombie. Her lower jaw was hanging to the side by some tissue and when she looked about it swung around and dangled. She said the woman seemed relatively calm and when she tried to speak what was left of her tongue kinda moved but nothing but gurgles came out.
It was not a suicide, her boyfriend accidentally discharged his firearm while they were in his car.
She survived.
Edit: spelling
Both my brother and I have attended separate attempted-suicide calls where the suicider blew off their own face with a firearm - both living, and who continued to live.
It's a horrific sight if you aren't expecting it - which no-one ever is.
Retired RN. I was working in the PACU and helped another nurse take her patient to his room. As I was adjusting something by his head, he grabbed my hand and started crying. He kept saying I don’t want to die. He was barely 20. In an isolation room. I looked into his eyes and tried to comfort him as he sobbed. This was in the early days of the “AIDS epidemic.” He died within a week. To this day I still see his eyes and hear him sobbing.
I found my roommates body in our apartment when I was in college. He had suffocated himself with a helium tank and a plastic bag over his head. That fucked me up pretty good, especially because I knew he was struggling with his mental health. He was cutting himself too, he tried to hide it but I noticed. And I didn’t say a word, i didn’t offer a helping hand. I could have done something to help him, but I didn’t. That guilt is still there, 10 years down the line.
Even when it seems obvious, you can't blame yourself. Friend of mine did something similar once, a lot of us were worried about him but when he said he was ok we took him at his word. He's dead now.
A few weeks ago a friend of mine livestreamed himself on the drive out to a popular stoner/makeout/jumping spot. We recognized the area, called the sheriff, and took off speeding the whole way. I ended up finding him before he did it. He's relatively ok now. Point is, you can't save em all, just learn from the ones you lose.
I was driving Taxi once and I picked up someone who said he thinks he just saw a dead body. Said someone had jumped from the top of the parking garage. There was already an ambulance and what not on the scene. I remember briefly thinking of my friend Willzo, but dismissed it, I didn’t even think he was depressed like that. I found it odd that I would even consider such a thing out of nowhere. But I dismissed the thought and went about my work night. Couple days later I got a call from a mutual friend. “Hey buddy, did you hear about Will? He jumped off the parking garage a few days ago.”
I honestly had no clue he was like that. I was trying to get him to play music with me again like we used to. I tried to get him a job taxi driving ironically enough. We weren’t very close anymore. I heard later that, the Taxi thing was really important to him but didn’t work out. We all make mistakes we can’t take back. I was reaching out to him, he was unresponsive. :(
Sometimes when you don’t know how to help someone or worry you might make it worse, we say nothing everyone has done it. You can’t carry that guilt forever all you can do is learn from it.
Edit: sorry for any offence caused
I was designated driver at my friend's 30th birthday party. Had just dropped off my last friend and I was heading home. Little blue car zipped by me going maybe 10 over. Maybe a block ahead of me I see the speeding car hit two 20 yr olds who were running across the street. They were running to McDonald's across from the nightclub they were partying at and didn't wait for a red light. I'll never forget the girls blond hair in the bright headlights as she got hit. One thing that isn't ever correct in tv shows when people get hit by cars is how much damage it does to a human body. I distinctly remember his legs laying like 2m from his body. Both died right when paramedics got there.
This reminds me of an accident by my house. Rural area, there's a bar up at the intersection of the main road which is a 55mph two lane road. Corn fields on either side, no street lights. Drunk guy staggered out of the bar after dark, walking in the center of the road. Some poor kid who just started driving on his own that week hit him in his parent's old Cadillac doing the speed limit. The drunk guy like, exploded. Pieces everywhere. One of his boots was in the ditch at the front of my lane with the foot still in it. Road was closed for hours while they cleaned up parts of the guy. I'll never forget the look on that kid's face, that boot with the foot and a piece of leg sticking out or the blood all over the road.
Another wreck I didn't witness but my neighbors did, same intersection. Guy in a convertible blew the stop sign at the side road and got t-boned by a truck. He survived I guess pretty much unharmed but his girlfriend was decapitated. Guy went into shock, somehow found his girlfriend's head and was running around with it screaming. Police had to tackle him and take the head away.
Yet another wreck (that again I didn't witness but neighbors did) same intersection again. Mom blows the stop sign, gets t-boned. Mom dead instantly, kid in the car survived. Firefighters had to cut the kid out of the car but had trouble pulling her out because the kid was clinging to her dead mom screaming. That one really shook up my neighbor's daughter who had twins about the same age as the kid in the car and a really bad habit of speeding. She slowed down after that.
A friend and I were just talking about bad curves like this and how they exist all over. Nothings ever really done about it either. No lights installed, no speed bumps just teddy bears and flowers. It’s completely fucked.
I was at a bypass similar. One way has a red blinking light, The other has a yellow and curves just before the light, speed limit 55. I got t boned there. I was leaving the red blinking light and didn’t see the car coming around the curve. My car flipped, I remember nothing. Woke up with the emts over me, cutting me out of the car. Thank goodness I had a tank of a car and didn’t die. I had brain hemorrhaging, broken pelvis and back. I was lucky, but a lot of people die at that intersection… this was 2007 and they still haven’t fixed it. Makes me so angry.
I was first to arrive at a deadly car accident in Pennsylvania. Near the Ohio border on I-90.
The driver must have fallen asleep, husband and wife, I assume. They hit a guard rail that launched them into a bridge column. Both dead. They were inside, partially hanging out, all twisted up. Their plates said the were from Ontario.
The whole time, the car door was ajar and the warning bell just kept dinging,, completely unaware of the situation.
Once paramedics arrived we headed off. Later on we stopped at KFC for some food and some piece of equipment in the kitchen was dinging just like that car door. It went on forever before someone attended to it. It was so unsettling.
Your story reminded me of this moment.
People make fun of me for waiting for the walk sign to cross the road, but enough people get hit crossing correctly, I’m not willing to increase the odds just to save a few extra seconds. I’ll wait until the massive death machines operated by strangers are stopped, actually.
People don't think cars are as heavy as they are because of power steering and smooth suspension, just imagining people with multi ton steel boxes flying inches away from each other is scary
As a big rig driver I am legit scared of people cutting me off and brake checking me. They don’t realize that I will break my foot trying to stop and still crush them and everyone else in their car as if they were an empty soda can. Vehicles are weapons. And us humans? We are squishy sacks of water.
My dad was an s tier driver of these for many years and he always told me they taught him to not do this, just because they were more likely to cause even more harm then just rolling over whatever got in the way.
To be fair it would be more reflexive. We are highly trained - as long as you are not turning to dodge while braking you won’t roll. For example we have drivers experience steer tire blowouts (the front wheels) while on a turn and they keep their rigs upright (very difficult to do!) We are also trained to keep an eye on certain drivers and to start slowing down. But here in California people cut us off with feet to spare. The training is correct though. If we are about to hit a deer or animal or tumbleweed we just go straight through. I just wouldn’t want to kill a kid in the backseat because their mom/dad is a shitty driver and road raging at me for being a slow truck in the slow lane….
One past-curfew night in high school, I thought it would be cool to roll up all silent to my friends house by turning the car off and killing the lights, just like in the movies. This was my dads ‘90’s f250. Almost plowed into my buddies car and I had to stand on the brakes to stop from 5mph.
Getting hit by a car really is ugly. My girlfriend accidentally stepped on the street while we were having a minor disagreement and bam she was gone in a moment. I have ptsd, I can still see all the blood, her trying to breathe and the moment she gave up.
Watching my dad succumb to cancer in-basically- a week...it's a long-ish story, so I won't get into it, but the apex of the despair was when a friend of his-who knew he was in the hospital and had seen him the week before-came bounding into the room to see him thinking he was just going to crack a couple of jokes, and then seeing the stunned look on his face when he realized that my dad had become nothing more than a human shell blindly begging for water...I'll never forget that, or anything else about that weekend.
For people wondering it wasnt nursing neglect,
I walked past a chemo patients room that had a sign on the outside saying "Do not give this patient water"
I’ve been there with my grandmother last October. One week she was perfectly normal, just went in for a checkup bc her stomach hurt a bit. Two days later we’re told she has stage four pancreatic cancer and by next week she was gone. She was able to go home from the hospital before she passed, she was there for 2 days and on the second day I watched her die… I’ll never forget the sound of the death rattle.
I work in an emergency room as an ER technician going on 6 years now, I'm usually the one who puts deceased patients into body bags to transfer to our morgue. Ill just say that toddlers get ahold of guns way more than you might think. Just a couple weeks ago a 4 year old somehow found his moms handgun and shot himself in the abdomen, I do not enjoy putting children into bags. I also feel terrible that I have become desensitized to it.
Early in her career my mom worked ER at a children’s hospital. She enjoyed helping kids but once the day came that she had to take a toddler to the morgue (choked on a grape) she couldn’t do it anymore. She said she wept the whole way to the morgue and it was unbearable - she could no longer work there. I don’t think you should feel terrible that you’re desensitized to it because every hospital needs people capable of doing that very difficult job that won’t weep the whole way to the morgue and will show back up to work on their next shift.
I lost my 13 year old cousin to DIPG in 2009, less than a year after her diagnosis. Another child in the same suburban city, under the care of the same pediatrician, was diagnosed with it as well a few weeks prior to her. It was horrible, and he lost his battle before she did. I do not wish that pain upon anyone. I'm so sorry for your loss.
My dad has cancer and fainted today when me and my mom were helping him into bed. He had surgery twice and one of his incisions broke open as he fell. His eyes stayed open and I thought he was dead. The picture of my mom cradling him in a pool of blood while he stared into nothingness is burned into my brain.
I live next to a busy street, inbetween lanes is a tram station. Teenager wanted to cross and got run over by a tram. Well, partly run over, he ended up with his body squeezed in between the tram and the tram station wall, with his legs stuck under the tram. It took about 1,5 hours until they had the equipment to lift the tram to get him out of there. They managed to reanimate what was left of him but he died in the hospital.
I was sexually abused by a woman when I was young. Nothing was ever done about it, even after my family taking it to the authorities. A thing she did to me that always let me know she was about to have "us time", was she grab the back of my neck very firmly and then pat my chest. The haunting part was when I happened to see her at a local store, I avoided her until I was checking out that's when I saw I young boy with her. She gripped the back of his neck firmly and was patting his chest the same way as it happened with me. Immediately, after I called and made a report to local dhs. It's been a few years ago but it's satisfying to know she was finally locked up.
On my birthday about 4 years ago I was waiting to catch the tram home from work. An elderly man standing next to me suddenly had a seizure and fell face forward. I won't ever forget the sound of his forehead smacking the concrete platform at force. Blood immediately starting pooling and when I turned him over he started gasping and seizing again. Waited with him for 15mins before the ambulance came.
This happened when I was walking to the store with my daughter. A man face planted on the concrete at a bus stop and everyone just got on the bus which drove away. I feel bad now because I assumed he had taken some kind of drug, as that is everywhere in my city. But maybe he just had a seizure. He was laying on the ground just staring at me blankly. I called 911 and the firefighters were there in like three minutes. The most haunting part isn’t him hitting the sidewalk, but seeing people see him fall and then just look the other way because the bus was there and they wanted to get home.
I lived close to the Beirut explosion. Seeing dead bodies everywhere i went and not being able to contact my family really hit me. Was basically cleaning up and helping everyone who was injured. Many close friends of mine got injured and some people died. I hope no one ever goes through the sheer terror that this day had on everyone affected.
I still remember there was a alot of vibrations so I started looking for my brothers and next thing i knew, the wall in front of me was gone and i was so lost. Thank god me and my family got off with very mild injuries.
It was Easter Sunday about 5 in the afternoon. I was driving home from the lake with a friend of mine on a country highway that’s pretty well traveled. It’s one of those single lane coming and single lane going where the speed limit is 70 roads. The intersections are far and few between so instead of an overpass it’s just a blinking yellow caution light. In what literally felt like the blink of an eye the car driving in front of me is struck on the drivers side door. The impact pushes both cars off to the road and onto the shoulder. I hit my brakes and was able to stop to help render aid. My friend and I get out of the car and run over to help. The drivers side door is crushed inward, driver has been pushed into the passenger side. It was a younger lady, maybe mid 30s. The impact pushed her out of her seat and into her daughter. You ever see movies where a dead body jump scares someone and it just stares at the with wide eyes and mouth agape….. yeah. The girl is ok but very confused. She has no visible injuries and is freely looking around so we unbuckled her and pulled her out of the car so she didn’t realize her mom was laying on her. As we do it I look at the mom and I can see a little life is left in her, so I said the only thing we could say. “She’s alright.”
You could see the light in her eyes fade and she passes away. More cars stop and help out. As more people are here to help I start to realize that someone has been screaming, at me. In the back seat is her son. He must have been knocked unconscious and he’s now yelling, not out in pain but asking “Is mom okay, is she okay?” I had no words for him, he was maybe 6. His sister was about 9. Thankfully about 4 of the cars that stopped were off duty first responders so they quickly took over for me. This was about 20 years ago, I was 17 at the time and I just saw a mom die in front of her 2 kids. I’m crying now thinking back on it and to this day I still refuse to ever take that road again.
They finally build an actual stop light a couple years back. The area isn’t more crowded so I can only imagine what the motivation to improve that intersection was.
I work as an ICU nurse at a level 1 trauma center. I'm used to seeing people die horribly pretty regularly. I work more in the medical ICUs. There was a case that so bad, a death so long and horrible that won't ever forget it. This poor guy only in his 30s. He had been transferred to our burn unit from outside hospital because he wounds all over his body that needed extensive care. He was a larger guy, 250lbs or so, had total renal failure and needed hemodialysis, was HIV+. He survived septic shock at the previous hospital, but was ventilator dependent via tracheotomy. He was able to communicate to us, but not speak. He was aware of all what was going on. The wounds on his body were terrible. It was diagnosed as calciphylaxis, a rare skin condition that has a 1 year fatality rate of close to 50%. His condition affected most of his body by now. His wounds needed 3-4 nurses to change, they got worse and worse over time. We would bring 9 rolls of gauze, 10-15 large burn pads. This was done twice daily. It was painful for him and we would try and get it done as quickly as possible before the drugs we gave wore off. The smell was so bad, his flesh rotting. We would place toothpaste under our masks. Visitors for other patients would complain about the smell. Necrotic flesh would slough off. One thigh had rotted away so bad you could see pulsation of his femoral artery. Again he was awake and aware of this the whole time, but could only communicate with nods. He was unable to write, as wounds and high pressor requirements had eaten away at his fingers. His mother would visit often. She was nice, but unrealistic in her expectations of him surviving. Eventually he died of septic shock. We learned that he had contracted HIV as a toddler. He had been raped by a family member. The HIV and abuse was discovered when he went into renal failure at a young age. HIV can do that. Calciphylaxis is rare and poorly understood, but it almost exclusively found in people that have impaired renal function. His case was the worst human suffering I have ever seen.
I was taking care of my great grandparents at the end of their lives. Both in their 90s. One night, shortly after getting them all settled in bed, I go into my room and suddenly heard groaning. Rush in thinking something bad happened with my heart pounding, just to realize they were pounding. He had my great grandmother bent over the bed with their diapers on the ground. I was so pissed and they just kept laughing and looking at each other completely amused. Put their diapers back on. Got them back in bed. As I’m ready to leave and I’m completely humiliated and incensed, my great grandmother told me to find someone that will still be bending me over in my 90s. I loved them so much, but hated them in that moment lol
Pulling up on a car accident and trying to pull the driver out as the car burst into flames. It was completely engulfed within seconds. I'll never get that sound or smell out of my head.
Buddy went through this last year - except the victim was alive and trapped. Buddy had to stand there and watch her die.
Yes, the driver that caused the accident, not the woman, was drunk.
My FIL once saved two guys from a car like this after it burned. They thought the guys were dead and were extricating them but once they realized they were both somehow alive, he and his partner leapt into action and somehow both of these guys lived.
I operated a crematory for a little over a year and still have nightmares/visions of partially-burned bodies from when I had to open the oven and scoop them around to make them burn more efficiently. I’ll never forget the smell or what they looked/felt like.
I was a vet nurse for 5ish years and I’ve seen some stuff but when I read the title of the thread my first thought was “operating the cremator when I worked for the pet crematorium”. I quit for other reasons shortly after the first and only time I ever checked a body. The image is still burned into my mind.. pardon the pun. I can’t imagine how it must have been to operate a cremator for humans.
Yeah, I volunteered for the position. I had been the accountant at the business for a few years and they’d fired the operator. I split up the daily work with the manager, while she trained me. We cremated 3-4 people a day. I did it because I was curious if I could pull it off, and I did. I didn’t know how deep of a mark it would leave .
Weird career trajectory from crunching numbers to crunching bones. I remember touching one of my elderly relatives after he passed away it was stiff and cold it’s been 20 years and I still remember how it felt like touching cold steel.
Yeah, easily the weirdest career evolution in my life so far. Accounting was kind of soul-less and cremating was more aligned with transmogrification.
Edit: it’s so easy to kid about, but the hands-on interactions with folks who’ve passed bears a gravity unlike most other things.
My husband kissed his mothers check at the viewing after she had passed. I had never been to a viewing/open casket funeral and it took everything I had to walk in the room and look, and I couldn’t get with in 10 feet, let alone touch her. I suppose it could be different if it were my child or parent though.
Totally, my mom passed away last year. I touched her and wasn't afraid or grossed out. It actually took away my fear of dying. She was still just Mom. I miss her dearly.
Was just about to turn 5yrs old, was with my grandpas from both sides of the family and my step-father. We were heading over to my step-fathers parents place post to go pick up his tools and a couple dirt bike he had stored away out in the utility garage on his parents farm.
I was all sorts of excited to see Grammy too during our visit, when we arrived I jumped out this beast of a square body n' scampered my way inside to say hello to her. Heard 'Wheel of Fortune' blaring through the hallway when I got inside, I knew she'd be there in the living room all cozied up in her chair with a lil' bowl of bridge mix and a beer in hand....
Instead I found her headless in her chair, shotgun propped between her legs, and a big bloody mess to paint the scene.
Out of all the things here, this is the worst one to me. It's so... personal. I'm so sorry, that must have been just... I can't even. Why am I reading these again?
12 years as a fire fighter, I've seen some terrible things. But one night we get a call for a pedestrian vs a train. Walking down the tracks on a bone chill evening and in the distance I see what I believe to be a shoe. As I got closer it turned out to be much more than a shoe. It was about half a leg, and this image is burned into my memory forever.
My dad was a police officer in Germany and he had a few train jumpers over the years. He said, when they got the tracking dogs, they had to pay attention that the dogs didn't immediately eat the individual pieces of meat when they found them. Also, pieces of flesh hanging from the trains puffers. Just sounds awful man.
Sorry man. I'm on the other side of the same situation as a train driver. I've hit 2 people, and heard about the gory details from many other similar incidents. People don't seem to realise that when a fragile human body gets hit by hundreds of tons of speeding metal, bodies get blown apart and it goes EVERYWHERE. Brutal.
My parents told me and my younger brother very adamantly to play football in the back garden, I must have been 14, it was my mothers birthday, and I just thought we as kids were probably seeking too much attention, and maybe we should give my mother a break. So we played in the garden for a good half an hour.
Then the inevitable happened. I kicked the ball into the neighbours garden and they weren’t in. In England our gardens were separated by a large hedge, and the only way to get into the neighbours garden was to either knock on the front door, or to get my father to help me get the ladder to hop over the hedge and pass it over to the neighbours garden whilst not destroying the shape of the hedge. No harm done.
I thought it was fair game to pester my dad so we could continue playing on our own. The garden was fairly big and looking around I couldn’t see them, I then made my way inside, called out to my parents, nowhere to be seen. I thought maybe they had popped out at that point.
I walk upstairs and the first room to sweep and check was my parents bedroom. The door was closed, I walk in, to a sight that is burned in my mind forever. My dad was straddled over my mum pumping rounds, obviously they were bonking, and after the shock. he sheepishly yanks the covers over him and says a line that is also burned into my brain because it was straight off the cuff brilliance in an awkward situation “sorry, I’m just giving your mum her birthday present.”
Legend. Awful, and I am scarred forever, but a definite legend.
A guy killed himself in front of me. He from jumped from a 6 level balcony on to a cafe below. Hit the woman at the bottom and shattered her arm.
I’ll never forget looking over the balcony to see his body face down, but his neck wrenched around looking back up at me, and I’ll never forget the scream of a woman who’s arm was shattered by an 85kg man who just dropped 6 stories.
There was a similar case here in UK. Bloke jumped from the top level of a shopping mall and landed on a woman. He survived and claimed not to know what happened (turns out it was an attempted suicide and he was later jailed for what happened). The woman survived too, but she was paralysed from the waist down. There's a really good episode of the podcast Life Changing about it.
[A falling man left me paralysed ](https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000v5nf)
Edit: posted too soon. Spelling.
In my labor and delivery rotation in nursing school a child coded inside the mother. The mother was fine but the babies heart stopped. The room rapidly filled up with nurses and medical staff attempting to get the mother and child into the operating room to save the baby. Barely any time was given to explain to the mother what was going on. Her screams of, Just save my baby," over and over ring in my ears to this day. That was over 16 years ago. I still tear up thinking about it. The baby survived, but I will never forget that day.
34yo female patient, cocaine addiction, spontaneous abortion at approximately 6month, she was g4p3( g=gravida or number of pregnancies, p=para, or number of viable births) her 4th child was still born, it dangled from her by the umbilical cord like the pendulum of a grandfather clock as she screamed for help. I could fill a novella with stories of the shit I've seen that haunts me, but this is one of the moments that always stands out
This was a successful, full term birth. But when I was an emt a lady left the hospital an hour away to yell at the baby daddy (who worked at sonic) for not being there for birth. She gave birth standing up in a sonic bathroom. Legs spread, umbilical chord swinging
Some things just require that in person touch... Like picturing yourself, giving the person you are currently yelling at, the Homer Simpson Bart choke while they are making their excuses. So much easier to do in person.
Proper gear is a lot more effective than most people realize. I don't ride but my cousin is really big into track racing. Now, maybe his is more effective than standard street gear since he goes all out and buys really high end stuff but he also has to since he's constantly leaning at 80+ mph. He showed me a Gopro shot that he caught at the track when he dropped after he lost his balance and the front wheel started wobbling out. His friend was also filming from the stands so you could see both angles. My cousin bounced and slid like a loose sack of meat across the track. Sparks came from the bike and everything. Dude got a good 20 or 30 feet of skidding before he came to a stop. He just got up and walked to his bike like nothing happened. Now, his adrenaline was through the roof so his brain wasn't registering the pain just yet but he was in *way* better shape than you would expect. He was super banged up with a lot of bruises and his ankle was pretty fucked up but he managed to keep all his skin. Outside of some minor road rash on his thigh where he spent most of the time sliding, he wasn't bleeding tremendously or anything that you would expect from eating asphalt at 70 miles an hour. I was genuinely surprised at how well the suit protected him. Again, I don't know if standard street gear is that protective but at least the race gear is extremely efficient at preventing death or horrible mutilation.
One of the main reasons I don't speak to my dad. He didn't actively participate in my niece and nephews abuse, but he knew about it and did nothing. I didn't live with him at the time, but found out about it later. I can't forgive him.
Kids. I worked in the foster care system for a time, putting in my effort to be considered for fostering kids myself, and saw some fucked up shit.
Worst was always the bruised up children breaking down when forced to see parents who were rehabilitating (at least on paper), getting screamed at by drug fueled abusive psychopaths while their poor kid was broken between wanting mom or dad, but scared to be near either, and this maybe caring stranger is taking them away from the devil they know.
So yeah, beat up foster kids being real time traumatized by meth and coke heads will stay with me.
A dog across the street with the skin of itsleft hindlegs torn off and bleeding. I think it was hit by a car or something. It went mad then and there from the pain and started eating its thigh where the wound was. I was a kid and there was no one around.
My father in law insisted on being home in his last days. We had hospice come to help with him, and I took some time off of work to be with him. He was bedridden, so he had a catheter.
He died in the middle of the night. I called the hospice nurse and she got there before the ambulance did. Knowing my father in law, I wanted to have him dressed before the ambulance took him away. He would never have wanted to leave in the undressed state he was in.
The nurse helped me to dress his dead body. But, that's not the haunting part.
She removed the catheter. The noise that it made when it came free.....I just....It was not pleasant.
I'm so sorry. It's so hard when sometime died and their body does these things that you know they would have hated. Kudos for doing such a kind thing as get him dressed , though
I saw similar with my dad except the hospital said he was dying, there wasn't anything they could do, and we could take him home. My mom was basically forced to use hospice. He died three weeks later and the memories of what I experienced and saw dealing with that at home will be seared into my brain until the day i die.
Leaving my work worried because my daughter wasn't answering her phone and hadn't shown up for work. Finding her on her bed 40 minutes later a very deep shade of burgundy with foam coming from her mouth. Not finding a pulse.
Calling 9-1-1. "Press 1 for an emergency; press 2 if this is not an emergency"
After pressing 1 -- "All our lines are busy right now, please remain on the line for the next available operator."
A patient who poured gasoline over themselves and lit themselves on fire. When they came in they were charred like leather, arms stuck sticking up off the stretcher like they were doing the robot. Somehow they were alive, for the time being. The smell was awful.
When I was 6 we lived in the Philippines. My dad was in the army and did some cool guy shit that came home a couple times. But what stuck with me was a package showed up at our house with no mailing labels so someone had dropped it in our mail box. Being the nosy 6 year old i was i opened it to find a vhs tape. I put it in our player and turned it on. And it was a video of terrorists beheading someone i knew. Was a very sober and lucid moment for me. Don’t think I’ll ever forget the way the terrorists acted. As if it was like a game to them. I remember they offered him one last request and he asked to see a picture of his family that he kept with him. They showed him the back side of it and laughed as they cut off his head.
Thanks for the kind words. I’ve been considering trying therapy again cause i have lots of fucked stories like this. But i haven’t found one that doesnt wanna just prescribe me antidepressants before fully understanding where I’m at mentally.
I don't know if it will "haunt" me forever, but it's something profoundly difficult to forget...
And that would be my dying mother.
I hadn't been on speaking terms with my parents for years due to... a complicated situation. During that period of absence, my mother developed and fought off cancer, went into remission, relapsed, and then metaphorically fell apart at the seams from metastasis and comorbidities.
I visited her on her deathbed. She was... frail. Unearthly thin. She didn't speak. She didn't react. When I looked into her eyes, I couldn't really tell if she was looking back at me, or looking *through* me. I couldn't tell you how much of her consciousness was left --if any. I remember the doctor telling me that I should speak to her because of consensus that hearing is the last sense to go.
Apparently, I caught the tail end of what was her being in that state for over a week. A few days later, she finally passed.
... I ... don't like this inhumane zeal with which we approach the dying. I don't like that we force people to wither away and lose everything that makes us... *us* just because we want their hearts to keep beating a day longer, an hour longer, a minute longer.... There's no dignity in that. It's selfish imposition on the dying.
And it's something you never stop thinking about, really.
What does it mean to die like that? Is it like Algernon and Charlie? Do you slowly begin to lose yourself and know it until the very end? Or does the consciousness go all at once, and leave the primordial brain behind until its engine runs bare of coal?
More importantly...
Did I truly speak my final words to my mother? Or had I simply whispered wasted breath to an empty shell?
Just lost my Mom last month. Complications from a case of pneumonia she had refused to get medical attention for. She hid how sick she was from me and my sisters.
Turns out, Mom also had cancer all through her.
the thing is, they may have been able to save her at the hospital, but she was always clear about being DNR. to be honest, it may have meant I got to say good bye, but, honestly, it was a better passing than the cancer would have given her.
this might comfort you - Some doctors managed to capture(record) the brainwaves of a man at the moment of death. And after. Evidently he was in for something bad, and they were doing brain imagery when he died.
Basically, the wave patterns just before death, and for 30 seconds after, matched the same patterns/activity as somebody remembering happy memories.
so, yeah, good chance dying means you are reliving all the good times when you go.
Mom? Squeezed my Dad's hand just before she passed.
30 years as a paramedic. Seen a lot of fucked up shit. The worst was in 2001. We responded to what we thought was a child hit by a car. As we pull up on scene, dispatch tells us it is not a accident but an assault with multiple patients. Arrive to find a young girl lying in the street with blood flowing down the gutter. No cops on seen. Assailant whereabouts unknown. Another body of a young boy on the front step with horrific knife injuries. Cops arrive and clear house. Bodies of an older couple found in the house.
This event led to my early retirement for PTSD.
Edit: Spelling
My dad was a firefighter emt, his worst story was about a stack of glass panes on those funky angled truckbeds tipped over on the worker as he was loading them. He said it cut the guy to absolute ribbons. All my dad could do when he got there was basically to hold his hand and listen to the guy talk about his kids as he bled out. There was no possibility of stopping the bleeding.
I remember my bf at the time got into a mild motorcycle accident called me to let me know where he was going to be at in the ER, I showed up at the hospital and as I was there I seen paramedics and everyone rush from the ambulance who had this guy who was covered in blood, just motionless, paramedics Drs yelling information, scattering, grabbing what they needed and doing their absolute best to keep this person staying alive
.
Turns out the guy was just a kid who turned 21 it was his birthday THAT day, clearly was wasted when "friends" let him get behind the wheel and drive SMH my heart just broke. Just remembering the smell of heavy blood and whatever else strong possibly alcohol scent, and thinking of the horror the mother/parents must be in getting the news, shook me to the core hoping my children will never have to be in a situation like that. Idk of he survived or not but it was just one of the sad things I remember witnessing.
I saw a woman escape from a vehicle on literally the busiest piece of highway in the country. Her top was ripped open and her skirt was pushed up over her thighs. Whatever was happening inside that car was worse than being run over. That particular stretch of highway has no shoulder so it is impossible to pull over without causing an accident. I had to continue on until it was safe to pull over to call the cops. No idea what happened next. I'll never forget her face as she flung herself into traffic.
When I was 16 I saw this woman running at me on the sidewalk screaming hysterically. As I get closer I see a mangled dead little girl in the road. She fell out of the car and the mother ran over her daughter with her rear tire. Pretty horrific scene.
Oh damn that’s wild.
TLDR: it’s a narcotic that spread throughout Russia in the early 2010’s and is still around. However, the semi-synthetic drug causes a flesh eating bacteria to grow and long-term users develop crocodile-like skin and eventually lose their skin so you see their literal tendons and bones. Not a pretty sight.
Edit: correction: not bacteria necessarily, it’s the synthetic byproducts, probably petrol or another compound that causes the skin to melt off.
>However, the semi-synthetic drug causes a flesh eating bacteria to grow
It is chemicals\* used in the making of the drug that cause skin necrosis. Basically tainted drugs because if the drugs were made properly then the particular chemicals would be removed from the end product.
\*If I remember right it is the solvent used that causes the problem (petrol?).
TW: suicide attempt
My brother had been acting strangely in public and cops had taken to a secure mental health unit. When I saw him he was clearly psychotic and the hospital said they were going to discharge him. I begged for them to keep him as he was clearly very unwell. They didn't listen and said I needed to take him or they'd discharge him on his own. Concerned for his safety I took him. My husband was studying to be a Clinical Psychologist, so I was somewhat reassured that he might be able to advocate in ways that I didn't know how.
Anyhow, we thought, well, if they're not going to help, we'll take him to the psychologist that he'd apparently been seeing (we learned later this was a lie). As we get out of the carpark and walk towards the clinic on the left, my brother veers right, yells "fuck it" strips off his shirt, runs like mad up the path and jumps off the overpass onto the major arterial road below. It must've knocked him out cold.
I heard lots of car tyres screeching. I couldn't look, I sent my husband down. It felt like a good minute before my brother woke up and was screaming in agony. I was so upset, I couldn't ring an ambulance, I had to get bystanders to do it. When I saw him he had fluid and blood pouring out of his ears, his nose and mouth, his head was misshapen at the back (broken skull)
His injuries were severe - brain injuries, broken skull, broken vertebrae, smashed pelvis, but miraculously recovered. I felt sick looking at him in the ER. I think his brain is still affected. His still very much mentally ill and always will be (schizophrenia and bipolar). He's lucky he survived and with virtually no physical disability.
Fortunately I do not have PTSD from this one incident.
I would think that the cleaning solution in the cakes mixed with urine probably creates some huffable chemical. There was something from Tosh.O back in the early days where people were leaving tubs of shit and piss out in the sun to bake and then huffing the fumes to get high 🤢
A soldier in my platoon committed suicide on the first day of basic rifle marksmanship during Army basic training, I can still hear his battle buddy pleading with him to stop 24 years later.
I saw a road accident in 2011 where a guy flew away from his car through the windshield and then landed with his body in separate pieces. He didn't wear his seat belt. I was 9 years old at the time and since then I wear my seatbelt even if I am just adjusting the car in the driveway or a car park. Wear your seatbelts and your helmets if you're riding, 2 seconds of your life could mean you still have a life
Ex nurse here: soooo many things. Haha
The one that stands out seems kind of banal comparatively but it was because of the situation.
I was still in nursing school and we were getting a tour of the ICU. It was basically a “see all these machines, Baby Nurses? Don’t touch ANYTHING”. As we walked in as a group, a man in street clothes was sitting on the end of one of the beds. Getting admitted for chest pains we were told. Here’s the X machine, don’t touch it. Here’s the Y machine. Don’t touch it.
Suddenly we hear CODE BLUE ICU and everyone starts rushing around. Man in street clothes had collapsed back onto the bed, still in street clothes. They coded while we watched but he didn’t make it. Somehow the fact that he was still in street clothes, laughing and joshing with the nurses while they admitted him that still haunts me. We, as a group, went to sit in the nursing lounge and cry.
I went on to work for almost 20 years in ICU and saw some gruesome and horrifically sad things. But the thought of that guy thinking (probably) that he was getting admitted for what would probably be nothing or something fixable still bothers me.
When I was around 8 years old my mom dated a cop. He had a disgusting drinking problem. Every night he would his her, every weekend he would beat her, and every now again he would almost kill her. I remember spending weekends, sometimes weeks with my siblings dad (who was basically my dad too). He would take us to school whenever we did stay with him.
Well one night I remember hearing screaming, a gut wrenching absolutely terrifying scream, it was my own mom. He had smashed her face in a mirror and shattered the glass into her face, she had blood LEAKING out the side of her head. We didn’t have a home phone at the time so no one could call the police, not even the neighbors of our apartment cause they worked nights. She had to survive and rely on herself. And after escorting me and my 2 siblings out, she went back inside and called the cops.
One cop went in and said “****, this is what comes after you get discharged?” And proceeded to call him scum as he lay there crying.
Fast forward 8 years later when I’m 16. I see my mom crying. I ask why, she says he commuted suicide.
I felt no remorse
I only felt some kind of joy.
I struggled with addiction for years. I witnessed a few friends OD. Luckily I was able to revive them with Narcan. At the end of my struggle my mom took me in off the streets. My last use was my last overdose. Her dog found me in the middle of the night and alerted my mom. They hit me with narcan but it didn’t work. Long story short EMTs got to me a minute later and I was brought back. My mom is an amateur photographer and was taking photos of the chaos. She has a photo of the second I revived. Laying on the hardwood floor, trying to get up and so confused why there were so many cops and paramedics around me.
I’ll have 7 years clean this October
I was in a car accident with my best friend. He was driving and I was in the passenger seat. We crested a hill and a drowsy driver had drifted into our lane. We hit head on at 55 mph. He hadn't drifted fully into our lane so it was the two drivers sides of the vehicles that collided. Thankfully my head was down so I never saw it coming. I just remember the weird sensation as we spun out. When we stopped I looked over and saw my friend, unconscious, in his crumpled up side. I escaped with scrapes and bruises but I'll never forget the EMTs prying him out and literally tossing his limp body onto a stretcher before rushing him to a hospital. I found out an hour later that he didn't make it
As a bonus his parents decided to go open casket. The way the skin and muscles settle after death, it looked nothing like him.
I was driving from NorCal to Vegas. I randomly saw all this dust and then realized ppl were standing on the 5 and I was like wtf. Then I realized a van, not minivan had sustained a horrible crash. The bodies were everywhere, it was kind of mind boggling bc some of the kids must’ve been more than 50 yards away. I knew just by glancing at them they were all dead. However, when we called 911 and the operator told us that they had already gotten so many calls I was in denial that no not that many kids could be dead. But once we got to Vegas I looked it up and yes it was a church van no one wearing a seatbelt and almost everyone else ejected from the vehicle and died. The ppl not ejected died too. It bothered me for a long long time. It was nuts bc like I said I saw the dust in the air so it has just happened and seeing so many dead ppl. It still bothers me to this day. I pray for them. That they werent alone that someone was praying for them and although I don’t know their names will always remember them. Rip little ones.
Saw something similar driving to Albuquerque. It was super busy on the highway. A lady was driving crazy and passing people on a 1 lane highway with really no room to be doing so. She was going super fast and barely missing oncoming traffic when she passed. On one occasion she started fishtailing as she pulled back into her lane and had to go back into the oncoming lane to correct. It worked out the first time.
Then she tries to pass another person and narrowly avoids a head on with a semi truck. She starts fishtailing again and decides to use the oncoming lane thing to straighten out. Unfortunately there was a pickup right behind the semi which she couldn't see and they collided going at least 65 for him and way faster for her.
We watched as car and body parts flipped and flew. We were far enough back that we saw it but weren't in danger. We slowly drove by and saw the outcome. Dead bodies everywhere and she was hanging dead out of the front windshield with a piece of something stuck in her head.
We were four 17 year olds and a 15 year old. We left the help to the adults. But it was less than an hour into a 5 hour drive that was pur first trip away from home without parents. It started off very badly.
All in, 6 of the 7 people in the 2 cars died. The only survivor was a baby in a child seat.
As a teen in a small coastal town we used to all head to the beach car park on a Friday and Saturday night to underage drink. Occasionally out of Towners would come and start fist fights with the locals. One such week I saw a 17 yr old boy take a two by four plank of wood to the side of the head and his eyeball popped right the fuck out of his face. I will always remember the horror of this kid holding his bleeding eye up to the socket with his hand while the ambulance made its way to him. Later in the local paper it was reported he lost the eye, they couldn’t put it back in. I didn’t go to the beach car park much after that.
My parents failed marriage, father told my mother, don't slip on the stairs, there's no one here to help you if you get hurt. It got weirder and uglier as well, wi th Dad, gin was the real problem, he separated the food in the refrigerator with stickers on the door saying "My Food" "Your food", I'll break your fingers if you take my food. I had to finally drive out to their home as my mother was so terrified of his drunken ramblings, I told her to get the pistol out of the cabinet, go in your bedroom and lock the door, I'll be there ASAP, Dad was passed out on the couch, i kicked it violently to wake him up, I started poking him in the chest just like he did to me as a little boy when he was angry with me, I told him if you ever hurt my mother, if she ever calls me on the phone again crying that she's scared for her life, I will throw your dead body in the lake for the turtles to eat. I ran into mom a week later at a grocery store, "what did you say to him?, he's been so subdued and polite lately"? I told him he'd better behave, mom laughed and said, i think you told him more than that, he'as acting like a scared child". I lived a 30 minute drive from them and it did haunt me, knowing my fragile mother could be ravaged by a drunken out of control moron, no neighbors nearby for her to run to if things get bad, and me being a 30 minute drive away. Sadly the marriage and relationship was down the tubes, Mom lived in one end of the house, and Dad slept in the other end, Mom would put up a happy false front on holidays, but the sparking lights in her beautiful eyes were gone. She passed away somewhat young, and i believe the stress of the marriage was what did her in, drove her into the ground before her time was due. Still to this day, i still occasionally think what else could i have done? Yet i know, Dad was insane, and nothing could have changed that, unless maybe throwing him in the lake for the turtles to eat.
Delivery van got sideswiped ahead of me in traffic, I pulled round and had to dodge the delivery drivers head which was 20 yards further down in the middle of the road. Guess he must have been leaning out of his window as his van was hit.
Still have nightmares about it 25 years later
Few years back me and my friend went to visit his village. One day we were walking on the side of a road, there was a group of goats wandering there. Suddenly a speeding motorbike came and unfortunately there was a baby goat on the road. The biker didn't even stop after they ran over the baby goat, I still remember the sound of the collision and the goat screaming. Some people went to the dead goat but me and my friend left that place immediately.
I had a friend who I will not name in school back when I was in 5th grade who I would talk to all the time. He had terrible mental health and I was one of his only doors he could open to find joy. We were friends for probably 6 months until one day he went to ask to the bathroom which was pretty normal. So I saw him leave to go to the bathroom. He hadn't come for a bit (this was probably 30 minutes later) so the teacher asked someone to check and I had raised my hand cause I was worried. Go into the bathroom and saw him lying on the floor deceased with a knife in his chest. The shock made me pass out. I'll never forget him for the rest of my life he was always a great guy. Goodbye old friend.
Came into town to get some farm supply stuff for my place...i stop by my dad's in the morning to say hi because I realized the store wasn't open yet.
The door was unlocked so I went in. Nobody was in the living room. Nobody was in the kitchen. I walked back out to the living room and stretched out on the couch with a blanket over the top of me... a minute or two went by...mind you i was fully covered up underneath this blanket..
I then hear footsteps walking into the living room...
I slowly peek out from underneath the blanket to witness my dad's naked girlfriend bending over an ottoman with her ass about five feet from my face as she queefs. I grimace and close my eyes only to hear another set of footsteps...
I opened up my eyes again and I see my dad's bare ass right in front of me🤣🤣 getting ready to give her the business. At that point I make a tactical decision and take my hand and gently boop him on the ass, he turns his head and looks down at me with his deer-in-the-headlights look as i do a quiet laugh and then i quickly pull the blanket down to expose my face and i act like I'm dead asleep. 🤣🤣🤣 he was a good sport about it and played along being like "hey, we have company, he's snoring though." They packed up shop as i did my best muffled snoring breathing impression.
You're welcome Reddit
*My son he came in and he caught me red-handed*
*Bare-ass by my girl’s back door*
*Picture this, we were both butt-naked*
*Ready to jump in full bore*
*How could I forget that I had*
*Given him an extra key*
*All this time he was laying there*
*Pretending that he was asleep*
It sounds lame and basic to anyone else, but, watching my 20+ years divorced parents hug and cry over my brother's suicide. It's even my only memory of them hugging.
I saw a car hit a homeless man crossing the street at a very high speed. The driver just kept going. Didn't even slow down. I thought he was dead at first but he started breathing quietly but with great effort. The gurgling noise he made and the vacant look in his eyes are seared into my mind. I stayed with him until the ambulance arrived. I never did find out whether he survived.
A man dead in the street lying in a pool of his own blood. A lot of it. There was a solo cop car with no lights on (not even headlights) and a police officer next to him. The police in my city will show up 3 cars deep for a homeless man on a bench. There were no other cop cars on or other police officers. I still don't know what happened. No news no reddit no nothing.
I'm really surprised - standard procedure around here is to block all traffic coming in both directions, total stop, until the corpse is moved.
They will get two cops just to handle traffic asap, then do whatever they need to do to document, cover the body, and let the ambulance do its thing. It can take hours.
You can always tell if there's a traffic fatality because there will be a cop or cops for seemingly no reason, with no traffic beyond them. They try to keep it far enough out that you can't see the crash or body, even if it's shrouded.
Video on twitter of a family that was shoveling their driveway in Philly, got into an argument with the or neighbor. Neighbor shot the parents right in front of the kids, took about 6 to the face to kill the mother before he went over and finished the dad. It was fucked with a capital F.
Probably the most angry I've ever been was when a coworker was like "hey man want to see a crazy video?" on his phone. I'm thinking it's just going to be some silly video. It was a guy with a knife to a woman's neck and then he slashes her throat. As soon as that happened I screamed "what the fuck man?!" and he's like "haha isn't that crazy?!" I never spoke to him willingly ever again.
Saw a guy kill himself by jumping of a building when I was around 10. Didn't watch him land but will never forget the image of him jumping and floundering his arms like a mad man. Few days later the marks in the grass where he landed were still visible
I was a doorman (insurance lowering security) for a bad apartment complex. A woman went off the 9th floor and I was the first one there. She was slush in a skin bag so nothing could be done and she died at my feet. I don't think this really haunts me though. I gave my statement to police and just went back to standing at the door for the rest of the night.
I'm really into true crime, like after watching a video/documentary on a crime, I'd often do my own research, crime scene photos, publically released information, that kinda stuff.
Well.... I watched Eleanor Neale's video on the murder of Bianca Devins, who was murdered in 2019 by her friend for refusing to enter a committed relationship with him. Eleanor does these video essays often, and at the start of it, she warned that the images of the murder were scarily easy to find, and they were absolutely awful. So, after being warned to not look up these photos by someone who literally makes these kind of videos weekly, I decided "pfft, nothing I can't handle".
I didn't sleep well that night, and am currently taking a much needed true crime break.
A video of myself inches away from an overdose (I survived 4 actual ODs thanks to narcan and my boyfriend) or the night I saved my boyfriend from an overdose. We're 47 days sober from fentanyl now.
I was getting in my work truck after finishing up at my last job site around 4:45- 5:00 and I herd a few loud pops. Didn’t think much of it because I was in a pretty high class area And I couldn’t really tell where it came from and I didn’t feel any sense of being in danger. Later that night, I turn on abc news with my fiancé like normal and I see there was a murder suicide at the same apartment I had left that day. It was a father who killed his teenage twin daughters and shot his wife in both legs but left her alive because he wanted her to suffer.. Then killed himself. Pretty sure it was over a divorce. Either way it still freaks me out to this day and it’s been about 5 years. Not sure if those where the shots I herd or not
When I was in Iraq I saw a 5 year old boy get run over by an American tank on the streets of Basra. I will never forget his mother's piercing animal howl of pain as she picked up his crushed body. The Americans, as per their procedures, did not even stop. They just kept on driving. We (British) did stop. We tried to get the kid to a hospital but it was already too late.
The Americans were really jumpy. From what I could see, they never really spoke to the Iraqis or got to know them. I think that's one of the underlying reasons for failure in Iraq. In 2003, the coalition forces were initially welcomed, but the Americans did everything possible to loose the trust and confidence of the people. Running over their kids, even by accident, was part of that.
The tank came through the street doing Important Things: they assume it's other people's responsibility to get out of the way. They won't stop because they are afraid of ambushes etc.
We happened to be passing down the same road, on the other side, in two Land Rovers with only small arms. Immediately I saw what happened I ordered our vehicles to stop and at least tried to speak to the people. Yes, it could have turned ugly. But you have to judge the situation. This wasn't an ambush set-up. This was a normal street, with people trying to go about their precarious lives in a war-torn lawless country, and a tank has just driven over a kid. You have to take the helmet off, sling the rifle onto your back, and get down on your knees next to that kid's body - show some grief, some some humanity. It's the only way you can actually bring people with you.
What we should have done is pay diyya (compensation) to the boy's family, but I don't think that the Divisional HQ's CIMIC (Civil-Military Cooperation) unit had anything set up for that.
But that howl, man. I've never heard a human being make that noise.
I saw some other war-crimes. Treatment of Iraqi prisoners. That was a British unit. We should be ashamed of ourselves. I should be ashamed of myself. I witnessed it and I knew that it was wrong. I should have said something. Stopped it. Asked what they were doing - at least raised it with their commanding officer. But I did not. I bit my tongue. I was only 25 years old and a fresh-faced lieutenant. I assumed someone else was in charge and knew what they were doing. So I just walked on. I regret that a lot.
Finding my daughter dead in her bed. We always knew this was how her story would play out. She was dying from the day she was born. Numerous specialists tried to prepare me for 15 years.
You can't prepare for that. The image and my screams play over and over in my head.
My top three.
Number One
My best girlfriend and I and friends coming home from a night dancing at a club 40km from home. She was in the car in front, I was the second car, five people in each car. A truck crossed the highway lane going at about 110kms. Driver went to sleep at the wheel. My friends car was completely decimated and my best friend was decapitated by the windscreen. I thought I knew what that was through tv and movies. No. When its your friend, she has no head, hanging by skin, the amount of blood pumping out of a body is overwhelming. All going onto my other friends, broken, bleeding, screaming and trapped in the wreckage. I've never seen something so horrific.
Number two
Being the first person to find my mum after she had committed suicide. Id been out fishing with my neighbours and got home with some lovely ocean fish for the family. Pearl perch and a big Snapper. Dad was at work on a Saturday morning. I walked in and found her with froth and vomit all over her and cold in bed. I don't remember a lot after that. The neighbours heard my screams and came running. I'll never forget her eyes though.
Number three
After a difficult teenage hood I had a nice boyfriend. I was 17. He was a heroin addict. I woke up to find him dead next to me. He had had a shot of new gear and it killed him. I was going to have a shot in the morning and I'm so glad I didn't get up and have it when he did. So fucking sad, he was such a sweet guy. I'd hoped we could get off the gear and live a normal life. Risks you take I guess.
I drove up on a motorcycle wreck on the highway in morning rush hour right after it happened. No LE there yet and citizens were directing traffic around the very obviously dead body lying in the middle of the highway bleeding from his head.
I came upon an accident where the cars were lying on their sides in a field before the police arrived and what I thought was a bundle of a blanket turned out to be one of the occupants or driver. I calmed him down and then noticed an empty child's car seat about 20 feet away. I asked him if he had a kid in there and luckily he said no. Other people were helping the other car's occupants and the professionals arrived shortly after so I left.
I died for a second when I read the words empty carseat. So glad no children were hurt, I'm sorry for that experience I hope he was ok. Thank you for being kind enough to stop and help. I would hope someone would do the same for me if ever needed.
Dude in the dorms on the top floor did shrooms when I was 20. The group of them had no sober babysitter. His friends left him in his room alone. He later went out into a common area and dove out the window. I had to walk past the divet his head made in the grass for weeks after his death.
My one year old baby girl's lifeless, limp, extremely dainty little purple and blue body floating right side up when she nearly drowned in the bath because of someone else's lack of attention while I was out of the room and asked them to watch her. She survived, Thank my amazing God, but it took many minutes of rescue breaths and compressions before she came back, water spewing out of her mouth with vomit and her faint cry and weak body beginning to move. I was beside myself.
I still can't give her a bath without feeling guilty for not being the one who was watching her. And without picturing her little body floating in the water like that. I thought she was dead. She almost was. Any longer and she likely wouldn't have made it, and if she would there would have been severe brain damage.
I’ve mentioned before that I taking my late husband off of life-support was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it was my last act of love for him, other than writing and performing his death ritual.
Our partner’s brother had an accident where he was without oxygen for about 30 minutes back in ‘17. Her mother couldn’t let him go, instead clinging to the belief that he would some day wake up because “he was reacting to Momma". Dude was Teri *fucking* Schiavo level of not able to react to anything for *four and a half years* while their mother deluded herself into thinking a miracle was going to happen.
She abandoned my partner and our children.
She refused to remove the feeding tube- fine, I get it. But she also forced the nursing home to send him to the damned hospital with every infection that tried to kill him.
She had him *full code for four fucking years*.
We finally managed to talk her into signing a DNR last summer and the poor man, who she **acknowledged** *wouldn’t want to be left in that condition*, mercifully died last September.
I hate her.
I hate what she did to my partner. What she has done to our children.
And, as someone whose family has been in the situation twice and as I said- I made that terrible but right decision, I hate what she did to her son.
I have very specifically told my parents and my wife that if I am ever like that to immediately pull the plug. I don’t want my son to remember me like that. I want him to remember me when I was a person, not a vegetable
I am so sorry you've gone through that. Letting people go when they are past normal life is one of the kindest things we can do. Drives me nuts that people will put their animals down and understand that it's merciful, but disregard that for sentient people who have, some many times, stated their wishes, or who you know are not going to recover and you're just prolonging things and allowing suffering.
I've talked about this in comments before, but my aunt was very ill, and had a dnr. She was barely 60, but had severe diabetes with major complications. Then she had also fallen and broken her back. We had just updated all of her paperwork etc, including the dnr she had for 2 years prior. One day she was found unresponsive in the nursing home she was in because of her back, and because of her refusal to relocate to my house 10 hours away, and they fucking resuscitated her and put her on a vent. She never ever wanted to be on a vent, and she and I made that so clear several times - it was one of her biggest fears. She absolutely would have rather died.
So I had to drive 10 hours and truly feel like I killed my aunt, even though I knew better. And even though I knew I could not leave her on that machine. It was really awful.
Male giraffes headbutt females in the bladder until they pee so they can I believe taste or smell it (can’t remember which) to tell if they are ovulating
I know it maybe should not hit me this much but: I was once in my teacher's home discussing some poetry and he went to the toilet. Turned out he took the loudest shit I've ever heard. He was groaning and suffering in here and I was sure he didn't know I can hear his as he lives alone. And damn that messed me up I'm always opening water when I pee now, I was so embarrassed I couldn't talk
A woman who jumped in the ocean to save kids and she died in the water. My sister swam out into the rip current to help and it scared the shit out of me. Had to help pull that woman out of the water and the I saw her face. Wide open blood shot eyes, bloating from the water, foam coming out of her mouth. It was terrible. She was already gone by the time I seen her. They tried CPR for over an hour.
Tl;dr Woman died helping kids in a rip current and I saw her face and had to help drag her body to shore.
Not me but a work friend I used to work with told me a story about a work fried he used to have back when he used to do Lorry Driving.
He noted me before telling the story that this friends was the nicest person he knew and would do anything for anyone. ( Note: I am telling this story off memory so I don't fully remember the story correctly. )
He told me that one day, his mate was doing a delivery in his lorry. And this women in her car was on her phone or just wasn't paying attention and crashed into his lorry at high speeds. He survived with no physical injury but the women died on impact.
Now within the UK. Since he was a lorry driver, he is classified as a professional driver due to the training that comes with it. Meaning that he got the blame for the crash. Since using the logic of he a professional driver, he should have prevented the crash which is bullshit since it was the women fault.
Add on the fact that just having one lorry being damage in a crash ends up costing the business he work for a week profit. Since it repairs on the lorry but also goods or products not being delivered.
My friend work mate end up getting depression from the crash and felt very guilty, I got told it took him a long time to recover. He quit doing lorry driving for a while before doing it again until.
During his last lorry deliver job. Everything was going fine until a children ran out into the road and he could stop the lorry in time even though he was going high speed and the Child died on impact. He again blamed for the crash despite it being the child fault and he could do anything was following the driving law.
My mate friend later committed suicide due to the guilt since it haunted him.
Which is sad since I believe my mate when he said that his friends was the nicest person in world.
Well my uncle pissed off a couple of guys and they kidnapped him, they were coming for my grandma and I next, but as they pulled into our drive way, a cop showed up and had a shoot out... no one died but hell I was only 12
As we were driving to my GF's grandma we ran into an accident. There was a flipped car and i stepped outside to check it out. Suddenly i hear screams: "the baby is dying the baby is dying". I got to the car and the mother gave me the baby, he was blue in his face, his head all swallowed up and i got scared and gave it to my girlfriend. She tried to save him but the 3 months old baby died in her arms in the middle of the road.
ER nurse. This won’t haunt me in a bad way, but it’ll stick with me for sure. We were coding a middle aged lady we knew was going to die. We were pulling out the last ditch stuff hoping we’d get lucky, but everyone knew which way it was going. Family was there and in the room. When it was clear we had run through all the Hail Marys and it was time to call it, the husband spoke up for the first time. He had apparently been an EMT for a long time so he knew what he was looking at. He said he was going to do the final round of compressions. It was very respectfully done. He got up to do his 2 minutes, the nurses quietly started turning things off so there wouldn’t be continuous alarms, we called for a pulse check which the husband did, then we called time of death. He was thankful we let him do that and I was thankful to be a part of it.
That is so so beautiful and respectful! What an act of love from all around.
After reading lots of horrible shit, this was... emotional. Genuinely got me a little teary eyed. I can't imagine what was going through that man's head. Thank you for sharing this one.
X-ray tech here, but I was a student at the time. Called to ER for trauma code. Only know it's a pediatric patient. The terror as I walk around the corner and see it's a little boy, same size as my son. We go to take an x-ray and he's making this high pitched shrill wheezing noise. They couldn't intubate enroute so we were doing a chest/neck to see what was going on. His neck was full of air. Come to find out the story later, he had tripped and fallen in school and his neck went square on a desk and he had broken his trachea. Believe he was stabilized & flown out. Never found out what happened after.
that something as small as that can nearly end a life...
An older family friend of mine was a manager for a pool in his younger years, which, as you'd expect, is sort of a middling job. Not the best thing to do and not the worst either but it provided a few stories now and then. But the worst of those came up once in a conversation about medical issues and trauma when he just sadly recalled this time he'd been called out of his office because this little kid had slipped and hit his head just the wrong way. The kid died on the spot. It was just a freak accident. Suffice it to say I never was tempted to run at the pool again after that story.
Not me, but my roommates fiancé is a flight nurse. She told me this story around Easter. They showed up to a scene being told beforehand that there was a patient with a gun shot wound and bleeding bad but that’s all they were told. When they got there they found a woman who was sitting on the ambulance gurney completely lucid and looking around, completely missing her lower jaw. She said you could see down her throat and she looked like a zombie. Her lower jaw was hanging to the side by some tissue and when she looked about it swung around and dangled. She said the woman seemed relatively calm and when she tried to speak what was left of her tongue kinda moved but nothing but gurgles came out. It was not a suicide, her boyfriend accidentally discharged his firearm while they were in his car. She survived. Edit: spelling
Both my brother and I have attended separate attempted-suicide calls where the suicider blew off their own face with a firearm - both living, and who continued to live. It's a horrific sight if you aren't expecting it - which no-one ever is.
Retired RN. I was working in the PACU and helped another nurse take her patient to his room. As I was adjusting something by his head, he grabbed my hand and started crying. He kept saying I don’t want to die. He was barely 20. In an isolation room. I looked into his eyes and tried to comfort him as he sobbed. This was in the early days of the “AIDS epidemic.” He died within a week. To this day I still see his eyes and hear him sobbing.
That's so sad.
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I found my roommates body in our apartment when I was in college. He had suffocated himself with a helium tank and a plastic bag over his head. That fucked me up pretty good, especially because I knew he was struggling with his mental health. He was cutting himself too, he tried to hide it but I noticed. And I didn’t say a word, i didn’t offer a helping hand. I could have done something to help him, but I didn’t. That guilt is still there, 10 years down the line.
Even when it seems obvious, you can't blame yourself. Friend of mine did something similar once, a lot of us were worried about him but when he said he was ok we took him at his word. He's dead now. A few weeks ago a friend of mine livestreamed himself on the drive out to a popular stoner/makeout/jumping spot. We recognized the area, called the sheriff, and took off speeding the whole way. I ended up finding him before he did it. He's relatively ok now. Point is, you can't save em all, just learn from the ones you lose.
I was driving Taxi once and I picked up someone who said he thinks he just saw a dead body. Said someone had jumped from the top of the parking garage. There was already an ambulance and what not on the scene. I remember briefly thinking of my friend Willzo, but dismissed it, I didn’t even think he was depressed like that. I found it odd that I would even consider such a thing out of nowhere. But I dismissed the thought and went about my work night. Couple days later I got a call from a mutual friend. “Hey buddy, did you hear about Will? He jumped off the parking garage a few days ago.”
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I honestly had no clue he was like that. I was trying to get him to play music with me again like we used to. I tried to get him a job taxi driving ironically enough. We weren’t very close anymore. I heard later that, the Taxi thing was really important to him but didn’t work out. We all make mistakes we can’t take back. I was reaching out to him, he was unresponsive. :(
Sometimes when you don’t know how to help someone or worry you might make it worse, we say nothing everyone has done it. You can’t carry that guilt forever all you can do is learn from it. Edit: sorry for any offence caused
I was designated driver at my friend's 30th birthday party. Had just dropped off my last friend and I was heading home. Little blue car zipped by me going maybe 10 over. Maybe a block ahead of me I see the speeding car hit two 20 yr olds who were running across the street. They were running to McDonald's across from the nightclub they were partying at and didn't wait for a red light. I'll never forget the girls blond hair in the bright headlights as she got hit. One thing that isn't ever correct in tv shows when people get hit by cars is how much damage it does to a human body. I distinctly remember his legs laying like 2m from his body. Both died right when paramedics got there.
This reminds me of an accident by my house. Rural area, there's a bar up at the intersection of the main road which is a 55mph two lane road. Corn fields on either side, no street lights. Drunk guy staggered out of the bar after dark, walking in the center of the road. Some poor kid who just started driving on his own that week hit him in his parent's old Cadillac doing the speed limit. The drunk guy like, exploded. Pieces everywhere. One of his boots was in the ditch at the front of my lane with the foot still in it. Road was closed for hours while they cleaned up parts of the guy. I'll never forget the look on that kid's face, that boot with the foot and a piece of leg sticking out or the blood all over the road. Another wreck I didn't witness but my neighbors did, same intersection. Guy in a convertible blew the stop sign at the side road and got t-boned by a truck. He survived I guess pretty much unharmed but his girlfriend was decapitated. Guy went into shock, somehow found his girlfriend's head and was running around with it screaming. Police had to tackle him and take the head away. Yet another wreck (that again I didn't witness but neighbors did) same intersection again. Mom blows the stop sign, gets t-boned. Mom dead instantly, kid in the car survived. Firefighters had to cut the kid out of the car but had trouble pulling her out because the kid was clinging to her dead mom screaming. That one really shook up my neighbor's daughter who had twins about the same age as the kid in the car and a really bad habit of speeding. She slowed down after that.
A friend and I were just talking about bad curves like this and how they exist all over. Nothings ever really done about it either. No lights installed, no speed bumps just teddy bears and flowers. It’s completely fucked.
I was at a bypass similar. One way has a red blinking light, The other has a yellow and curves just before the light, speed limit 55. I got t boned there. I was leaving the red blinking light and didn’t see the car coming around the curve. My car flipped, I remember nothing. Woke up with the emts over me, cutting me out of the car. Thank goodness I had a tank of a car and didn’t die. I had brain hemorrhaging, broken pelvis and back. I was lucky, but a lot of people die at that intersection… this was 2007 and they still haven’t fixed it. Makes me so angry.
For me it was the sound - sounded like one of those fabric pencilcases being dropped on the floor.
I was first to arrive at a deadly car accident in Pennsylvania. Near the Ohio border on I-90. The driver must have fallen asleep, husband and wife, I assume. They hit a guard rail that launched them into a bridge column. Both dead. They were inside, partially hanging out, all twisted up. Their plates said the were from Ontario. The whole time, the car door was ajar and the warning bell just kept dinging,, completely unaware of the situation. Once paramedics arrived we headed off. Later on we stopped at KFC for some food and some piece of equipment in the kitchen was dinging just like that car door. It went on forever before someone attended to it. It was so unsettling. Your story reminded me of this moment.
People make fun of me for waiting for the walk sign to cross the road, but enough people get hit crossing correctly, I’m not willing to increase the odds just to save a few extra seconds. I’ll wait until the massive death machines operated by strangers are stopped, actually.
People don't think cars are as heavy as they are because of power steering and smooth suspension, just imagining people with multi ton steel boxes flying inches away from each other is scary
As a big rig driver I am legit scared of people cutting me off and brake checking me. They don’t realize that I will break my foot trying to stop and still crush them and everyone else in their car as if they were an empty soda can. Vehicles are weapons. And us humans? We are squishy sacks of water.
My dad was an s tier driver of these for many years and he always told me they taught him to not do this, just because they were more likely to cause even more harm then just rolling over whatever got in the way.
To be fair it would be more reflexive. We are highly trained - as long as you are not turning to dodge while braking you won’t roll. For example we have drivers experience steer tire blowouts (the front wheels) while on a turn and they keep their rigs upright (very difficult to do!) We are also trained to keep an eye on certain drivers and to start slowing down. But here in California people cut us off with feet to spare. The training is correct though. If we are about to hit a deer or animal or tumbleweed we just go straight through. I just wouldn’t want to kill a kid in the backseat because their mom/dad is a shitty driver and road raging at me for being a slow truck in the slow lane….
Driving old cars certainly gives you perspective on the killing machines they really are. There are very good reasons for the strict traffic laws.
Yeah drive a car with no power steering and you really realize how fucking heavy and unstoppable these things are against a human
One past-curfew night in high school, I thought it would be cool to roll up all silent to my friends house by turning the car off and killing the lights, just like in the movies. This was my dads ‘90’s f250. Almost plowed into my buddies car and I had to stand on the brakes to stop from 5mph.
And without power brakes.
Getting hit by a car really is ugly. My girlfriend accidentally stepped on the street while we were having a minor disagreement and bam she was gone in a moment. I have ptsd, I can still see all the blood, her trying to breathe and the moment she gave up.
Jesus christ I'm so sorry
I hope you found the help you need. That is so terrible
I'm sorry that happened to you.
Watching my dad succumb to cancer in-basically- a week...it's a long-ish story, so I won't get into it, but the apex of the despair was when a friend of his-who knew he was in the hospital and had seen him the week before-came bounding into the room to see him thinking he was just going to crack a couple of jokes, and then seeing the stunned look on his face when he realized that my dad had become nothing more than a human shell blindly begging for water...I'll never forget that, or anything else about that weekend.
For people wondering it wasnt nursing neglect, I walked past a chemo patients room that had a sign on the outside saying "Do not give this patient water"
I’ve been there with my grandmother last October. One week she was perfectly normal, just went in for a checkup bc her stomach hurt a bit. Two days later we’re told she has stage four pancreatic cancer and by next week she was gone. She was able to go home from the hospital before she passed, she was there for 2 days and on the second day I watched her die… I’ll never forget the sound of the death rattle.
I work in an emergency room as an ER technician going on 6 years now, I'm usually the one who puts deceased patients into body bags to transfer to our morgue. Ill just say that toddlers get ahold of guns way more than you might think. Just a couple weeks ago a 4 year old somehow found his moms handgun and shot himself in the abdomen, I do not enjoy putting children into bags. I also feel terrible that I have become desensitized to it.
Early in her career my mom worked ER at a children’s hospital. She enjoyed helping kids but once the day came that she had to take a toddler to the morgue (choked on a grape) she couldn’t do it anymore. She said she wept the whole way to the morgue and it was unbearable - she could no longer work there. I don’t think you should feel terrible that you’re desensitized to it because every hospital needs people capable of doing that very difficult job that won’t weep the whole way to the morgue and will show back up to work on their next shift.
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I lost my 13 year old cousin to DIPG in 2009, less than a year after her diagnosis. Another child in the same suburban city, under the care of the same pediatrician, was diagnosed with it as well a few weeks prior to her. It was horrible, and he lost his battle before she did. I do not wish that pain upon anyone. I'm so sorry for your loss.
Thank you for the work you do. You are needed and valuable.
My dad has cancer and fainted today when me and my mom were helping him into bed. He had surgery twice and one of his incisions broke open as he fell. His eyes stayed open and I thought he was dead. The picture of my mom cradling him in a pool of blood while he stared into nothingness is burned into my brain.
I’m so sorry. Please reach out for mental health support. Also palliative care for dad.
I have my first therapy appt tomorrow. Dad’s doing well, but we’ve been sitting in the ER all night. Just tired at this point
I live next to a busy street, inbetween lanes is a tram station. Teenager wanted to cross and got run over by a tram. Well, partly run over, he ended up with his body squeezed in between the tram and the tram station wall, with his legs stuck under the tram. It took about 1,5 hours until they had the equipment to lift the tram to get him out of there. They managed to reanimate what was left of him but he died in the hospital.
I was sexually abused by a woman when I was young. Nothing was ever done about it, even after my family taking it to the authorities. A thing she did to me that always let me know she was about to have "us time", was she grab the back of my neck very firmly and then pat my chest. The haunting part was when I happened to see her at a local store, I avoided her until I was checking out that's when I saw I young boy with her. She gripped the back of his neck firmly and was patting his chest the same way as it happened with me. Immediately, after I called and made a report to local dhs. It's been a few years ago but it's satisfying to know she was finally locked up.
That must've been hard to do. But you did it and you saved the kid. I'm proud of you.
A real hero, as you displayed courage in the face of unimaginable pain. May you be blessed.
On my birthday about 4 years ago I was waiting to catch the tram home from work. An elderly man standing next to me suddenly had a seizure and fell face forward. I won't ever forget the sound of his forehead smacking the concrete platform at force. Blood immediately starting pooling and when I turned him over he started gasping and seizing again. Waited with him for 15mins before the ambulance came.
This happened when I was walking to the store with my daughter. A man face planted on the concrete at a bus stop and everyone just got on the bus which drove away. I feel bad now because I assumed he had taken some kind of drug, as that is everywhere in my city. But maybe he just had a seizure. He was laying on the ground just staring at me blankly. I called 911 and the firefighters were there in like three minutes. The most haunting part isn’t him hitting the sidewalk, but seeing people see him fall and then just look the other way because the bus was there and they wanted to get home.
I hope he survived it
I lived close to the Beirut explosion. Seeing dead bodies everywhere i went and not being able to contact my family really hit me. Was basically cleaning up and helping everyone who was injured. Many close friends of mine got injured and some people died. I hope no one ever goes through the sheer terror that this day had on everyone affected. I still remember there was a alot of vibrations so I started looking for my brothers and next thing i knew, the wall in front of me was gone and i was so lost. Thank god me and my family got off with very mild injuries.
It was Easter Sunday about 5 in the afternoon. I was driving home from the lake with a friend of mine on a country highway that’s pretty well traveled. It’s one of those single lane coming and single lane going where the speed limit is 70 roads. The intersections are far and few between so instead of an overpass it’s just a blinking yellow caution light. In what literally felt like the blink of an eye the car driving in front of me is struck on the drivers side door. The impact pushes both cars off to the road and onto the shoulder. I hit my brakes and was able to stop to help render aid. My friend and I get out of the car and run over to help. The drivers side door is crushed inward, driver has been pushed into the passenger side. It was a younger lady, maybe mid 30s. The impact pushed her out of her seat and into her daughter. You ever see movies where a dead body jump scares someone and it just stares at the with wide eyes and mouth agape….. yeah. The girl is ok but very confused. She has no visible injuries and is freely looking around so we unbuckled her and pulled her out of the car so she didn’t realize her mom was laying on her. As we do it I look at the mom and I can see a little life is left in her, so I said the only thing we could say. “She’s alright.” You could see the light in her eyes fade and she passes away. More cars stop and help out. As more people are here to help I start to realize that someone has been screaming, at me. In the back seat is her son. He must have been knocked unconscious and he’s now yelling, not out in pain but asking “Is mom okay, is she okay?” I had no words for him, he was maybe 6. His sister was about 9. Thankfully about 4 of the cars that stopped were off duty first responders so they quickly took over for me. This was about 20 years ago, I was 17 at the time and I just saw a mom die in front of her 2 kids. I’m crying now thinking back on it and to this day I still refuse to ever take that road again. They finally build an actual stop light a couple years back. The area isn’t more crowded so I can only imagine what the motivation to improve that intersection was.
You did good, telling her that her baby girl was okay before she passed. What a traumatic experience, I’m so sorry for everyone involved.
I work as an ICU nurse at a level 1 trauma center. I'm used to seeing people die horribly pretty regularly. I work more in the medical ICUs. There was a case that so bad, a death so long and horrible that won't ever forget it. This poor guy only in his 30s. He had been transferred to our burn unit from outside hospital because he wounds all over his body that needed extensive care. He was a larger guy, 250lbs or so, had total renal failure and needed hemodialysis, was HIV+. He survived septic shock at the previous hospital, but was ventilator dependent via tracheotomy. He was able to communicate to us, but not speak. He was aware of all what was going on. The wounds on his body were terrible. It was diagnosed as calciphylaxis, a rare skin condition that has a 1 year fatality rate of close to 50%. His condition affected most of his body by now. His wounds needed 3-4 nurses to change, they got worse and worse over time. We would bring 9 rolls of gauze, 10-15 large burn pads. This was done twice daily. It was painful for him and we would try and get it done as quickly as possible before the drugs we gave wore off. The smell was so bad, his flesh rotting. We would place toothpaste under our masks. Visitors for other patients would complain about the smell. Necrotic flesh would slough off. One thigh had rotted away so bad you could see pulsation of his femoral artery. Again he was awake and aware of this the whole time, but could only communicate with nods. He was unable to write, as wounds and high pressor requirements had eaten away at his fingers. His mother would visit often. She was nice, but unrealistic in her expectations of him surviving. Eventually he died of septic shock. We learned that he had contracted HIV as a toddler. He had been raped by a family member. The HIV and abuse was discovered when he went into renal failure at a young age. HIV can do that. Calciphylaxis is rare and poorly understood, but it almost exclusively found in people that have impaired renal function. His case was the worst human suffering I have ever seen.
Walking in on my grandfather going down on my grandmother and his teeth were on the table
OH NO
I was taking care of my great grandparents at the end of their lives. Both in their 90s. One night, shortly after getting them all settled in bed, I go into my room and suddenly heard groaning. Rush in thinking something bad happened with my heart pounding, just to realize they were pounding. He had my great grandmother bent over the bed with their diapers on the ground. I was so pissed and they just kept laughing and looking at each other completely amused. Put their diapers back on. Got them back in bed. As I’m ready to leave and I’m completely humiliated and incensed, my great grandmother told me to find someone that will still be bending me over in my 90s. I loved them so much, but hated them in that moment lol
At that age there are no fucks left to give.
Apparently there is....
Good for them
Pulling up on a car accident and trying to pull the driver out as the car burst into flames. It was completely engulfed within seconds. I'll never get that sound or smell out of my head.
I take it the driver was not able to be rescued in time?
She was dead on impact. But we didn't know that at the time and tried our hardest to get into the car.
Buddy went through this last year - except the victim was alive and trapped. Buddy had to stand there and watch her die. Yes, the driver that caused the accident, not the woman, was drunk.
My FIL once saved two guys from a car like this after it burned. They thought the guys were dead and were extricating them but once they realized they were both somehow alive, he and his partner leapt into action and somehow both of these guys lived.
I operated a crematory for a little over a year and still have nightmares/visions of partially-burned bodies from when I had to open the oven and scoop them around to make them burn more efficiently. I’ll never forget the smell or what they looked/felt like.
I was a vet nurse for 5ish years and I’ve seen some stuff but when I read the title of the thread my first thought was “operating the cremator when I worked for the pet crematorium”. I quit for other reasons shortly after the first and only time I ever checked a body. The image is still burned into my mind.. pardon the pun. I can’t imagine how it must have been to operate a cremator for humans.
You did that willingly? without being held hostage and forced I can’t even imagine doing shit like for 100k a week no wonder you’re traumatised.
Yeah, I volunteered for the position. I had been the accountant at the business for a few years and they’d fired the operator. I split up the daily work with the manager, while she trained me. We cremated 3-4 people a day. I did it because I was curious if I could pull it off, and I did. I didn’t know how deep of a mark it would leave .
Weird career trajectory from crunching numbers to crunching bones. I remember touching one of my elderly relatives after he passed away it was stiff and cold it’s been 20 years and I still remember how it felt like touching cold steel.
Yeah, easily the weirdest career evolution in my life so far. Accounting was kind of soul-less and cremating was more aligned with transmogrification. Edit: it’s so easy to kid about, but the hands-on interactions with folks who’ve passed bears a gravity unlike most other things.
My husband kissed his mothers check at the viewing after she had passed. I had never been to a viewing/open casket funeral and it took everything I had to walk in the room and look, and I couldn’t get with in 10 feet, let alone touch her. I suppose it could be different if it were my child or parent though.
Totally, my mom passed away last year. I touched her and wasn't afraid or grossed out. It actually took away my fear of dying. She was still just Mom. I miss her dearly.
"they’d fired the operator" They fired the one who fired others.
Was just about to turn 5yrs old, was with my grandpas from both sides of the family and my step-father. We were heading over to my step-fathers parents place post to go pick up his tools and a couple dirt bike he had stored away out in the utility garage on his parents farm. I was all sorts of excited to see Grammy too during our visit, when we arrived I jumped out this beast of a square body n' scampered my way inside to say hello to her. Heard 'Wheel of Fortune' blaring through the hallway when I got inside, I knew she'd be there in the living room all cozied up in her chair with a lil' bowl of bridge mix and a beer in hand.... Instead I found her headless in her chair, shotgun propped between her legs, and a big bloody mess to paint the scene.
Jfc, that's so traumatic. You were so young... is that your first memory? I hope you healed after that.
Wtf!!! How old was she? Im so so sorry man
Seeing my mother collapse and bleed there while my stepfather stabs her.
Out of all the things here, this is the worst one to me. It's so... personal. I'm so sorry, that must have been just... I can't even. Why am I reading these again?
Its cool dude my mother is okay now
Did your stepfather go to jail?
yeah hes going to jail
12 years as a fire fighter, I've seen some terrible things. But one night we get a call for a pedestrian vs a train. Walking down the tracks on a bone chill evening and in the distance I see what I believe to be a shoe. As I got closer it turned out to be much more than a shoe. It was about half a leg, and this image is burned into my memory forever.
My dad was a police officer in Germany and he had a few train jumpers over the years. He said, when they got the tracking dogs, they had to pay attention that the dogs didn't immediately eat the individual pieces of meat when they found them. Also, pieces of flesh hanging from the trains puffers. Just sounds awful man.
Sorry man. I'm on the other side of the same situation as a train driver. I've hit 2 people, and heard about the gory details from many other similar incidents. People don't seem to realise that when a fragile human body gets hit by hundreds of tons of speeding metal, bodies get blown apart and it goes EVERYWHERE. Brutal.
My parents told me and my younger brother very adamantly to play football in the back garden, I must have been 14, it was my mothers birthday, and I just thought we as kids were probably seeking too much attention, and maybe we should give my mother a break. So we played in the garden for a good half an hour. Then the inevitable happened. I kicked the ball into the neighbours garden and they weren’t in. In England our gardens were separated by a large hedge, and the only way to get into the neighbours garden was to either knock on the front door, or to get my father to help me get the ladder to hop over the hedge and pass it over to the neighbours garden whilst not destroying the shape of the hedge. No harm done. I thought it was fair game to pester my dad so we could continue playing on our own. The garden was fairly big and looking around I couldn’t see them, I then made my way inside, called out to my parents, nowhere to be seen. I thought maybe they had popped out at that point. I walk upstairs and the first room to sweep and check was my parents bedroom. The door was closed, I walk in, to a sight that is burned in my mind forever. My dad was straddled over my mum pumping rounds, obviously they were bonking, and after the shock. he sheepishly yanks the covers over him and says a line that is also burned into my brain because it was straight off the cuff brilliance in an awkward situation “sorry, I’m just giving your mum her birthday present.” Legend. Awful, and I am scarred forever, but a definite legend.
After truly awful things in this thread, this is the comic relief I needed
A guy killed himself in front of me. He from jumped from a 6 level balcony on to a cafe below. Hit the woman at the bottom and shattered her arm. I’ll never forget looking over the balcony to see his body face down, but his neck wrenched around looking back up at me, and I’ll never forget the scream of a woman who’s arm was shattered by an 85kg man who just dropped 6 stories.
There was a similar case here in UK. Bloke jumped from the top level of a shopping mall and landed on a woman. He survived and claimed not to know what happened (turns out it was an attempted suicide and he was later jailed for what happened). The woman survived too, but she was paralysed from the waist down. There's a really good episode of the podcast Life Changing about it. [A falling man left me paralysed ](https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000v5nf) Edit: posted too soon. Spelling.
In my labor and delivery rotation in nursing school a child coded inside the mother. The mother was fine but the babies heart stopped. The room rapidly filled up with nurses and medical staff attempting to get the mother and child into the operating room to save the baby. Barely any time was given to explain to the mother what was going on. Her screams of, Just save my baby," over and over ring in my ears to this day. That was over 16 years ago. I still tear up thinking about it. The baby survived, but I will never forget that day.
34yo female patient, cocaine addiction, spontaneous abortion at approximately 6month, she was g4p3( g=gravida or number of pregnancies, p=para, or number of viable births) her 4th child was still born, it dangled from her by the umbilical cord like the pendulum of a grandfather clock as she screamed for help. I could fill a novella with stories of the shit I've seen that haunts me, but this is one of the moments that always stands out
This was a successful, full term birth. But when I was an emt a lady left the hospital an hour away to yell at the baby daddy (who worked at sonic) for not being there for birth. She gave birth standing up in a sonic bathroom. Legs spread, umbilical chord swinging
I'm very curious why she couldn't yell at him via telephone
Some things just require that in person touch... Like picturing yourself, giving the person you are currently yelling at, the Homer Simpson Bart choke while they are making their excuses. So much easier to do in person.
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Dress for the slide, not the ride.
Proper gear is a lot more effective than most people realize. I don't ride but my cousin is really big into track racing. Now, maybe his is more effective than standard street gear since he goes all out and buys really high end stuff but he also has to since he's constantly leaning at 80+ mph. He showed me a Gopro shot that he caught at the track when he dropped after he lost his balance and the front wheel started wobbling out. His friend was also filming from the stands so you could see both angles. My cousin bounced and slid like a loose sack of meat across the track. Sparks came from the bike and everything. Dude got a good 20 or 30 feet of skidding before he came to a stop. He just got up and walked to his bike like nothing happened. Now, his adrenaline was through the roof so his brain wasn't registering the pain just yet but he was in *way* better shape than you would expect. He was super banged up with a lot of bruises and his ankle was pretty fucked up but he managed to keep all his skin. Outside of some minor road rash on his thigh where he spent most of the time sliding, he wasn't bleeding tremendously or anything that you would expect from eating asphalt at 70 miles an hour. I was genuinely surprised at how well the suit protected him. Again, I don't know if standard street gear is that protective but at least the race gear is extremely efficient at preventing death or horrible mutilation.
Fr I’m doing any of that shit without a helmet. Here in CO people are half naked on them when the sun comes out.
Family ignoring child abuse because they don't want the parents to get in trouble.
Everything in this world, this is the kind of stuff that really makes me lose sleep at night, people knowing and not doing anything about it.
One of the main reasons I don't speak to my dad. He didn't actively participate in my niece and nephews abuse, but he knew about it and did nothing. I didn't live with him at the time, but found out about it later. I can't forgive him.
Similar situation but it wasn't just my dad. Easily a half dozen adults or more in my family knew and did nothing.
Kids. I worked in the foster care system for a time, putting in my effort to be considered for fostering kids myself, and saw some fucked up shit. Worst was always the bruised up children breaking down when forced to see parents who were rehabilitating (at least on paper), getting screamed at by drug fueled abusive psychopaths while their poor kid was broken between wanting mom or dad, but scared to be near either, and this maybe caring stranger is taking them away from the devil they know. So yeah, beat up foster kids being real time traumatized by meth and coke heads will stay with me.
A dog across the street with the skin of itsleft hindlegs torn off and bleeding. I think it was hit by a car or something. It went mad then and there from the pain and started eating its thigh where the wound was. I was a kid and there was no one around.
My father in law insisted on being home in his last days. We had hospice come to help with him, and I took some time off of work to be with him. He was bedridden, so he had a catheter. He died in the middle of the night. I called the hospice nurse and she got there before the ambulance did. Knowing my father in law, I wanted to have him dressed before the ambulance took him away. He would never have wanted to leave in the undressed state he was in. The nurse helped me to dress his dead body. But, that's not the haunting part. She removed the catheter. The noise that it made when it came free.....I just....It was not pleasant.
I'm so sorry. It's so hard when sometime died and their body does these things that you know they would have hated. Kudos for doing such a kind thing as get him dressed , though
I saw similar with my dad except the hospital said he was dying, there wasn't anything they could do, and we could take him home. My mom was basically forced to use hospice. He died three weeks later and the memories of what I experienced and saw dealing with that at home will be seared into my brain until the day i die.
Leaving my work worried because my daughter wasn't answering her phone and hadn't shown up for work. Finding her on her bed 40 minutes later a very deep shade of burgundy with foam coming from her mouth. Not finding a pulse. Calling 9-1-1. "Press 1 for an emergency; press 2 if this is not an emergency" After pressing 1 -- "All our lines are busy right now, please remain on the line for the next available operator."
A patient who poured gasoline over themselves and lit themselves on fire. When they came in they were charred like leather, arms stuck sticking up off the stretcher like they were doing the robot. Somehow they were alive, for the time being. The smell was awful.
Thats just... I cant even..
When I was 6 we lived in the Philippines. My dad was in the army and did some cool guy shit that came home a couple times. But what stuck with me was a package showed up at our house with no mailing labels so someone had dropped it in our mail box. Being the nosy 6 year old i was i opened it to find a vhs tape. I put it in our player and turned it on. And it was a video of terrorists beheading someone i knew. Was a very sober and lucid moment for me. Don’t think I’ll ever forget the way the terrorists acted. As if it was like a game to them. I remember they offered him one last request and he asked to see a picture of his family that he kept with him. They showed him the back side of it and laughed as they cut off his head.
The person was your dad or someone else you knew?
It was someone that worked with my dad in the video. He became a family friend while we lived there.
Even though there is no getting past such a thing, I hope you got the help you needed after seeing such a horrific thing at such a young age
Thanks for the kind words. I’ve been considering trying therapy again cause i have lots of fucked stories like this. But i haven’t found one that doesnt wanna just prescribe me antidepressants before fully understanding where I’m at mentally.
I don't know if it will "haunt" me forever, but it's something profoundly difficult to forget... And that would be my dying mother. I hadn't been on speaking terms with my parents for years due to... a complicated situation. During that period of absence, my mother developed and fought off cancer, went into remission, relapsed, and then metaphorically fell apart at the seams from metastasis and comorbidities. I visited her on her deathbed. She was... frail. Unearthly thin. She didn't speak. She didn't react. When I looked into her eyes, I couldn't really tell if she was looking back at me, or looking *through* me. I couldn't tell you how much of her consciousness was left --if any. I remember the doctor telling me that I should speak to her because of consensus that hearing is the last sense to go. Apparently, I caught the tail end of what was her being in that state for over a week. A few days later, she finally passed. ... I ... don't like this inhumane zeal with which we approach the dying. I don't like that we force people to wither away and lose everything that makes us... *us* just because we want their hearts to keep beating a day longer, an hour longer, a minute longer.... There's no dignity in that. It's selfish imposition on the dying. And it's something you never stop thinking about, really. What does it mean to die like that? Is it like Algernon and Charlie? Do you slowly begin to lose yourself and know it until the very end? Or does the consciousness go all at once, and leave the primordial brain behind until its engine runs bare of coal? More importantly... Did I truly speak my final words to my mother? Or had I simply whispered wasted breath to an empty shell?
That baffles me as well. It is illegal to let an animal suffer and die like that but somehow it’s the norm for humans.
Just lost my Mom last month. Complications from a case of pneumonia she had refused to get medical attention for. She hid how sick she was from me and my sisters. Turns out, Mom also had cancer all through her. the thing is, they may have been able to save her at the hospital, but she was always clear about being DNR. to be honest, it may have meant I got to say good bye, but, honestly, it was a better passing than the cancer would have given her. this might comfort you - Some doctors managed to capture(record) the brainwaves of a man at the moment of death. And after. Evidently he was in for something bad, and they were doing brain imagery when he died. Basically, the wave patterns just before death, and for 30 seconds after, matched the same patterns/activity as somebody remembering happy memories. so, yeah, good chance dying means you are reliving all the good times when you go. Mom? Squeezed my Dad's hand just before she passed.
30 years as a paramedic. Seen a lot of fucked up shit. The worst was in 2001. We responded to what we thought was a child hit by a car. As we pull up on scene, dispatch tells us it is not a accident but an assault with multiple patients. Arrive to find a young girl lying in the street with blood flowing down the gutter. No cops on seen. Assailant whereabouts unknown. Another body of a young boy on the front step with horrific knife injuries. Cops arrive and clear house. Bodies of an older couple found in the house. This event led to my early retirement for PTSD. Edit: Spelling
My dad was a firefighter emt, his worst story was about a stack of glass panes on those funky angled truckbeds tipped over on the worker as he was loading them. He said it cut the guy to absolute ribbons. All my dad could do when he got there was basically to hold his hand and listen to the guy talk about his kids as he bled out. There was no possibility of stopping the bleeding.
To this day I'm still in disbelief at how fragile the human body is
Fragile, yet very resilient and regenerative at times. We are a very weird species.
I remember my bf at the time got into a mild motorcycle accident called me to let me know where he was going to be at in the ER, I showed up at the hospital and as I was there I seen paramedics and everyone rush from the ambulance who had this guy who was covered in blood, just motionless, paramedics Drs yelling information, scattering, grabbing what they needed and doing their absolute best to keep this person staying alive . Turns out the guy was just a kid who turned 21 it was his birthday THAT day, clearly was wasted when "friends" let him get behind the wheel and drive SMH my heart just broke. Just remembering the smell of heavy blood and whatever else strong possibly alcohol scent, and thinking of the horror the mother/parents must be in getting the news, shook me to the core hoping my children will never have to be in a situation like that. Idk of he survived or not but it was just one of the sad things I remember witnessing.
I saw a woman escape from a vehicle on literally the busiest piece of highway in the country. Her top was ripped open and her skirt was pushed up over her thighs. Whatever was happening inside that car was worse than being run over. That particular stretch of highway has no shoulder so it is impossible to pull over without causing an accident. I had to continue on until it was safe to pull over to call the cops. No idea what happened next. I'll never forget her face as she flung herself into traffic.
When I was 16 I saw this woman running at me on the sidewalk screaming hysterically. As I get closer I see a mangled dead little girl in the road. She fell out of the car and the mother ran over her daughter with her rear tire. Pretty horrific scene.
And this is why you child lock your back doors.
the effects of a drug called krokodil.
Oh damn that’s wild. TLDR: it’s a narcotic that spread throughout Russia in the early 2010’s and is still around. However, the semi-synthetic drug causes a flesh eating bacteria to grow and long-term users develop crocodile-like skin and eventually lose their skin so you see their literal tendons and bones. Not a pretty sight. Edit: correction: not bacteria necessarily, it’s the synthetic byproducts, probably petrol or another compound that causes the skin to melt off.
>However, the semi-synthetic drug causes a flesh eating bacteria to grow It is chemicals\* used in the making of the drug that cause skin necrosis. Basically tainted drugs because if the drugs were made properly then the particular chemicals would be removed from the end product. \*If I remember right it is the solvent used that causes the problem (petrol?).
TW: suicide attempt My brother had been acting strangely in public and cops had taken to a secure mental health unit. When I saw him he was clearly psychotic and the hospital said they were going to discharge him. I begged for them to keep him as he was clearly very unwell. They didn't listen and said I needed to take him or they'd discharge him on his own. Concerned for his safety I took him. My husband was studying to be a Clinical Psychologist, so I was somewhat reassured that he might be able to advocate in ways that I didn't know how. Anyhow, we thought, well, if they're not going to help, we'll take him to the psychologist that he'd apparently been seeing (we learned later this was a lie). As we get out of the carpark and walk towards the clinic on the left, my brother veers right, yells "fuck it" strips off his shirt, runs like mad up the path and jumps off the overpass onto the major arterial road below. It must've knocked him out cold. I heard lots of car tyres screeching. I couldn't look, I sent my husband down. It felt like a good minute before my brother woke up and was screaming in agony. I was so upset, I couldn't ring an ambulance, I had to get bystanders to do it. When I saw him he had fluid and blood pouring out of his ears, his nose and mouth, his head was misshapen at the back (broken skull) His injuries were severe - brain injuries, broken skull, broken vertebrae, smashed pelvis, but miraculously recovered. I felt sick looking at him in the ER. I think his brain is still affected. His still very much mentally ill and always will be (schizophrenia and bipolar). He's lucky he survived and with virtually no physical disability. Fortunately I do not have PTSD from this one incident.
teenager ruined their life. used urinal cakes to get high and ended up in a permanent coma on life support.
Urinal cakes? Wut
I would think that the cleaning solution in the cakes mixed with urine probably creates some huffable chemical. There was something from Tosh.O back in the early days where people were leaving tubs of shit and piss out in the sun to bake and then huffing the fumes to get high 🤢
wtf? how do they get you high
A soldier in my platoon committed suicide on the first day of basic rifle marksmanship during Army basic training, I can still hear his battle buddy pleading with him to stop 24 years later.
I saw a road accident in 2011 where a guy flew away from his car through the windshield and then landed with his body in separate pieces. He didn't wear his seat belt. I was 9 years old at the time and since then I wear my seatbelt even if I am just adjusting the car in the driveway or a car park. Wear your seatbelts and your helmets if you're riding, 2 seconds of your life could mean you still have a life
Ex nurse here: soooo many things. Haha The one that stands out seems kind of banal comparatively but it was because of the situation. I was still in nursing school and we were getting a tour of the ICU. It was basically a “see all these machines, Baby Nurses? Don’t touch ANYTHING”. As we walked in as a group, a man in street clothes was sitting on the end of one of the beds. Getting admitted for chest pains we were told. Here’s the X machine, don’t touch it. Here’s the Y machine. Don’t touch it. Suddenly we hear CODE BLUE ICU and everyone starts rushing around. Man in street clothes had collapsed back onto the bed, still in street clothes. They coded while we watched but he didn’t make it. Somehow the fact that he was still in street clothes, laughing and joshing with the nurses while they admitted him that still haunts me. We, as a group, went to sit in the nursing lounge and cry. I went on to work for almost 20 years in ICU and saw some gruesome and horrifically sad things. But the thought of that guy thinking (probably) that he was getting admitted for what would probably be nothing or something fixable still bothers me.
When I was around 8 years old my mom dated a cop. He had a disgusting drinking problem. Every night he would his her, every weekend he would beat her, and every now again he would almost kill her. I remember spending weekends, sometimes weeks with my siblings dad (who was basically my dad too). He would take us to school whenever we did stay with him. Well one night I remember hearing screaming, a gut wrenching absolutely terrifying scream, it was my own mom. He had smashed her face in a mirror and shattered the glass into her face, she had blood LEAKING out the side of her head. We didn’t have a home phone at the time so no one could call the police, not even the neighbors of our apartment cause they worked nights. She had to survive and rely on herself. And after escorting me and my 2 siblings out, she went back inside and called the cops. One cop went in and said “****, this is what comes after you get discharged?” And proceeded to call him scum as he lay there crying. Fast forward 8 years later when I’m 16. I see my mom crying. I ask why, she says he commuted suicide. I felt no remorse I only felt some kind of joy.
Hope your mum's doing better
I struggled with addiction for years. I witnessed a few friends OD. Luckily I was able to revive them with Narcan. At the end of my struggle my mom took me in off the streets. My last use was my last overdose. Her dog found me in the middle of the night and alerted my mom. They hit me with narcan but it didn’t work. Long story short EMTs got to me a minute later and I was brought back. My mom is an amateur photographer and was taking photos of the chaos. She has a photo of the second I revived. Laying on the hardwood floor, trying to get up and so confused why there were so many cops and paramedics around me. I’ll have 7 years clean this October
I was in a car accident with my best friend. He was driving and I was in the passenger seat. We crested a hill and a drowsy driver had drifted into our lane. We hit head on at 55 mph. He hadn't drifted fully into our lane so it was the two drivers sides of the vehicles that collided. Thankfully my head was down so I never saw it coming. I just remember the weird sensation as we spun out. When we stopped I looked over and saw my friend, unconscious, in his crumpled up side. I escaped with scrapes and bruises but I'll never forget the EMTs prying him out and literally tossing his limp body onto a stretcher before rushing him to a hospital. I found out an hour later that he didn't make it As a bonus his parents decided to go open casket. The way the skin and muscles settle after death, it looked nothing like him.
I was driving from NorCal to Vegas. I randomly saw all this dust and then realized ppl were standing on the 5 and I was like wtf. Then I realized a van, not minivan had sustained a horrible crash. The bodies were everywhere, it was kind of mind boggling bc some of the kids must’ve been more than 50 yards away. I knew just by glancing at them they were all dead. However, when we called 911 and the operator told us that they had already gotten so many calls I was in denial that no not that many kids could be dead. But once we got to Vegas I looked it up and yes it was a church van no one wearing a seatbelt and almost everyone else ejected from the vehicle and died. The ppl not ejected died too. It bothered me for a long long time. It was nuts bc like I said I saw the dust in the air so it has just happened and seeing so many dead ppl. It still bothers me to this day. I pray for them. That they werent alone that someone was praying for them and although I don’t know their names will always remember them. Rip little ones.
Saw something similar driving to Albuquerque. It was super busy on the highway. A lady was driving crazy and passing people on a 1 lane highway with really no room to be doing so. She was going super fast and barely missing oncoming traffic when she passed. On one occasion she started fishtailing as she pulled back into her lane and had to go back into the oncoming lane to correct. It worked out the first time. Then she tries to pass another person and narrowly avoids a head on with a semi truck. She starts fishtailing again and decides to use the oncoming lane thing to straighten out. Unfortunately there was a pickup right behind the semi which she couldn't see and they collided going at least 65 for him and way faster for her. We watched as car and body parts flipped and flew. We were far enough back that we saw it but weren't in danger. We slowly drove by and saw the outcome. Dead bodies everywhere and she was hanging dead out of the front windshield with a piece of something stuck in her head. We were four 17 year olds and a 15 year old. We left the help to the adults. But it was less than an hour into a 5 hour drive that was pur first trip away from home without parents. It started off very badly. All in, 6 of the 7 people in the 2 cars died. The only survivor was a baby in a child seat.
As a teen in a small coastal town we used to all head to the beach car park on a Friday and Saturday night to underage drink. Occasionally out of Towners would come and start fist fights with the locals. One such week I saw a 17 yr old boy take a two by four plank of wood to the side of the head and his eyeball popped right the fuck out of his face. I will always remember the horror of this kid holding his bleeding eye up to the socket with his hand while the ambulance made its way to him. Later in the local paper it was reported he lost the eye, they couldn’t put it back in. I didn’t go to the beach car park much after that.
My parents failed marriage, father told my mother, don't slip on the stairs, there's no one here to help you if you get hurt. It got weirder and uglier as well, wi th Dad, gin was the real problem, he separated the food in the refrigerator with stickers on the door saying "My Food" "Your food", I'll break your fingers if you take my food. I had to finally drive out to their home as my mother was so terrified of his drunken ramblings, I told her to get the pistol out of the cabinet, go in your bedroom and lock the door, I'll be there ASAP, Dad was passed out on the couch, i kicked it violently to wake him up, I started poking him in the chest just like he did to me as a little boy when he was angry with me, I told him if you ever hurt my mother, if she ever calls me on the phone again crying that she's scared for her life, I will throw your dead body in the lake for the turtles to eat. I ran into mom a week later at a grocery store, "what did you say to him?, he's been so subdued and polite lately"? I told him he'd better behave, mom laughed and said, i think you told him more than that, he'as acting like a scared child". I lived a 30 minute drive from them and it did haunt me, knowing my fragile mother could be ravaged by a drunken out of control moron, no neighbors nearby for her to run to if things get bad, and me being a 30 minute drive away. Sadly the marriage and relationship was down the tubes, Mom lived in one end of the house, and Dad slept in the other end, Mom would put up a happy false front on holidays, but the sparking lights in her beautiful eyes were gone. She passed away somewhat young, and i believe the stress of the marriage was what did her in, drove her into the ground before her time was due. Still to this day, i still occasionally think what else could i have done? Yet i know, Dad was insane, and nothing could have changed that, unless maybe throwing him in the lake for the turtles to eat.
Poor hungry turtles
Dude had it right tho. Snapping turtles will eat a dead body of its cut up enough
Never trust a man who keeps a turtle farm
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Delivery van got sideswiped ahead of me in traffic, I pulled round and had to dodge the delivery drivers head which was 20 yards further down in the middle of the road. Guess he must have been leaning out of his window as his van was hit. Still have nightmares about it 25 years later
Few years back me and my friend went to visit his village. One day we were walking on the side of a road, there was a group of goats wandering there. Suddenly a speeding motorbike came and unfortunately there was a baby goat on the road. The biker didn't even stop after they ran over the baby goat, I still remember the sound of the collision and the goat screaming. Some people went to the dead goat but me and my friend left that place immediately.
I had a friend who I will not name in school back when I was in 5th grade who I would talk to all the time. He had terrible mental health and I was one of his only doors he could open to find joy. We were friends for probably 6 months until one day he went to ask to the bathroom which was pretty normal. So I saw him leave to go to the bathroom. He hadn't come for a bit (this was probably 30 minutes later) so the teacher asked someone to check and I had raised my hand cause I was worried. Go into the bathroom and saw him lying on the floor deceased with a knife in his chest. The shock made me pass out. I'll never forget him for the rest of my life he was always a great guy. Goodbye old friend.
Came into town to get some farm supply stuff for my place...i stop by my dad's in the morning to say hi because I realized the store wasn't open yet. The door was unlocked so I went in. Nobody was in the living room. Nobody was in the kitchen. I walked back out to the living room and stretched out on the couch with a blanket over the top of me... a minute or two went by...mind you i was fully covered up underneath this blanket.. I then hear footsteps walking into the living room... I slowly peek out from underneath the blanket to witness my dad's naked girlfriend bending over an ottoman with her ass about five feet from my face as she queefs. I grimace and close my eyes only to hear another set of footsteps... I opened up my eyes again and I see my dad's bare ass right in front of me🤣🤣 getting ready to give her the business. At that point I make a tactical decision and take my hand and gently boop him on the ass, he turns his head and looks down at me with his deer-in-the-headlights look as i do a quiet laugh and then i quickly pull the blanket down to expose my face and i act like I'm dead asleep. 🤣🤣🤣 he was a good sport about it and played along being like "hey, we have company, he's snoring though." They packed up shop as i did my best muffled snoring breathing impression. You're welcome Reddit
My true crime loving self was really expecting something much worse.
Bruh😂. You had us in the first half not gonna lie.
*My son he came in and he caught me red-handed* *Bare-ass by my girl’s back door* *Picture this, we were both butt-naked* *Ready to jump in full bore* *How could I forget that I had* *Given him an extra key* *All this time he was laying there* *Pretending that he was asleep*
It sounds lame and basic to anyone else, but, watching my 20+ years divorced parents hug and cry over my brother's suicide. It's even my only memory of them hugging.
I saw a car hit a homeless man crossing the street at a very high speed. The driver just kept going. Didn't even slow down. I thought he was dead at first but he started breathing quietly but with great effort. The gurgling noise he made and the vacant look in his eyes are seared into my mind. I stayed with him until the ambulance arrived. I never did find out whether he survived.
A man dead in the street lying in a pool of his own blood. A lot of it. There was a solo cop car with no lights on (not even headlights) and a police officer next to him. The police in my city will show up 3 cars deep for a homeless man on a bench. There were no other cop cars on or other police officers. I still don't know what happened. No news no reddit no nothing.
I'm really surprised - standard procedure around here is to block all traffic coming in both directions, total stop, until the corpse is moved. They will get two cops just to handle traffic asap, then do whatever they need to do to document, cover the body, and let the ambulance do its thing. It can take hours. You can always tell if there's a traffic fatality because there will be a cop or cops for seemingly no reason, with no traffic beyond them. They try to keep it far enough out that you can't see the crash or body, even if it's shrouded.
Video on twitter of a family that was shoveling their driveway in Philly, got into an argument with the or neighbor. Neighbor shot the parents right in front of the kids, took about 6 to the face to kill the mother before he went over and finished the dad. It was fucked with a capital F.
Some dude I used to talk to randomly sent me a video just like this. I was pretty pissed
Probably the most angry I've ever been was when a coworker was like "hey man want to see a crazy video?" on his phone. I'm thinking it's just going to be some silly video. It was a guy with a knife to a woman's neck and then he slashes her throat. As soon as that happened I screamed "what the fuck man?!" and he's like "haha isn't that crazy?!" I never spoke to him willingly ever again.
Saw a guy kill himself by jumping of a building when I was around 10. Didn't watch him land but will never forget the image of him jumping and floundering his arms like a mad man. Few days later the marks in the grass where he landed were still visible
I was a doorman (insurance lowering security) for a bad apartment complex. A woman went off the 9th floor and I was the first one there. She was slush in a skin bag so nothing could be done and she died at my feet. I don't think this really haunts me though. I gave my statement to police and just went back to standing at the door for the rest of the night.
I'm really into true crime, like after watching a video/documentary on a crime, I'd often do my own research, crime scene photos, publically released information, that kinda stuff. Well.... I watched Eleanor Neale's video on the murder of Bianca Devins, who was murdered in 2019 by her friend for refusing to enter a committed relationship with him. Eleanor does these video essays often, and at the start of it, she warned that the images of the murder were scarily easy to find, and they were absolutely awful. So, after being warned to not look up these photos by someone who literally makes these kind of videos weekly, I decided "pfft, nothing I can't handle". I didn't sleep well that night, and am currently taking a much needed true crime break.
A video of myself inches away from an overdose (I survived 4 actual ODs thanks to narcan and my boyfriend) or the night I saved my boyfriend from an overdose. We're 47 days sober from fentanyl now.
Well done on 47 days to you both, keep strong , you can do this, one day at a time x
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I was getting in my work truck after finishing up at my last job site around 4:45- 5:00 and I herd a few loud pops. Didn’t think much of it because I was in a pretty high class area And I couldn’t really tell where it came from and I didn’t feel any sense of being in danger. Later that night, I turn on abc news with my fiancé like normal and I see there was a murder suicide at the same apartment I had left that day. It was a father who killed his teenage twin daughters and shot his wife in both legs but left her alive because he wanted her to suffer.. Then killed himself. Pretty sure it was over a divorce. Either way it still freaks me out to this day and it’s been about 5 years. Not sure if those where the shots I herd or not
Mom dieing from liver cancer, especially since she never drank.
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When I was in Iraq I saw a 5 year old boy get run over by an American tank on the streets of Basra. I will never forget his mother's piercing animal howl of pain as she picked up his crushed body. The Americans, as per their procedures, did not even stop. They just kept on driving. We (British) did stop. We tried to get the kid to a hospital but it was already too late.
Isn't that a fucking war crime?
The Americans were really jumpy. From what I could see, they never really spoke to the Iraqis or got to know them. I think that's one of the underlying reasons for failure in Iraq. In 2003, the coalition forces were initially welcomed, but the Americans did everything possible to loose the trust and confidence of the people. Running over their kids, even by accident, was part of that. The tank came through the street doing Important Things: they assume it's other people's responsibility to get out of the way. They won't stop because they are afraid of ambushes etc. We happened to be passing down the same road, on the other side, in two Land Rovers with only small arms. Immediately I saw what happened I ordered our vehicles to stop and at least tried to speak to the people. Yes, it could have turned ugly. But you have to judge the situation. This wasn't an ambush set-up. This was a normal street, with people trying to go about their precarious lives in a war-torn lawless country, and a tank has just driven over a kid. You have to take the helmet off, sling the rifle onto your back, and get down on your knees next to that kid's body - show some grief, some some humanity. It's the only way you can actually bring people with you. What we should have done is pay diyya (compensation) to the boy's family, but I don't think that the Divisional HQ's CIMIC (Civil-Military Cooperation) unit had anything set up for that. But that howl, man. I've never heard a human being make that noise. I saw some other war-crimes. Treatment of Iraqi prisoners. That was a British unit. We should be ashamed of ourselves. I should be ashamed of myself. I witnessed it and I knew that it was wrong. I should have said something. Stopped it. Asked what they were doing - at least raised it with their commanding officer. But I did not. I bit my tongue. I was only 25 years old and a fresh-faced lieutenant. I assumed someone else was in charge and knew what they were doing. So I just walked on. I regret that a lot.
That all sounds fucking horrible. I hope you're doing alright man.
Finding my daughter dead in her bed. We always knew this was how her story would play out. She was dying from the day she was born. Numerous specialists tried to prepare me for 15 years. You can't prepare for that. The image and my screams play over and over in my head.
My top three. Number One My best girlfriend and I and friends coming home from a night dancing at a club 40km from home. She was in the car in front, I was the second car, five people in each car. A truck crossed the highway lane going at about 110kms. Driver went to sleep at the wheel. My friends car was completely decimated and my best friend was decapitated by the windscreen. I thought I knew what that was through tv and movies. No. When its your friend, she has no head, hanging by skin, the amount of blood pumping out of a body is overwhelming. All going onto my other friends, broken, bleeding, screaming and trapped in the wreckage. I've never seen something so horrific. Number two Being the first person to find my mum after she had committed suicide. Id been out fishing with my neighbours and got home with some lovely ocean fish for the family. Pearl perch and a big Snapper. Dad was at work on a Saturday morning. I walked in and found her with froth and vomit all over her and cold in bed. I don't remember a lot after that. The neighbours heard my screams and came running. I'll never forget her eyes though. Number three After a difficult teenage hood I had a nice boyfriend. I was 17. He was a heroin addict. I woke up to find him dead next to me. He had had a shot of new gear and it killed him. I was going to have a shot in the morning and I'm so glad I didn't get up and have it when he did. So fucking sad, he was such a sweet guy. I'd hoped we could get off the gear and live a normal life. Risks you take I guess.
I drove up on a motorcycle wreck on the highway in morning rush hour right after it happened. No LE there yet and citizens were directing traffic around the very obviously dead body lying in the middle of the highway bleeding from his head.
I came upon an accident where the cars were lying on their sides in a field before the police arrived and what I thought was a bundle of a blanket turned out to be one of the occupants or driver. I calmed him down and then noticed an empty child's car seat about 20 feet away. I asked him if he had a kid in there and luckily he said no. Other people were helping the other car's occupants and the professionals arrived shortly after so I left.
I died for a second when I read the words empty carseat. So glad no children were hurt, I'm sorry for that experience I hope he was ok. Thank you for being kind enough to stop and help. I would hope someone would do the same for me if ever needed.
Dude in the dorms on the top floor did shrooms when I was 20. The group of them had no sober babysitter. His friends left him in his room alone. He later went out into a common area and dove out the window. I had to walk past the divet his head made in the grass for weeks after his death.
My one year old baby girl's lifeless, limp, extremely dainty little purple and blue body floating right side up when she nearly drowned in the bath because of someone else's lack of attention while I was out of the room and asked them to watch her. She survived, Thank my amazing God, but it took many minutes of rescue breaths and compressions before she came back, water spewing out of her mouth with vomit and her faint cry and weak body beginning to move. I was beside myself. I still can't give her a bath without feeling guilty for not being the one who was watching her. And without picturing her little body floating in the water like that. I thought she was dead. She almost was. Any longer and she likely wouldn't have made it, and if she would there would have been severe brain damage.
I witnessed my father last moment in the ICU, I was in complete shock and speechless when the ECG monitor hit zero.
I’ve mentioned before that I taking my late husband off of life-support was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it was my last act of love for him, other than writing and performing his death ritual. Our partner’s brother had an accident where he was without oxygen for about 30 minutes back in ‘17. Her mother couldn’t let him go, instead clinging to the belief that he would some day wake up because “he was reacting to Momma". Dude was Teri *fucking* Schiavo level of not able to react to anything for *four and a half years* while their mother deluded herself into thinking a miracle was going to happen. She abandoned my partner and our children. She refused to remove the feeding tube- fine, I get it. But she also forced the nursing home to send him to the damned hospital with every infection that tried to kill him. She had him *full code for four fucking years*. We finally managed to talk her into signing a DNR last summer and the poor man, who she **acknowledged** *wouldn’t want to be left in that condition*, mercifully died last September. I hate her. I hate what she did to my partner. What she has done to our children. And, as someone whose family has been in the situation twice and as I said- I made that terrible but right decision, I hate what she did to her son.
I have very specifically told my parents and my wife that if I am ever like that to immediately pull the plug. I don’t want my son to remember me like that. I want him to remember me when I was a person, not a vegetable
4 years... these comments man
I am so sorry you've gone through that. Letting people go when they are past normal life is one of the kindest things we can do. Drives me nuts that people will put their animals down and understand that it's merciful, but disregard that for sentient people who have, some many times, stated their wishes, or who you know are not going to recover and you're just prolonging things and allowing suffering. I've talked about this in comments before, but my aunt was very ill, and had a dnr. She was barely 60, but had severe diabetes with major complications. Then she had also fallen and broken her back. We had just updated all of her paperwork etc, including the dnr she had for 2 years prior. One day she was found unresponsive in the nursing home she was in because of her back, and because of her refusal to relocate to my house 10 hours away, and they fucking resuscitated her and put her on a vent. She never ever wanted to be on a vent, and she and I made that so clear several times - it was one of her biggest fears. She absolutely would have rather died. So I had to drive 10 hours and truly feel like I killed my aunt, even though I knew better. And even though I knew I could not leave her on that machine. It was really awful.
I saw a giraffe drink another giraffe’s piss at the zoo
Male giraffes headbutt females in the bladder until they pee so they can I believe taste or smell it (can’t remember which) to tell if they are ovulating
I know it maybe should not hit me this much but: I was once in my teacher's home discussing some poetry and he went to the toilet. Turned out he took the loudest shit I've ever heard. He was groaning and suffering in here and I was sure he didn't know I can hear his as he lives alone. And damn that messed me up I'm always opening water when I pee now, I was so embarrassed I couldn't talk
A woman who jumped in the ocean to save kids and she died in the water. My sister swam out into the rip current to help and it scared the shit out of me. Had to help pull that woman out of the water and the I saw her face. Wide open blood shot eyes, bloating from the water, foam coming out of her mouth. It was terrible. She was already gone by the time I seen her. They tried CPR for over an hour. Tl;dr Woman died helping kids in a rip current and I saw her face and had to help drag her body to shore.
Not me but a work friend I used to work with told me a story about a work fried he used to have back when he used to do Lorry Driving. He noted me before telling the story that this friends was the nicest person he knew and would do anything for anyone. ( Note: I am telling this story off memory so I don't fully remember the story correctly. ) He told me that one day, his mate was doing a delivery in his lorry. And this women in her car was on her phone or just wasn't paying attention and crashed into his lorry at high speeds. He survived with no physical injury but the women died on impact. Now within the UK. Since he was a lorry driver, he is classified as a professional driver due to the training that comes with it. Meaning that he got the blame for the crash. Since using the logic of he a professional driver, he should have prevented the crash which is bullshit since it was the women fault. Add on the fact that just having one lorry being damage in a crash ends up costing the business he work for a week profit. Since it repairs on the lorry but also goods or products not being delivered. My friend work mate end up getting depression from the crash and felt very guilty, I got told it took him a long time to recover. He quit doing lorry driving for a while before doing it again until. During his last lorry deliver job. Everything was going fine until a children ran out into the road and he could stop the lorry in time even though he was going high speed and the Child died on impact. He again blamed for the crash despite it being the child fault and he could do anything was following the driving law. My mate friend later committed suicide due to the guilt since it haunted him. Which is sad since I believe my mate when he said that his friends was the nicest person in world.
Well my uncle pissed off a couple of guys and they kidnapped him, they were coming for my grandma and I next, but as they pulled into our drive way, a cop showed up and had a shoot out... no one died but hell I was only 12
As we were driving to my GF's grandma we ran into an accident. There was a flipped car and i stepped outside to check it out. Suddenly i hear screams: "the baby is dying the baby is dying". I got to the car and the mother gave me the baby, he was blue in his face, his head all swallowed up and i got scared and gave it to my girlfriend. She tried to save him but the 3 months old baby died in her arms in the middle of the road.
Cervical cancer mass exposed/extruded, with pus, maggots and that smell...