# "What's the worst thing you've ever seen?" and your responses



## 74restore (Aug 28, 2013)

Tried searching and didn't find anything similar. 

"What's the worst thing you've ever seen?" 
The point of this thread is not to ask this question, but rather to hear your responses to it. 

I don't particularly like being asked this question. It makes me feel uncomfortable. It brings to mind bad calls, past patients, things that I've tried to put behind me for a reason. 

What are some of the creative ways you answer this question? Serious? Witty? Jokingly? 

Or do you simply tell them the story?


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## DesertMedic66 (Aug 28, 2013)

It all depends who asks me. Ill either give a honest response or a joking response. I personally don't have a call that I have trouble talking about. 

When I start teaching skills for the EMT classes at my college I get asked that question many many times.


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## chaz90 (Aug 28, 2013)

Completely depends who asked, and more importantly, what kind of response they're hoping to hear. Nobody asking what they think is a flippant question wants to hear an honest answer, which is fine. I have plenty of funny stories for the vast majority of the time people this question.


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## Tigger (Aug 28, 2013)

I turn to the "large lady in a hospital gown stuck to a lazy boy on a humid day" story pretty much always. It's moderately amusing and totally PG.


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## DesertMedic66 (Aug 28, 2013)

Tigger said:


> I turn to the "large lady in a hospital gown stuck to a lazy boy on a humid day" story pretty much always. It's moderately amusing and totally PG.



If they want a serious answer my go to response is a 3 car TC with a couple of DOAs when we arrived. I haven't had anyone ask any questions about the call after I say that lol


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## Bullets (Aug 28, 2013)

Most people are expecting a really gory story

They dont know how to react when they get stories of self neglect and mistreatment, which are usually the worst


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## TechYourself (Aug 28, 2013)

This is definitely one of the "know your audience" kinds of questions.

No one really wants the true bad story, so usually the one about attempting a rectal temperature on the dirty 600 lb woman who completely fills a hospital gurney suffices.  This usually includes a throwaway joke about spelunking and needing a headlamp.


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## Mariemt (Aug 28, 2013)

For a typical layperson,  if it makes you feel uncomfortable like you said, throw the HIPAA word around.
I don't talk about my calls. Even in non detail. I just tell them I can't.


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## Medic Tim (Aug 28, 2013)

As someone already mentioned it depends on who asks and my mood. I usually go with... foley cath on a 450+lb woman with a yeast infection.... what has been seen can never be unseen.

or I am honest and go with the 10 day old I had to run a code on by myself or running the code of one of my high school friends who committed suicide.


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## NomadicMedic (Aug 28, 2013)

There have been some bad calls, but I don't tell laypeople about them. Honestly, it's not something they need to know. I usually just say something like, "what may be gross to you doesn't bother me...and vice versa." Then they always ask, "have you seen people with their heads all smashed in?"  

A simple "yup" usually suffices. 

Save the gross war stories for people who understand a little gallows humor is okay in this job. Don't inflict your most horrific scenes on laypeople, no matter how interested they may seem.


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## RocketMedic (Aug 28, 2013)

74restore said:


> Tried searching and didn't find anything similar.
> 
> "What's the worst thing you've ever seen?"
> The point of this thread is not to ask this question, but rather to hear your responses to it.
> ...



Old man trapped in a failing, dying body, without even a picture of the family that assumed guardianship and orders noncaring nursing staff to call and recall EMS in an attempt to 'save Grandpa' from death itself, for which the rewards are constant pain and suffering, and a total lack of communication due to a stroke. Sad fate.


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## abckidsmom (Aug 28, 2013)

I like how Peter Canning tells it in Rescue 486 says "Oh man the body was spread-eagled across the road, intestines ripped out, gore everywhere.  And oh the smell!  It stunk!!!  It was a skunk, and wow it stunk."


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## TheLocalMedic (Aug 28, 2013)

The worst stories aren't the gory ones...  But I quickly realized at the beginning of my career that nobody wants to hears about the really unbelievably sad stuff that we see.  I just pass off the question with "Oh, we see some pretty nasty stuff," and leave it at that.  

I had a group of people a couple of years ago that really pushed and pushed for stories, so I told them one of the worst ones I had.  Afterwards it was just crickets...  It just made them sad, and totally killed the conversation.  Nobody wants to hear the real stories.


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## DrankTheKoolaid (Aug 28, 2013)

My replay is always a 80 year old male/female opposite of the person asking the question, in a G-string. Always gets a chuckle or look of horror on their face and is easy to steer the conversation away from more questions at that point


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## VFlutter (Aug 28, 2013)

A patient who just turned 100 with end stage multiorgan failure and dementia who kept asking us to let her die but had a son, the DPOA, who lived off her social security checks and wanted everything done. She ended up intubated, on pressors, bilat chest tubes, Central and arterial lines, feeding tube, continuous dialysis, etc. She suffered like that for a week while the ethics committee got involved. Many of the Physicians even refused to provide care. She finally went into PEA and passed in a veryyyyy slow code.


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## Smash (Aug 28, 2013)

Three words:  Soy. Chai. Latte.


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## CPRinProgress (Aug 28, 2013)

My worst call was an MVA with entrapment.  The car went up in flames and he got 4th degree burns on 20% of his body.  I could see his skull.  That was pretty bad.


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## medicsb (Aug 28, 2013)

My response: "Lima beans on pizza"


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## abckidsmom (Aug 28, 2013)

medicsb said:


> My response: "Lima beans on pizza"



Awesome.


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## Carlos Danger (Aug 28, 2013)

medicsb said:


> My response: "Lima beans on pizza"



That does sound like a disturbing sight.


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## Bullets (Aug 29, 2013)

medicsb said:


> My response: "Lima beans on pizza"



Or the classic response...."Your Mom"


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## WuLabsWuTecH (Aug 30, 2013)

For most people, I do some variation of this:

Well, it was almost quittin' time and I was getting ready to change into street clothes when the tones dropped.  I looked around and my replacement wasn't here yet, so I zipped up my boots and hopped back in the truck.  The dispatch was for an industrial accident, so I went through my mental checklist of what I needed to do.  It wouldn't have mattered anyways, there was nothing that I could have done to prepare myself for what was to come.  As we get halfway there, dispatch calls us back and informs us that bystanders are now informing of a second building in the area that had collapsed with unknown entrapments.  They completely forgot to tell us when the first one collapsed.  Once again, I knew it was going to be bad, but never did I think it would have been this bad.

The nearest fire department was still about 15 minutes further out than we were, so we were going to be first on scene.  I went ahead and called for an incident commander and set up a radio channel for fireground ops.  I would later learn it was all an exercise in futility.  None of it mattered.

We got on scene and my partner and I's jaws both just dropped!  What was before our eyes was something no man should ever have to see again.  We both just sat there staring at the scene and for the first time in our lives, our training didn't kick in and we didn't just jump into action.  Though my partner would never admit it, I think he shed a tear.  We were too late, and it was over.  I called off all of the other units except for an engine to come in and write up the report.

The scene had been leveled.  Where two structures used to stand, there was now nothing except for the outline of one and then nothing but fields for miles.  Surrounding the skeleton of the structure was about a foot deep worth of brown liquid that was foamy.  Still to this day, we are not sure of what happened.  Maybe some shoddy engineering?  Maybe just a freak earthquake that hit at exactly the wrong place at exactly the wrong time.  But all we knew was that where two 250,000 gallon tanks used to stand, there was just now one massive puddle of spilled beer.

Of course if someone "in the industry" asks, they usually preface it with, "I know this might be hard, and you don't have to answer if you don't want to, but what was the most action you've seen?"  Never do they phrase it as "worst call."  They might ask about, "bad trauma" or "worse chain reaction of events," but in my experience they are most likely to ask about "best saves" than "worst calls."


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## Handsome Robb (Aug 30, 2013)

I'll either joke with them and pick something funny or if they're serious they get the "it's a toss up between dad backing over his 16 month old boy's head in his truck or the 22 month old girl who was sexually abused by her mother's boyfriend multiple times."

Generally stops the conversation dead in its tracks.


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