There are no prizes for guessing people do some pretty silly things when they’ve had too much to drink. I’ve been working as an emergency and trauma nurse for the best part of five years and it’s fair to say that in this line of work I have seen my fair share of outrageous behaviour.
The job ranges from heartbreaking to hilarious in the blink of an eye and though it can be life and death there are also a whole range of stories out there that give you no choice but to laugh (or else we’d all just cry).
So here’s a collection of my stories and the stories of my colleagues regarding patients who’ve had a bit too much to drink.
1. The drunk bridesmaid.
“I had a lady in her 30s admitted in her bridesmaids dress. She got completely trashed at her sister’s wedding. She kept waking up intermittently asking if her make up still looked all right and then was eventually snoring with vomit down the front of her dress. It was very classy.”
2. The gate crasher.
“We once had a guy who tried to break into a concert and fell through the roof. He broke his leg and was covered head to toe in glitter when he arrived in the ambulance.”
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3. He just really loved his goat.
“We once had a guy a bring his pet goat into the Emergency Department. He’d had far too much to drink and had dropped a glass bottle of something on the ground and was worried his goat had stepped on it.”
4. The Announcer.
“We once had a guy come in, completely off his chops, demanding more pain killers. We were advised by medical staff not to give him any because he was already quite intoxicated and tried to do everything we could to calm him down. The next minute we turn around and he’s grabbed he P.A. system that broadcasts over the whole Emergency Department and is calling out, ‘Can someone please bring some strong pain killers to cubicle 22’. His announcement was actually very polite and he was so well spoken! He probably should have had a career in radio.”
5. Table dancer.
“Having someone fall off a table after a few too many isn’t that uncommon but I felt so sorry for this one girl in particular because she was a backpacker who was due to fly home that morning. She was certainly set on going out with a bang because she fell off a bar bench, fractured two of her vertebrae and was stuck in the country recovering for two months.”
(Image via iStock.)
6. Came in after having "wild sex".
"A girl came in after having one too many and had fallen over and fractured her arm. After quizzing her as to why it took so long for her to present to hospital she finally admitted she’d been busy having 'wild sex' with her partner and wanted to, 'finish up there', before she came into the ED."
7. The chick magnet.
"We had a man come in with his head stuck in the door of a chicken coup. He had come home after a hefty session at the pub and according to his partner, decided he had to go and kiss every one of their six chickens goodnight before he could get to sleep. He ended up getting his head stuck in the chicken coup's door frame and managed to cut around the outside to get himself free before making his way down to the hospital to get the rest removed."
8. Dead arm.
"There was this one guy once who had fallen asleep on his arm after a big night out. When he woke up his entire arm had gone completely blue and he needed to have emergency surgery to release some of the pressure in it. The arm was luckily OK but I think he'll be rethinking how much he has to drink before bed in the future."
(Image via Paramount.)
9. The bloody bride.
"Last Halloween we had one of the strangest things I've seen happen. A man who would have been well into his 50s had dressed up as a bride and was so drunk he had walked through a glass door. By the time he got to us his white dress and blonde wig were both completely covered in blood. It became even stranger because much to his wife’s dismay, he wouldn't let us take the wig off to clean him up."
10. Using the hospital as a toilet.
"We once had a guy so drunk that he just started peeing in the corner of the hospital. It was disgusting! When he sobered up I couldn't decide who out of the two of us was more mortified."
11. Road runner.
"This happens almost every weekend, there is always some young girl who comes in crying and completely wasted and you go off to get them some medication to make them stop vomiting on themselves and by the time you get back they're gone. It’s like they realise what they’re doing, get embarrassed, and make a run for it."
12. Off to the pokies.
"I once lost a guy on night shift for four hours. I was just about to call the police to file a missing persons report when he finally strutted in, completely drunk, and was trying to give us all fifty dollar notes because he’d had a, 'big win at the pokies'."
(Image via iStock.)
13. This is not a fast food restaurant.
"There was one night when we were dealing with a particularly difficult patient who kept complaining he was hungry. I went and found him some sandwiches and when I came back he had managed to run across the road and bring himself back a Big Mac meal, I think I was more upset that he didn’t think to bring anything back for me."
14. Couples dispute.
"We had a couple in once who had gotten into a big fight and gone off with their respective friends to have a few drinks and blow off some steam. The man had slammed his hand in a taxi door and the women had fallen down some stairs and they both ended up in the cubicle next to each other in our department. It wasn't a happy ending though, they refused to talk to each other the whole time and were both discharged at different times and went home with different people."
15. YouTube fame gone wrong.
"A group of teenage boys came in once looking very sheepish. They had super-glued cans of coke to one of their friends backs for some kind of YouTube video they were making. They had managed to get most of them off but there was just one that wouldn't budge. It took two doctors and a nurse to remove the bloody thing and the poor kid had to go home with the sorest looking welts all over his back."
Got an embarrassing story to share?