Okay so, buckle up, because this isn’t your average “crazy night at work” post. This was next-level, straight out of a horror movie, but real. I still think about it sometimes when I’m trying to sleep.
It was around 2 AM, classic dead-hour chaos. We’d already had our share of nonsense—some guy freaking out over a mosquito bite convinced it was dengue. Then the ambulance rolls in with a 50-something-year-old woman, morbidly obese. Not like “a bit overweight.” I’m talking immobilized by her body, skin folding onto itself kind of situation.
Her husband, this guy looked like he hadn’t seen a doctor since ‘93, keeps insisting, “She walks fine. She just slipped.” Sir. With all due respect, no way in hell this woman was walking. She was being wheeled in on a stretcher, barely responsive, covered in sweat and wrapped in what looked like every towel and sheet they had at home.
Then the smell hit us. It was brutal. I was wearing this on my face, nothing blocks out smells better, and still the stench was overwhelming. It was awful.
Turns out, their idea of “cleaning” her was putting hot wet towels on her body. That’s it. No soap. No rinsing. Just… warm mildew towels.
And then the daughter shows up. 22 years old, same build, same energy. “My mom’s fine, she just needs to rest. We want to take her to our usual hospital in a taxi.” A TAXI. You couldn’t even fit her in a normal cab. And I’m not even body shaming, this was a full-on medical crisis. The woman was septic and barely conscious.
We ran her labs and my jaw legit dropped.
WBC count: 32,000 (normal: 4.5k–11k) – full-blown infection.
CRP: 280 mg/L (normal: <5) – her body was screaming inflammation.
Lactate: 6.5 mmol/L (normal: 0.5–2.2) – major red flag for sepsis.
Creatinine: 3.1 mg/dL (normal: 0.6–1.3) – kidneys were not okay.
Blood glucose: 389 mg/dL – undiagnosed or uncontrolled diabetes on top of everything else.
Despite the daughter’s protests, we kept her for stabilization and prepped her for transfer to a bigger hospital. But before that… we had to clean her.
It took four of us. When we undid the sheets, the smell got worse. Her skin was in folds on folds, and in between them? Literal fungus. Like, mushrooms. We’re talking colonies. Not just irritation or yeast. One of the nurses gagged and had to step out. I’ve seen some nasty wounds, but this was on another level.
We used gauze soaked in Betadine, trying to get under the folds gently. That’s when she started screaming. Not normal patient distress. I mean demonic, guttural howls—like The Exorcist level. She cursed, she cried, she twisted her head and yelled “DON’T TOUCH ME!” in this deep voice that did not feel like it came from a human.
I’ve never been so creeped out at work in my life.
Sadly, after being transferred and a couple of days in ICU, she passed away from septic shock. It hit hard, because it didn’t have to get this bad. She had family. But they were deep in denial. Her daughter kept saying “she was fine yesterday,” even though the labs said otherwise. And honestly… the daughter looked like she was heading down the exact same path.
Still think about that night sometimes. It was sad, grotesque, and terrifying all at once. We weren’t just fighting bacteria. We were fighting years of neglect, denial, and a healthcare system that lets things get this bad.
Stay healthy, drink your water, and please… bathe properly.
Comments
Man I really messed up by reading this while eating.
I’m wondering how they got her into the ambulance.
well, gluttony is a deadly sin after all…
As an ER nurse I’ve had patients like this . I feel like part of a weird club that has seen this stuff.
Wow that sounds terrible, great thing it’s not real.
This is a karma farming bot.
Omg
I have no doubt this can happen but this post sure whiffs of being AI-generated
I hope anyone reading this will take some compassion towards the nurses. I know it’s hard to sit and wait in the ED, but the other patients don’t know what is happening all around them. I worked as an Emergency Technician and I would stop by waiting patient’s rooms and thank them for being patient. I’d always follow up with, “I know it feels like you’ve been forgotten, but an hour for you feels like minutes to the nurses. I promise they are working hard. If they only knew what patient care nurses provide. It takes a strong person and immense compassion to be a nurse.
Mushrooms? Wow. Just, wow.
I job shadowed my aunt who a nurse for my senior project. There was a patient like this who came in and she hit my aunt because she had to put a catheter in…. I changed my mind on nursing that day.
We had a woman that lived in a trailer that they had to have the fire department cut out the front door because she was too big to fit. Had been in the house close to a decade. We were about 75 miles from NYC and sent a handful of patients to the Bronx Zoo for ct scans because they didnt fit in any machines
That CRP level was wild, scary.
I will never look at a mushroom the same ever again. Wtf.
I used to take morning walks with my ER nurse friend. She would unload all the crazy patient stories. Insane stuff! Just like this. I believe and people are just different acting in some homes.
“It didn’t have to get this bad”…no it didn’t but many people in this type of situation avoid medical care for too long to avoid the judgement and potential of hospital staff calling them grotesque. As bad as it was for the staff having to clean her up, it was worse for the woman. Have some compassion.
Honestly, I don’t know how you guys do it, but fair play. Literally my worst nightmare visually and the smell. Feel sick thinking about it and I’ve never even seen it in the flesh (or mouldy flesh).
This is why I went on Mounjaro and went from 310 to 145, I never wanted to get this bad.
Hi, ex x-ray tech here. They probably ordered a portable KUB on her too and all of radiology collectively groaned.
I was told by The Last of Us that the human body is too warm to host mushrooms – until global warming mutates/evolves said fungi and we all die/turn into zombie mushroom people – are we here already? I’m not cut out for a post apocalyptic world.
It would have been interesting to see what kind of colonies the human body could grow like that.. sorry if that’s morbid and I’m sorry you had to go through that. The human brain is such a funny thing to be able to allow this to go on so long. Is the will to live gone?
I watched a funeral home literally fold a body in half to get it out of the home.
When you say like mushrooms, do you specifically mean there were mushrooms? I’m not being facetious
I’m a PT at a large university hospital. Worked with a patient for a month on acute care who fluctuated between 900 and 950 lbs. she was ambulatory, got her up to 150’ and also was able to go up and down 12 stairs. That was up 1 then down 1 12 times. No way I was letting her try to go up a full flight. It’s incredible how much weight the human body can carry
Damnnnn that’s wild. 🤢
I wouldn’t say it was the “healthcare system” that let things get that bad.
My mom was an ER nurse and her worst case was a baby who was SAed very horribly. She is still haunted by it even though she is the kindest mother I know.
Does betadine hurt on wounds like alcohol does?? I’ve never encountered it
Oh jeez.
Once it was christmas (bc of course) had a shift from hell. Around 4in the frickin morning when I was literally barely awake an ambulance with a firetruck stopped infront of our er. They needed 6 firefighters to get this woman on a stretcher and then move her. She was almost 200kg. It was insane. Long story short.
Mice. In folds little mice families.
I was suddenly super awake.
I just feel so sad that she had no dignity. Even years later, after she dies (in an excruciatingly painful way), people make fun of her on Reddit and her stats and complete medical info is on display to gawk at. This world is so fucked. She was someone’s mom, wife, daughter, and I guarantee there was a damn good root reason for her conditions.
I’m horrifically amazed.
My ex’s mom was morbidly obese. She hoarded garbage and her dirty diapers, and never bathed, just wet wipes sometimes. The bathroom in her pigpen of a home didn’t even have working plumbing. She was not incontinent, just disgustingly lazy and mentally disturbed. She stored her cigarettes in a festering abscess under her left breast.
Any time there is an unnecessary link in a post I assume it is an ad or affiliate link
I read these stories to remind me to never go back to bedside. I worked on a gen surg floor but we mainly got bariatric patients. Took 5 people to turn a 700 lb man. Happy to be away from that environment.
Damn. I hope your hospital reported this criminal neglect of a vulnerable adult to the authorities.
This is so sad. It makes me think that everyone, specially those living through something as heartbreaking and awful as this, was once a baby. A blank canvas, with some kind of free will (yes, shaped by all the factors around us like geography, family, money, etc. etc.) but still with some choices that were entirely our own. And if they grew up in an average home, their mom probably held them and bathed them with so much care and love. There’s something about the image of a mother cradling her innocent newborn, who later becomes an adult that ends up hurting themselves, that just aches so deeply. Poor woman—I hope she finds peace, wherever she is now.
This needs to be a storyline on the next season of The Pitt
Well now I really need a picture
I bet you the family blames her death on the hospital.
Nothing makes you worry abt society as denial does
I’m thinking whats eating Gilbert grape 🤔
Lord this is why I can’t get into nursing 😩
I work in vascular and the worst smell is from folds of fat. This story is traumatic.
I’m so sorry you had to deal with this and I am very sad for the woman 😭
Confession: My brother in law is this lady. And we don’t know what to do. Like, legally he is allowed to make his own decisions. I get blaming the family – but they are legally competent adults, allowed to make their own bad decisions.
Medical professionals are saints among us. No way in HELL I could have dealt with that situation.
All of a sudden I want to bathe in Clorox water poor soul rip
What do the first two tests represent?
How can you actually get mushrooms on your body? Just from bacteria overtime?
Ugh.
What’s your role? Those lab values shouldn’t have been surprising to anyone who interprets labs (i.e., RN or MD), and, despite your dramatic account, the team of any level or credentials should have anticipated that cleaning her would be extremely painful and emotionally distressing.
You are sensationalizing your inexperience at your patient’s expense.
I’m sorry you had to deal with that. Very much reminds me of the “swamps of Dagobah” post from years ago.
Do to a health issue I was 450 lbs
Size 7 x shirt 58 “ waist
not easy to find cloths
It is not easy to move around or not be discriminated against
I had gastric surgery it has turned me from 450 to 118 lbs
Now have a hart time finding smaller cloths
I can honestly say when you are large people look at you completely different
And assume it’s all your fault or your just lazy
Etc etc
My exhusband’s first wife was grossly overweight and unhygienic. She ended up needing to have surgery to remove gangrene that had developed between the folds of her belly/pubic area. 😮
OP trying to make money / track clicks for ads with that link.
sneaky sneaky
Now imagine trying to do a pelvic exam on someone with this body habitus who came in complaining of generalized abdominal pain. I had to change my scrubs immediately because they smelled so bad, and my white coat which was hanging on the wall of the exam bay had to be thrown away.
As a nursing student I had to place a foley for a bariatric patient. It took stirrups-and four people other than myself to move her skin folds on her legs out of the way to get line of sight. We ended up having to use sheets as a retractor to lift the pannus. All in : 4 people on legs, 2 on pannus, and me with the foley in on first try. Everyone was literally sweating buckets. Nobody got hassled for the gagging from the smell. Made C-diff a walk through the roses comparatively. This was 25+ years ago before more specialized plans and equipment for these patients.
Have you seen the movie “When evil lurks” by chance? Your description of that person sounds so much like the infected ones from that movie! Sorry you had to experience it
Dude do you work at my hospital?? Something super similar happened to me and I work nights.
EMS brought in a barely conscious, 776 pound pt. Same deal. Garbage labs, unholy smell. The patient (and her family) were so far in denial. They said “Jesus will take the weight off if he wants it gone!”
She died within hours before even making it to ICU.
But it gets so much worse. They called for her to be moved to the morgue, but only two security guards tried to move her. So it didn’t go well.
First, they couldn’t fit her through the door. And while trying, they DROPPED HER. The stretcher tipped and she fell on the floor half in half out the morgue. They had to call 8 more people to get her off the floor and into the morgue. She was dead on the floor for 2 hours while everyone tried to move her. And the whole thing was on security footage.
“I still think about it when I’m trying to sleep”
Wh-why?! Why are you doing this to yourself?! Please I beg of you not to do this to you! For the love of all that is holy!! Omg I hope you stop doing that!
Even before they reach the point of immobility due to their extreme obesity, there can be related problems. I used to work with a lady, not someone I took care of – a coworker, whose obesity was a factor in her death. She was in a bad car accident, and her girth caused problems getting in surgically to repair the damage. She passed away from what were probably survivable injuries with intervention.
As an ultrasound tech, these are the kind of patients our ER docs will order STAT bilateral venous Doppler for swelling and call us every 5 minutes to see when we’ll be there to scan them. Like sir I think they have bigger problems than their morbidly obese legs.
I bet she wouldn’t let hubs bathe her with soap and water. It probably hurt her to much.
I’ve watched enough episodes of my 600# life to know the baths are the most important. There have been a couple 600+ pound people who were able to walk but for short distances and because they were young
That poor woman.
I’ve had the duty of washing and drying a 780 lb female psych pt who would throw herself on the floor during med pass as defiance against her guardian approving forced meds. She could amazingly get in and out of a strong chair and lived without a bariatric toilet at home. Had a baby by c-section who was a toddler at that time. What did her in was cardiac failure scooting herself up a second flight of stairs. Plenty of issues leading up to this, but she was too bitter and angry to be immobile. I wonder what her quads and spine looked like since we never did any imaging. Our building at the time did not have a bariatric scale, so it was the loading dock.
Ah, Swamps of Dagobah part deux
In theory, could you harvest and eat mushrooms grown between your own fat folds?
Ok I’m gonna put down the extra doughnut and go for a run. My god the fungus…. Her family are monsters for letting that happen! Buying heroin for an addict seems more humane.
I’m fat, but I never got close to being that large. At my heaviest, I was just under 280lb before I hit it I said fuck that and now I’m down hovering between 230 and 225 still not great but better then the other direction.
Isn’t this the infamous piece of Reddit lore the Swamps of Dagoba story?
She was a late stage American.
You should submit this to “Tales from the Break Room”.
America?
OP, you shared this in a decent, kind way without being judgmental, more from a place of concern. Seems like you care about the people you help. There are people suffering greatly from mental health issues and sometimes entire families get sucked into the pit of denial. So sad. Makes me wonder how their living conditions were…like an episode of Hoarders.
Can this be blamed on healthcare? Wouldn’t she have a responsibility to keep herself clean and keep on top of health appointments and follow guidance from doctors? Same for her family.
If healthcare workers explained what to do and she ignored them it’s on her, not healthcare.
I wonder if she avoided medical care for too long because she was worried that someone would post gross-out stories about her on the internet.
Oh hell no
Somehow this sounds AI
Sad
My mom, an RN for 30 years, had a morbidly obese patient who was in the SICU. The patient was getting her fat rolls cleaned and a chicken nugget fell out. My mom picked it up and asked how long it’d been there. The patient grabbed it and ate it. After swallowing, she says she had been wondering where that went.
This lady was growing penicillin in her rolls.
Nurse I use to work with told me a similar story. She found a wash cloth in one of the folds that had imbedded itself in the skin it had been there so long
This story can’t possibly true, can it ? OMG.