Shocking Lab Results Medical Workers Can't Forget

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7 days ago

Medical workers are the unsung heroes of our society, and they often deal with some truly bizarre, shocking, and traumatic things on the job. Sometimes, their stories sound too wild to be true.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses, doctors, and anyone working in the medical field were at the forefront of a global pandemic that claimed millions of lives. But even outside of dire circumstances, their job involves witnessing some truly shocking stuff.
During a recent Reddit deep dive, I came across this post in the r/AskReddit sub from one user who asked medical workers to share "the craziest lab result you've seen in a patient." Some of these entries are truly terrifying.
"Sent a patient for an ambulatory sleep study when he was referred to us for suspected sleep apnea. He was very tired and apathetic when he came in. His test came back with an Apnea-Hypopnea Index of 127, with the longest apnea episode lasting 77 seconds, essentially meaning he was stopping 127 times every hour."
"Called him back in urgently to start a CPAP trial, moved to VPAP, and last I had seen him, he was happy, cheerful, and about 35 kilograms lighter than when we initially saw him."–u/HaruDolly
"Older woman with a pulse rate of 8. I figured the pulse oximeter was sh*tting the bed, as they often do, so I told my coworker to take it off the patient and put it on me, to check if it was the machine acting weird. The coworker put the pulse oximeter on me, and it showed a normal, healthy pulse rate almost immediately. My coworker and I looked at each other, looked at the patient, looked at each other again, and just went 'oh fuck.'"
–u/Mysterious_Bag_9061
"Not a lab, but I had a patient walk in for an Electroencephalogram (EEG). We chatted the whole time. Super nice. Started the EEG. They were having a seizure every 30-40 seconds and had no idea. They drove there."
–u/Nomofricks
"Blood pressure of 280/186 on a pregnant patient in the field (I'm an EMT). Terrifying."
"As a lab tech, I've seen quite a few. The highest glucose I've seen was 1750, the highest accurate potassium was 7.9 (the rule of thumb is 8, and you're big dead, hemolyzed samples make it shoot up, so it's likely not real, but that one WAS). I learned our lactic acid analyzer only goes up to 40; that guy unfortunately didn't live long. I've seen a urine sample with so many crystals, I couldn't see anything else. My most recent was an 89-year-old man with what appeared to be a LOT of very healthy-looking sperm in his urine sample. I was shocked at the quality and quantity of them."
"I had a 10-year-old boy come into the emergency department for his diabetes. The finger-prick result was so high it wouldn't give a measure, which means it was ridiculously high. Parents were saying, 'He's always thirsty, but we only give him orange juice that has no added sugar. And McDonald's shakes.' For anyone not aware, both these things may as well be pure sugar for someone with diabetes."
–u/Binda33
"Not a specific lab result, but one time I had to process a blood sample where the plasma looked like strawberry Go-Gurt. Ideally, it would be almost clear."
–u/Popular_Emu1723
"Internal medicine resident here. Our clinic often has patients who get lost to follow up. A patient came in just under two years after his last appointment, where it was revealed he had a ferritin of 1. I repeat, ferritin of 1. Poor guy also had hemorrhoids and said he was bleeding every day; continuous fatigue — no kidding! Nothing to replenish your hemoglobin stores! The crummy part is that the ferritin was a lab from a while ago, and he never followed up for intervention; we're on track now, though."
"As a lab scientist in Australia, brown snake envenomation always provides interesting results. Had one 22-year-old male who went into Disseminated Intravascular Coagulation following a brown snake bite and died with a haemoglobin of 22. He was a Jehovah's Witness and refused a transfusion."
–u/thumpingcoffee
"The record WBC (white blood cell) count I've seen on admission was 185,000. (Acute Myeloid Leukemia)."
"A sodium of 555. Yes, you read it right. We looked at him. He replied, 'I don't feel so good,' and dropped dead. I'll never forget it as long as I live."
"Reading a bone marrow aspirate and found what ended up being Histoplasma capsulatum. Everyone related to hematology was in my office that day. Many extra slides were pulled and stained for personal collections."
–u/hopingforchange
"A tortuous, herniating stroke. The brain was twisting clockwise from the left temporal region and herniating through the foramen magnum. Symptoms were headache and dizziness for 45 minutes."
"A genetic test that came back XY on a patient with a clear vulva and no penis. We sent another blood test to a different lab to confirm there was no error. There was no error. The child was male, but had a vulva and no penis. Gender is truly a spectrum."
–u/WhatsInAName8879660
"I was the doctor covering a psychiatric hospital on the night shift. At the tail end of the shift, around 6 a.m., nurses from one of the Old Age wards called me saying one of their patients had been complaining of chest pain since midnight, but they didn't want to reach out at that time as they didn't think it was so serious to disturb me."
"Got a call from the lab tech that my patient had 'Blue-Green crystals of death.' The tech said that when those show up, death is usually imminent. The patient passed about an hour later."
"I'm not a med tech, but I am a phlebotomist. I had a child with blood that was so thin, it looked like a Halloween prop. When I dropped off the sample, the med tech did not believe me when I told them it was real and not just me covering up some sort of mess up. I don't know what that child's hemoglobin was, but it was scary low. Low enough that the same med tech was surprised they were alive. I have never seen blood so thin before in my 11 years on this job. It was red-tinted water."
–u/zombae788
"Worked in hospice for a time. Joint visit with the RN. Patient's pulse oximeter was 18%...awake, completely oriented, talkative — not short of breath or any other symptoms. The highest it went. The entire visit was 25%...we kept trying it on ourselves, different fingers. The nurse even tried toe readings on us, which were all normal. We straight up told the patient and family...we aren't sure how you are awake and talking to us, but we don't think you'll be with us a whole lot longer. Patient and family were extremely understanding — lived another 18 hours talking and visiting with family, ultimately passing in their sleep."
"Heart rate of 0 when a man was sitting up and talking, then after a few seconds of 0, he paused and stared, we were dumbfounded, figuring the leads were bad, then after 17 seconds, he came back and finished his sentence, Heart rate back to normal."
–u/cporterriley