When we hear someone died on the news or read it on social media, we always wonder exactly what happened. Sometimes it’s tragic, sometimes it’s sad. Sometimes, it’s just plain stupidity and weirdness that landed that person in the morgue. But it’s rarely as bizarre as what these AskReddit doctors, nurses, morticians and the like shared about the weirdest causes of death they have ever encountered.
I’m gonna be real, some of this is tough to read. You’ve been warned…
1. Too large
I’m a histotechnician in an anatomical pathology laboratory, and if my daily duties allow it, I assist with autopsies.
An autopsy was performed on an individual after he fell over dead on his wife after they were finished having sex. Turned out, he had a severe case of hypertension (his heart was easily double the size that it should be) and was taking Cialis. His death was ruled as a heart attack.
2. For the love of cheese!
A Med student here in Germany. In our Pathology Seminar the Professor told us about some weird cases he handled. The weirdest is that some guy had a fetish for Cheese. Yes, cheese. He liked to wrap himself in cheese with those plastic wrappers. And when I say wrap himself I mean all of his body was wrapped in cheese. He got sick and had a fever but he would not unwrapp himself and he could not sweat and so he could not transmit heat and so he died of hyperthermia. The Professor had to unwrap the plastic and remove the melted Cheese.
3. No Circulation
Doctor here. A friend of mine was on call on one of our medicine rotations and was called to the ER to do an admission. The patient in question was an elderly man who came to the ER because of progressive leg weakness. A CT-scan of his chest and abdomen showed complete occlusion of his aorta somewhere in his mid-abdomen – there was literally no blood flow going to the lower half of his body. Even the radiology report stated “This condition is not survivable.” The man died less than 2 hours later in the ER, never even made it up to the floor.
4. GOOD GOD
Patient was being transported via stretcher on elevator. The transporter pushed the stretcher onto the dark elevator just as the elevator was being called up to another floor. The elevator pulled the patient into the shaft leaving her hanging upside down. Lower half of her body crushed to her chest. Patient was screaming, her family witnessed the whole episode. There was an Otis repair crew working on the elevator because it was stuck. They didn’t put up signs that said it was out of order. Transporter was new employee and didn’t question why the lights inside elevator off. OSHA now has mandated that metal bar is across the doors and big yellow signs to indicate out of order. Employees who witnessed it resigned from PTSD. I still work at the hospital. It’s been almost 20 years since it happened
5. Didn’t see anything wrong?
An accidental death where a guy and his friend had been drinking and watching some show about people getting liposuction. One of the guys has the great idea of a Do-it-yourself liposuction – they go to his workshop (with even more liquor) and he proceeds to put an incision in his abdomen and try to use a shop-vacuum to suck out the fat. He sucked almost all of his intestines out, but not a single ounce of fat was in the vacuum. The friend was freaked out when he sobered up but told us his buddy was laughing and didn’t see anything wrong until he started bleeding profusely.
6. Internal bleeding
I was on the verge of working the county morgue last summer. The morgue is right beside the county prison too, so the morgue processes deceased inmates for the county because it’s cheaper that way. When I went in for my formal interview they took me on a little tour and run through of what they do and procedure and they let me sit in while they did an autopsy. The guy on the table was an inmate in maximum security, who had died in his cell and no one was sure how. So they start to work their way through the process of the autopsy and they notice lots of blood near his intestines. As they start to inspect that, an intern saw something in the guys rectum, so the Medical Examiner removed it and blood poured out of his rectum and his intestines emptied. This dude has shoved a short, but thick, metal rod up his butt, and had sliced open the internal parts of his anus, and he died from internal bleeding.
7. That’s just rude
We had a case once, the dude was a window washer. First day on the job. Somehow the scaffolding got tangled up and sling-shot him off an 8-story hospital roof. Splat. The ambulance company charged his family $700 to pick him up outside the hospital and take him into the emergency room.
