What was the absolute worst day of your life so far?

[earthanimal]

I find it hard to pinpoint a particular day that was the "worst" of my life (I also have a fairly selective memory and have blocked out most of my childhood thanks to my PTSD)
There are a few times as a kid that I remember just being a real, lucid nightmare. I still dream about them every so often.

One time was when my mother (who was always very high on something) had made me some mac n cheese for dinner. Her cooking was always horrible, and I was a pretty underfed kid because I could never finish anything she gave me. She was on the phone gossiping when I asked if I had eaten enough -- I always had to ask, because there were times that I didn't finish without saying anything and she would flip her shit.
She didn't answer me, because she was on the phone with someone who was obviously more important than her daughter. So I asked again. I was about 5 years old and didn't really understand the courtesy of not interrupting yet. She answered then. She told me to go wait in my room for her.
So I did. And she got off the phone eventually, and came to punish me for not wanting to finish my food. It is definitely the most vivid memory I have of her beating me. I remember she first asked me "how many times do you think I have to hit you?" which I mistook as her asking "how many times do you think I HAVE hit you," to which I responded "99," because for some reason I thought saying 100 (the biggest number I could think of) would be ridiculous. Realistically, she had hit me and my sister many more than 100 times, but I was afraid that hyperbole would get me into more trouble. She seemed surprised by my answer, and said, "you think I should hit you 99 times???" and of course, I said no, I thought you asked something else.
She ended up hitting me 33 times (I counted, of course) with the buckle of her belt. After 30, I tried to crawl away and she grabbed me by my leg and pulled me back. She also smacked me across the face hard enough to leave a long-lasting hand print before saying "that'll teach you to keep your bitch mouth shut."

I ended up showing off my bruises at the YMCA the following days, thinking they made me look cool. Social services were called, and my mom told me it was because I wore a pink dress with red tights.

To this day, she adamantly denies ever hitting us.

[Xiloscient]

My boyfriend's little sister was diagnosed with brain cancer, and on the same day I found out he's been cheating on me, escorting behind my back, and on dating websites. I'm in the middle of midterms and it's all becoming a lot...

[fallacy]

The day I was borned.

[babzy]

my God. This whole thread reminds me of the idea that you shouldn't be quick to judge because you never know what someone else has gone through.

@(you need an account to see links) - I am so sorry that you went through that horror. I hope that she will change and own up to her actions but more than that, that you can find healing.

@(you need an account to see links) I know exactly what you're talking about. Not the worst day of my life but I seriously injured my back 14 years ago. I've had surgery after surgery and I'm not much better. It limits life so much and people do fade away. I'm not as much fun as I used to be, I know that, but there's not much that I can do about it. I also have two pups who I adore and are my constant companions.

The worst day? I can't pinpoint one. Certainly my mother's death is at the top. It's been decades and I still cry sometimes. The other is concerning my adult daughter (I'm no spring chicken!) but I can't go there now.

No bonus points for me!

[Cherry Soul]

The worst day of my life was when I had to take my dog to be put down after she bleed almost all her blood out the night before due a very serious disease I was trying to threat her with no sucess. I had family members who died and I never felt even near what I felt that day. I didn't cry or made a scene, but that day I wished I could go with her forever.

[Poem]

Just reading through this thread. I love all of you and feel free to message me if you ever want to talk. Y'all are beautiful people and I hope all of you are an okay place right now. <3

[Fleur]

Not really 'worst day of my life', but more so 'worst period of my life'. I lived with an abusive father and had done so for 18 years of my life. Physical and verbal abuse was a daily occurrence.

A positive spin to this is the best day of my life was moving out just before my birthday. It's been 5 years since and my life has been pretty swell for the most part.

[Ph0enix]

The worst day of my life to date was 11/27/18. Less than a month ago. After a hike my best friend and I stopped at circle k and while I was talking to one of my aunts in the parking lot my mother called me. My father had fallen in the shower and hit his head. He was dead. I swear to god I saw black for a second. I have never felt pain like this. My favorite person on earth was gone. I am trying so hard just to get out of bed. I am profoundly sad. I can't find joy in the things I used to. I know this is grief and eventually it gets better but I can't see how. I loved him so fucking much. He is all I think about.

To top it off my aunt has stolen everything he left to us from my sister and I. I lost other family members, just not physically. I feel so lost. Every day since he died has been the worst of my life.

[ruzzeh]

Alright, so this is going to be pretty long. I need to include a lot of context to explain the gravity of the situation, so if you don't like to read long posts, you're better off skipping this story.

I've had a pretty hard life as a child and faced a lot of difficult things, but I remember one of my worst days being at a previous job I've had. It's one thing when a bad day only involves you, but when you're in the care for someone else it makes things a lot scarier.

To give context, I was a new EMT at a new job in a new city that I had just moved to. I worked for a decently sized ambulance company and I was eager to show them that I was ready to move up in the medical world.

In my city, they don't let new EMTs work on the ambulance right away. They stick you in these wheelchair units, where you're basically a taxi for sick people that are wheelchair bound. Oh, and you do it solo.

So I had a lady who was discharged from a local emergency room, her chief complaint had been respiratory distress. At baseline, she required oxygen, about 4 liters per minute. No problem, I pull out my o2 tank and wheelchair and load her up into my van. It had already been a stressful day, as I had already worked a 12 hour shift. I was supposed to go home before this call, but unfortunately dispatch can give you a call up to one minute before your off time. They don't care if you get home late, and refusing to take a call means grounds for termination. So like I said, I load her up and lo and behold, traffic is a fucking shit show. Her destination is 30 minutes away per GPS, but I already knew it was going to take much much longer.

I forgot to mention. My city, Portland, just had the worst snowfall it had had in many many years. I'm not exaggerating, it was honestly insane. (you need an account to see links).
For more context, it actually doesn't snow much here, so the city wasn't prepared at all.
I'm not scared of driving in the snow- I grew up in Colorado. But in Portland, driving in the snow here is way up there on my list of scariest things I've ever done. For those who have never been to Portland, the roads here are awful. By awful, I mean it literally looks like the person who designed the roads blindfolded a child and let them scribble on a piece of paper. There is loads of steep hills, sharp turns, drop-offs to the side, and sometimes there is no alternative route to get to where you need to go.
Portland only had a few snowplows for the entire city, and they do not salt the roads. Due to the humidity, the snow quickly melts and turns into ice.
People literally just gave up and abandoned their cars in the middle of the freeways and streets. (you need an account to see links) <-- Here is a video where you can see the freeway just littered in ditched cars. I've never seen anything like it!
So anyway, not only am I sliding around, I also have to worry about abandoned cars IN THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD. And for some godforsaken reason, my company did not have enough tire chains for every vehicle. I was one of the unlucky ones without chains.

So getting past the freeway, whatever. It was uncomfortable and annoying, but nothing eventful happened. But of course, this lady didn't live right off the freeway. She lived 15 minutes off the freeway, up a mountain road.
So I'm about a mile from her place, and there is this massively steep hill. The police here in Portland were overworked helping people trying to recover their cars, so for the problem areas they blocked off the roads so people wouldn't try and drive on them. I saw the roadblock, and I knew that hill would most likely be too steep for me to make it without chains, so I tried to see if I could find a road that could take me up there but with less incline. I find another road, I start driving down it, and I get stuck.
I start problem solving, and I grab some blankets that I had stored in the back for my patients, and I shoved them under my tires. After a while I'm able to get enough traction to get unstuck. I drive about 20 ft and get stuck again. Repeat the process three more times.

I finally get going a little bit and for FUCKS sake there are cinderblocks blocking the fucking road. Apparently they decided they didn't want thru traffic on this road either, so they fucking had cinderblocks that are unmoveable, in the fucking road. (Portland decides to do this to random streets, not related to snowfall, and it doesn't show on GPS. I don't know why they do it, but it really fucked with my gps the entire time I had this job). So I think well FUCK, I guess I need to back track and take on that fucking hill. That was the only alternate route, and it had fucking cinderblocks.
The hill I had mentioned before, was blocked off, but only by some shitty temporary fence blocks, so I knew I could move them and just move them back. As long as I could get up that fucking hill.
So I start my way back, but of course, not without getting stuck again basically in the same spots I was stuck before. At this point this 30 minute drive had become a 3 hour ordeal due to traffic (the freeway was moving at about 5 MPH because of the snow/abandoned cars/blocked exits), getting stuck, and also the time it takes getting report from the nurse at the ER, and loading the patient up into my vehicle.

So I'm at the bottom of the hill. I know I can't fucking make it, but god damn I have to try. This lady needs to get home, she already had a long day at the hospital.
I start heading up at a steady pace, and I see other cars that were abandoned, and another car that was dangling off the overhang on the side of the road. I really didn't want that to be me and my patient hanging off of a fucking cliff, so drive as far away from the overhang as I possibly can. And would you believe it? I got stuck again.
Fucking. Stuck. a g a i n.
This time, really stuck. My van slowly drifted to the left leaving me at an angle against a pile of snow.
Whatever, I get out to try my blanket trick and I realize.............


My patient has been on oxygen this whole time. I forgot about the oxygen. I haven't looked at the oxygen in hours. My portable tank can only hold so much. FUCK.

I look, and she's at 500 PSI.
At the rate of 4 liters per minute, we have about 15 minutes left before she runs out.

She went to the hospital for respiratory distress, she needs oxygen to breathe.
I immediately feel a sense of dread wash over me, because I have !!!15 minutes!!! to figure this out before she runs out of the most important thing that lets her breathe.

I get out of the vehicle, call my supervisor and let him know the situation. I need chains to get her home, and I need oxygen, NOW. I tell him what I have left and I let him know my location. He has dispatch send me a mechanic for chains and other unit to bring me oxygen.

Before you ask why I didn't call 911, is because MY COMPANY IS 911. WE RUN THE 911 CALLS FOR THE COUNTY WE ARE IN. IT IS MY PROBLEM, AND MY COMPANY'S PROBLEM. Of course, due to the roads and traffic, my patient and I, are basically fucked. Who knows how long it'll be before help gets here.

While I'm internally freaking the fuck out, and before I let her know that she is almost out of oxygen, she tells me she needs to pee right this second.
I ask if she can wait, and of course, she says it's an emergency. She tells me that she doesn't mind using my trashcan in my vehicle. She just reallyyyy has to go.

So what else can I do? So... She pees in my trashcan. This is already a PR nightmare and my patient is forced to pee in a fucking trashcan. And I still have to tell her that hey, don't freak out ok, but you're running out of oxygen.

At this point, you're probably wondering why she is not screaming at me. Fortunately this lady has a little bit of dementia.
In the medical field we judge awareness by assessing their ability to answer four questions relating to their person(self), place, purpose, and time. We call this A&O (alert & oriented by) x (whatever number of questions they're able to answer). This lady was A&Ox2 meaning she only knew her own name and purpose (she knew she was coming home from the hospital). She did not know she was in Oregon or where her home was and she did not know what year it was. So pretty much, not 100% with it.

So I let her know, she's running out of oxygen. We have somebody on the way with chains and another unit coming with oxygen.
Time passes and I'm still waiting on my people to come with the resources I need.
At this point she's at 100 PSI, meaning only minutes away from running out of oxygen.
Since I'm in a wheelchair van and not an ambulance, I have very few tools for me to help her.
I have a bag valve mask, for those of you who don't know, is what we use to give manual respirations. Here's a picture:

So I set it up and wait for the time to come.
Sure enough, we run out.
I don't immediately start ventilating her, I watch to see how she is able to tolerate room air.
I take a set of vitals with the few things that I have, so basically I take a blood pressure and pulse. The thing that I need most to really be able to assess her ability to breathe, which is a pulse oximeter, was not in my van. The Pulse oximeter reads the oxygen saturation in somebody's blood. Generally people are at 97-100%, but below 93% generally needs intervention. Since I don't have that, I have to rely on other clues to see how she is doing.
She was slightly hypertensive aka high blood pressure, but not at an alarming rate. She was also slightly tachycardic, aka high pulse. Her respirations were increased, and she positioned herself into what we call a tripod. Tripod positioning can indicate that somebody is having difficulty breathing, and I'll show you a picture so you can have a visual reference:
.
Blood pressure and heart rate increasing can be an indication that her body is working harder to breathe.
So I start ventilating her.

Unfortunately, a bag valve mask isn't really the best way to help a conscious person to breathe. A BVM is generally only used for a patient who is unconscious or sedated because people don't really like the feeling of someone forcing air into their lungs while a mask is forcibly being pushed onto their face. But, it was all that I had so it's what I had to do.
She was hyperventilating, which decreases the co2 levels in her blood, which can cause other symptoms that we did not want. It's not uncommon for people who are severely hyperventilating to pass out. With me helping her ventilate, we were able to slow her breathing down enough that it didn't happen.

After what feels like forever, for some god forsaken reason, the mechanic made it to me before the other crew with the oxygen.
He had come in his own personal jeep, and had all four chains set up on his vehicle.
I made the decision that we need to leave now, and not wait for the other crew.
The mechanic picked her up and carried her to his car, and placed her in the back seat. I sat back there with her, and continued to ventilate her and we were able to tackle the hill. The caregivers opened the door, and we get the oxygen that she needs.
I sat with her for a little while and make sure that she was doing ok, and with the oxygen back on her she went back to baseline in good time.

I felt comfortable leaving her with her caretakers instead of the hospital due to the mechanism of the breathing problem being a lack of oxygen. Her caregivers were foreign so they did not speak English very well, but they understood that they needed to keep an eye on her just in case. They didn't really grasp what had happened, but basically "ok back from hospital stay, if bad go back ok" which was good enough for me.

When I get back to my vehicle I find the other crew waiting for me. The only thing that they say to me is "why would you leave your car unlocked? This is a terrible area you should know better" and I think r u fucking kidding that was the least of my worries you fucking fuck nuts.

I finally get back to base and all in all, it ended up being a 17 hour shift. I write up an incident report and my supervisor informs me that I made some good judgement calls.

This isn't the most severe medical emergency I've had, but it was 100% the most stressful due to lack of experience and I thought for sure I was going to lose my job and hurt my patient, on top of an already stressful day. It made me question if I was really cut out for working in medicine, but in the end it was ok. My work supported me and my patient never complained. I learned a lot from the situation and now I have a much better job in a hospital where I know I have immediate support for any situation I get thrown into.

[Banette]

Let's see...

Funny Shit:

Please log in to view spoilers.

Not so Funny Shit:

Please log in to view spoilers.

I'm not sure of what else, but I may add them here eventually.