Reader beware! Today’s story is not for the faint of heart. For many people, myself included, it’s actually a nightmare come to life and will surely leave you crawling in your skin.
TikTok is full of medical mysteries — people love sharing their weird and terrifying hospital stories, and we as an audience love gobbling them up. But in this case, the only thing being gobbled up was the patient herself. I’ll explain what I mean by that in a bit, but for now, let’s set the scene.
This story was shared by TikToker @nursemirandashea, who often shares her experiences working in the medical profession on the app. This story has to be one of her most disgusting — it starts with a woman in her forties being admitted to a hospital with an incredibly low hemoglobin count. Miranda notices little black specks all over the woman’s body and clothes but isn’t sure what to make of it. The doctors do all the tests and consider all the possibilities, including cancer and immunological diseases, but nothing seems to explain the low hemoglobin count.
Of course, in time, Miranda would soon find out the answer.
Creepy-crawly blood-suckers
It turned out that this poor woman was being eaten alive by countless bed bugs that had taken over her home and had been making a meal out of her for literal years. She had tried to solve the problem numerous times but hadn’t had any luck eliminating the insects for good. Instead, she just got used to living with the creepy crawlies, which Miranda admits is very sad.
The woman claimed that the bugs were brought in by a roommate. Unfortunately, the roommate left, but the bugs did not. It’s actually very easy for bed bugs to spread like this. According to Americanpest.net, these hellspawn will often attach luggage or clothing and can be transported from place to place just like that. This means that Miranda and everyone else at the hospital were also at risk of catching a few if they weren’t careful, but luckily they have isolation gowns for things like this.
I suppose the silver lining here is that it wasn’t anything like cancer or some unknown disease, but it’s still pretty disturbing. Miranda was able to help the woman out by cleaning off the bugs and doing a blood transfusion. However, the woman will presumably still be returning to a house full of blood-sucking nightmares, so she could very well end up back in the hospital if she doesn’t get to the bottom of the problem somehow.