Everyone who’s been to the gynecologist knows it can be an awkward experience. It’s hard for it not to be, considering how vulnerable and exposed these checkups can make you feel, even when the professional examining you is kind and reassuring. You just have to take a deep breath and get through it.
But sometimes, it’s not the patients who leave the appointment shaken. It’s the doctors, too, after everything they end up seeing. So when Redditors asked gynecologists to share their wildest and most horrifying stories, they had plenty to say.
We’ve rounded up some of the most shocking ones below. Please note that this list contains sensitive content.
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One that a colleague in OB/GYN shared a while back:
A woman was in for a pelvic exam, is up in the stirrups and my colleague has her fingers in up to the cervix.
At this point, something possesses the woman to ask, and I quote, "So, do you ever think about stuffing a turkey while you're doing this?"
My colleague, trying to keep a straight face, answers, "No, but now I will every Thanksgiving..."
The woman finds this hilarious, and proceeds to stare my colleague dead in the eye while yelling "*GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE GOBBLE*", with my colleague's hands still up her hoody-hoo.
I still enjoy telling that story to friends at Thanksgiving. It means more turkey for moi.
This is a story from a friend's dad, happened three summers ago.
An overweight woman comes into the office for an STD test and pelvic exam, complaining of colorful discharge, an awful stench, and burning during urination. She assumes she has gonorrhea. Wrong. It was much worse.
He gets in there for the pelvic exam, all the while assaulted by the stench of rot, and finds a dead frog in her vagina. This thing is heavily decomposed, since the warmth of the woman's vaginal cavity has helped to speed up the process, and he has to pull it out piece by piece. Needless to say, she also had a wicked UTI.
The woman explained that she'd passed out naked and drunk/high/whatever at some party at her boyfriend's house, and figures he or one of his friends must have thought it would be an absolute riot to put a live frog up her vag. She apparently did not seem bothered by the fact that an animal had died and decomposed in her vagina, just relieved she didn't have gonorrhea.
Edit: For extra gross-out factor, it's worth knowing that this was in Memphis, TN, where temperatures routinely get well over 100F with over 90% humidity. Think about that.
I'm an EMT and work in free health clinics with Remote Area Medical. We provide vision, dental, medical and women's health clinics. I was assigned to the women's health area when we had a lady come in with a washcloth shoved in that region.
Stank to high heaven, and she'd put it up there three weeks ago as homemade contraception.
That was my first time working in the women's health clinic.
And I have more, such stories, such horrible horrible stories.
My wife is an ob/gyn specializing in maternal fetal medicine which is basically high risk patients...she had an obese diabetic woman come in with an absess the size of a lemon on her labia..when they lanced it the absess exploded missing my wife but hitting her nurse...she described the smell as worse than a thousand decaying bodies and the nurse with over ten years of experience proceeded to throw up all over the exam room.
That must have been so painful for the patient and such a relief to get it lanced even if it did stink
During a delivery of twins the doctor notices that one of the twins isn't looking so good and needs some help coming out. The doctor applies some traction to the babies head, which is unusually mushy.
**He decapitates the baby.** The head literally comes off in his hands.
The doctor does a silent "oh s**t" and dumps it in a medical waste bag before the mom can see it.
Turns out that this was actually a triplet that was never noticed on ultrasound. It had been choked off by the other two, died at some point prior, and started decomposing.
I'm a gynecologist, and what irks me is that our providers have had to write doctor's notes specifically stating to have NO intercourse for a certain amount of time, because sometimes husbands don't really understand or care — one poor woman had stated she needed her note to include no oral either, and her stupid husband counted down the days until she was 'released from her restrictions.'
One of my friends worked as an intern with a gynaecologist 2 years ago. There was a client complaining that she couldn't get pregnant. She also had been having diarrhea for a long time. The gynaecologist asked if she regularly had a**l s*x and the woman confirmed that she only did it anally. Apparently her husband had told her you can get pregnant from a**l s*x, so she wanted it non-stop to get pregnant.
My sister's boyfriend was doing a gyno rotation. He was quite upset, as he was examining a woman that from sight and smell alone it was obvious she had cervical cancer so advanced that she wasn't going to make it. For the first time on that rotation he had to warn someone about their imminent death. It was all very depressing and solemn, so it was quite a relief when it turned out to be a tampon that had been in there long enough to resemble a tumor.
EDIT: On TSS- someone correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it the bacteria that causes TSS is either present in a patient or not, like MRSA. TSS is NOT an inevitable consequence of disgusting tampon behaviour.
My dad's a gyno, tends not to be too open about the gritty details, but everyone in my family knows the story of the time he was doing a routine exam and found half a ham sandwich beneath a fat fold of one of his patients. Yeah, every time a friend makes a crack about my dad seeing a lot of puss, I tell that story.
While working in an ER... A lady comes in and complains of money stuck in her vagina. We get her back to the room and discover a huge roll of small bills that cannot come out. The surgeons had to take her to the OR and put her under general anesthesia to pull out the wad of money. It was a roll six inches in diameter. Around $4000. They turned it into the bank who sent the damaged bills back to the treasury and the patient got brand new dollars.
Another lady had her dog's tennis ball stuck in her. She was in her 70's.
People, there are toys for this kind of thing. And I don’t mean a tennis ball.
I'm not a gyno, but one of my friend's aunts is. She said that one time, this lady came in and complained about being in a lot of pain. Upon inspection, my friend's aunt discovered a thong inside the woman. Neither one of them knew how a thong could possibly end up INSIDE a vagina.
Err in Oz a thong is a flip flop - I had to do a reset when I initially read this one.
Not a gyno but was an EMT/Firefighter about 10 years back. Treated a very attractive woman who decided to dump about 4 oz of Drano into/on her vagina to "k**l the sperm" that her date left in her "by accident." Just think of an English bulldog who got popped an Alka-Seltzer, got into a Costco sized jar of mayo and then was punched in the face about 10 times. That's what it resembled.
To add to the awkward factor, about a year later I met a very attractive woman at a grocery store. Got her number and met her for drinks. Later that night we ended up at my place making out. As soon as I started taking her shirt off I suddenly remembered that the girl who I had taken out for drinks was the one who previously dumped drano into her vag. Our night ended abruptly and awkwardly as you can imagine.
Not me, my uncle that's a doctor. He was doing his rounds in medical school and it was his turn to be an OBGYN, or however the rotations work in medical school. A lady came in with a black discharge coming from out of her vagina. He opened her up and started poking at a black object around the cervix. He asked if it hurt when he touched it. She said no so he started tugging on it with forceps or tweezers, whathaveyou. He began to slowly pull it out and it turned out to be a tampon that was stuck in there for over six months. The smell was so bad that the nurse had to leave the room. I'm surprised she didn't get toxic shock syndrome.
A patient came to the emergency room with a foreign body in her vagina. It was a peach, with a bite taken out.
My Aunt is a Gynecologist and she (very awkwardly) lectured me after a recent client had visited.
Apparently this girl and her boyfriend decided to get "creative". So they used tuna and milk to (excuse me), "eat her out". The girl kept getting random orgasms in class and went to find out she had maggots.
So gross. Just a tip.
Disco rice doesn't just magically appear. There had to have been...flies...present. I can't believe I just typed this.
I'm on placement as a scrub nurse for a Gyne theatre. I've seen many, many gross things in my time here. Mostly it's been terrible smells and a whole load of prolapses, but one case really sticks in my mind.
This poor woman came in with cervical cancer, and she got treated for it with chemo. For some reason (I don't know the medical technicalities behind this) her her rectum and vagina fused, and any bowel movement she had would erupt furiously out of her vag. She was also very overweight, so couldn't properly clean herself, meaning all the festering [feces] and general uncleanliness had caused everything down there to start rotting.
I'm a critical care nurse and we had an [adult worker] brought in through the ER and she kept grabbing towards her vagina shouting she had stuff in there. We looked at each other and thought oh no now we gotta look. We preceded to pull out toilet paper, $32.50, and a handful of maggots. Almost all of us gagged.
Nurse here. I had a girl come into the ER walking funny. She was complaining of pain near her vagina. She has an in-grown pubic hair next to her vagina that was infected & created a 4cm lesion of pus & stench. The PA and I had to drain the vesicle. I think I screamed louder than her when it popped while the PA was injecting some lidocaine to numb the area. It's sad, with no insurance, the poor girl let it go for so long before she spent the money for a doctor.
My friend is a nurse at a gynos office and she told us this story a few years ago. A lady came in complaining that she was bleeding during s*x. When the doctor examined her he found two old condoms and an old tampon. She also said she hadn't gotten her period in six months.
Oh I have another... examining vaginal smear samples for infection under a microscope in the lab with Rihanna "Rudeboy" playing in the background on the radio. I'm hearing Rihanna moaning "take it, take it, baby, baby" "come here rude boy boy are you big enough" through the speakers while looking down the microscope at slides of gonorrhea, chlamydia, bacterial vaginosis & spermatozoa swimming around. Maybe not awkward, but hilarious.
Delivering late miscarriages. Ruins my whole week.
My mother is a nurse and she has a great story about a friend. Her friend was doing the exam and used a vaginal speculum to open things up down there on the patient. She immediately noticed that the vagina contained a bunch of LIVE ANTS!!
So the nurse freaks out a little and checks again. Right about then she notices that the ants had been in the speculum and that she had just inserted them into the patient...
tl;dr: Nurse inserted ants into patients vagina by mistake.
Ants inside the speculum??! Doesn't seem like a very sterile clinic, then... 😣
My dad is a gynecologist, and he told about this woman who came in, thinking there was something wrong with her lady parts. She used reusable tampons (which is gross in itself), and to help my dad make a diagnosis (there wasn't anything wrong with her, she was just crazy), she had brought in every reusable tampon she had used during her last period. Think of a plastic bag, filled with bloody rags. So gross.
Retained tampons, AKA when a tampon is stuck inside of someone. The smell is horrid, and we usually have to close a room for the day after removing them.
My mom works as a Gynecologist's assistant and she has told me a few stories. A woman once went in and apparently filled an entire room with her putrid stench. She had been wearing the same underwear for two months and her panties, which were originally white, became a darkish yellow brown. She apparently wasn't very good at wiping either.
My wife is a urologist and increasingly more of the issues handled by a gynecologist are being recognized as appropriately handled by female urology. Her worst experience was as a medical student visiting at a Midwest medical school. The patient was an insanely morbidly obese woman who they had to keep in the hospital for days until a new table capable of supporting her could arrive. When the time came for the exam, they had to assign a medical resident to either side of her to hold back her panis (google it) just to get access to the labia. We aren't talking holding fat up, we're talkin' holding fat back side-to-side like a barn door. When they finally got it open, the aged attending physician who had seen it all had to turn away from the stench to avoid vomiting. Since my wife was just a medical student, she was observing from a reasonable distance but said her favorite part was watching the faces of the residents left holding the panis as the attending fled.
Third year of medical school on my family medicine rotation which I'm doing on my med school's campus academic health center. Electronic medical record shows 24 year old with chief complaint of cough so I go in to interview her where it comes to light she's really there for vaginal itching. Finish up the interview and tell her I'm going to grab my attending for the pelvic exam. My attending tells me she'll let me do the pelvic if the patient consents (I had already done ob/gyn at this point and was quite comfortable with it) but we both agree I'd likely get asked to leave the room altogether. Lo and behold, patient consents, I do the pelvic, we write her a script for some antifungals and she goes home.
Two days later, I'm teaching a small group of first year students how to perform an abdominal physical exam (teaching is a requirement of the family medicine rotation) when, during introductions, I come face to face with my patient who never mentioned she was a first year student. We both play it off really cool at first but during the session, her partner asks me to show him how to do an inguinal/femoral hernia examination on a female patient AKA his partner. While I'm doing my exam, she breaks out in hysterical laughter which causes me to lose it and start laughing at the absurdity of the situation as well. She played it off like she was ticklish and I said something stupid like "I thought of something funny, don't mind me."
Two weeks later, she returns to the clinic for a follow up and I go see her. We talk for a while about how she's feeling, how awkward our second meeting was when he goes "So when are you going to take me out to dinner?" I politely declined and explained I had a girlfriend at the time and never saw her again.
tl;dr I did a pelvic exam on a girl who ended up being a fellow medical student (though 2 years behind me) and asked me on a date at her follow up appointment.
My college roomate is now an OBGYN. We were also roomates when he was doing his residency at an urban hospital known for treating very poor, often uneducated people. Here are just a few of the stories that he told me:
* First day of his residency, he gets introduced around - during introductions, one Dr.has a lady in the stirrups and says, "Dr. __, take a look over here." The other Dr. begins to show my friend what a vaginaa with multiple STDs looks like. His exact statement: "No textbook prepared me for that."
* After a while, the hospital was so busy that he was doing everything on his own. A lady came in one day and he gives her an exam. My friend says "Yeah, I think you have a yeast infection here." to which the lady replies "I KNOW! I've just been eating too much bread!"
* A lady came in and delivered her 8th child. The number of children she was having was wreaking havoc on her body so my friend went through how to use birth control (the pill), side effects, etc. A few months later he sees the same lady - she's pregnant. My friend says "I thought we agreed that you were going to remain on birth control" to which the lady replies "Oh those? Those made me sick so I gave them to my boyfriend!".
I was gchatting with my dad, who is a gyno, and sent him that link a short while ago where the gyno had to instruct his clients on how to have s*x, and he sent this fun story back.
"One of my favorite stories involves a woman who was born without a vagina. It's not that unusual and is called Rokitansky Syndrome. These patients don't know they don't have a vagina (believe it or not) and she was using her urethra (believe it or not) for s*x!!
ouch!".
I don't want to hear anymore complaints about men not knowing the intricacies of female genitalia when you've got a woman who literally thought her urethra was her v****a
My grandmother was an assistant and told us about how a woman who was a little loopy came in once with some kind of very serious infection. Turns out she had been hiding things INSIDE her vagina like money, jewellery, I think maybe a cigarette lighter that kind of thing.
Manager of a OB/GYN clinic here. Not really a horror story but, Patient called our nurse mentioning she had dark colored discharge and vaginal discomfort. After asking questions we confirmed it was because she thought you could use any type of jelly for intercourse. She had used grape jelly and not ky.
When my wife was a medical student on her OB-GYN rotation, she had to deliver an overdue baby. It turned out that there was an infection or something, and when they popped the membrane, it was pretty much all pus. Imagine the biggest, pusiest and stinkiest event ever — literally experienced nurses were vomiting, it was so gross. The mom and baby were both fine, though, so happy ending.
I had a lady who came in with 'unexplained' vaginal bleeding. She'd never had a pap smear before, and she was around 40 years old. Lo and behold, there was a huge cancerous tumor on her cervix. The gynecologist tried to take a small biopsy, and the bed looked like a murder scene. I went and booked in for my pap smear the next day, since I had been putting it off.
I worked at a gynecologist's office for three years as a nurse, and you see some odd stuff. We had this one patient who had dementia, and was really scared and just nervous all the time. We use these things called pessaries that hold the vaginal wall or bladder up when women prolapse. We couldn't get this lady in for so long, because she was just always scared and fighting the staff. It got to the point where it was like, 'Whenever she calls, get her in, no questions asked!' She came in and her pessary had grown into the skin of her vaginal canal. It was god-awful...no amount of medicine helped with the smell.
Medical assistant to an gynecogist in the biz for 40+ years, so I have heard some incredible horror stories (and seen a few of my own). A brief synopsis of a few:
--doc's story: young teenager (around 14) had two babies back-to-back, and then had an emergency appointment for bleeding. She was freaking out. It was her period; she had never had one before because of the back-to-back pregnancies.
--doc's story: post partum patient had an emergency c-section. Doc and nurses advised how getting up and moving was important, but patient's mother was an ob-gyn in China and told her daughter to absolutely not move. Patient listened to mother and not doc, developed massive blood clots, and unfortunately passed away.
--doc's story: patient came in to ER with total procidentia, meaning all her lady organs had prolapsed outside of her body. The kicker: she had a tumor growing on her uterus, which was visible since the uterus was on the exam table. Immediate emergency referral to gyn/oncology.
--doc's story: patient went home with stitches after childbirth, came in to office in pain after a few days. She told doc her partner "just couldn't wait," caused terrible damage to the recovering tissues, and permanent damage. Doc did her best to restitch but the damage had been done.
--my story: patient came for annual after 6 years. Told me at the beginning she was seeing urology for constant bladder leakage. Exam showed massive cervical tumor, and what she thought was bladder leakage was seepage from the tumor. She's doing well!
--my story: patient in her 40s had annual, said her period was coming every 2 weeks for the last few years. Endometrial biopsy disgnosed grade 3 uterine cancer . She's also doing great!
--my story: 14-year-old came in with a possible retained tampon. At least, that was her original story. Turns out it was the cap of a highlighter from....ahem....exploratory time. God bless her, she stuck to her story right to the end ("I don't know how that got there, now I'm really concerned").
I've got one for you. A 17 yr old called stating she had a bottle cap stuck in her vagina. Most of us were thinking it was like a coke bottle cap, but it was a perfume bottle cap. She was "trying something new" and the cap somehow got unscrewed and stuck in her vaginal cavity.
My sister is personal friends with her OB/GYN (I know, weird, but whatever,they're collegues, she works in the hospital with him..) anyway, she asked him if he ever go sicked out by some stanky vag, and he said that he had not personally run across any that sicked him out, but that "you need to wash your FEET!" LMAO! After that, I make sure to give the tootsies a good scrubdown with the antibac soap in the exam room before the doc has to stick their face between them.
My OB/GYN's nurse told me of an old lady that came in that had "lichen" which she described as "exactly what it sounds like" and it had to be treated with a vinegar pack. The old lady said, "Just call me Pickle-Puss!".
My ex-girlfriend's dad used to be in the field before retiring. The worst case he had was a woman who was an addict. For whatever reason, she had to get creative with where she injected. Apparently, she considered her labia a good place. That was until they went gangrene on her.
My Ex-gfs dad was a gyno. He told me one time a largely obese chick came in and he lifted her panis (Belly) to get the lady parts and an old stale oreo fell out along with the putrid stench.
Now he only stocks small through large gowns. He no longer stocks XL or XXL and refers them. I think these experiences ruined him.
To whom would he refer them? Are there doctors who specialize in treating obese patients?
Surgeon here. I was doing a pediatric surgical rotation when an eight year old girl was brought in by her parents in ER for vaginal bleeding.
I was called in to have a look at her because the nurse 'could see something inside'.
Yep, there was stuff inside, and lots of it.
PENCILS
She used to pleasure herself with pencils.
Took her to theatre and removed more than twenty pencils from her.
Scarred for life. Can never look at pencils without remembering that...
Super late to the thread here. Not an OB/Gyn (different specialty), but I've done my share of vaginal exams.
I once admitted a 300+ pound mentally handicapped woman (to the hospital) for some non-gyn issue. However, she had what I suspected to be a RAGING case of bacterial vaginosis because her whole room smelled like rotten zombie vaginaa. It was so bad the nurses moved her to a single room and put a fan in her room to move some air. Unfortunately this meant that I would, at some point, have to do a pelvic exam. I put it off the first day, which turned out to be a mistake.
The following day I showed up to check things out. The nurses informed me that her handicapped boyfriend had been in the room all day with the door shut. I walked in before the exam and the room was literally saturated with the smell of vaginosis. It was so thick in the air I swear it was precipitating on my skin.
I get her all positioned and have my med students hold her thighs open for me (yes, hold her thigh fat out of the way). I go in with the speculum. Her vaginal walls are collapsing around the sides of the speculum because of her size making visualization difficult. She has an abhorrent amount of vaginal discharge, which was probably from her BV. At this point I'm breathing through my mouth, because I know if I so much as sniffle I'll probably gag. The med students are looking away with a look of horror on their face, obviously having made the rookie mistake of breathing through their nose. In addition to her vaginal discharge, however, I notice what is very clearly semen. To this day I still see her semen filled infected vagina when I close my eyes.
When I was still in medical school I was performing a vaginal speculum exam and thought I saw a pubic hair trapped near the cervix, turns out it wasn't a pubic hair but was a thread from an intrauterine contraceptive device. Good job I didn't try yank it out!
TL;DR thought an IUD thread was a pube.
My brother was doing a obgyn rotation and they were taking a swab from a 17 year old pregnant on her second baby who was dripiping with chlamydia. His words. Anyway it was pretty viscous and caught air as he was taking it, flew across the room and hit a nurse in the eye. Also you can get chlamydia in your eye.
I'm not a gynecologist, but there are a few case studies of women who were using their urethra like a vagina for sex...and some of those women didn't know it was a urethra.
A friends dad told me about a patient he had who was so obese, he needed 3 nurses to hold her fat out of the way so that he could examine her. It took one nurse per leg and the third nurse held the gut out of the way.
Couple of years back, during med school I was doing my Ob/Gyn rotation. Had this patients with clear signs of infection and some exams (like ultrasound) pointing towards a gynecological origin. So the patient underwent surgery to remove the abscess. She was a bit big for a girl, and also had way too much hair. So we open her up, start looking for common structures. Nothing, no uterus, no ovaries, nothing. Very weird. Keep on looking and there is a weird mass near the bladder. Start getting a better look and realized its not a weird mass, its the prostate. After we woke her up she confessed to having a s*x change operation a couple of years back. How she ever got the fake exams, we'll never know. We still laugh at the surgeon for having performed gynecological surgery on a dude!
Had a lady who came in with “unexplained” vaginal bleeding. Never had a pap smear. She was around 40 yars old. Huge great cancerous tumour on her cervix. The gynae tried to take a small biopsy and the bed looked like a murder scene. I went and booked in for my pap smear the next day (I had been putting it off).
I once did a vaginal examination on a pregnant lady to see how dilated her cervix was. I swear she moaned when I slid my fingers in. The student nurses were giggling in the background.
Another time, post delivery, while I was suturing a episiotomy wound, the patient asked me if I could give her an extra stitch to make it a bit tighter. I obliged.
This is some teen boy writing this. This a gross fantasy of his; this is not real.
So much body shaming. So much judgment. This is disgusting. If you're an OB-GYN reading this, do better. Yes, there are a number of issues tied into weight management and blood sugar management. But every story here seems to start with "here's her weight". And the doctors talking about how they no longer treat obese women because of one specific patient...but the ones complaining about unhygenic skinny women do not mention their weight AND don't decide to stop carrying small or extra-small gowns. Or that they now ask a woman's profession and no longer treat s*x workers. Nope! It's all NO MORE FATTIES HAR HAR HAR. These women are sick. No one chooses to become 500 lbs of their own volition. Something's wrong, and they need understanding and medical assistance, not judgment.
Thank you!! I was saddened by how many wrote about the larger women like they were some kind of animal :(
Load More Replies...Sad to realise practically all these stories seem like they come from USA. So many of them through sheer ignorance, mental issues, obesity or even $$costs involved to get issues seen earlier. So very sad :(
So much body shaming. So much judgment. This is disgusting. If you're an OB-GYN reading this, do better. Yes, there are a number of issues tied into weight management and blood sugar management. But every story here seems to start with "here's her weight". And the doctors talking about how they no longer treat obese women because of one specific patient...but the ones complaining about unhygenic skinny women do not mention their weight AND don't decide to stop carrying small or extra-small gowns. Or that they now ask a woman's profession and no longer treat s*x workers. Nope! It's all NO MORE FATTIES HAR HAR HAR. These women are sick. No one chooses to become 500 lbs of their own volition. Something's wrong, and they need understanding and medical assistance, not judgment.
Thank you!! I was saddened by how many wrote about the larger women like they were some kind of animal :(
Load More Replies...Sad to realise practically all these stories seem like they come from USA. So many of them through sheer ignorance, mental issues, obesity or even $$costs involved to get issues seen earlier. So very sad :(
