r/tifu

So to preface my parents divorced when I was 1, my mom remarried when I was 3, and I lived with my single dad throughout my formative years. My new wife would also like to add that we both know next to nothing about weddings and she put me 100% in charge of the license.

My wedding was last Saturday and after weeks of stress, planning, and everything else that comes with it the magical day I got to marry my best friend arrived.

The day itself was magical; we got married outside in an old growth property close to the city with 100+ of our closest friends and family. We had my dad officiate and it turned into the most casual us possible wedding where when it was time for rings we called my Golden Retriever who bounded down to give us the rings.

At the end of the party as things were wrapping up my new wife and I walked up to my dad to ask to sign the marriage license. Without missing a beat my dad goes “oh absolutely I was wondering when we’d do that! Where is it?”

… I stared for what felt like an eternity before my wife and I both looked and said “wait we thought you had it”.

Turns out my assumption that the officiant just got a coupon style book of licenses for them to fill out was wholly incorrect and my wife and I were supposed to go to the government center together before the wedding.

So to anyone out there that found the love of your life but never had a family that talked about the fine points of marriage; make sure you get the license before your wedding day or you’ll end up like my wife and I having a second backyard wedding with just our parents to do the legal paperwork.

TL:DR turns out I’m dumb and to prevent officiants from marrying people willy-nilly the two people getting married have to go in and apply for a marriage license before the wedding and now my wife and I are having a second ceremony later today with just our parents so the government recognizes it.

TIFU. Okay, this is a long one - I apologize in advance. But I figure I should be detailed in case it helps anyone avoid this situation for themselves.

The Initial Snapchat Scam

Six years ago, one of my best friends, whom I snapped regularly, messaged me on Snapchat, sounding EXACTLY like herself. She said something about how she cracked her phone and was trying to use Snapchat on her dad's old ipad to contact friends, but the app kept asking her to verify her phone number if she wanted to keep using it. So, because she "couldn't use her phone" to verify, she asked me if she could just put in my number as the phone number instead. There were definitely other details used to incite urgency, but I can't remember exactly what they were. At the time, I was under a ton of commotion getting ready for a class I was nervous about, so I just said sure, whatever, and (as much as this pains me to say) I gave her the code. To be fair, this (fake) scenario would absolutely 1000% happen to this particular friend, but I still should have known better than to give anyone a code for any reason. Lesson learned.

That friend then FaceTimes me, which confused me because I thought her phone was broken and unusable. We both very quickly realize what had happened. Both of us, along with four or five of her other friends, had been scammed, hacked, and locked out of our accounts. Thankfully, I was able to get the scammer out of my account within an hour, but unfortunately, during that hour, they had access to the many, many explicit pictures of me in my saved "Memories" that I had taken when my (still current) partner and I were long distance for a year (again, I know I shouldn't have allowed those to remain saved in the app - I never thought I would fall for a scam like this, but lesson learned). I knew they had taken at least one picture that was saved in a message, because my partner got a notification that they had downloaded it while logged in. But I tried to (probably naively) maintain hope that the scammer didn't have enough time to go through all of the thousands of everyday regular non-explicit snapchat memories I had taken and saved since that year of long distance, when the majority of explicit pictures were taken.

Note (for anyone who may be facing a similar scam pattern): The scammer then kept texting my friend, pretending to be Snapchat Security, and stating that she needed to give over the code to her "For My Eyes Only" folder to verify the account. This confirmed for us that the point of the scam was to retrieve explicit photos.

I gathered all of the IP addresses associated with the scammer's log ins, the new phone number that was associated with the account once I logged back in, the phone number used to text my friend, and the usernames of all of her friends that had been scammed, and I submitted a cybercrime report to the FBI. Never heard back. When I tried to search for the IP addresses and phone numbers on my own, it was clear that the scammer had used a VPN and a Google Voice number that immediately rerouted you to another random phone number in the US when you called (my friend and I used a Google Voice # to try calling later to see if it was perhaps someone we knew). I also reached out to Google about this, and it seemed they couldn't do anything.

Yesterday - Nude was posted on VSCO

So, fast forward to present-day, six years later. Up until now, none of us had seen our explicit photos from the Snapchat scam anywhere on the internet. I would regularly reverse image search non-explicit parts of some of my photos, especially the one I knew had been screenshotted, to check for matches. And although I know that's a very faulty way of going about things, I was hopeful that the lack of results and the lack of related incidents in general meant that nothing had really resulted from the scam to my knowledge. Maybe they only got that one photo, that didn't have my face in it, and nothing else. Maybe I got them out of my account quickly enough that they weren't able to scroll back far enough in my memories while actively scamming other people to retrieve the rest of the photos. But I was wrong.

One of my old teammates texted one of my best friends yesterday saying that she was clearing out her VSCO and scrolling her feed when she saw a nude of mine come up, posted from my own account. I hadn't even thought of VCSO in over 10 years, and I barely ever used it when I had it, so this was shocking to me. The nude that was posted was a very old one, different from the one I had always known the scammer downloaded; the date of the photo that was posted confirmed for me that the scammer was able to retrieve many, many explicit photos from me while they were logged into my account. Probably all of them. This has been really, really hard for me to stomach and process.

The account had posted the nude 2 days prior. For whatever reason, they only posted that one, and didn't change the email to the account. So, thankfully, I was able to log back in, delete the photo, change the password, and log them out (after filing an NCII report with VSCO of course). Then, I went back into my old email that was associated with the account (note: VSCO doesn't allow for two-factor authentication), to see if there was any further evidence of activity. For multiple reasons that have nothing to do with this, VSCO messages went to my Trash folder, along with everything else that I've categorized as spam over the years. It turns out they had logged in on September 29 (no further IP information or anything, just "device"), posted this photo on October 3, and logged in again to check back in on it yesterday, October 5. At no point did they try to message me, extort me, lock me out, or anything. This series of events is interesting and confusing to me. Maybe they retrieved the nude from the dark web or gross forums, and they're doing this because they have a humiliation kink or something...? If anyone has any insight on why someone would do this in this way, please feel free to enlighten me.

As a reminder: my password for VSCO was not revealed or used in the initial Snapchat scam, so the VSCO hack must have connected leaked account information with the leaked nudes.

Notably, they also tried to log into my Facebook after they got into my VSCO. They weren't able to, thank GOD, because I have everything updated there and now use full security on my apps wherever I can.

But this series of events told me a few things:

(1) all of my nudes from the initial Snapchat scam have likely been distributed across the internet;

(2) my leaked account info, including my old email and whatever password I initially used for VSCO, has not only been distributed across the internet as well, but have been connected to those nudes; and

(3) the person who hacked me recently wanted to post explicit photos of me on multiple of my accounts, without necessarily extorting me for money, etc.

Questions:

Does anyone have any advice or clarification they can provide on this? I'm confused by the motivation to post me without extorting me. Is it a humiliation kink or fucked up misogynistic scheme?

And is there any way I can reliably get these photos and/or my leaked information off major forums now? I know there's no way to completely wipe the photos from places they've been saved, especially given the initial scam was six years ago. But I just feel so out of control because I know someone could always post them on accounts of their own or personally message them to people I'm connected to online, etc., since they're connected to identifiable information somewhere (like my old email). And I know I can try to get compromised passwords, etc. off the internet, but if anyone has any helpful information related to places where identifiable account information might be connected to leaked photos in this way, please let me know. Maybe that could help me at least narrow down a couple places to report.

TL;DR: My nudes got stolen after I got scammed on Snapchat six years ago, and one of them was just posted to my own VSCO yesterday, connecting leaked account information with the leaked nudes.

I was heading out to run some errands when I saw a really nice office chair sitting next to the trash room in my building. People leave furniture there all the time, so I figured someone was getting rid of it.

I work from home and my current chair is terrible, so I quickly brought it up to my apartment before leaving.

A couple hours later I got home and started wiping it down properly. When I flipped it over I noticed a couple tiny bugs around one of the seams underneath. I looked closer and immediately felt sick.

I dragged the chair straight back downstairs and posted in our building group chat asking if anyone knew who had left it there.

A few minutes later someone messaged me privately saying it came from their apartment and they had put it outside because they were dealing with bugs. Apparently they were expecting it to get thrown away and didn't think anyone would take it.

So now I've spent the afternoon vacuuming the path from my front door to my bedroom and checking every corner because I brought an infested chair into my apartment for absolutely no reason.

TL;DR: Saw a nice office chair by my building's trash room, brought it upstairs before running errands, then found bugs on it when I came home to clean it. The owner later told me they threw it out because their apartment had bugs.

This just happened and I am MORTIFIED .. typing this while im on break. I was working cashier at your local Walmart, whilst ringing this family of 3 out i offered stickers to their kid, being the enthused wally world employee I am I proceed to say "Yknow, you all could match if ya wanna!" Parents seemed to be chill with it i gave a sticker to the mom, "alright one for mom" I say.. then followed up with "And does daddy want a sticker?" As those words left my mouth i knew I screwed up.. I was mortified as mentioned earlier. Time felt like it had personally frozen so I could stew in my stupidity why.. why would I say this??? Not "does dad want a sticker" not "and one for papa!" No.. no "does daddy want a sticker"! And it doesn't help i have sort of a... feminine customer service voice. The "gaycent" if you will so it sounded VERY zesty.. to top it off the dad gave me the most bombastic eyebrow raised side eye.. the mom didnt seem to catch on but he knew.. HE KNEW I screwed up, he held eye contact from behind his wife and child, he smirked at me! I just want to melt into the ground and fade away.

TL;DR: Called someone's husband and father daddy. He caught on and made me suffer in silent embarassment.

Obligatory this didn't happen today.

Nope, this happened on a Saturday almost 25 years ago.

My 2 YO daughter came to me, dressed in her favorite PJ's and bunny ears on her head, grabbed me by the hand and led me back to her room.

There she had set up her table my dad made and had plates and cups set out. My (really, her) dog, a big ol' rottweiler cross was sitting and wearing a tutu, her favorite doll was next, and I was told to sit down and join them.

So, I sat down to a fine tea (water) and biscuits (Goldfish crackers) event.

She told me all about her week, while handing crackers to the dog at intervals. I learned about her adventures, and what her doll had done.

Then we ran out of "tea."

My little girl jumped up like a good host and ran to get more. She came back seconds later and refilled my cup.

Except, I didn't hear the sink run. I mean, she had a step stool, so she could have reached it, but... instead I heard the toilet flush.

So I asked the hardest question ever.

"Sweetie, where did you get the water?"

"From the potty! I flushed so it is new!"

I went and cleaned the pot and cups, and got us fresh "tea", and carried on. But damn.

I don't want to talk about the crackers. The dog got the rest of those. I got us fresh snacks.

TL;DR: My kiddo made me drink toilet water, but it is still one of my favorite memories with her. Great morning. None of us had ill effects (including the dog).

1,000,000/10 company
1/10 refreshments

Still worth it.

The actual fuckup was in 2019, but the realization of it was yesterday.

I've been dancing for almost eight years. The first five years or so were a total waste of time, I eventually realized, because the teachers I had in my small dance scene were simply no good at teaching.

One teacher from my first year stuck out in memory. I attended one class and felt that he was more interested in having his beautiful self being watched than actually teaching. I never went back. During the COVID pause he moved elsewhere.

Fast forward years to last weekend, he was in town for a special one-time lesson. I'm much better now, so maybe I could get something out of his lesson despite his prancing, so I went.

It was fantastic. He was a great teacher. His dance was amazing. None of that "look at me" vibe I had remembered so strongly from before. Great lesson.

So yesterday I dug up the after-lesson recap video from that 2019 lesson, which I hadn't looked at since that day, and realized that what I had dismissed as vanity was actually just incredible skill... so far above anything I'd seen in my scene that at the time I didn't even recognize it for what it was: the highest level of this dance.

Had I recognized what I was looking at back then, my journey would have taken such a different, less painful path. To drive that point home, I notice in that old video that one of the other students is now one of the better teachers whose class I regularly attend. Doh!

[FWIW, the dance is sensual bachata]

TL/DR: years ago I was dismissive of a dance teacher as vain, only to realize now that I it was actually skill beyond my comprehention. I wasted so many years with shitty teachers when I could have been truly progressing with him.

I work at a popular Halloween store. I enjoy dressing up and do occasionally. Customers enjoy it, and it leads to good conversation.

We had our employee day and I purchased the mehron bruise wheel and some makeup sponges. I have NEVER done horror makeup like this before. I gave myself a fake black eye and bruised up my lip. Because I did it, I could tell it was fake. I asked a friend and sent some photos to some others. I figured the photos probably made it look better due to lighting and that I didnt do that believable of a job. It was a first try after all.

I stopped to grab coffee at the shop near work before I clocked in. People avoided looking at me. Women looked at me with visible concern, and I could see they maybe wanted to say something. I didnt want to announce to the entire coffee shop, "its makeup. I work next door" bc thats awkward. I did tell the worker I see regularly who took my order. He gave a laugh of relief as he had seen me yesterday fresh faced. He let the other workers know as he saw them. It was busy, but we giggled together as he was walking an order out and said, "i should have let it keep going"

Anyway, TL; DR - I bruised up my face with makeup and grabbed coffee before work. People thought I had been legitimately attacked.

I work for a small local gym and we’re opening a second location. My boss asked me to update an old flyer with the new address, opening offer, QR code etc and send it to the print shop.

The old file had a phone number at the bottom. I assumed it was the gym number because why wouldn't it be.

It was my boss's personal cell.

Apparently he had made the original flyer himself years ago when the business was tiny and just used his own number back then. Nobody noticed when I sent the new version for printing.

We had 2,000 copies made and a local company distributed most of them around the neighborhood over the weekend.

Monday morning my boss comes in asking why random people have been calling him since 7am asking about memberships, parking, showers and whether they can bring their kids.

I checked the flyer and immediately saw it.

There was an opening promo that said to call for more info, so people were actually using the number.

We couldn't exactly go collect the flyers back once they had already been distributed, so we had to order another batch with the correct number and hope those replaced enough of the old ones.

My boss eventually found it funny but for the first hour I genuinely thought I was getting fired.

He did make me change his contact name in our work chat to "Customer Service" for the rest of the week.

TL;DR: Updated an old company flyer without realizing the phone number on it was my boss's personal cell. Printed and distributed 2,000 copies before anyone noticed.

I was driving home late from work and it was raining and I had my music turned up. I was driving through a small town when I noticed the flashing lights behind me. I started to pull to the side of the road. I seriously don’t know why but for some reason I thought the cop behind me was an ambulance, I waited for the “ambulance” to pass me and when it obviously didn’t I assumed that it was turning somewhere else or it already was where it needed to be. So I kept driving and after a few minutes I saw the lights behind me again and that’s when my dumbass finally realized that it was a cop. He immediately asked if I was running from him but when I explained to the cop that I thought he was an ambulance he looked at me as if it were my first day on earth. TL;DR I thought a cop was an ambulance, continued driving and in the end he gave me a warning for running and a fat ticket for speeding. Definitely not my finest moment 😭

I also wanted to add that when I was getting pulled over I heard no sirens. I did have my music up but I turned it down when I saw the lights expecting to hear sirens, I did think it was an ambulance but since there were no sirens it really added to my confusion. And when it came to the speeding it was absolutely not intentional. I am generally a cautious driver and for a long time I was an anxious driver. That was the first and only time I’ll speed.

To start with a bit of context, I'm deaf - I use cochlear implants to hear. This will be important later.

I'm lucky enough to have a garage gym. Lately I've been leaving the garage door open while I work out. The weather is nice at the moment and I get a nice breeze.

While I'm working out I sit on the gym bench in between sets with my back to the road. I also do not wear the processors for my cochlear implants as they get in the way If Im lying on the bench etc.

In between sets I set a timer on my phone then will just scroll until rest time is up. As I'm scrolling, a post in a fitness sub pops up of a middle aged to older gentleman showing off his gains. Im scrolling the comments and something possesses me to click on this profile.

The first post that pops up on the profile is this person in all their glory, the hog just hanging out. No big deal right? I'm an adult, i've seen it all before. Only problem is, just after this post comes up on my phone, I sense some movement out the corner of my eye.

I look around and there is the postman looking quite awkwardly at me. Turns out he has a package for me that needs to be signed for. Poor post man caught me apparently looking at naked old men in between sets.

TL;DR: deafness caused me not to hear the postman behind me who caught me looking at naked old men on my phone.

I live in an apartment building where the front door locks automatically and delivery drivers usually have to buzz somebody to get in.

Yesterday I was leaving to grab groceries when a guy came up behind me carrying one of those big insulated delivery bags. He said "thanks man" and grabbed the door before it closed. I didn't think anything of it. I actually held it open for him because he was messing with his phone and the bag looked heavy.

Went shopping, came home, normal night.

This morning our building group chat was blowing up because a bunch of packages had disappeared from the lobby. Management checked the cameras.

There I am in perfect HD politely holding the door open for the guy who took them.

It gets worse because apparently he walked in with an empty delivery bag, spent a few minutes putting smaller packages inside it, then walked back out carrying the bag plus two bigger boxes.

Management emailed me asking if I knew him. I had to explain that no, I just saw the delivery bag and assumed he was supposed to be there.

One neighbor already replied in the group chat saying "whoever let him in needs to stop letting random people into the building."

Yeah. That would be me.

TL;DR: Held our locked apartment door open for a guy I assumed was a delivery driver. He was actually there to steal packages and the security footage shows me personally letting him inside.

I (37F) and my youngest (10M) “Sam” were looking for Halloween costume ideas, when we came upon a picture of people dressed as Yip Yips.

For the uninitiated, Yip Yips are Sesame Street muppets (technically called the Martians), that look at ordinary objects and say “yip yip yip yip yip” “oooooooooooooohhhh” “uh huuuuuuuh” “yip yip yip yip yip” over and over and over again. They’re delightfully annoying.

Anyway. Sam had never seen Yip Yips before, so I pulled up a video, and promptly unlocked a new stim that has already thrown my household into chaos.

I have 4 kids. 2 of them have Tourette’s, and Sam is not one of them… however, he’s the sort of kid who does random Mario jumps at the grocery store, says “it’s a me-ya” and makes Pac Man “waka waka waka” noises at random, and gives not a singular shit if people stare. He’s honestly the best, and I love his antics.

His siblings do not always feel the same way. Tics tend to trigger more tics, and while the “yips” are not tics, they’re still repetitive…

So now this fun thing has happened where the whole house is breaking out into random yips. You’d think it would be fun, except the whole house is also prone to overstimulation, and now my daughter (12F) has barricaded herself in her room and Sam has started getting upset at other people yipping because he thinks they’re doing it to tease him. Cue the tears only to be consoled by “ooooooooh… sad. Saaaaad yip yip yip yip yip yip”.

Now I’m in damage control mode, and there is a very real chance Sam and I will have to trick or treat just the two of us to keep the peace. I’m going to have to make the costumes in secret so not to set anyone off again, but the toothpaste has left the tube. There is no going back.

TLDR; I showed my kid a video of Yip Yips, and my whole house is either yipping or losing their minds about it.

This wasnt exactly today. More like a few months ago. But I find myself regretting it daily. It was such a good opportunity, a way to be part of the community without being part of the videos myself. And the sole reason I turned it down. Was because I was working full time and didn't think I had enough time to edit videos.

I turned down something I dreamed of. Out of fear of losing a job I was fired by soon after. It will forever be a regret. And now, I doubt I will ever have such an opportunity again.

I'll move on, and continue to be a stagehand. I just wanted to share one of my biggest regrets to this day. I'd sell my soul to be an editor.

I won't be sharing who the youtuber is. They aren't anyone big, just someone who wanted help with motivational videos that I knew from my full time job. We stopped contacting one another because I turned them down, I can still contact them. And possibly ask for that opportunity back. But I think I hurt them too much to do so.

TL;DR I turned down a youtuber friend of mine, and I regret it everyday but I worry I cannot contact them as I think I hurt them pretty bad.

So basically, I woke up one day about a month ago and decided I wanted to teach my middle aged dog we got from a shelter some years before new tricks (she only knew how to sit), I looked up some easy ones and came to the conclusion I wanted her to shake! Easy right? She did it great, but she started doing it ALL. THE. TIME. Someone has food in their hand? She’ll raise up her paw and smack them in the leg (she’s pretty short but not a small dog). You’re telling her to sit? She’ll sit and then smack you with her paw. It doesn’t matter whether your hand is out, she’ll just do it whenever. It’s honestly funny, she’ll hit doors when she wants in, or hits her bowl when she wants more food etc etc. until people come over to visit and she’s smacking them! Everyone has thought this is funny, and I’m not too sure how to get her to stop, but it’s a great conversation starter when she comes over to say hi to friends and family!

TL;DR: my dog likes to hit people after an attempt at teaching her how to shake!

So. TIFU. I have closed comodones and pimples as a 20 year old female, and I would like to have my best years feel like I'm pretty, not pimpley. I went to the doctor a couple days ago to try and talk to them about the options for skin care routines, prescription creams, or even Accutane. I felt very lost and asked for some guidance or recommendations on what I should do, as I feel like I've done everything. Birth control, gel creams, niamacide, salaylic acid, benzoyl peroxide, you name it, i probably put it on my face. Anyways, after some discussion, this very strong benzoyl peroxide ( with other additives) was suggested, and later prescribed. I asked ALL the right questions. "When should I apply it? How much? How often? Any side effects? What does it target? How does it work?" And most importantly "how do I incorporate this into my normal routine, and would this cream have negative effects with my skin care routine as it is now?" I do a cleanser, then salaylic acid every 3rd day ish, then moisturizer. I do this routine morning and night. I was told I can continue my routine as it is. And when i pick it up at the drug store, i confirm with the pharmacist aswell. So I do continue with my normal routine. First day is great. Second day is great....but doing my night routine last night, it was salaylic acid day! So of course I put it on my face and....Pain. it BURNNNS oh my god. I thought i got it in my eyes for a bit as they were watering and in pain. I took as much as I could off and put a soothing face mask on to try and recoup and let denial of the inevitable wash over me.... I 100% just burnt my face. When I take it off. Around my left eye it looks as if I had a black eye, but with a red rash look. My undereye was inflamed and bumpy. It was. Awful. I applied my moisturizer which stung aswell, but not as much. I figured i just severely destroyed my skin barrier and needed to cut off the acids during this cream. I also decided to switch my moisturizer because the hydrolonic acid in it must be somthing im reacting to aswell. So i planned to get a new one in the morning, and left my face issues as a tomorrow OP job. Flash to today, I put on my cleanser to clean my face.... BURNNNNING ×2. My face is on fire. Eyes pinched shut immediately. ow?!?! Wtf??? This is my CLEANSER! Its supposed to be a calm one and I dont understand why I'm reacting to thi- oh. %2 salaylic acid included. Dammit. I reach to my other backup face wash.... and it burns aswell. It also has salaylic acid AND niamacide...what is wrong with me?! I ended up using hand soap as a last ditch effort to get it all off before I became a red tomato. So. Now my face is still stinging as i write this, and im genuinely confused on how downhill this all came so quick. I'm scared to look in the mirror, but I'm going to have to in the next bit....I just KNOW its bad. I have a new moisturizer and soap that is ment for sensitive skin which I apparently have now. Still mad at myself for not looking over my cleansers before applying them. Totally my fault, and shouldve looked over everything after the first reaction. TL;DR: applyed acidic products twice without double checking if they had acid.

I was tired of waiting for a haircut a couple weeks back and decided to shave it off using the same guard all around. While it didn’t look bad, looked bland. The wife and I talked and I decided with her help we could give myself a fade into a short top similar to a crew cut.

I was wrong, very wrong… we started with a 5mm all around the head leaving the scalp and it was alright looking but very obvious without any blending. Well from there I decided I wanted take the side burns out as they didn’t really flow with what we had goin on.

This is really where I fucked up as I grabbed the 1mm guard and shaved em off. Well as you can imagine now the rest of the sides of my head didn’t match in length to my newly shave sideburns. So I took further up…

Moral of the story we spent about 20 min trying to make something work as far blending it in. That did NOT work and I eventually said enough is enough. We decided I either go full Chuck Liddell Mohawk or leave it and see if a professional can take care of it tomorrow AFTER WORK

with some convincing (rightfully so) I decided to leave it be and let a professional try to scavenge it tomorrow. At least this way if I have to go Mohawk it’ll be straight.

Anyway, my head now looks like a mushroom that’s been trampled. Trying to find the humor in it all.

TL;DR: Cut my own hair and I look like a mushroom.

TL;DR: Fainted on the phone with the medical helpline due to severe hemorrhoid pain. Busted my eyebrow on the way down. Went to the urgent care to get stitched up, where the doctor literally lost the suture needle inside my eyebrow. cue 24 hours of CT scans, ER transfers, and plastic surgery to dig it out—all while unable to sit down.

So, two days ago, I was having a truly miserable time dealing with severe hemorrhoids. I was on the phone with the medical helpline seeking advice when the pain/vagal response got the better of me and I passed out cold.

When I woke up on the floor disoriented, sweating, with my ears ringing, I realized two things:

-My eyebrow was split open and bleeding.

-I was sitting in a pool of clear, slightly viscous fluid. I thought I peed myself, but I’m pretty sure one of the external hemorrhoids actually burst from the fall.

Thankfully, the nurse was still on the phone line listening to me regain consciousness and called an ambulance. My husband rushed home in a frenzy, and the EMTs took me to the urgent care clinic (närakut).

This is where the fever dream really began.

The doctor started stitching up my eyebrow. Halfway through, the suture needle snapped off the thread and vanished into my eyebrow wound.

The medical staff went dead silent. The doctors were baffled.

What followed was a chaotic 24-hour medical wild goose chase:

Urgent Care: Sent me for a CT scan. Waited 2 hours. Scan confirmed a metallic object hiding in my facial tissue. Urgent care threw their hands up and transferred me to the main hospital ER.

Main Hospital ER: Reopened the wound, poked around, did an ultrasound, and brought in multiple doctors to dig around in my face. Still couldn't find it. Meanwhile, I was in agony because I couldn't sit down properly, was starving, and hadn't been given proper pain relief yet. Finally, they threw their hands up, gave me pain meds/hemorrhoid cream, and told me to go to the specialized Eye Hospital the next morning.

Eye Hospital/Plastic Surgery: The next day, after a photo session and waiting through the lunch break in pain, I was transferred to the plastic surgery ward.

When I always pictured myself seeing a plastic surgeon, I assumed I’d at least leave the operating room with bigger boobs. Instead, I just left needle-less and with a freshly re-stitched eyebrow.

The plastic surgery team was actually incredible and managed to excavate the rogue needle, but the whole OR process was an entire ordeal of its own.

I am finally back home, medicated, lying on my side, and deeply contemplating how a simple hemorrhoid issue turned into a multi-hospital saga.

0/10 experience, but at least the plastic surgeons were great.

UPDATE:

Wow, I did not expect this post to blow up like this! Thank you for all the comments and well wishes. To address a few common points and questions:

It was NOT malpractice: The suture needle snapped due to a rare manufacturing defect. The doctors at närakut were so baffled by the broken needle that they actually checked and discarded the entire box from that manufacturer to ensure it wouldn't happen to anyone else.

Why no magnets/MRI? Surgical needles are non-magnetic stainless steel, so a magnet won't pull them out. An MRI would risk heating the metal and tearing facial tissue.

My main grievance: I just wish the initial urgent care team had given me pain relief for the hemorrhoids right away. Waiting through hours of CT scans and face exams while dealing with unmedicated pain made the ordeal so much worse.

TIFU because I (46M) decided to go work at my local haunted house and while getting scares, I decided to jump off of a stage(I’ve done this many times before) and landed awkwardly breaking my heel aka calcaneus fracture. Luckily no displacement. This stage is 5 ft off the ground. I had to be rushed to the Emergency Room and have X-rays taken. All the nurses either got a kick out of my all white contacts or were a little disturbed by them. Ultimately they were great and were very friendly.

I cannot bear any weight, unfortunately so I won’t be walking for a little while, but a knee scooter is on the way so that I can hopefully get back to moving around.

I also was lucky enough to take the next week of work off before this happened, however it is a 4-6 week healing period and I will be out of work unless I can figure something else out. Hoping for short term disability. I do have a doc note for work saying no work for 2 weeks and then light duty only.

TLDR jumped from a high point and broke my heel.

NSFL is more accurate, you've been warned.

A while back I started getting an itchy spot on the palm of my hand right at the ball of my pinky finger. I do some hobby metal and wood work so I just figured it was a burr or splinter that got embedded and it would work its way out. It hasn't, if anything, it's gotten worse, and at night, before bed, I had started noticing a smelly yellow crust around the cracked skin in that area. That's when I really started looking for causes. I couldn't pin anything down, until I was brushing my teeth one night, and saw yellow goop on my hand, right where I was holding the end of the brush. I looked hard at the toothbrush holder, and it all made sense. At the bottom of the plastic thing where I keep my brush, there was yellow gunk, right where the end of the brush touched it. My little lizard brain put two and two together and I realized that I've been introducing a fungus or mold or whatever it is, right onto my hand, and the back and forth motion from brushing was probably irritating the skin just enough to get it into the layers. This was two days ago. Since then, I've been washing my toothbrush with soap and water before using it, then washing my hands both before (as I usually did) and after brushing my teeth. I've also been more diligent about cleaning the holder. The cracked, irritated skin has started clearing right up, and it's not even itching now. Before anyone says anything, I keep a cover on my toothbrush regardless so the part that goes into my mouth has always been kept clean. I'm going to look into one of those racks where the end of the toothbrush doesn't even touch anything.

TL;DR: I wasn't cleaning my toothbrush holder well and ended up introducing an itchy fungus into the skin of my hand.

Mosquitos have been really bad in socal lately. I am a chronic mosquito attracter with one big problem. I have mild skeeter syndrome and I have a skin picking problem. In an effort to curb said skin picking problem, i always put hydrocortisone cream on the bites so that I don't itch to the point of open sores. It was working fine i guess (i would still have welts where the bites were.) But i was just bored on my bed applying the cream on a bite on my leg when I read the instructions further. On the back in all caps under walls of text was "NOT FOR USE ON HUMANS." I've had this tube for a few years. I got it from my gran who had it in her bathroom drawer. So, I erroneously thought it was just for use on humans. I had no idea that animals even have their own hydrocortisone cream.

TL;DR: Have been using animal grade hydrocortisone cream for years without knowing it, only found out when checking the tube on a whim.