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Where to watch "Untold Stories of the ER"
4. Law And Disorder
2020 - Season 15
During a heat wave, EMS come into Nurse Terry Foster's ER with a young man named Andre, who's suffering from an apparent gunshot wound to the face. When the team removes the dressing, they're shocked to see that Andre's nose is completely gone. After suctioning blood and examining the injury, Terry and the attending physician try to make sense of it. There's no sign of the bullet, and the wound is unusually clean. Andre's brother Orin arrives in the waiting room, desperate to see Andre but before they allow him in, an incoherent Andre begins exclaiming that Orin's going to kill him. Are they all in danger? With police at his side, Nurse Foster approaches Orin to ask him what happened. He didn't witness the shooting, but he heard the shot, rushed to Andre's side and found him lying on the floor in front of a broken window. It sounds like a drive-by shooting, but the bullet wound is unlike any Terry or the doctor has ever seen. The mystery is solved when police arrive with a crucial piece of evidence: a heavy old window fan that was knocked outside when Andre fell into it face-first. There was no shooting at all. The window had slammed shut with a loud bang, shattering the glass. Andre's nose is still stuck to one of the fan blades, and amazingly, the doctor is able to re-attach it. 17-year-old Kaitlyn Dobrow thought she had the flu when she came into the ER of Dr. David Meyers. Her vital signs are abnormal, and she has unexplained bruises on her limbs and face. Dr. Meyers' initial concern proves out when Kaitlyn's condition begins to deteriorate rapidly, and within hours, she's covered with bruises. A lumbar puncture confirms Dr. Meyers' worst fear: she has the most dangerous kind of meningitis a form of the disease that has a 90 percent mortality rate. As her condition continues to descend, Kaitlyn is intubated and eventually transported to a burn ICU for specialized treatment. Dr. Meyers has no reason to believe she'll live, but he later learns that she did indeed survive after losing all four limbs by amputation. Nonetheless, Kaitlyn has come through the ordeal with a bright spirit and has become an inspiration to millions of followers on her streaming web channel. Five years later, Dr. Meyers is overjoyed when a grinning Kaitlyn comes walking into the hospital on prosthetic legs to thank him for saving her life. On an overnight shift in his small ER, Dr. Peter Riga is confronted with an apparently intoxicated college student. Alex was unconscious in the basement when his father discovered him. When blood tests reveal an alcohol level of zero, Dr. Riga suspects that Alex may have actually poisoned himself, and finally gets him to admit that he has ingested anti-freeze in an effort to end his life. With no time to spare, Dr. Riga tries to get the specialists and antidote he'll need to save Alex's life, but neither is available and then he's interrupted by another emergency. A young man has walked in with a lethal snakebite, and has brought the venomous Coral Snake that bit him in a household jar. The man refuses treatment despite Dr. Riga's warnings, and leaves. Meanwhile, Dr. Riga comes up with an unusual workaround for the missing antidote: booze, which will have the same mitigating effect, and he's able to get his hands on a bottle of vodka. He administers the alcohol, and then must insert a dialysis catheter and perform dialysis without the help of the usual specialists. In the midst of this challenging endeavor, the snakebite victim returns to claim his snake, and when he's refused, a police officer threatens to arrest Dr. Riga. He persuades her to let him treat Alex first, and before long, the snakebite victim collapses, unconscious. Dr. Riga manages to save the lives of both patients, and in the end is confronted one last time by the police officer this time to thank him for his efforts.
3. Fire in the Hole
2020 - Season 15
Following a single-vehicle collision, a young girl is rushed into Dr. Ruthie Crider's ER by EMS. Her older sister, Madison, follows closely behind in hysterics. Madison was driving the car, and though she seems not to be injured, she is consumed with worry and guilt. The patient is sent for x-rays and Dr. Crider does her best to reassure Madison. She notices that her breathing is very shallow, but before she can examine her, Madison passes out. Upon examination, Dr. Crider discovers severe bruising on Madison's chest, and concludes that she must've hit the steering wheel. She orders a cat scan, but before Dr. Crider can send her to radiology, Madison stops breathing. Her blood pressure drops rapidly, and Dr. Crider must find the source of the problem immediately. She uses a bedside ultrasound to examine Madison's heart, and soon discovers that the teenager is suffering from a life-threatening cardiac tamponade blood is leaking into the pericardial sac around the heart, creating pressure that prevents the heart from pumping blood properly. She may only have minutes to live. Dr. Crider soon learns that there are no surgeons in the hospital, and her only hope for saving Madison's life is to perform a risky procedure called a pericardiocentesis, an invasive and extremely risky procedure that's normally only done in the O.R. Dr. Amy Ho is working a weekend night shift in the ER when an EMS call comes in: a police pursuit has ended in a multi-vehicle collision, and several injured patients are en route. Two men and one woman arrive with a range of injuries, and as Dr. Ho and her team treat them, the police arrive, eager to question the patients. Dr. Ho insists that they wait until each patient is medically cleared but suddenly, a shot rings out in the ER! A nurse lies gripping her bleeding leg on the floor as the police fan out with guns drawn. But where's the shooter? As Dr. Ho rushes to the aid of her injured colleague, cops are quick to surround the most obvious suspects, but their frisking and questioning lead nowhere. With an active shooter apparently at large, they call a "code silver" putting the hospital on lock-down. ER staff and patients scramble to hide as police hunt for the shooter and eventually discover exactly what happened: a pistol had fallen on the floor when a patient's clothes were removed by a nurse, and the gun went off accidentally. There was no shooter at all -- it was a freak accident. When a distressed bride is brought into Dr. Murdoc Khaleghi's ER directly from her wedding reception, his efforts to diagnose her are frustrated by the fact that she speaks not a word of English. This Korean woman appears to be suffering from altered mental status, but presents with normal vital signs. Suspecting that the cause may be drugs or alcohol, Dr. Khaleghi does a full workup and orders blood tests and a translator, but soon discovers that the woman is speaking complete nonsense. The groom and others from the wedding party arrive and are unable to shed light on the mystery of the bride's symptoms. When the groom explains that they don't drink or use drugs at all, Dr. Khaleghi is stumped. The entourage grows to include the girl's parents, and when her mother collapses on the floor, Dr. Khaleghi suspects lead poisoning from the ceremonial tea set everyone drank from at the wedding reception. The tests for this will take 24 hours, and Dr. Khaleghi breaks the news to the newlyweds that they won't be able to leave the hospital. It is then that the maid of honor finally comes clean and solves the mystery. The virgin bride was so nervous about consummating the marriage, that her friend gave her a marijuana brownie to calm her nerves. Her reaction was more severe than anyone had bargained for.
2. Thin Red Line
2020 - Season 15
It's late in the evening when a young couple rushes into Dr. Arya Chowdhury's ER barely clothed and covered in bee stings. The two were in the midst of a romantic encounter in the woods and lay down on a hive of aggressive bees. Fortunately, neither have a bee allergy, but it just so happens that Dr. Chowdhury does a severe one that nearly killed her as a child. When the female patient removes her blanket, the doctor's worse nightmare comes true: a handful of angry bees is unleashed into her ER. Before they can be captured and the ER made safe for the doctor, a seriously injured patient is dropped off in the waiting room. The man has been impaled in the eye with a large metal bolt, and needs immediate attention. In order to save the man's life Dr. Chowdhury must risk her own and sure enough, she ends up getting stung before she can finish stabilizing the patient. She needs to work fast before she becomes incapacitated, so she asks the nurse for an epinephrine shot to keep her breathing long enough to insert a chest tube and intubate the patient. The intervention she needs for the bee sting will incapacitate her, so she must race the clock to complete the work, her heart rate rising and her hands shaking and swelling right before her eyes. On a very busy overnight shift, ER physician Stefanie Simmons is handed the chart of a patient with a "sore toe". Anticipating a quick and easy case, she introduces herself to the patient, a reticent young man named Jackson who's been relegated to the hallway since the ER is so full. He explains that he dropped a knife on his foot, which is now slightly swollen. Throughout the exam, Jackson maintains an odd position, his arms crossed and his head down. An older woman rushes into the hallway, hysterical. She is Jackson's former nanny, and she reports to Dr. Simmons that she found a bloody knife at Jackson's house. This is an alarming detail, and may suggest foul play, and a degree of risk for the doctor and staff. "What were you doing with the knife?" asks Dr. Simmons. "I was trying to end it", says Jackson, who finally lifts his head, revealing that he has slit his own throat! Incredibly, he has missed all the major blood vessels, but his trachea his hanging on by a thread, and Dr. Simmons must perform a delicate procedure right there in the hallway before Jackson loses his airway, an outcome that would surely cost him his life. When EMS wheel a patient into the ER of Dr. Matthew Christensen, it turns out to be one of the medics, not the patient, who is most in need of his attention. Simone, a career paramedic and member of Christensen's close-knit circle of first responders, is never one to complain. But today, intense abdominal pain has gotten the best of her, and when her partner Alex pressures her, she reluctantly agrees to be examined. She's given a bed, and moments later Dr. Christensen is shocked by what he sees when he opens the curtain: Simone is a deep shade of purple. "Barney the Dinosaur purple". This is a clear sign of severe hypoxia, and Dr. Christensen knows he must act fast but her vital signs are so unstable, that he's unable to intubate her safely, and must scramble to keep her alive until he can find the source of the problem. After a series of innovative workarounds, he manages to get her on a ventilator and into the CT scanner. Meanwhile, Simone's estranged daughter has arrived in the hospital and fears that her mother will die before they're able to reconcile. In the nick of time, Dr. Christensen solves the medical mystery: the combination of an ordinary UTI and a kidney stone has caused a nearly fatal case of sepsis in Simone's body. She's rushed to the OR, where surgery is able to unblock her kidney and save her life.
1. End Zone
2020 - Season 15
Dr. Jonathan Wenk tends to a man's dislocated shoulder as the patient's teenage son, Chad, looks on. Before he's sedated, the man brags about Chad's all-star football future, and schools the boy on how to be tough. But as soon as his dad is asleep, Chad confides in Dr. Wenk: he's been suffering from stomach pains and intense headaches. Dr. Wenk must focus on his patient, and the son's complaints are a distraction but when Chad suddenly collapses, priorities shift quickly! Chad comes around while dad is still unconscious and asks Dr. Wenk not to tell his father about his problem, but Dr. Wenk knows this could be serious. He suspects a head trauma from football, and when the proud father wakes up, Dr. Wenk has to navigate the situation carefully. He persuades the reluctant sports dad to consent to a CT scan for his son. The results are ominous. They reveal that Chad has had a stroke. A CT Angiogram reveals a condition that's even more serious, and extremely rare in a young patient. The imaging reveals a vascular dissection -- a tear in a blood vessel that probably occurred on the football field. Dr. Wenk has to recommend that Chad give up football a bitter pill, especially for his fanatical father. Dr. Harry Severance began his career more than 40 years ago at an elite trauma center. He recalls one event that was essentially his rite of passage into the world of emergency medicine. In an uncanny coincidence, just days into the young doctor's final year of residency, a man is shot in the parking lot of the trauma center. He's rushed in, barely alive, with a bullet in his chest. Dr. Severance is barely able to get his bearings before the attending physician announces that they need to crack the patient's chest open, and instructs him to reach into the man's chest, pinch the bullet hole in the heart to stem the bleeding, and with his other hand, perform cardiac massage. As he complies with these onerous instructions, Dr. Severance is hoisted onto the gurney, and the team rushes the patient to the operating room with Severance literally straddling him, both hands in his chest. It's at this point that Dr. Severance describes "the scariest moment of my entire life" the man suddenly opens his eyes, staring at the young intern who is just inches from his face! In the O.R., the patient is sedated and put on a ventilator, but the challenges for the shell shocked Dr. Severance continue. Until the team is able to suture the man's bleeding heart, he must hold the wound closed, with the sharp needle just inches from his vulnerable fingers. In Dr. Sarah Carrier's ER, music is sometimes the best medicine. Nurse Stu is an aspiring songwriter, who likes to write country tunes at work. But on this day, he's suffering from writers block. That will soon change. Dr. Carrier's first patient is a woman complaining of abdominal pain, believing that it was caused by her tiny dog, who jumped on her belly. This is an unlikely story, but Dr. Carrier orders tests to determine what's actually happening. Already, Nurse Stu's creative wheels are turning. And now, a second patient is rolled in by EMS: a middle-aged man who has been run over by his own motorcycle trailer not once but twice! The paramedic explains that it was his wife behind the wheel, and when she arrives with their extroverted young son, the story begins to deepen. Was this an attempted murder? The police soon arrive, and the patient is finally able to explain that the whole thing was an accident. Dr. Carrier determines that the man's injuries are not life threatening, and as she sends him off to surgery, she gets the test results from the patient with the dog. As it turns out, a severe case of diverticulitis was the cause of her pain, which was indeed triggered by the tiny dog jumping on her belly. Both patients will make a full recovery and Nurse Stu is so inspired by the day's events, that he unveils a new ballad called "Life is a Ruptured Colon".
