An emergency room nurse has stunned social media with stories of her most mind-blowing cases, including a woman who contracted an infection from a tampon soaked in hand sanitizer.
Clips posted by Alexis Harper, an emergency room nurse in Tennessee, have gone viral on TikTok – attracting millions of views.
The series of skits detail astonishing experiences she’s had with patients over the years.
As well as the young woman who used a tampon with hand sanitizer on it, she’s also encountered a man who set his hand alight in an attempt to recreate a stunt he saw on 00s reality show, Jackass.
The nurse also tells of a teenage girl who swallowed hair dye after her friend dared her to.
Ms Harper, who goes by @lexx_harper01 and has 19,000 followers on the platform, uses fake names for patients and does not publish their ages.
Alexis Harper, an emergency room nurse in Tennessee, has gone viral on TikTok after posting a series of skits based on real experiences she has had with patients
In her most popular skit, which has 1.1 million views, Ms Harper depicts a young woman visiting the emergency room complaining of pain and itching near her genitals.
The patient says the symptoms started the day after she’d inserted a tampon. After experiencing intense itching and burning while urinating, she thought removing the tampon would ease her symptoms.
However, even after taking it out, the discomfort persisted. She also noticed blood in her urine.
After a long back-and-forth, the patient finally admitted that the tampon fell on the ground before she inserted it.
As it was her last one, she put hand sanitizer on it ‘because it might be dirty’ and then inserted it anyway.
‘It was the last one I had. I had to use it,’ Ms Harper depicts the patient saying.
One user named Hannah DeMoure commented on the video: ‘me thinking I’ve definitely dropped a tampon and used it anyway, then she said HAND SANITIZER.’
Ms Harper also has shared stories of patients who have swallowed hair dye (left) and lit their limbs on fire (right)
Ms Harper replied: ‘I do not recommend either of those options.’
Dropping a tampon on the bathroom floor could leave it prone to bacteria like E. coli, salmonella, and staphylococcus aureus.
E. coli and salmonella spread from food, water, and surfaces that have been contaminated with feces, such as bathroom floors.
Meanwhile, staphylococcus (staph) is typically found on people’s skin and spreads from person to person.
Staph infection is one of the leading causes of toxic shock syndrome, a rare and potentially life-threatening infection that often occurs when tampons are left in for too long – more than eight hours.
According to the Mayo Clinic, symptoms include a sudden high fever, low blood pressure, vomiting and diarrhea, sunburn-like rash, confusion, muscle aches, red eyes, seizures, and headaches.
If left untreated, the condition can lead to shock, kidney failure, and death.
As for the hand sanitizer, this is most often made with at least 70 percent isopropyl alcohol, which can lead to burns in sensitive areas like the vulva or the vagina.
In another skit that has attracted nearly 84,000 views, Ms Harper depicts a mother and teenage daughter who showed up to the emergency room.
The teen, who had just dyed her hair bright red, insisted that her mother is overreacting.
‘I just dyed my hair, and we had extra product, and we weren’t trying to be wasteful, so we wanted to make sure we used it,’ the girl reportedly said.
Ms Harper asked the teen where she used the extra product, and the teenager admitted to drinking it based on a dare from her friend.
‘For further reference, that is something you should not do,’ Ms Harper said in the video.
Swallowing hair dye can lead to poisoning due to harsh ingredients like ammonia, hydrogen peroxide, and arsenic.
This can lead to abdominal pain, blurred vision, difficulty breathing, throat burning, diarrhea, low blood pressure, difficulty urinating, rash, slurred speech, and vomiting, according to Mount Sinai.
It’s important to seek immediate medical care if you suspect that you have been poisoned.
Ms Harper also posted a video depicting a man who came into the ER after trying to film a viral video.
He said that he doused his hand in hand sanitizer and then lit it on fire so it could ‘glow really fast,’ explaining that he was attempting to create the extreme stunts seen on the noughties reality show, Jackass.
‘It went a little wrong,’ Ms Harper depicts him saying. Instead of a lighter, he had used a torch, which caused his entire arm to catch on fire.
User luckycharmer79 commented: ‘What is it with hand sanitizer!?’
‘They love hand sanitizer, easy to get I guess,’ Ms Harper replied.
