An emergency room nurse has stunned social media with stories of her most astonishing 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 and have been viewed millions of times.
The series of sketches describes the amazing experiences she has had with patients over the years.
In addition to the young woman using a tampon with hand sanitizer, she has also encountered a man who set his hand on fire in an attempt to recreate a stunt he saw on the ’00s reality show, Jackass.
The nurse also tells of a teenage girl who took hair dye after her friend dared her to do so.
Mrs. Harper, passing 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 had with patients
In her most popular sketch, which has been viewed 1.1 million times, Ms. Harper depicts a young woman visiting the emergency room complaining of pain and itching near her genitals.
The patient says her symptoms started the day after she inserted a tampon. After experiencing severe itching and burning while urinating, she thought removing the tampon would relieve her symptoms.
But even after it was taken out, the discomfort persisted. She also noticed blood in her urine.
After a long back and forth discussion, the patient finally admitted that the tampon had fallen on the floor before she inserted it.
Since it was her last one, she put hand sanitizer on it “because it might be gross” and then put it in anyway.
‘It was the last one I had. I had to use it,” Ms. Harper portrays the patient saying.
A user named Hannah DeMoure commented on the video, “I thought I must have dropped a tampon and used it anyway and then she said HAND SANITIZER.”
Ms Harper has also shared stories of patients who have swallowed hair dye (left) and set their limbs on fire (right)
Ms Harper replied: ‘I don’t recommend either option.’
If you drop a tampon on the bathroom floor, it can become susceptible to bacteria such as E. coli, salmonella, and staphylococcus aureus.
E. coli and salmonella spread through food, water and surfaces contaminated with feces, such as bathroom floors.
Meanwhile, staphylococcus (staph) is usually found on the skin of people 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 sudden high fever, low blood pressure, vomiting and diarrhea, sunburn-like rash, confusion, muscle aches, red eyes, seizures and headache.
If left untreated, the condition can lead to shock, kidney failure and death.
As for hand sanitizer, it is usually made with at least 70 percent isopropyl alcohol, which can lead to burns in sensitive areas such as the vulva or vagina.
In another sketch that has been viewed nearly 84,000 times, Ms. Harper shows a mother and teenage daughter who came to the emergency room.
The teenager, who had just dyed her hair bright red, insisted her mother was overreacting.
“I just dyed my hair and we had extra product, and we were trying not 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 teen 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.
Ingesting hair dye can lead to poisoning from aggressive ingredients such as ammonia, hydrogen peroxide and arsenic.
According to Mount Sinai, this can lead to abdominal pain, blurred vision, difficulty breathing, burning throat, diarrhea, low blood pressure, difficulty urinating, rash, slurred speech and vomiting.
It is important to seek immediate medical attention if you suspect you have been poisoned.
Ms. Harper also posted a video of a man entering the ER after trying to film a viral video.
He said he doused his hand in hand sanitizer and then set it on fire so it could “glow really quickly,” explaining that he was trying to recreate the extreme stunts seen on the 1990s reality show, Jackass.
“Things went a little wrong,” Mrs. Harper pictures him saying. Instead of a lighter, he had used a torch, which set his entire arm on fire.
User luckycharmer79 commented: ‘What is it about hand sanitizer!?’
“They like hand sanitizer, which is easy to get, I think,” Ms. Harper responded.