When we watch Grey’s Anatomy, the last thing we’re looking to see is a realistic portrayal of the health-care industry. We relish the dark and twisty turns the show takes when it comes to our favorite couples (Meredith and Derek! Cristina and Owen! Callie and Arizona!) and the patients in the emergency room.
Over the past 11 years (and more than 200 episodes), show creator Shonda Rhimes has told some incredibly tear-jerking—and plenty of WTF—stories. But could any of these scenarios actually happen to, you know, real people?
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“They have a sprinkling of real medicine [on the show],” says says Darria Gillespie, M.D., assistant professor in the department of emergency medicine at Emory University School of Medicine and executive vice president of Sharecare. “The reality is, we see crazy things in the ER. And so in some of the cases, they’re able to pull from reality, and others are kind of a stretch and a dramatization of them. But that’s the craziness and beauty of the ER—you never know what you’re going to see.”
Here are some of the over-the-top cases that had us glued to our TVs, ranked from least cuckoo to most:
8. The Woman Who Had a 70-Pound Tumor (Season 1)
That’s right—70 freakin’ pounds. The character died after a 14-hour surgery. “That’s not impossible, especially in some malignancies like ovarian cancer,” says Gillespie. “Part of the problem with ovarian [cancer] is that [a tumor] can grow for a long time without somebody noticing—they may just feel bloated. And if you have someone who’s obese, then yes, it’s possible. This one is so not far from the truth.” In fact, in 2013, the Huffington Post reported that a 556-pound man in Oregon had a 70-pound tumor in his abdomen.
7. The Divorced Couple Who Got Stuck Together During Sex (Season 3)
Her IUD caught on his penis piercing. Oh, and Addison Montgomery (McDreamy’s ex-wife, in case you've forgotten) just so happened to announce this in front of the couple’s daughter—making this one painful on so many levels. “An IUD has a string on it, which is how you retrieve it when you want to take it out,” says Gillespie, who notes that while yes, theoretically something like this could occur, she’s never seen it. “As you can imagine, a piercing could somehow get stuck onto that string of the IUD.”
6. The Guy Who Had Parasites in His Brain (Season 5)
Archer, Addison’s brother, started having seizures on an episode of Private Practice, the Grey’s Anatomy spinoff show. In a crossover episode of Grey’s, they learned that his seizures were being caused by parasites, and not a tumor, in his brain. Luckily, McDreamy figured out a way operate on his ex-wife’s brother succesfully. Believe it or not, this is something that can actually happen, though it mostly occurs in the developing world. The condition is called cysticercosis—it’s the most common parasitic infection—and it's caused by eating food (usually pork) contaminated with the tapeworm Taenia solium. “If you eat infected tapeworn eggs, those eggs hatch, and then they migrate to various parts of your body including your brain,” says Gillespie.
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5. The Baby Whose Bones Broke Right After Birth (Season 11)
During an ultrasound, it was revealed that doctor couple April and Jackson’s fetus had osteogenesis imperfecta, a.k.a. brittle bone disease. Their baby boy ended up dying shortly after the birth. This is a real (although rare) medical condition—and Sarah Drew, the actress who plays April, pitched the idea for the storyline because it happened to a family friend. “It’s hearbreaking,” says Gillespie. “The bones break with little or no trauma, so just swaddling your child or chaning a diaper can lead to fractures.” While the mild form of the disease doesn’t affect life expectancy, the most severe form, Type II, is usually lethal soon after birth.
4. The Man Who Shot Eight Nails into His Head (Season 1)
He fell down the stairs with a nail gun, and while he was being operated on, doctors found out he also had a tumor in his brain. Miraculously, he survived the episode. “Eight is a stretch,” says Gillespie, “but I have seen people who’ve shot themselves in the head with a nail gun. I had one patient who accidently shot himself in the head with a nail, came to the ER, and just had a tiny abrasion on his scalp. He said he had fallen and was worried that he may have shot a nail into his head, and lo and behold, he had a five-inch nail in his brain. The nail was literally through the scalp—you couldn’t see it.”
3. The Two Random Strangers Who Got Impaled by a Pole (Season 2)
They were in a train crash—and while the man, Tom, told doctors to save the woman, Bonnie, since she was younger and newly engaged, she ended up dying while he lived. Again, this is something that could theoretically happen, but the fact that this was such a massively-sized pole makes the situation pretty darn improbable. “The chances of it not hitting [vital] blood vessels is fairly low,” says Gillespie. “It would have to hit the right place [in the body], and I think the chance would be extremely slim.”
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2. The Teenager Who Was Encased in Cement (Season 4)
His friends dared him to lie in a vat of cement, which hardened around his body and then started poisoning his organs and burning his skin. He lived after Cristina Yang performed a controversial heart surgery on him. From a medical standpoint, this is very, very unlikely, says Gillespie. “You’d have to be lying in there for a really long time, since cement takes around one to two days to harden,” she says.
1. The Man Who Had a Fish Swim Into His Penis (Season 3)
The chairman of Seattle Grace Hospital, Larry, got admitted to the hospital with swollen testicles after a rare fish swam up his penis while he peed in the Amazon River. Um, what? The fish is called Candiru, and according to legend, it has the ability to jump into your urethra while urinating, says Gillespie. (A guy who swears this happened to him was featured on Animal Planet.) However, it’s never been proven to actually be possible. “There have been many anecdotes but no truly document cases,” says Gillespie. “People talk about it a lot, but it’s never been in medical literature.”
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