You'll be shocked to see how many things patients have tried to hide from their doctors who are trying to help them!
The True Male Problem
“In terms of masking, every primary care male patient over 50 (and many under 50): doctor I have been feeling more tired lately, I think my blood pressure is too high, I have a slight cough on Tuesdays, etc…15 minutes into interview ‘Oh yeah, I’m most concerned about Erectile Dysfunction'” (source).
Medical Conditions
“Do you have any medical conditions? No. What medications are you on? Proceeds to name at least 10 medications. People seem to think that if they take medication for a certain condition, then it is completely cured…” (source).
Crack Lung
“I admitted a guy for pneumonia, which was odd because he was young and strapping, no other medical issues, x-ray didn’t look quite right. The pieces just didn’t add up and so I started questioning him more closely. Me: Do you use any drugs? Patient: Drugs! That’s disgusting. I’m no f–cking druggie! I’ve never touched drugs in my life. I move on to other questions and suddenly: Patient ‘Look, doc, I just want you to know I may have used cocaine once or twice years and years ago.’ I just snorted it though. That wouldn’t cause this, right? Me: How long ago? Patient: Like ten years, maybe longer. Me: It shouldn’t be affecting you after this long. Patient: More like five. Me: Years? Patient: Uh, like five months ago. This goes on forever, until he admits he just got off a massive crack binge the day before, where he spent the past three days in a hotel with some ‘loose women’ smoking crack non-stop. He finishes with: ‘But I don’t want you to think I’m one of those dirty druggies.’ No, I think you’re the idiot who lied and was getting treated for pneumonia instead of getting the proper treatment for crack lung, which is what he had. Here’s a tip: I genuinely don’t care. I’m not your momma, your spouse, or your priest. Don’t waste my time and endanger your health spewing bullsh–t. Whatever horrible twisted thing you think is too shameful to talk about, I promise you, I’ve seen worse” (source).
The Midst of Labour
“My mother (the medical professional of our family) had a thirteen-year-old girl who was 9 months pregnant, in the midst of labour, dilated to 10cm and crowning in the emergency triage swearing until she was black and blue that she was a virgin and that nobody knew what they were talking about. Her mother stood on the sidelines causing a commotion demanding a real doctor make an appearance. Let’s just say when the twins made an appearance ten minutes later they were all singing a different tune” (source).
Bad Case of Gangrene
“My aunt is a family doctor so patients come to her with symptoms and she directs them towards a specialist based on her diagnosis. One day an elderly husband and wife came into her office and when asked why they had come in, the wife responded, ‘his foot has been smelling for a while and I finally convinced him to come have it looked at.’ My aunt, not hard of smelling, concurred that his foot stunk. She asked him to remove his shoe and sock. When he removed his sock, the bone from his big toe fell out of his toe and onto the ground. Turned out he had a very bad case of gangrene that had eaten away the flesh of his toe. He knew something was wrong but was stubborn and didn’t get it checked sooner” (source).
Crushed Up Pills
“Not so much bizzare as clever. I drug tested a patient who should test positive for opiates as i prescribe them. The urine looked totally normal but the test came back bizarre. Had an insanely high specific gravity (means there was a lot of stuff dissolved in it), sample was positive for opiates but had zero confirmatory metabolites (what your body metabolizes the drug) in it. Otherwise test was totally normal. It took me a couple minutes to figure out how this was possible. The patient was selling their pills instead of taking them and didn’t want to get caught. They crushed up the pill and put it into the urine. This made the test ‘positive’ for opiates but because it had never gone through their body the testing machine found no metabolites. I use the case to find the smart med student in a group now” (source).
BBQ Chicken
“A guy came in with burns to his entire willy. He tried to say he got it by trying to shoplift a hot bbq chicken from a deli down his pants. What he was really doing was f–cking the chicken” (source).
Breast Cancer
“My cousin told me about a patient who complained about her nipple falling off all the time. She said she tried to glue it back on or use skincare cremes to have it stick to her breast. Turns out she had breast cancer. From what I remember the tumor got so big that the breast-skin was stretched quite a bit. Somehow that plus friction lead to an open, not healing and oozing wound which extended to her nipple…. Nobody there understood how she didn’t go to a Doctor or a hospital earlier. Keep in mind this happened in Germany. She had a job. Health insurance and everything” (source).
Happened To Fall
“Nurse here: one time had a patient come in with insane intestinal trauma, had to have his colon stitched up. Said he was fishing and fell his rectum just happened to fall perfectly on a fishing pole. Must have been a wild night, to be ‘fishing’ naked” (source).
“Some Leg Swelling”
“Not sure if this counts as hiding, but a patient we recently had tried to play off a rampant staph infection as ‘just some leg swelling’ Turns out what he meant by that was he had a horrible infection in and around his genitals (something known as ‘Fournier’s gangrene’–do yourself a favor and don’t google that). The swelling had gotten so bad that his penis had literally inverted. He later told us that he had to pee with a 5 gallon bucket held up to his crotch because he no longer had any idea where the pee was going to go” (source).
Can’t Really Hide Anything From Your Doctor…
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