That’s Not How Any Of This Works
“This pregnant young lady and her baby daddy came in one night because the girl was bloated and in a lot of pain. I felt her stomach and it was as hard as a rock, so I asked her when the last time she went to the bathroom was. She told me, ‘I haven’t gone since I found out I was pregnant. I didn’t want to poop the baby out.’ Turns out she had been taking medicine to stop you from going to the bathroom for weeks…It’s shocking to me that there are at least two people in the world that believe you poop out babies.”
He Was Totally, Absolutely Sure He’d Never Had Heart Surgery
“Maybe not an idiot, but one of my favorite ‘Wha?’ patients denied any surgical history. His notes from the referring doctor mentioned bypass surgery. I asked specifically about his heart surgery.
Him: ‘Nope, never had that.’
Me: ‘No problems with your heart at all?’
Him: ‘Nope.’
Me: ‘Ok, moving on…’
While performing a physical exam later, I asked about the giant scar right over his sternum.
Him: ‘That’s from that bypass I had done.’
Me: ‘Oh, I must have misunderstood, I thought you didn’t have any heart issues.’
Him: ‘Well, not since the bypass!’
Honorable mentions from colleagues include the woman who burst into the free clinic, shouting for all to hear, ‘My bo-gina! It be achin!’
That was because she was in active labor.
The last one is really sad: a family of refugees had a young daughter (under 1-year-old) who was medically fragile. A swallow study showed that she aspirated on pretty much everything. Her family was told multiple times that she couldn’t eat anything but they would constantly put food in her mouth because ‘she likes it.’ They refused almost all medical treatment since they thought God would take care of her but had no issue rushing her to the ER when she had a heart attack; this happened 7 or 8 times. I saw her obituary in the paper last month.”
This Nurse Figured She Knew Everything…She Didn’t
“I’m an EMT. I worked interfacility transport for a while, that means not 911. We had a lady in the ER who was going to a higher level of care at a different hospital. Her blood pressure was through the roof (something like 210 systolic).
We started getting her ready, I grabbed the stuff she’s bringing, and I noticed she’s a nurse.
We asked her if she’s on any medication and she said she was on blood pressure medication but stopped (on her own, not by doctor orders) because her blood pressure went down (that’s not how blood pressure medicine works).
The ER nurse came in and said she got her blood work back and her potassium is slightly low, she’s going to give her a potassium pill. The patient asks if that’s why her head is hurting so badly (no, THAT’s the high blood pressure).”
Why Do These People Even Wait In The ER?
“I have lots, the guys with the perianal abscess’ who always think that one dose of antibiotics is enough. There was the special chap who didn’t like having his legs treated for his chronic ulcers and peripheral vascular disease, and that none of us could do it properly and that’s why he was getting the problems.
But the ones that annoy me the most are the ones that come in with a problem, wait for hours at time in the ER, get given their diagnosis which is sometimes serious and then decide they don’t want to come in treatment as the medical team is clearly wrong. They waste their time, our time and it always makes me go home and think I failed, could have done more, should have done this and that, when in reality there’s nothing you can do.”
Nothing’s More Frustrating Than Know-It-All Patients
“The stupid patients are the ones that refuse treatment because they ‘know better than you.’ People not managing their diseases is usually due to secondary causes (low education, income, etc), so you really can’t blame them.
Patients who come to the hospital, refuse to give you information to what happened to them, don’t want you to do a physical exam, but still plead for you to figure out what’s causing their distress, are the worst. ‘Do you really need to know if my abdominal pain is lower or upper?’ Guys, the vast majority of diagnoses are made on the history and physical. If you don’t give us an accurate history, it’s very hard to figure out what’s wrong.
When I was on my surgery rotation, we did a small procedure on a patient. Unfortunately, the wound became infected. We were giving her antibiotics and had her on a wound vac. One night, she decided to leave Against Medical Advice (AMA). She kept saying ‘she felt fine’ and wanted to go home. We told her she felt fine because of the potent IV antibiotics and pain meds. Unfortunately, she didn’t believe us. It’s really not an ‘I was right, you were wrong’ feeling. It actually just makes you feel really bad that you couldn’t convince them to stay in the first place. We pleaded with her, but she did it anyway, almost as if show us that she was in control. She asked for a Percocet script after she signed out AMA and wasn’t thrilled when we told her we couldn’t give it to her.
Flash forward a week when I was doing consults in the emergency department. Guess who showed up with the foulest smelling infection I’ve ever smelled, writhing in pain, with green pus oozing from her wound? The biggest surprise it that she made it a whole week.
I don’t remember what happened to her, but I imagine she lived. The surgeons debrided her wound in the ED and admitted her, and I lost track after that.”
This Guy Managed To Ignore The Grossest Thing Ever
“I work in Primary Health as a Nurse, the patients I hate most are the ones who come in for something simple like a blood test or a dressing and just when they’re about to leave they go ‘Oh, by the way, can you look at this/I need a new script/I’ve had chest pain since three this morning/etc.’
We had a nuggety little man who lives in the bush and rarely comes in. He lives on his own and has a real ‘She’ll be right, mate’ attitude (I’m an Australian if you couldn’t tell)
He came into the doctor for a few scripts and on his way out, he told the doctor, ‘Oh, by the way, there’s something on my back, can you have a look?’ Righto, he brings him down to me in the treatment room, he lifts his shirt and he has the biggest fungating cancer (google that if you dare) on his back. This thing stunk, was oozing and raised like a rotten cauliflower and was the size of both fists put together covered in band-aids and some toilet paper.
Dr and I just look at each other in abject horror. What. The. Actual. Frack.
We had to send him to a specialist where they removed it surgically in sections because it was way too big to remove at once. How he had lived with that for what must have been months is beyond me. It stunk so bad and was so oozing. I can’t imagine what his bed/clothes looked like.”
When The Doc Offered Water, The Whole Family Freaked
“RN here. I see some crazy stuff, but one thing that stands out was the time I was admitting a guy to the hospital. I can’t really remember what for but he was about 400lbs, diabetic, had heart disease, you name it. Anyhow, I’m at the computer going over some admission questions with him and his 10 family members who were crowded in the room with him. A few minutes in, he started complaining that he’s thirsty. He needed something to drink RIGHT NOW. So I get on my phone and call the nurse assistant and ask her to bring in some ice water. As soon as the words are out of my mouth, the whole family screamed, ‘NOOOO! NO WATER! HE’S ALLERGIC TO WATER!’
Well, this was gonna be a problem. Turns out the guy had been drinking nothing but Sprite and sweet tea for years because of his ‘water allergy.’
The next question the wife had was, ‘Where are we all supposed to sleep?’ The whole family, 10 people, were planning to stay at the hospital with him.
You can’t make this stuff up.”
The Patient Wasn’t An Idiot But The Dad Sure Was!
“As a nurse, the moment that still sticks out in my mind and haunts me to this day happened ten years ago when I was working at a pediatric clinic. A father came in with a four-year-old child who had apparently never eaten solid food. He told me, ‘She just doesn’t like it so I never make her do it.’
I told him in a very serious and unequivocal way that four-year-olds absolutely need nutrition and not just the INFANT formula she was drinking. She was very thin and lethargic and I was very worried. But the stupid dad just kept saying the whole time, ‘You don’t understand, I’m not starving her, she just doesn’t want to eat.’
He became irate with me saying, ‘I don’t know why you’re trying to suggest I torture my daughter and force her to eat before she’s ready.’ I was honestly almost crying by the end of it because I felt so bad for the child. Apparently, the physician never got any further and we ended up having to report it to the authorities but I never heard the end of it due to confidentiality reasons. But it just horrified me to think of an otherwise healthy four-year-old wasting away of malnutrition because her dad was too nervous to make his daughter do something.”
Vanity Almost Killed Him
“My most favorite one was this moron who came in because he thought he had appendicitis. Turns out he was actually right in that he did – and it had a micro perforation and an abscess already because he’d sat on it a couple days. Mr. Moron had googled it and decided that since in some places they treat appendicitis with antibiotics, he was going to do so for his appendicitis. I explained very patiently for way too freaking long that the research into that only applies to simple, early, non-abscessed appendicitis and was not appropriately applied to his situation. And, yes, I am bitter that I will never get that half hour of my life back. His main reason for wanting to avoid surgery? He didn’t want scars on his six-pack. If you haven’t already gotten the picture here, think of ‘The Situation’ from ‘The Jersey Shore.’
I refused to participate in his stupidity and prescribe antibiotics, so he left against medical advice. Fast forward two days. He’s back in the ER. He had purchased fish antibiotics and was taking that to treat his abscessed appendicitis. He now is septic with a fever of 103, a Lactate of 6, and systolic BP in the 80s (which is hella sick).
Fortunately for him, he was young/healthy and it’s actually really hard to kill young healthy people. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but you have to work really hard. So Mr. Moron pulls through but ends up with a full laparotomy (zipped right down the middle of his six-pack) instead of the nice little laparoscopy scars he would have had if he’d come in the first day.”
This Woman Thinks Bad Eyesight Is A Scam
“I work for an optometrist and it was the month before school started and a woman brought in her son to have his eyes checked for the first time. Seems like a pretty reasonable thing for any parent, even if he was a little older than usual for a first eye exam. Better late than never, I guess. The mom was well spoken and appeared fairly intelligent. Everything went as normal, the doctor examined the boy and ended up prescribing glasses.
The doctor was explaining to the mom that her son had to wear his glasses all the time since he’s nearsighted and basically can’t see clearly past 5′ in front of him, so will definitely need glasses for school. For some reason, this caused a switch to flip in the mom and she spazzed out on the doctor, saying that her son doesn’t need glasses and that the doctor is only saying that he does because he wants to sell glasses. She says that she only brought her son in because there was some form for school that needed to be filled out and that doctors are all con artists trying to push unnecessary medications and interventions.
The doctor tried to calm her down and explain that he’s only trying to help them but that she was free to get a second opinion and gave her a copy of the kid’s prescription and sent them on their way. About four months later, the lady was back asking for another copy of her son’s prescription. Apparently, the first-semester midterm results were in and her son failed them all because he couldn’t see the board in his classes and needed glasses!”
People Taking Matters Into Their Own Hands Is A Bad Idea
“I’m a clinical pharmacist with one story from working in the ER and one from working in the pharmacy.
1) An ER physician told me this one: 16-year-old boy presented to the ER with an extremely swollen, discolored manhood. Apparently, he has been using his mom’s insulin needles to draw blood out of his arm and inject it into his own junk. He thought that adding blood would help increase his size. His thing was terribly infected and he was hospitalized for a week or so.
2) One day in the pharmacy, a girl comes to the counter requesting a refill for her birth control. We pulled up her profile and realized we couldn’t refill it because she just got a 28-day fill less than 2 weeks ago. When we asked what happened to the other one, she said she was out. Apparently, both her and her boyfriend were each taking a pill each and was adamant that was how they needed to prevent pregnancy.”
She Swore She Couldn’t Have Cancer…Because It Doesn’t Exist
“I was a third-year med student on rotation at an outpatient clinic, so people show up for an appointment then go home. That morning was pulmonary (lungs) day. We had a woman come in for a follow up on lab results or radiology. It looked like she had lung cancer, which didn’t appear too advanced, and we wanted to do a biopsy so we could grab it early and treat it.
The resident who saw her last time spoke to her and said they were worried about it being cancerous and malignant, meaning it could spread to other parts of her body and no longer be treatable. The patient said she felt fine (a normal reaction) and that cancer was serious, so if she had something serious, she would already know about it. She then said that if something was serious, she needed to go somewhere where it could be cured. The resident essentially said, ‘That’s what we do here.’
She was still upset that we ‘weren’t offering her any help,’ so resident explained, again, that we wanted to test what it was before we decided on whether or not she needed treatment and what type of treatment she needed. She started getting upset that he wanted her ‘to die of cancer,’ at which point we got the pulmonologist attending doctor to come in. She asked the patient what was wrong, the patient stated that the resident and student (me) were trying to ‘give’ her cancer that she didn’t have. Pulmonologist explained that she might already have cancer, we were just trying to figure out if the mass was bad or okay.
Pulmonologist explained we wanted to do a biopsy and see what it was, the same way you taste somebody else’s cooking to see whether or not it’s good or bad. The patient got upset and called the pulmonologist a heathen cannibal for trying to eat human flesh. We tried to explain that away and the pulmonologist asked a more basic thing, ‘Okay hun, can you tell us what the word “cancer” means to you? What do you think it is?’ The patient revealed that cancer was a made up way for hospitals to kidnap people and take their money, that there was no such thing as cancer and she absolutely didn’t have it (a bit different than her prior attitude with the resident).
The pulmonologist was getting rattled at that point and asked the patient what her family would want her to do if they knew she got this news. ‘I don’t know what my parents would want me to do, they both died of lung cancer back in the 80s.’ In a last-ditch attempt, the pulmonologist asked the patient what they would like us to do for her. The patient told the doctor, ‘Cure me, you idiot!’
The pulmonologist walked out, yelling, ‘We can’t cure you if you won’t let us treat you.’ There was one oncologist (cancer doctor) who I worked with later, an incredibly smart and kind and charismatic woman, great with the patients, who were just checking in on the clinic casually and the resident gave them the run down and asked them to see if they could do anything with the patient. Everyone else left the room, the oncologist talked with her for five or 10 minutes and came back into the office saying, ‘Eff her, it’s her life, she can choose to live or ignore everything we try to tell her and die.’ Never heard her swear before or since.
I’ve seen plenty of patients and families in actual denial, it’s heartbreaking. This patient was literally just too stupid to understand what cancer was or that the people she was choosing to go to for help actually wanted to help her.”
A Simple Exam That He Refused Might Have Saved His Life
“Many would qualify for the idiotic slot, but I vividly recall one guy even though more than 32 years have passed.
I was an intern and examined a middle-aged fellow. His systolic blood pressure was well over 200. I proceeded with ophthalmoscopy and such, and he grabbed my hand, ‘Why are you doing all this?’ I explained to him that his blood pressure was pretty high and we need to examine him very thoroughly.
He just blew up. ‘You are wrong. I can never have high blood pressure.’ It was a scene. The silly guy just would not believe that he could be sick. He walked out fuming and cursing me and the medical profession.
Some three weeks later I was doing my ER duty, and late at night, an unconscious person was wheeled in.
He had subarachnoid hemorrhage (bleeding on his brain), and his kidney functions were compromised. After staying in comatose state for a couple of days, he had a severe heart attack and died.
He was the same nutjob who was refusing to accept that he was sick just three weeks earlier.
He might have saved himself that fatal ending and his kids a life of despair.”
Super Cinnamon Death Snort
“A patient came in breathing through his mouth. His mouth was as wide as he could stretch it. His breath sounded like sucking that last bit of liquid through a straw. He’d snorted 9 ounces of cinnamon when his mom’s boyfriend dared him to. He then tried to snort water to wash it away. His mucus became like a biscuit. He had a cold too. I tried very hard not to insult their collective intellect.
Since I wasn’t trained to hand out Darwin awards, a colleague of mine suggested a procedure that is normally used to treat patients with asthma.
As far as I could tell, it meant inhaling water vapors to soften up the crust and then blowing/coughing it out. The vapors were supposed to cause the crust to inflate and lose the grip on the skin.
This was, of course, after the poor boy had to endure a probe in his mouth to see how far the cinnamon had settled. Luckily for him, it did not get anywhere near the trachea, so there was no danger of suffocation or choking if the crust inflated or peeled off.
It took 20 minutes before he blew out the first piece. Two 30-minute sessions and the problem seemed to be solved. Most of the cinnamon actually fell down his esophagus, into the stomach.
I was very worried about this boy because the best alternative would’ve been a true near-death experience for him. We were seriously scared that the water vapor treatment wouldn’t have worked, but at least it couldn’t have done any damage. After he was done, he was extremely happy and hugged us tightly.
While all this was going on, the mom’s boyfriend was arrested for trying to take pills from the hospital’s pharmacy.
These are the joys of working in the clinic.”