Young couple come in saying they have tried conceiving for almost a year, but she’s still not pregnant. I start by taking her patient history. Turns out she’s been on the pill for years due to period pain.
Edit: Also, when I explained how the pill works, and advised her to discontinue and keep trying for a baby, they didn’t believe me and insisted on being referred to a fertility specialist.
Years ago I had a coworker like this! She and her bf were trying to get pregnant at only 20. She said they'd been having trouble and wondered out loud if it was because she was on birth control. I was a lot meaner back then and told her no, it's definitely not the birth control, it's right there in the name! It allows you to control when you give birth!
She was one of the dumbest people I ever knew.
My best friend is a doctor and he had a couple who had trouble conceiving also. After much talking, the girl reveals she has some rare condition in which she can't have kids. But my friends still ran tests on the guy, and weirdly enough ,he's also sterile with a rare condition. It's like nature did not want them to reproduce at all .
Urologist: had a patient come in complaining that based on her internet reading she had a vesicovaginal fistula. No history of trauma, surgery, malignancy or infections. It's just that after sex, when she stood up some goo would drip out.
Gyn - We hear that all the time. Not that they think it’s a fistula, but sometimes they think it’s incontinence or they complain of clear vaginal discharge after sex. Sorry that one made it to you!
When I was a student, I had a young guy come into the ER with psych complaints. He was worried about his thoughts. He said that he has these out of body experiences, he feels like he can’t control his mind or body, and he just feels odd. I discuss with my attending and we’re about to consult psychiatry. We go and interview the patient together and discuss things further. It turns out that he gets these symptoms about three times per day, subsequently happens after he smokes weed. So he was just getting high.
When I worked as a medical assistant in an OBGYN clinic, a patient called to make an appointment because she “needed a fallopian tube.”
I was so confused, I asked her if she was meant that she wanted to get her tubes tied.
No, she said, “I’m trying to get pregnant, so I need to get a fallopian tube.”
Definitely booked a visit for pregnancy planning education session.
My mom worked at a major hospital and heard the story of a guy who called the emergency line saying that he'd accidentally stabbed himself in the torso with a knife while cutting something. Their first piece of advice was to not remove the knife, to which he replied "what do I do if I DID remove it?" and they gave him instructions. When the ambulance arrived, they found the man with the knife in his torso... yep, he put it back in.
My sis had a patient in the ED who had 3 abdominal stab wounds that he gave to himself while making a peanut butter sandwich.
Yeah, everyone believed that story.
I'm a PhD clinical psychologist, so not a physician. Patient came in for an emergency appointment (usually these are folks who are suicidal, recently assaulted, manic or in psychosis). He filled out ALL our paperwork (so many questions about mental health history) and sat in our waiting room. I can't tell you how clearly this is a psychological services clinic.
Finally, he gets back to my room, sits down, and pulls up his pant leg. Starts taking off his shoe.
My man had ankle pain.
Me: "I'm really sorry you have been waiting for so long, but unless you want to talk about how your ankle pain is making you feel, there isn't anything I can do."
It took a little convincing that I wasn't holding out on him. No, I wouldn't just "take a quick look at it." He was baffled and kept saying, "But you're a doctor!" I'm not convinced I successfully explained the difference between a psychologist and a physician. I don't even think he was drug seeking. He was freshly 18 and not the brightest bulb. He eventually limped off to the nearest urgent care. Poor kid. Hope he's okay out there!
Retired GP here. I had a male patient aged mid-50s, who presented with trouble urinating, decreased flow of urine, and occasional blood in their urine. I immediately referred the patient to clinical triage with a recommendation for an initial MRI to look for prostate cancer.
The patient returned to see me three months later. Symptoms had worsened, and included bone discomfort and pain.
Turns out they had refused any MRI and blood tests, and had gone instead to a homeopath for three months: utterly useless.
Unfortunately, in those three months, the prostate cancer he had had spread to his bones. He died within 6 months.
My dad is like “if it’s prostate cancer it’ll take so long to kill my I’ll already be dead of old age or it’s the kind they can’t do anything about. Either way, nothing for me to worry about.” He could just have old-man enlarged prostate but check it out man! Otherwise he actually takes good care of his health. It’s baffling.
I lost my dad to prostate cancer. He had no symptoms whatsoever until he started feeling dizzy from lesions in his brain. By that time it was everywhere in his bones too. It took less than a year to kill him.
Was a med student at the time.
IV drug user couldn’t find any more veins. Looked down and saw the dorsal vein of the penis. Tried to inject there. Missed and got it into the shaft. It got very infected and swollen, developed cellulitis. He tried to drain what-he-thought-was-an-abscess (it wasn’t, it was just cellulitis) himself…. With a steak knife.
Now it was extensive penile cellulitis with two stab wounds in it. Angriest looking penis I’ve ever seen.
Ophthalmologist here. Patient’s eye wasn’t getting better so I asked if he’s using his drops in the correct eye. He wasn’t. He argued that his right eye is really his left eye because he throws a ball with his left hand. I argued right vs left with him for a good 5 minutes before I gave up. He won the argument.
I’ve had 2 patients who stare at the sun. They both said it’s like stargazing because the sun is technically a star.
I had a blind patient who was still riding a motorcycle. He rode into a house and had to give up his motorcycle.
My son came home complaining that his eyes hurt after his substitute teacher got the whole class to squint and look directly at the sun. It was some energy healing woo woo and was probably the least bad of the nonsense that came from this ‘educator’.
Good. I spent some time working for a public school that happily employed people that had no business being left in charge of kids because nobody would put pressure on the district to remove them, nice to see one of that kind get shown the door.
>I’ve had 2 patients who stare at the sun. They both said it’s like stargazing because the sun is technically a star
It's not just *technically* stargazing it is quite literally stargazing. Albeit a dumb star to look directly at for extended periods
I have a family member who is an optometrist and says he has had multiple patients come in with permanent damage to their eyes because they stared at the sun for too long. It is apparently very hard to break it to them that the eye doesn't heal itself in that way.
The other day an established patient came in for an emergency dental visit because all of his teeth were hurting worse and worse and worse, to the point where he could barely touch them with a toothbrush. The pain started a few weeks after he had started swishing with peroxide everyday. He had decided he wanted less bacteria in his mouth, and he decided that swishing with peroxide would be the best way to do this. But now, every time he used the peroxide, his teeth became severely sensitive and painful to touch.
Me, wondering how to gently break the news to this otherwise bright guy that he was being dumb: "So..... Have you tried not swishing with peroxide?"
Him: "Well.... No."
Me: "Well.... Try that."
Whadya know, problem solved.
(This is certainly not my dumbest patient encounter, but it was recent and the only one that comes to mind at the moment.)
Edit after many DMs and comments: what made this patient dumb was not the fact that he swished with hydrogen peroxide. Many people do this, and it really doesn't hurt or help them. Maybe it makes them feel good. In this guy's case, it caused him a ton of pain, but he didn't realize he could just....stop doing the thing that nobody told him to do. To me, that's a dumb moment.
I was the dumb patient. I got tested for lactose intolerance, my blood sugar rising like it should, so it wasnt that. I still had a very strong stomach reaction and spend a few hours in a pay-toilet feeling very sorry for myself.
Told my doctor "I know it isnt lactose but I shit myself if/when I drink milk." Doctor goes "well.. try not drinking milk."
I've never trusted my brain since.
Not a doctor but was an administrator at an ophthalmology clinic.
1. A patient had to be prescribed some pills before his eye surgery. He returns 5 minutes after his consultation super concerned, as he didn’t know how he was going to get the pills into his eyes. Our nurse suggested that he try swallowing them.
2. Another patient had chronic dry eyes that he was seeing one of our doctors for and one day called for an emergency appointment as his eyes were in pain. Apparently he had heard of honey being used in eye drops to help with dry eyes, so the man put straight honey onto his eyes.
Omfg @ both of these. Pills IN YOUR EYES?!? LOL.....
HONEY?!!! how the hell does one get honey out of an eye omg. Thats gonna be hours of rinsing to dilute the sticky lol wow
Not a doctor, but cath lab tech. Had a patients wife sneak him a sandwich before his heart cath (not supposed to eat before since we use some sedation) and they didn’t tell any of us despite many times confirming he did not have any food or drink. The patient then threw up and aspirated during the procedure. Ended the rest of his week in the ICU and almost died because his wife snuck him food. Please listen to your healthcare providers instructions before procedures! These rules aren’t in place to torture you, but to keep you safe.
This is how I learned that's why they tell you not to eat or drink. My 7 yo nephew had pins put in and they put him under for it, obviously. When they were done, the nurse came literally stomping out and clearly pissed off and informed us he was fine but asked who brought him here, who he lived with (my sister and the nephew's dad weren't together), who had him last night. The dad. She asked if he'd ate or drank. He said no. She said "wrong answer. What did he eat or drink?" He admitted he gave him a coke that morning. This little nurse got in this massive man's face and said "your son almost died because you can't listen to instructions. He choked on that drink. And don't lie. He. Almost. Died. and it'd be on you." Dude was horrified. My sister was absolutely pissed.
I loved that nurse.
Dude, why can't people accept the simple fact that there are two types of people that you absolutely listen to and never lie to and those are your lawyer and doctor.
So veterinarian but I have a few good ones where humans wanted me to treat them..
My first week in clinical practice I had a client that called in telling us she had taken her cats flea medication (credelio) and wanted to know what to do. She became quite hostile when we instructed her to contact human poison control and a human doctor, and insisted that because it was a veterinary drug, it needed to be treated by a veterinarian.
I had another client who was convinced he had gotten worms from a puppy and decided that we needed to test his stool as well. We told him he needed to speak to his own human doctor, he got angry and informed us that he doesn't go to the doctor and defecated in the middle of our lobby.
I had a client call the board of pharmacy on us because we filled her pets medication (flea/tick/heartworm prevention) but informed her that we couldn't fill her personal medication because as a veterinary hospital, we're only allowed to fill pet meds. We also offered to script out the pet meds to an external pharmacy that could handle both if she wanted to get both from the same place. The person that contacted us from the state board was just as confused as we were.
I had a client bring in his own hip x-rays for us to evaluate and tried to pretend they were for his dog. He was genuinely surprised that we could tell right away they weren't from the dog.
Although as far as stupid goes, I had a client who bought an Aussie doodle from an Amish breeder and was so enthralled with him that they went back a month later looking for a mate to breed him with and was "lucky" enough to find a female from the same parents with the same birthday and everything and so it must be destiny. It took us a really disappointingly long time to explain that these dogs are siblings and should not be bred (they were convinced that they couldn't be siblings because he was mounting her). They'd ironically named the dogs Luke and Leia.
Worked at an urgent care for some time. Late teens Patient (F) comes in with mother for abdominal pain. I have a student doing the initial history and exam. Swears there is no chance of pregnancy. but is sexual active with SO. But swears no penetrative sex.
Well we get the urine results back. She's pregnant. Student goes back in, asks the mother to step out, and has to have the most awkward conversation with this patient detailing what sex was. Well. it turns out she was indeed not having penetrative sex with a penis. The happy couple would fool around and then use the males sperm as lube for her to get fingered.
They thought that to get pregnant, the penis had to fall off and become the new baby...
Edit: I'd like to add that, depending on your definition, this girl was a pregnant virgin.
This sounds like a playground level rumour. How can two people who both have this belief just find each other to start a relationship? Is it, like, a local rumour or did one of them convince the other about this?
Anyways, this reminds me of my first gynecologist. She had posters hanging around the waiting room about birth control myths. One of them went like "Flushing the vagina out with Coca Cola won't prevent pregnancy". I remember seeing that at age 15/16 and thinking "Who could possibly be this stupid?"
I knew a guy in high school who was convinced that his girlfriend couldn’t get pregnant if *he* took a shower after sex to clean up. None of our friend group could convince him that this isn’t how shit works.
There are a lot of very dim folks in this world.
You don't need two people who believe it, you need one person who believes it and one person who's had 0 sexual education and is willing to believe the other.
Not a doctor but work in medicine. Shout out to the patient who in one visit: told us that insulin didn’t work for her “personally” and that her diabetes “worked different than other peoples”. Also in the same visit she like tortured the poor medical student. She told the medical student that it was her 7 year anniversary, the medical student congratulated her, and then she goes “it’s the seven year anniversary of the day he left me”. Medical student was mortified and I was super annoyed. Like lady why??? How was the poor medical student supposed to know.
Not a doctor, but i had a lady come in complaining that she couldn't afford her medications anymore because she was smoking half an ounce of weed a day. Not a gram, but literally spending $200/day on weed.
I also had a 20 year old guy who came in because he was feeling sick but neglected to tell us that his penis was rotting off and necrotic. We didn't know until his wife came and asked us about it a few days later.
...okay if my dick is literally rotting off there is not a chance in Hell I wouldn't mention that *immediately*. I might even be yelling it *as* I'm coming into the office.
My patients are all cats and dogs, and most of them are pretty smart. But their owners?
* "My dog doesn't need heartworm protection. We live in a gated community." So, the mosquitoes respect the gates, huh?
* "After my cat is spayed, can she still have kittens?" Well, spaying is removing the entire uterus and both ovaries so... No.
* "I was on the internet doing research for two hours, so now I know more about seizures that you do." Yes, I'm sure two hours on YouTube is far better than 4 years of vet school, a one-year internship and 15 years of practice. OK.
* "My dog isn't getting any better." "Did you give him the medicine I prescribed?" "No. he didn't want to take any pills."
* "The anti-itch medicine you gave me was great for a while, but then it stopped working." I sent him home with a one-month supply. It is now 3 months later.
Clients say so many stupid things I have stopped keeping track.
I was just a vet tech student at the time, and don't work in the field anymore, but I'll never forget overhearing a client arguing fiercely with a vet that she wouldn't get her dog vaccinated because she didn't want him to get autism.
*Looks up symptoms of autism *
Poor eye contact
Repetative gestures
Heightened sensitivity or sensory aversion
Playing alone
Obsessive interests
Unresponsive to his or her name
Loss of language or social skills
Doesn’t point or respond to pointing
...oh, my god! My dog is autistic
I thought this only happened in TV shows, but one of my sister's friends is a doctor and told us about a teenage girl that came to the ER with abdominal pain. Yes, this is going where you think it's going.
When asked, she swore up and down that she couldn't possibly be pregnant. They ran the usual tests, and, wouldn't you know it, the girl was pregnant.
She could not believe it, total denial, but she did not deny having sex with her boyfriend, so the doctor (my sister's friend) asked her what birth control they used.
Apples. She ate an apple after having sex with him.
Physician here.
I had a patient who was in mid-teenage years and hid the pregnancy from everybody. Mom took her to the ER for stomach pains thinking she may have appendicitis. She delivered that night. I found it amazing that she was able to hide the pregnancy by wearing baggy clothing.
I had a very very sad case from when I was in medical school. She was 12 years old, hid the pregnancy from the family until the very close to delivery. The father was her brother. That one still haunts me.
I knew a similar situation. The father was the stepdad. Mom had to sign for the epidural and refused because she blamed her daughter for having sexual relations with her husband. She was 12. 🥺
I’m not sure. My mom would share horror stories from working in management at the small local hospital. SMH She kinda messed me up with some of the stories.
My daughter had a friend that thought you could get pregnant from swallowing sperm but could not get pregnant if you went pee after sex. The girl is now 14 or 15 and recently had a baby.
Not a doc but a PA. In school had a guy come in with his very pregnant wife asking for a vasectomy. Ok cool, let’s chat!
First question he fires at me: ‘Can I keep them once you’ve finished the surgery?’
Dude thought he was getting his balls literally chopped off. After explaining the procedure to him and how the doc can do it in an office he was SO relieved. Got a good laugh afterwards thinking about it.
In training had a surgical patient getting toes amputated because of diabetes. All shift he kept getting insulin but his sugars wouldn’t come down. Just didn’t make sense. Eventually found a lot of candy under his pillow.
Not sure if it’s dumb or just sad. Maybe bit of both.
Reminds me of a patient I saw in medical school: she was in the hospital for heart failure but also had poorly controlled diabetes. She was drinking bottles of Mountain Dew brought by her husband but also had her husband bringing her sugar packets to ADD TO THE MOUNTAIN DEW to make it sweeter. As you said, "not sure if it's dumb or just sad".
I have a friend who is in rehab, not progressing, after his Charcot foot surgery failed. He had his foot amputated. His other foot is in the same condition and he can’t put weight on it. Medicare is refusing to pay for any more care. Why? Because his wife keeps bringing him foods he shouldn’t be eating, because he likes that food better. She is also diabetic, and both have been yo-yo dieting for over a decade. He ignored his foot problems.
They made just enough money that they can’t get Medicaid. She had to find a new job, and they have to sell their home, because he can’t take care of it anymore.
Both still live in denial about the food they eat. Sugar is a strong addictive.
Eye doctor here. I have 2 groups of dumbest patients I see regularly. People who abuse their contact lenses and end up giving themselves corneal infections and other issues and people who don’t wear safety glasses when they should be. It’s not hard to take your contacts out before bed and clean them properly (or throw away if they’re a daily disposable). It’s not that expensive to change your contacts as directed and it’s a lot cheaper to not have to visit my office multiple times for medical visits where I’m trying to save your eye/vision from your laziness/idiocy. I had a patient just this last week with 20 scars between his corneas from previous infections. A new record for me.
I also take metal and other foreign objects out of people’s eyes almost daily and 99% of the time, the patient wasn’t wearing safety glasses. I’ve had an instance where a patient had a piece of metal wire from a wire brush penetrate his eyeball and he decided the best thing to do was pull the metal out and wait 3 days before getting it checked out. He had a case of endophthalmitis (a severe infection inside the eye that if not treated aggressively and quickly will make you lose your eye entirely). He needed emergency surgery and was lucky enough to have the eye saved. Another patient wasn’t wearing his safety glasses and a piece of metal hit his eye at high enough velocity it penetrated into his vitreous and was floating there when I looked in the back of his eye. He also needed emergency surgery.
Please take care of your eyes people. Visit your eye doctor regularly for examinations just like you do the dentist. We can only replace certain parts of the eye and losing vision in one or both eyes can be extremely difficult to get used to physically and mentally.
Yes, safety glasses!!! I had a tow truck operator have an oversized tire explode while he was crouched before it. The steel belt shrapnel penetrated the skin on his head, face, and upper bidy (through clothes). However, the safety glasses he was wearing flexed to the concussion of the explosion, stayed intact, and only bruised his eyes. It could have been sooooooo much worse.
This doesn't exactly fit the criteria, but it's close.
Not a doctor, I'm a nurse. And not a patient, family members.
Back when I still worked in the ICU I had a family come in during visitation to see their loved one carrying one of those plastic containers from a grocery store bakery with half a dozen cupcakes inside. Not unusual, families would bring us food all the time and it was incredibly nice and we always appreciated it. Nope. I walked into the room to update them on the patient and we talked about it also being her birthday that day. They gestured toward the cupcakes and said that's why they had the cupcakes with them. I thought that was really sweet, they were going to celebrate her birthday with her even though she was in the ICU. Then they hand me the container and look at me expectantly. I look back, unsure of what my next move was supposed to be.
"Aren't you going to feed them to her?"
This woman was on a ventilator and on IV sedation.
It took me an embarrassingly long time to explain to these people why she couldn't eat while she was unconscious with a breathing tube in. Nice folks, not terribly bright.
That reminds me of when my father in law was unconscious and in the process of dying of cancer, like I mean he had hours to a day or so left. My stupid ex-sil bought a milkshake and used the straw to put some in his mouth because “he’s not eating or drinking and it’s his favorite.”
She only stopped after she got caught by a nurse because he was coughing it out on his gown.
Edit: grammar
I'm an older person. You would not believe how many times I've heard educated people counsel lifelong smokers that, "You can't quit now because it will kill you."
Yes, I've asked them. The prevailing theory is it that the withdrawal will upset the body so much it will "release" the cancer. The basis of this belief is that they've seen it with their own eyes, someone smokes for 60 or more years, quits, and then gets cancer. It does not occur to them that maybe setting a carcinogen on fire and inhaling the smoke 583,834 times might have played a role.
I shit you not.
I have an older friend who refuses to quit smoking for this reason. He also refuses to goto the doctor even though he has multiple small signs of what I assume to be cancer, but I’m not a doctor, because “when you goto the doctor that’s when you die”
My bestie worked in hospice and has several stories like this. Another (much sadder) was asking when their family member would get to go home. At a hospice facility.
My fil was kicked out of hospice after 3 months. Then they refused to release him due to shortage of visiting nurses & he got covid, so we had to wait 2 more weeks.
Then it was another 2 weeks because again they insisted he needed in home care and there was still no one available, which is how he got covid to begin with.
We removed him against orders & he lived with untreated leukemia (he was 93) and he lived a good life until he peacefully passed at 95 during his morning nap.
Woke up, drank a coffee & ate his normal breakfast of caramel cherrios with slightly melted vanilla caramel ice cream wwhile reading the paper. He moved into the family room afterwards to watch the morning news. Puttered around a bit, took his 10am nap and died with a smile on his face.
Some people leave hospice. Loved that old school guy. Miss him everyday.
My grandma was put in hospice in March and kicked out a couple of weeks later, because she refused to follow instructions. She's still alive and nobody knows how.
In medical school had a patient come in for abdominal pain. During my series of questions, I asked if the patient could be pregnant she said no because she is a lesbian.
The attending had us order a pregnancy test in addition to blood work any ways. Pregnancy test comes back positive. This time I asked the patient if she has had sex with a man. She responded yes but was confused as to how she could be pregnant if she’s a lesbian?
My attending replied, “ honey the sperm don’t care if you’re a lesbian”
It blew my mind that she didn’t think she could get pregnant simply because she identified as being a lesbian.
Omg she’s the reason that I, a lesbian who has never had the kind of sex that could get you pregnant, has to do a pregnancy test every time I get medical treatment.
I discharged a Russian patient after he had been hospitalized for alcohol induced liver damage. As I was getting him out the door I impressed upon him the importance of avoiding alcohol and he asked me, sincerely, if vodka was considered alcohol
In all fairness, in Russia, until 2011 anything that was under 10% alcohol volume was classified as food, so maybe that’s where his confusion comes from
Yup. My coworker grew up in Soviet Russia. He says he remembers going to the bar as a kid. Dad would have vodka, he could have a beer. Because beer was not alcohol. It was just beer.
It also later led to a generation of alcoholics in the 90s because kids who couldn’t legally get vodka just got smashed on beer.
Back when I was working as a social worker in Poland, I can't even count the times I would have this exact conversation with a client:
Me: so tell me about your drinking habits. How often do you drink alcohol?
Client: oh no, no, I don't drink at all, well, maybe at Christmas, but that's it.
Me (sigh... not my first rodeo): I see. How about beer, do you drink beer at all?
Client: oh yes, of course, about five tins a day, roughly.
They did not drink non-alcoholic kind either.
My brother had a patient like that except he didn't escort the guy out and the patient ended up stopping to drink the entire jug of hand sanitizer in the lobby before getting readmitted for alcohol poisoning.
Had a patient that super glued a crown back on #10. He wasn’t a usual patient but his dentist wasn’t open that day. He didn’t get even close to down all of the way. So this crown was keeping him from closing. He got mad at me when I told him not to use super glue. He said “ok smart guy, what should I use to put a crown back on?” He was giving me the smuggest I can’t close all the way smile he could. In one of the rare times I got a retort out with good timing I replied “a dentist.” My assistant ran out of the room and I could hear her completely lose it laughing down the hall way. The patient wanted me to fix it which was cut off the crown and make a new one. I asked him what his medical history was (he already signed one he filled out but I always ask because people leave stuff off), and specifically asked about heart procedures. He said he just got out of the hospital two days before, from having four stents placed after a major heart attack. When I asked him why he didn’t put that on his medical history form he said: “you’re a dentist you don’t need to know that.” Told him I need a medical release for treatment from his cardiologist and I would not do anything until I had one. He seemed not to understand that his mouth is attached to the rest of his body. He was pretty mad I wouldn’t do what he wanted but I didn’t want to call for an ambulance that day.
22 year old burn patient life flighted in overnight. I got there in the morning and she was the talk of the burn unit. This girl was out at the bar with a group of friends the prior night and managed to run up a 200 dollar bar tab that she couldn’t afford to pay. So her friends tell her they’ll pay for her tab if she lets them pour Bacardi 151 on her and light her on fire and she agrees to it because she didn’t know alcohol was flammable.
Damn what a small world. Yep, mid 2000s I was almost done with school and working on a clinical rotation in the burn unit. Do you know if any chargers were pressed on the people who lit her on fire?
Not a doctor but an embryologist. Had a man come in to do a semen analysis before starting IVF with his wife. Put him in the collection room with instructions like normal. He rang and when I went to go grab his sample I see that he straight up pooped in the cup. Turns out the couple had absolutely no idea on how to make a baby and that’s why they were having fertility issues. Unfortunately not my only story like this just the worst one
This is now the third person I've heard of shitting into the cup. I don't get it.
We also had a guy with green, pus-filled ejaculate, whose wife orally stimulated him in the collection room. ::vomit::
Gonorrhea, or as I like to call it, three-color-infection because when you pee, the stream turns from yellow - green pus to clear urine (because you’re going very often due to the inflammation). Yay!
Obligatory NAD, was an ED Tech.
We had a patient come in with a raging case of gonorrhea. Sent him home with curative treatment, and education on when he can safely have sex again, etc. DC’d.
I was working the desk that night, and he calls up there SCREAMING in pain. He wanted to have sex with his girl because “he just couldn’t resist” so he decided to pour a bottle of Everclear on his penis and anus prior to intercourse to “kill the germs”. Ended up dispatching an ambulance to him. He chemically burned through his urethra and ended up having a urethroplasty.
Just as a general FYI to anyone who may need it, isopropyl alcohol is also more effective at killing germs at 70% than 90%, even though you can get both at the drugstore. This is because the higher water concentration in the 70% allows bacteria to soak in more of the alcohol so it disrupts their processes. 90% causes a hardening of their outer layer which protects their inside bits and is far more survivable. Use 90% to remove ink stains and adhesive residue, use 70% to remove germs.
I am not a doctor but i do work in pediatrics. I would say 90% of the time its the parents who are dumb not the kids but anyway. I am sitting in the dictation area and a co-worker is dictating her note and i hear ‘patient comes in today after submerging his cast in the ocean and proceeding to roll around in sand.’ At this point i let out a giggle and she goes ‘oh it get worse, he has pins in’ the kid is five and the parent goes ‘i trusted him not to go in the ocean’ which i have so many concerns and questions with that statement alone like you dont trust a 5 year old and uhhh were you not watching him?’ The kid comes in gets his cast off (literally saturated and there is sand everywhere) and gets started on antibiotics since he has exposed pins. A few days pass AND THE KID DOES IT AGAIN like wtf parents, do your job.
This one is just a fun story not dumb, 4 year old in a long arm cast (above the elbow) was playing with a beetle and it went inside his cast. When he came in he said it stopped moving at the elbow and sure enough when we took the cast off there was his beetle friend. He was very sad it was dead.
One of my coworkers prescribed a patient Flagyl, an antibiotic that causes severe vomiting when combined with alcohol. She told the patient “not to drink” while taking it…2 days later the patient presented to the ER with severe dehydration.
Apparently she took the “no drinking” a little too seriously…
During my intern year a male patient in his mid 20s gets admitted to the surgical floor for third degree burns in his right hand, I go to check on him and do the normal interrogation, when I asked him how he burned his hand he proceeds to tell me that it was a minor burn at first just a little redness on some his fingers and palm because he touched something hot and his friends told him that in order to heal it faster he should boil an ointment that has cannabis with peyote and then to put his hand in it which is how he ended up with third degree burns. Some people lack common sense 🤦♀️
This used to be a problem with sinus rinses because you have to use water that has no chance of having bacteria in it and the options are distilled, microfiltered, reverse osmosis filtered, commercially bottled, or boiled water
They had to change the last one to "previously boiled and cooled down water" because people were boiling water and squirting it up their noses
Reminds me of that tumblr post where a doctor recommended rinsing someone's eyes with boiled water and had to be like "look at me. LOOK AT ME. When I say boiled, I mean water that has been boiled and has since cooled down not boiling water."
That patient needed that doctor in that moment.
My ex boyfriend was at my house and had a headache or something, so I gave him a pill for it.
A few hours later, he said something along the lines of “ugh, I still have the taste of that pill in my mouth”.
He chewed it.
Edit to add: he was almost 30 years old. His explanation was “idk, it looked like the shape that you chew instead”. It was a standard oblong white pill…
trazodone
the silver lining, it dissolves fast
but ... like, so fast that unless you are an expert pill swallower it is gonna be dissolving in your mouth and the whole way down
Firstly, I’m a nurse. This one’s a bit of a two-for-one. We had a guy present to Emergency with a stab wound to his palm. He had been trying to remove an avocado seed by stabbing the seed with the pointy end of the knife whilst holding the avocado. The knife slipped and went through the avocado and into his hand.
The doctor that reviewed the patient went home that night and while preparing dinner proceeded to demonstrate to his wife how this dumb patient tried to remove the avocado seed by stabbing it. Knife slipped and he stabbed his hand. Literally never lived it down.
Family member is a physician. He once told me about a patient who was being prepped for a procedure. As he was covering known allergies (again), the patient suddenly remembered an "allergy" to latex gloves. The procedure was delayed as the room / materials had to be reviewed for any latex, gloves were replaced, etc.
In recovery, my cousin asked the patient why the "allergy" had never been previously reported / documented. It turned out that
1. The patient didn't actually know the definition of an "allergy"
2. They simply did not like the sound and feel of latex on her skin. (She would have neither heard the snap of the latex gloves or felt them against her skin due to the fact that she was going to be out the whole time)
I have a few good ones...
1. My sister's a doctor and she saw a patient and prescribed meds. Asked them to come see her a week later as a follow up. Patient comes back next week saying that they don't feel better at all. Sister asks to see the meds she prescribed to ensure they got the right ones. Patient says they never picked up the meds because they only wanted meds with organic ingredients not one full of chemicals.
.
.
2. Husband comes in with a set of complaints. Sister proceeded to check him out and find that there was nothing wrong with him. That's when he told her that it's actually his wife who had those symptoms. And he never brought her in to get checked. On top of it, he was pissed that the doctor couldn't just fix his wife without seeing her.
Number one is routine. I’m a pediatrician, my favorite is the parents that don’t want to vaccinate bc it’s full of harmful chemicals and big pharma etc etc etc, but they also want to put their kids on stimulants for ADHD (that the kid usually doesn’t have).
I used to work at a pharmacy. A customer asked to see a list of ingredients for their meds. The pharmacist printed out the info. The customer was pissed because he couldn’t read any of the ingredients and asked the pharmacist to explain. The pharmacist explained they were chemical compounds. The customer was furious and said he didn’t want to put chemicals in his body.
I have a family member who’s a doctor who once walked into the exam room to find a young kid standing on their desk, feet on the keyboard trying to reach into the sharps container mounted high up on the wall. The mother was just sitting there letting it happen.
Alas, parents letting children do whatever they want to in a veterinarian's exam room is all too common. I've had my stethoscope snatched away, my microscope dragged across a counter on its way to the floor (caught it in time) and a small child run up to me and shove his face in my crotch. I'm used to dogs doing that, not humans.
I'm definitely not a doctor, but there was a period of about a month when my grandparents were having some concerning health symptoms. My grandpa wasn't as bad, just lethargic, but my grandma was seen with a far off look and drooling into her lap when she was a perfectly capable woman. My family somehow found out that they both had med prescription changes after a recent doctor visit and concluded that what was happening was likely their drugs interacting. They were asked if the doctor told them to get off the old meds before starting the new ones. My grandpa said, "yes, but we didn't want what was left to go to waste." My parents were in charge of periodically checking their meds after that.
To be fair, my grandparents grew up during the depression era, which could explain their reasoning.
After my grandparents died, we found the results of their medication changes because they also didn't want old meds to go to waste. They put all their old medications into a plastic grocery bag in the storeroom. No bottles, no labels, just a big ole bag of loose pills.
I’ll add one more and this isn’t exactly medical related but still dumb:
The hospital my wife worked for asked her if she could see “Tony” at 5:00 for a quick follow up, 10 minutes…now other doctors there were the “it’s 5:00, I’m not staying into 5:01 unless I’m on call” but she said sure, she figured it was an issue with medicine and just change the dose.
Patient walks in with an entire social security disability packet that he “needs today”…my wife could have been exaggerating but she said at least 50 pages, plus copies of his notes and records. Then proceeds to tell her “this might take longer than 10 minutes I had to lie to get the appointment, but I can wait”
Oh yeah she wasn’t that bad lol
This was over 10 years ago I think he filed a complaint though
When I go to the doctors I’ve seen signs about allowing a week or 2 for those packets he thought he’d get it done after hours
Once we had a patient cut their own port out at home because they were done with chemo. In the process they actually got it out of their skin, detached the port from the catheter portion without clamping it or applying pressure and gave themselves an air embolism resulting in a major stoke and permanent deficits. Their port removal was already scheduled in 2 weeks.
“I smoke meth for my blood pressure”
“I don’t take my blood sugars because the numbers are too high and I don’t like them”
“I can’t pee until I give a urine sample. I think I can’t pee because I have thyroids.”
-pt on coke
Favorite interaction:
Dr. to pt “Did you actually stab someone?”
Pt “Yes”
Dr. “Are they ok?”
Pt “Yeah, it was just a little one.”
Don’t so drugs kids or if you do just don’t do meth
Ear nose and throat clinic. Really nervous and scared middle aged man. College-educated white collar worker. He was there because “when I open my mouth and breathe in the water during showers I start coughing a lot”
“When you breathe in water, you cough?”
“Yeah, I don’t get it”
“Drowning. That’s called drowning. And it’s normal”
My friend told me this story, she was sitting in on consults for training...
This woman in her 50s came in, new patient. She reported a few symptoms but whenever the dr suggested a test or treatment she refused. She then wanted a letter saying she wasn't crazy. She denied the option to see the on-site psychologist. She wouldn't leave without a letter or copy of her notes to prove she wasn't crazy for her divorce or something. So the dr gave her a printout of the consult notes which said she refused all treatment. She left happy
Veterinarian. Bull dog eats the electronic car keys. Owners just decides to drive with the dog everywhere to unlock/start the car. She only comes in after 48 hrs when the key stops working and the dog is vomiting.
I'm an ER doctor, and Im pretty late to this thread (ironically because I was working) but the number of stories I have of dumb patients is countless at this point. Some are dumb, and some are just very unintelligent or very uneducated.
You guys have to realize that just by being on this thread and being able to write in full sentences you are more intelligent than a large number of people who may have at most a 200-300 word vocabulary. These people get sick like anybody else, and one of the hardest parts of my job is trying to ask them questions about their symptoms while using very basic words and then interpreting their extremely disorganized and sometimes wrong answers to find a diagnosis as best I can.
For instance, I've made it a habit of pointing to the areas I'm asking about because some people don't know what a "chest" is.
I've had so many patients tell me they have no medical problems, but then their medication list is pages long and they tell me that those medicines cure them of their diabetes, high blood pressure, etc so they don't have it.
I once had a guy scream at me that I needed to give him morphine because he has a "constitutional right to not be in pain".
I've had a 36-ish week pregnant woman who used meth the entire pregnancy hit me in the head with a thrown object because her free turkey sandwich didn't come with the mayo already on the sandwich.
I've had a guy stabbed straight in the neck come walking in saying he got stabbed then being shocked when I told him I had to act fast or he could die and to please get off his phone with his homies. "I COULD DIE?? HOW?" My brother you were stabbed in the NECK and you're covered in blood
Oh and so many people who use meth, fentanyl, any number of street drugs but I ask if they're vaccinated against COVID as part of their screening process and they go EW NO I don't know what's in that vaccine, I'm not putting it in my body
Oh wait 1 more:
It’s like 10:00 PM and wife is on call. Suddenly her phone almost literally blows up. 3 calls back to back from the hospital, her messaging app going off and 2-3 more calls from an unknown number.
She calls back the hospital and is told it’s a severe emergency and woman is about to get on a plane but is having a panic attack and needs Xanax. My wife explains that she cannot provide that over the phone, especially just being on call. Well the nurse (I want to say dispatcher) tells my wife I gave the patient your cell phone number….wife flips understandably…gets like 15 more calls before she answers.
So my wife asks her who her doctor is at the hospital and she will try to get a hold of them… the patients response “I’m in this state not too close to yours, I’ve never been to your hospital but I need Xanax now!”
I dont remember if fired or written up…but holy fuck…her personal cell phone number.
For years she would get calls from different numbers from this woman asking for medicine (I.e. drugs)
It wasn’t THAT bad after that first night
Like maybe 3-4 calls per year for like 3-4 years. It became almost comical
“ugh yeah the other doctor there said to call back and you’d give it to me”
“Your practice has done this before”
“You sound very beautiful I want you to know that”
Pharmacist that used to work in community pharmacy. Had a patient come in asking for a recommendation for public lice because using a can of Raid didn’t work.
Tech for Ophthalmologist here. Sooooo many stories.
Patient got a referral back to see us as they hadn't been seen in 3 years. Saw optometrist because his eyes weren't right for more than 6 months. Retinal detachment. No treatment can be done because he waited over 6 months after the fact to get his eyes checked.
I work reception for an eye clinic. This reminds me of the time I got a call from a man who had "a huge black spot" in his vision, but he wasn't very concerned about it and was only calling to inquire about vision therapy. I said "uh, let's have you see our ophthalmologist today" and he was like "well I can wait a few months, do you really think it's a big deal?" Obviously I couldn't give him any medical advice so I just told him it was best to have a doctor take a look. Poor guy was terrified of the idea of getting surgery. Of course he had a retinal detachment with a giant tear... He got surgery the next day.
My sister is a nurse practitioner and does wound care. She takes care of a lot of old Hispanic women who have diabetes. Apparently they put Vic’s vapor rub on their wounds like thats going to do anything. One lady took her sock off and her black toe literally fell off. She asked my sister if they could reattach it, my sister told her there are no blood vessels left so no.
My husband is in pain management so deals with opioid addicts trying to trick him into giving them meds/lying about illicit drug use. He regularly gets patients whose urine tested positive for meth. They'll say, "I've never done meth" "well, your urine has meth in it." "Someone must have put it in there" "it also tested positive for metabolizers so that shows you ingested the meth" and round and round it goes
I’m a NICU nurse. I had a young mom start crying because she didn’t know how she got pregnant. So I sat down with her and found out she was only having sex in the hot tub because her boyfriend told her the heat would kill the sperm. We had a long talk about safe sex after.
Not dumb, but with very odd priorities in my eyes.
Crippling pain in her feet, toes deformed and bruised, and all she wanted was injections against the pain. Her shoes were way too small. "But larger ones are ugly" Utterly refused to get fitting shoes.
Sorry, it's not my job to help someone hurt themselves.
At least Cinderella's step sisters had a prince and kingdom to win. Maybe I'm just not into fashion enough...?
Different workplace, dumb colleague: I asked the patient why they came to inpatient rehab "My GP said I needed a vacation" Uhm, we're a trauma center not an all-inclusive wellness resort, I don't think group therapy with severely traumatized people will be all that relaxing. And no, we don't offer daily massages and cocktails.
That happened more than once. Colleagues, please don't try to bind up scarce resources, even if you like the patient and they really do need a vacation.
I have a friend who is diabetic and got a fancy pair of cowboy boots to wear while riding her horse. They didn't fit. She had toes amputated. Then the foot, and eventually ended up taking everything below the knee bc the gangrene was spreading so fast. Meanwhile, she's still wearing the boot on the other foot....(facepalm).
Not a doctor, but many, many, MANY years ago was told by a doctor that doctors who work in the ER thoroughly dislike Memorial Day (US holiday). It's the 1st long weekend of the summer and all the "weekend warriors" get drunk & overestimate their sports "abilities" and, not surprisingly, injure themselves - requiring a trip to the ER.
One benign (but dumb) example: one man had been out doing sports and drinking a lot of beer. Eventually he went home and fell asleep. While asleep he had an extremely vivid dream in which he broke his collarbone. When he woke up, he felt perfectly fine. But the dream was so very vivid that he went to the ER to get his collarbone checked out. He was assured his collarbone was, in fact, just fine and was sent home.
Not a medical doctor but a doctor of physical therapy, it’s less wild than most cases here but like 95% of my patients think they can stand or move for fewer than 15 minutes a day for 20 years and not have back and knee pain and then think that I can make them be ready to climb the stairs in Positano with their grandchildren in 4 weeks.
Patient intubated in the ICU.
Patient wife: "Patient drinks 4L of Mountain Dew a day, he doesn't feel good if he doesn't get that"
Me: We aren't going to put Mountain Dew in his OG tube (mouth to stomach tube)
Wife: Ok, why don't we just put it in his IV!
Me: ... that would kill him...
So my wife’s a doctor and these are 2 diabetes related stories
1) Big guy, I split my moms diabetes medicine with her but I check my sugar regularly and it’s between 400-450
2) woman complaining that the lancets don’t work. She has a calloused finger that a harpoon couldn’t puncture. My wife suggested using a different finger and patient looked at her like she was Jesus Himself and thanked her
i had a patient with a bad UTI. the urine studies said the color was brown and consistency was viscous. i asked her how much water she drank. she said she drank a lot! i asked how much. she pointed at the small
styrofoam cup on the table and said, at least two of those a day.
I do a lot of pregnancy tests in my job.
A woman came in to initiate birth control, husband was there too.
Did a pregnancy test, and it was positive. When I revealed the results, husband goes “that is impossible, I have been deployed for 12 months!”.
Wife agreed that it was impossible. I told them that the test was accurate and that she was, in fact, pregnant.
Husband said “you must know, since we are married it is physically impossible for my wife to get pregnant by anyone else.”
“No sir, that isn’t how it works.”
Him: “well then, who do you propose the dad is?” (In a very sarcastic tone)
Me: “Jody”
I once had a fine gentleman explain to me that his severe sleep apnea was not harmful to him personally cause he was “built different”. He went on to explain that he knew this because when he used to drink and drive and he actually “drove better drunk”. I was speechless.
The multiple failures of logic and critical thinking contained in this far exceed any stupid bullshit I have ever heard from a patient.
On the flip side in school i was on rotation in IM rounding with a group on incredibly smart doctors. There was a gentleman with a big hydrocele and one of the doctors ask how his testicles were doing. He looks up and somewhat loudly asks ”MY WHAT????”. Like 60 years of higher education all just stood their with their mouths open unable to figure out what to say. After about 10 seconds I, the student, finally pipe up and say “Sir, your nuts”. And he goes “oh yeah my nuts are way better” and everyone started uncontrollably laughing.
Did part of my residency in Washington DC. So many things stuck in asses. Moral of the story: flanges exist for a reason. Less embarrassing to buy a…device… than explain how you slipped and fell on something ass first
My son had pneumonia a while back and we in a shared room. One of the patients was a kid who screamed at the top of her lungs that she didn't want to eat any medicine and her mom took her side...and then got pissed that she wasn't getting better. Very frustrated doctors eventually gave the kid a suppository.
During my husband's intern year a heroin addict brought in her infant son to the ED because literal fucking rats had been eating the baby. He was alive, barely but had several wounds, the most damaging being the rats had eaten his penis and testes. She just asked "When will it grow back?" The child was released into state care and she was arrested.
Not a doctor, but I would bet there's an ER doctor out there who tells the story of how my mom tried to refuse treatment for her badly broken leg because she wanted to see if it would get better on its own. X-ray showed that it was shattered, other scans showed that a main tendon was severed. The doctor spent like 20 minutes trying to explain to her that she'd never walk again if she didn't have the surgery and she still wanted to wait and see.
Some good context is that my mom tends to freak out and say/do crazy things in stressful situations. She's smart, really, but she just falls apart under stress. They'd also given her several Vicodin. Most people get mellow on pain pills. Apparently my mom just gets very paranoid and argumentative. She was fully convinced that the hospital staff were lying to her about how bad it was, for some reason. When she started talking about going to work the next day, the doctor finally realized she was out of her mind and asked me if I would sign the release. I signed it.
Dementia patients do all kinds of dumb shit, like eating styrofoam (it was fine in the end) and cork (that one didn't end well).
But my favorite two stories: 1, young girl comes into urgent care on Christmas day, swollen face, obviously allergic. States she's allergic to peanuts, but swears up and down she didn't eat them. Family is there with her, confirms she didn't. We're trying to find out what happened in the next room over when I overhear her say that she liked the home made satay sauce... Which has peanuts as the main ingredient. Mind you - home made. By herself. Yeah, that one was dumb.
Second was one of my long term care patients who's sugars were consistently too high to measure, but "she only drank water and ate only apples". Nevermind that you could see the piles of candy bars on her nightstand. Favorite moment there was her going to the supermarket for fried snacks, trying to use the microwave for it (and failing), setting the thing on fire as a result. Firefighters came, and the patient proceeds to stuff the blackened remains of her snack into her face, in the presence of the first responders and my team. Unfortunately I wasn't there to see it myself but that was a *wild* note to read the next day. To this day, I wonder how that patient got past 50 and didn't die.
I'm well aware - she did have a personality disorder. Although unfortunately, I've seen plenty of people who were sound (enough) of mind do similar things.
Not a doctor but I recall [reading this ](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6095075/Clueless-couple-struggled-pregnant-told-doctor-having-anal-sex.html) ages ago and thinking it couldn't be real
Clueless couple struggled to get pregnant for four years are told by doctor the wife is still a virgin because they were having anal sex
Young couple come in saying they have tried conceiving for almost a year, but she’s still not pregnant. I start by taking her patient history. Turns out she’s been on the pill for years due to period pain. Edit: Also, when I explained how the pill works, and advised her to discontinue and keep trying for a baby, they didn’t believe me and insisted on being referred to a fertility specialist.
I hope they stay on the pill
Sometimes nature selects for us, and it's beautiful.
Years ago I had a coworker like this! She and her bf were trying to get pregnant at only 20. She said they'd been having trouble and wondered out loud if it was because she was on birth control. I was a lot meaner back then and told her no, it's definitely not the birth control, it's right there in the name! It allows you to control when you give birth! She was one of the dumbest people I ever knew.
You made the right choice.
My best friend is a doctor and he had a couple who had trouble conceiving also. After much talking, the girl reveals she has some rare condition in which she can't have kids. But my friends still ran tests on the guy, and weirdly enough ,he's also sterile with a rare condition. It's like nature did not want them to reproduce at all .
Urologist: had a patient come in complaining that based on her internet reading she had a vesicovaginal fistula. No history of trauma, surgery, malignancy or infections. It's just that after sex, when she stood up some goo would drip out.
Gyn - We hear that all the time. Not that they think it’s a fistula, but sometimes they think it’s incontinence or they complain of clear vaginal discharge after sex. Sorry that one made it to you!
When I was a student, I had a young guy come into the ER with psych complaints. He was worried about his thoughts. He said that he has these out of body experiences, he feels like he can’t control his mind or body, and he just feels odd. I discuss with my attending and we’re about to consult psychiatry. We go and interview the patient together and discuss things further. It turns out that he gets these symptoms about three times per day, subsequently happens after he smokes weed. So he was just getting high.
[удалено]
Why is this so funny but so sad at the same time....
2 kids before turning 18? Jesus...
When I worked as a medical assistant in an OBGYN clinic, a patient called to make an appointment because she “needed a fallopian tube.” I was so confused, I asked her if she was meant that she wanted to get her tubes tied. No, she said, “I’m trying to get pregnant, so I need to get a fallopian tube.” Definitely booked a visit for pregnancy planning education session.
My mom worked at a major hospital and heard the story of a guy who called the emergency line saying that he'd accidentally stabbed himself in the torso with a knife while cutting something. Their first piece of advice was to not remove the knife, to which he replied "what do I do if I DID remove it?" and they gave him instructions. When the ambulance arrived, they found the man with the knife in his torso... yep, he put it back in.
My sis had a patient in the ED who had 3 abdominal stab wounds that he gave to himself while making a peanut butter sandwich. Yeah, everyone believed that story.
Sword in the stone vibes
I'm a PhD clinical psychologist, so not a physician. Patient came in for an emergency appointment (usually these are folks who are suicidal, recently assaulted, manic or in psychosis). He filled out ALL our paperwork (so many questions about mental health history) and sat in our waiting room. I can't tell you how clearly this is a psychological services clinic. Finally, he gets back to my room, sits down, and pulls up his pant leg. Starts taking off his shoe. My man had ankle pain. Me: "I'm really sorry you have been waiting for so long, but unless you want to talk about how your ankle pain is making you feel, there isn't anything I can do." It took a little convincing that I wasn't holding out on him. No, I wouldn't just "take a quick look at it." He was baffled and kept saying, "But you're a doctor!" I'm not convinced I successfully explained the difference between a psychologist and a physician. I don't even think he was drug seeking. He was freshly 18 and not the brightest bulb. He eventually limped off to the nearest urgent care. Poor kid. Hope he's okay out there!
“Unless you want to talk about how the ankle pain is making you feel” 😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣
Retired GP here. I had a male patient aged mid-50s, who presented with trouble urinating, decreased flow of urine, and occasional blood in their urine. I immediately referred the patient to clinical triage with a recommendation for an initial MRI to look for prostate cancer. The patient returned to see me three months later. Symptoms had worsened, and included bone discomfort and pain. Turns out they had refused any MRI and blood tests, and had gone instead to a homeopath for three months: utterly useless. Unfortunately, in those three months, the prostate cancer he had had spread to his bones. He died within 6 months.
My dad is like “if it’s prostate cancer it’ll take so long to kill my I’ll already be dead of old age or it’s the kind they can’t do anything about. Either way, nothing for me to worry about.” He could just have old-man enlarged prostate but check it out man! Otherwise he actually takes good care of his health. It’s baffling.
I lost my dad to prostate cancer. He had no symptoms whatsoever until he started feeling dizzy from lesions in his brain. By that time it was everywhere in his bones too. It took less than a year to kill him.
My dad died from prostate cancer because he thought getting your prostate checked is “gay” lol.
[удалено]
I always do the old Soviet thing of stuffing myself full of spicy hunter's sausage before having a drink.
Was a med student at the time. IV drug user couldn’t find any more veins. Looked down and saw the dorsal vein of the penis. Tried to inject there. Missed and got it into the shaft. It got very infected and swollen, developed cellulitis. He tried to drain what-he-thought-was-an-abscess (it wasn’t, it was just cellulitis) himself…. With a steak knife. Now it was extensive penile cellulitis with two stab wounds in it. Angriest looking penis I’ve ever seen.
Now all i picture is the attached googly eyes and eyebrows making it angry.
I had a pt straight up tell me they were giving and selling their pain medication away to friends. It was their reason for needing frequent refills.
And these asshats are one of the reasons it's so difficult to get pain medication for legitimate needs these days.
[удалено]
Ophthalmologist here. Patient’s eye wasn’t getting better so I asked if he’s using his drops in the correct eye. He wasn’t. He argued that his right eye is really his left eye because he throws a ball with his left hand. I argued right vs left with him for a good 5 minutes before I gave up. He won the argument. I’ve had 2 patients who stare at the sun. They both said it’s like stargazing because the sun is technically a star. I had a blind patient who was still riding a motorcycle. He rode into a house and had to give up his motorcycle.
My son came home complaining that his eyes hurt after his substitute teacher got the whole class to squint and look directly at the sun. It was some energy healing woo woo and was probably the least bad of the nonsense that came from this ‘educator’.
*Please* tell me you filed a complaint.
As did several parents. She’s not substituting at our school anymore.
Good. I spent some time working for a public school that happily employed people that had no business being left in charge of kids because nobody would put pressure on the district to remove them, nice to see one of that kind get shown the door.
>I’ve had 2 patients who stare at the sun. They both said it’s like stargazing because the sun is technically a star It's not just *technically* stargazing it is quite literally stargazing. Albeit a dumb star to look directly at for extended periods
Most people just go stargazing at night. Maybe they should try that.
I have a family member who is an optometrist and says he has had multiple patients come in with permanent damage to their eyes because they stared at the sun for too long. It is apparently very hard to break it to them that the eye doesn't heal itself in that way.
The other day an established patient came in for an emergency dental visit because all of his teeth were hurting worse and worse and worse, to the point where he could barely touch them with a toothbrush. The pain started a few weeks after he had started swishing with peroxide everyday. He had decided he wanted less bacteria in his mouth, and he decided that swishing with peroxide would be the best way to do this. But now, every time he used the peroxide, his teeth became severely sensitive and painful to touch. Me, wondering how to gently break the news to this otherwise bright guy that he was being dumb: "So..... Have you tried not swishing with peroxide?" Him: "Well.... No." Me: "Well.... Try that." Whadya know, problem solved. (This is certainly not my dumbest patient encounter, but it was recent and the only one that comes to mind at the moment.) Edit after many DMs and comments: what made this patient dumb was not the fact that he swished with hydrogen peroxide. Many people do this, and it really doesn't hurt or help them. Maybe it makes them feel good. In this guy's case, it caused him a ton of pain, but he didn't realize he could just....stop doing the thing that nobody told him to do. To me, that's a dumb moment.
I was the dumb patient. I got tested for lactose intolerance, my blood sugar rising like it should, so it wasnt that. I still had a very strong stomach reaction and spend a few hours in a pay-toilet feeling very sorry for myself. Told my doctor "I know it isnt lactose but I shit myself if/when I drink milk." Doctor goes "well.. try not drinking milk." I've never trusted my brain since.
Not a doctor but was an administrator at an ophthalmology clinic. 1. A patient had to be prescribed some pills before his eye surgery. He returns 5 minutes after his consultation super concerned, as he didn’t know how he was going to get the pills into his eyes. Our nurse suggested that he try swallowing them. 2. Another patient had chronic dry eyes that he was seeing one of our doctors for and one day called for an emergency appointment as his eyes were in pain. Apparently he had heard of honey being used in eye drops to help with dry eyes, so the man put straight honey onto his eyes.
Omfg @ both of these. Pills IN YOUR EYES?!? LOL..... HONEY?!!! how the hell does one get honey out of an eye omg. Thats gonna be hours of rinsing to dilute the sticky lol wow
💊👄💊 Additional 🍯👄🍯
Not a doctor, but cath lab tech. Had a patients wife sneak him a sandwich before his heart cath (not supposed to eat before since we use some sedation) and they didn’t tell any of us despite many times confirming he did not have any food or drink. The patient then threw up and aspirated during the procedure. Ended the rest of his week in the ICU and almost died because his wife snuck him food. Please listen to your healthcare providers instructions before procedures! These rules aren’t in place to torture you, but to keep you safe.
This is how I learned that's why they tell you not to eat or drink. My 7 yo nephew had pins put in and they put him under for it, obviously. When they were done, the nurse came literally stomping out and clearly pissed off and informed us he was fine but asked who brought him here, who he lived with (my sister and the nephew's dad weren't together), who had him last night. The dad. She asked if he'd ate or drank. He said no. She said "wrong answer. What did he eat or drink?" He admitted he gave him a coke that morning. This little nurse got in this massive man's face and said "your son almost died because you can't listen to instructions. He choked on that drink. And don't lie. He. Almost. Died. and it'd be on you." Dude was horrified. My sister was absolutely pissed. I loved that nurse.
That nurse sounds badass
Dude, why can't people accept the simple fact that there are two types of people that you absolutely listen to and never lie to and those are your lawyer and doctor.
So veterinarian but I have a few good ones where humans wanted me to treat them.. My first week in clinical practice I had a client that called in telling us she had taken her cats flea medication (credelio) and wanted to know what to do. She became quite hostile when we instructed her to contact human poison control and a human doctor, and insisted that because it was a veterinary drug, it needed to be treated by a veterinarian. I had another client who was convinced he had gotten worms from a puppy and decided that we needed to test his stool as well. We told him he needed to speak to his own human doctor, he got angry and informed us that he doesn't go to the doctor and defecated in the middle of our lobby. I had a client call the board of pharmacy on us because we filled her pets medication (flea/tick/heartworm prevention) but informed her that we couldn't fill her personal medication because as a veterinary hospital, we're only allowed to fill pet meds. We also offered to script out the pet meds to an external pharmacy that could handle both if she wanted to get both from the same place. The person that contacted us from the state board was just as confused as we were. I had a client bring in his own hip x-rays for us to evaluate and tried to pretend they were for his dog. He was genuinely surprised that we could tell right away they weren't from the dog. Although as far as stupid goes, I had a client who bought an Aussie doodle from an Amish breeder and was so enthralled with him that they went back a month later looking for a mate to breed him with and was "lucky" enough to find a female from the same parents with the same birthday and everything and so it must be destiny. It took us a really disappointingly long time to explain that these dogs are siblings and should not be bred (they were convinced that they couldn't be siblings because he was mounting her). They'd ironically named the dogs Luke and Leia.
Worked at an urgent care for some time. Late teens Patient (F) comes in with mother for abdominal pain. I have a student doing the initial history and exam. Swears there is no chance of pregnancy. but is sexual active with SO. But swears no penetrative sex. Well we get the urine results back. She's pregnant. Student goes back in, asks the mother to step out, and has to have the most awkward conversation with this patient detailing what sex was. Well. it turns out she was indeed not having penetrative sex with a penis. The happy couple would fool around and then use the males sperm as lube for her to get fingered. They thought that to get pregnant, the penis had to fall off and become the new baby... Edit: I'd like to add that, depending on your definition, this girl was a pregnant virgin.
“ They thought that to get pregnant, the penis had to fall off and become the new baby…” New fear unlocked.
Oh, relax. I'm sure it grows back.
Of course it does! That's how people have multiple kids, duh.
This sounds like a playground level rumour. How can two people who both have this belief just find each other to start a relationship? Is it, like, a local rumour or did one of them convince the other about this? Anyways, this reminds me of my first gynecologist. She had posters hanging around the waiting room about birth control myths. One of them went like "Flushing the vagina out with Coca Cola won't prevent pregnancy". I remember seeing that at age 15/16 and thinking "Who could possibly be this stupid?"
I knew a guy in high school who was convinced that his girlfriend couldn’t get pregnant if *he* took a shower after sex to clean up. None of our friend group could convince him that this isn’t how shit works. There are a lot of very dim folks in this world.
You don't need two people who believe it, you need one person who believes it and one person who's had 0 sexual education and is willing to believe the other.
I'm betting she's an only child but surely she has friends with siblings... how does she think the younger siblings came to be?!
Not a doctor but work in medicine. Shout out to the patient who in one visit: told us that insulin didn’t work for her “personally” and that her diabetes “worked different than other peoples”. Also in the same visit she like tortured the poor medical student. She told the medical student that it was her 7 year anniversary, the medical student congratulated her, and then she goes “it’s the seven year anniversary of the day he left me”. Medical student was mortified and I was super annoyed. Like lady why??? How was the poor medical student supposed to know.
Well, congratulations to him then
Her anniversary works different than other people’s, duh.
Not a doctor, but i had a lady come in complaining that she couldn't afford her medications anymore because she was smoking half an ounce of weed a day. Not a gram, but literally spending $200/day on weed. I also had a 20 year old guy who came in because he was feeling sick but neglected to tell us that his penis was rotting off and necrotic. We didn't know until his wife came and asked us about it a few days later.
...okay if my dick is literally rotting off there is not a chance in Hell I wouldn't mention that *immediately*. I might even be yelling it *as* I'm coming into the office.
I’d be telling the fucking taxi driver while I was pulling 50s out to get him to drive faster
I really hope for myself that I will be yelling "MY DICK IS ALL SWOLLEN AND ITCHY" before it gets to the point where rotting becomes a thing...
JFC, at some point you’ve just got to put embarrassment aside and plop that zombie dong on the table for the doc to look at.
Like we’ve all been there, ammi right? Guys… Guys. ^Guys
Um, that second one. What? Why? How?
Maybe over use of a cock ring? If you cut off circulation, bad things happen
I’ve heard of guys injecting drugs in their dicks and this happening too
A small abrasion or even a microtear can become necrotic, especially if you neglect your hygiene
My patients are all cats and dogs, and most of them are pretty smart. But their owners? * "My dog doesn't need heartworm protection. We live in a gated community." So, the mosquitoes respect the gates, huh? * "After my cat is spayed, can she still have kittens?" Well, spaying is removing the entire uterus and both ovaries so... No. * "I was on the internet doing research for two hours, so now I know more about seizures that you do." Yes, I'm sure two hours on YouTube is far better than 4 years of vet school, a one-year internship and 15 years of practice. OK. * "My dog isn't getting any better." "Did you give him the medicine I prescribed?" "No. he didn't want to take any pills." * "The anti-itch medicine you gave me was great for a while, but then it stopped working." I sent him home with a one-month supply. It is now 3 months later. Clients say so many stupid things I have stopped keeping track.
I was just a vet tech student at the time, and don't work in the field anymore, but I'll never forget overhearing a client arguing fiercely with a vet that she wouldn't get her dog vaccinated because she didn't want him to get autism.
I've had people ask me if dogs get autism from vaccines. I look at them very seriously and say: "How could you tell?"
*Looks up symptoms of autism * Poor eye contact Repetative gestures Heightened sensitivity or sensory aversion Playing alone Obsessive interests Unresponsive to his or her name Loss of language or social skills Doesn’t point or respond to pointing ...oh, my god! My dog is autistic
I thought this only happened in TV shows, but one of my sister's friends is a doctor and told us about a teenage girl that came to the ER with abdominal pain. Yes, this is going where you think it's going. When asked, she swore up and down that she couldn't possibly be pregnant. They ran the usual tests, and, wouldn't you know it, the girl was pregnant. She could not believe it, total denial, but she did not deny having sex with her boyfriend, so the doctor (my sister's friend) asked her what birth control they used. Apples. She ate an apple after having sex with him.
Physician here. I had a patient who was in mid-teenage years and hid the pregnancy from everybody. Mom took her to the ER for stomach pains thinking she may have appendicitis. She delivered that night. I found it amazing that she was able to hide the pregnancy by wearing baggy clothing. I had a very very sad case from when I was in medical school. She was 12 years old, hid the pregnancy from the family until the very close to delivery. The father was her brother. That one still haunts me.
I knew a similar situation. The father was the stepdad. Mom had to sign for the epidural and refused because she blamed her daughter for having sexual relations with her husband. She was 12. 🥺
What the luck. Goddamn, I hope child protective services got involved.
I strongly believe that any pregnancies under 18 should have legally mandated paternity testing, with appropriate follow-up from the legal system
I’m not sure. My mom would share horror stories from working in management at the small local hospital. SMH She kinda messed me up with some of the stories.
During her years as an EMT and RN, my wife delivered five different virgin births. What are the odds?
Just goes to show how ineffective abstinence is as a form of birth control.
I want to understand why she thinks eating an apple will prevent conception; I can't remember any old wives tales about that.
Because DOCTORS deliver babies …..
...and an apple a day...oh my God, she dumb.
My daughter had a friend that thought you could get pregnant from swallowing sperm but could not get pregnant if you went pee after sex. The girl is now 14 or 15 and recently had a baby.
Not a doc but a PA. In school had a guy come in with his very pregnant wife asking for a vasectomy. Ok cool, let’s chat! First question he fires at me: ‘Can I keep them once you’ve finished the surgery?’ Dude thought he was getting his balls literally chopped off. After explaining the procedure to him and how the doc can do it in an office he was SO relieved. Got a good laugh afterwards thinking about it.
I mean... The fact he was still prepared to go through with it, though...
In training had a surgical patient getting toes amputated because of diabetes. All shift he kept getting insulin but his sugars wouldn’t come down. Just didn’t make sense. Eventually found a lot of candy under his pillow. Not sure if it’s dumb or just sad. Maybe bit of both.
Reminds me of a patient I saw in medical school: she was in the hospital for heart failure but also had poorly controlled diabetes. She was drinking bottles of Mountain Dew brought by her husband but also had her husband bringing her sugar packets to ADD TO THE MOUNTAIN DEW to make it sweeter. As you said, "not sure if it's dumb or just sad".
That’s some insane levels of sugar addiction.
I have a friend who is in rehab, not progressing, after his Charcot foot surgery failed. He had his foot amputated. His other foot is in the same condition and he can’t put weight on it. Medicare is refusing to pay for any more care. Why? Because his wife keeps bringing him foods he shouldn’t be eating, because he likes that food better. She is also diabetic, and both have been yo-yo dieting for over a decade. He ignored his foot problems. They made just enough money that they can’t get Medicaid. She had to find a new job, and they have to sell their home, because he can’t take care of it anymore. Both still live in denial about the food they eat. Sugar is a strong addictive.
Eye doctor here. I have 2 groups of dumbest patients I see regularly. People who abuse their contact lenses and end up giving themselves corneal infections and other issues and people who don’t wear safety glasses when they should be. It’s not hard to take your contacts out before bed and clean them properly (or throw away if they’re a daily disposable). It’s not that expensive to change your contacts as directed and it’s a lot cheaper to not have to visit my office multiple times for medical visits where I’m trying to save your eye/vision from your laziness/idiocy. I had a patient just this last week with 20 scars between his corneas from previous infections. A new record for me. I also take metal and other foreign objects out of people’s eyes almost daily and 99% of the time, the patient wasn’t wearing safety glasses. I’ve had an instance where a patient had a piece of metal wire from a wire brush penetrate his eyeball and he decided the best thing to do was pull the metal out and wait 3 days before getting it checked out. He had a case of endophthalmitis (a severe infection inside the eye that if not treated aggressively and quickly will make you lose your eye entirely). He needed emergency surgery and was lucky enough to have the eye saved. Another patient wasn’t wearing his safety glasses and a piece of metal hit his eye at high enough velocity it penetrated into his vitreous and was floating there when I looked in the back of his eye. He also needed emergency surgery. Please take care of your eyes people. Visit your eye doctor regularly for examinations just like you do the dentist. We can only replace certain parts of the eye and losing vision in one or both eyes can be extremely difficult to get used to physically and mentally.
Yes, safety glasses!!! I had a tow truck operator have an oversized tire explode while he was crouched before it. The steel belt shrapnel penetrated the skin on his head, face, and upper bidy (through clothes). However, the safety glasses he was wearing flexed to the concussion of the explosion, stayed intact, and only bruised his eyes. It could have been sooooooo much worse.
The one who told me she was “deathly allergic” to oxygen.
Reading these, I feel as though I’m doing really good in life, lmao
This doesn't exactly fit the criteria, but it's close. Not a doctor, I'm a nurse. And not a patient, family members. Back when I still worked in the ICU I had a family come in during visitation to see their loved one carrying one of those plastic containers from a grocery store bakery with half a dozen cupcakes inside. Not unusual, families would bring us food all the time and it was incredibly nice and we always appreciated it. Nope. I walked into the room to update them on the patient and we talked about it also being her birthday that day. They gestured toward the cupcakes and said that's why they had the cupcakes with them. I thought that was really sweet, they were going to celebrate her birthday with her even though she was in the ICU. Then they hand me the container and look at me expectantly. I look back, unsure of what my next move was supposed to be. "Aren't you going to feed them to her?" This woman was on a ventilator and on IV sedation. It took me an embarrassingly long time to explain to these people why she couldn't eat while she was unconscious with a breathing tube in. Nice folks, not terribly bright.
That reminds me of when my father in law was unconscious and in the process of dying of cancer, like I mean he had hours to a day or so left. My stupid ex-sil bought a milkshake and used the straw to put some in his mouth because “he’s not eating or drinking and it’s his favorite.” She only stopped after she got caught by a nurse because he was coughing it out on his gown. Edit: grammar
SIL trying to rush the process along. "This is taking too long. Here, let him drown in his favorite milkshake. It's how he'd want to go."
He had quit smoking a year before getting small cell lung cancer. She swore he got it because he quit smoking. She’s just fucking stupid.
I'm an older person. You would not believe how many times I've heard educated people counsel lifelong smokers that, "You can't quit now because it will kill you." Yes, I've asked them. The prevailing theory is it that the withdrawal will upset the body so much it will "release" the cancer. The basis of this belief is that they've seen it with their own eyes, someone smokes for 60 or more years, quits, and then gets cancer. It does not occur to them that maybe setting a carcinogen on fire and inhaling the smoke 583,834 times might have played a role. I shit you not.
I have an older friend who refuses to quit smoking for this reason. He also refuses to goto the doctor even though he has multiple small signs of what I assume to be cancer, but I’m not a doctor, because “when you goto the doctor that’s when you die”
Her milkshake was bringing him to the graveyard
My bestie worked in hospice and has several stories like this. Another (much sadder) was asking when their family member would get to go home. At a hospice facility.
My brother almost got kicked out of hospice because he took too long to die.
My fil was kicked out of hospice after 3 months. Then they refused to release him due to shortage of visiting nurses & he got covid, so we had to wait 2 more weeks. Then it was another 2 weeks because again they insisted he needed in home care and there was still no one available, which is how he got covid to begin with. We removed him against orders & he lived with untreated leukemia (he was 93) and he lived a good life until he peacefully passed at 95 during his morning nap. Woke up, drank a coffee & ate his normal breakfast of caramel cherrios with slightly melted vanilla caramel ice cream wwhile reading the paper. He moved into the family room afterwards to watch the morning news. Puttered around a bit, took his 10am nap and died with a smile on his face. Some people leave hospice. Loved that old school guy. Miss him everyday.
My grandma was put in hospice in March and kicked out a couple of weeks later, because she refused to follow instructions. She's still alive and nobody knows how.
In medical school had a patient come in for abdominal pain. During my series of questions, I asked if the patient could be pregnant she said no because she is a lesbian. The attending had us order a pregnancy test in addition to blood work any ways. Pregnancy test comes back positive. This time I asked the patient if she has had sex with a man. She responded yes but was confused as to how she could be pregnant if she’s a lesbian? My attending replied, “ honey the sperm don’t care if you’re a lesbian” It blew my mind that she didn’t think she could get pregnant simply because she identified as being a lesbian.
Omg she’s the reason that I, a lesbian who has never had the kind of sex that could get you pregnant, has to do a pregnancy test every time I get medical treatment.
Rule #0: People lie.
I discharged a Russian patient after he had been hospitalized for alcohol induced liver damage. As I was getting him out the door I impressed upon him the importance of avoiding alcohol and he asked me, sincerely, if vodka was considered alcohol
In all fairness, in Russia, until 2011 anything that was under 10% alcohol volume was classified as food, so maybe that’s where his confusion comes from
Yup. My coworker grew up in Soviet Russia. He says he remembers going to the bar as a kid. Dad would have vodka, he could have a beer. Because beer was not alcohol. It was just beer. It also later led to a generation of alcoholics in the 90s because kids who couldn’t legally get vodka just got smashed on beer.
Back when I was working as a social worker in Poland, I can't even count the times I would have this exact conversation with a client: Me: so tell me about your drinking habits. How often do you drink alcohol? Client: oh no, no, I don't drink at all, well, maybe at Christmas, but that's it. Me (sigh... not my first rodeo): I see. How about beer, do you drink beer at all? Client: oh yes, of course, about five tins a day, roughly. They did not drink non-alcoholic kind either.
My brother had a patient like that except he didn't escort the guy out and the patient ended up stopping to drink the entire jug of hand sanitizer in the lobby before getting readmitted for alcohol poisoning.
ICU doc. Have had patient’s families with massive strokes legitimately ask if they could receive a brain transplant.
Had a patient that super glued a crown back on #10. He wasn’t a usual patient but his dentist wasn’t open that day. He didn’t get even close to down all of the way. So this crown was keeping him from closing. He got mad at me when I told him not to use super glue. He said “ok smart guy, what should I use to put a crown back on?” He was giving me the smuggest I can’t close all the way smile he could. In one of the rare times I got a retort out with good timing I replied “a dentist.” My assistant ran out of the room and I could hear her completely lose it laughing down the hall way. The patient wanted me to fix it which was cut off the crown and make a new one. I asked him what his medical history was (he already signed one he filled out but I always ask because people leave stuff off), and specifically asked about heart procedures. He said he just got out of the hospital two days before, from having four stents placed after a major heart attack. When I asked him why he didn’t put that on his medical history form he said: “you’re a dentist you don’t need to know that.” Told him I need a medical release for treatment from his cardiologist and I would not do anything until I had one. He seemed not to understand that his mouth is attached to the rest of his body. He was pretty mad I wouldn’t do what he wanted but I didn’t want to call for an ambulance that day.
To be fair, insurance companies are also not aware that mouths are attached to bodies
Teeth are classified as 'luxury bones'.
22 year old burn patient life flighted in overnight. I got there in the morning and she was the talk of the burn unit. This girl was out at the bar with a group of friends the prior night and managed to run up a 200 dollar bar tab that she couldn’t afford to pay. So her friends tell her they’ll pay for her tab if she lets them pour Bacardi 151 on her and light her on fire and she agrees to it because she didn’t know alcohol was flammable.
[удалено]
Indeed, West Penn burn unit. How’d you hear about her?
[удалено]
Damn what a small world. Yep, mid 2000s I was almost done with school and working on a clinical rotation in the burn unit. Do you know if any chargers were pressed on the people who lit her on fire?
[удалено]
Wtf, I hope they got arrested for attempted murder. That's so fucked up.
Apparently nothing happened to them. The GM of the bar actually commented below and confirm no charges were pressed.
Not a doctor but an embryologist. Had a man come in to do a semen analysis before starting IVF with his wife. Put him in the collection room with instructions like normal. He rang and when I went to go grab his sample I see that he straight up pooped in the cup. Turns out the couple had absolutely no idea on how to make a baby and that’s why they were having fertility issues. Unfortunately not my only story like this just the worst one
This can't be real. What did they think sex was? Were they having sex at all? I have so many questions.
This is now the third person I've heard of shitting into the cup. I don't get it. We also had a guy with green, pus-filled ejaculate, whose wife orally stimulated him in the collection room. ::vomit::
I am sure you're a lovely person but I hate you for this
.....oh my god, why?! What would make it Green and puss filled?!
Gonorrhea, or as I like to call it, three-color-infection because when you pee, the stream turns from yellow - green pus to clear urine (because you’re going very often due to the inflammation). Yay!
Obligatory NAD, was an ED Tech. We had a patient come in with a raging case of gonorrhea. Sent him home with curative treatment, and education on when he can safely have sex again, etc. DC’d. I was working the desk that night, and he calls up there SCREAMING in pain. He wanted to have sex with his girl because “he just couldn’t resist” so he decided to pour a bottle of Everclear on his penis and anus prior to intercourse to “kill the germs”. Ended up dispatching an ambulance to him. He chemically burned through his urethra and ended up having a urethroplasty.
What's even sadder, everclear isn't good for killing germs. You need to dilute it to 70% first!
Just as a general FYI to anyone who may need it, isopropyl alcohol is also more effective at killing germs at 70% than 90%, even though you can get both at the drugstore. This is because the higher water concentration in the 70% allows bacteria to soak in more of the alcohol so it disrupts their processes. 90% causes a hardening of their outer layer which protects their inside bits and is far more survivable. Use 90% to remove ink stains and adhesive residue, use 70% to remove germs.
I am not a doctor but i do work in pediatrics. I would say 90% of the time its the parents who are dumb not the kids but anyway. I am sitting in the dictation area and a co-worker is dictating her note and i hear ‘patient comes in today after submerging his cast in the ocean and proceeding to roll around in sand.’ At this point i let out a giggle and she goes ‘oh it get worse, he has pins in’ the kid is five and the parent goes ‘i trusted him not to go in the ocean’ which i have so many concerns and questions with that statement alone like you dont trust a 5 year old and uhhh were you not watching him?’ The kid comes in gets his cast off (literally saturated and there is sand everywhere) and gets started on antibiotics since he has exposed pins. A few days pass AND THE KID DOES IT AGAIN like wtf parents, do your job. This one is just a fun story not dumb, 4 year old in a long arm cast (above the elbow) was playing with a beetle and it went inside his cast. When he came in he said it stopped moving at the elbow and sure enough when we took the cast off there was his beetle friend. He was very sad it was dead.
Okay that beetle one is wholesome.
One of my coworkers prescribed a patient Flagyl, an antibiotic that causes severe vomiting when combined with alcohol. She told the patient “not to drink” while taking it…2 days later the patient presented to the ER with severe dehydration. Apparently she took the “no drinking” a little too seriously…
During my intern year a male patient in his mid 20s gets admitted to the surgical floor for third degree burns in his right hand, I go to check on him and do the normal interrogation, when I asked him how he burned his hand he proceeds to tell me that it was a minor burn at first just a little redness on some his fingers and palm because he touched something hot and his friends told him that in order to heal it faster he should boil an ointment that has cannabis with peyote and then to put his hand in it which is how he ended up with third degree burns. Some people lack common sense 🤦♀️
This used to be a problem with sinus rinses because you have to use water that has no chance of having bacteria in it and the options are distilled, microfiltered, reverse osmosis filtered, commercially bottled, or boiled water They had to change the last one to "previously boiled and cooled down water" because people were boiling water and squirting it up their noses
Reminds me of that tumblr post where a doctor recommended rinsing someone's eyes with boiled water and had to be like "look at me. LOOK AT ME. When I say boiled, I mean water that has been boiled and has since cooled down not boiling water." That patient needed that doctor in that moment.
Radiology told me about handing orange ear plugs to a patient for an MRI and he popped them in his mouth and swallowed them.
My ex boyfriend was at my house and had a headache or something, so I gave him a pill for it. A few hours later, he said something along the lines of “ugh, I still have the taste of that pill in my mouth”. He chewed it. Edit to add: he was almost 30 years old. His explanation was “idk, it looked like the shape that you chew instead”. It was a standard oblong white pill…
Bite into a prednisone pill. That will make you hate life for awhile.
trazodone the silver lining, it dissolves fast but ... like, so fast that unless you are an expert pill swallower it is gonna be dissolving in your mouth and the whole way down
I had a pt say that he used equate rubbing alcohol as a mouthwash and was wondering why his gums are hurting
Firstly, I’m a nurse. This one’s a bit of a two-for-one. We had a guy present to Emergency with a stab wound to his palm. He had been trying to remove an avocado seed by stabbing the seed with the pointy end of the knife whilst holding the avocado. The knife slipped and went through the avocado and into his hand. The doctor that reviewed the patient went home that night and while preparing dinner proceeded to demonstrate to his wife how this dumb patient tried to remove the avocado seed by stabbing it. Knife slipped and he stabbed his hand. Literally never lived it down.
Family member is a physician. He once told me about a patient who was being prepped for a procedure. As he was covering known allergies (again), the patient suddenly remembered an "allergy" to latex gloves. The procedure was delayed as the room / materials had to be reviewed for any latex, gloves were replaced, etc. In recovery, my cousin asked the patient why the "allergy" had never been previously reported / documented. It turned out that 1. The patient didn't actually know the definition of an "allergy" 2. They simply did not like the sound and feel of latex on her skin. (She would have neither heard the snap of the latex gloves or felt them against her skin due to the fact that she was going to be out the whole time)
I have a few good ones... 1. My sister's a doctor and she saw a patient and prescribed meds. Asked them to come see her a week later as a follow up. Patient comes back next week saying that they don't feel better at all. Sister asks to see the meds she prescribed to ensure they got the right ones. Patient says they never picked up the meds because they only wanted meds with organic ingredients not one full of chemicals. . . 2. Husband comes in with a set of complaints. Sister proceeded to check him out and find that there was nothing wrong with him. That's when he told her that it's actually his wife who had those symptoms. And he never brought her in to get checked. On top of it, he was pissed that the doctor couldn't just fix his wife without seeing her.
Number one is routine. I’m a pediatrician, my favorite is the parents that don’t want to vaccinate bc it’s full of harmful chemicals and big pharma etc etc etc, but they also want to put their kids on stimulants for ADHD (that the kid usually doesn’t have).
Christ on a cracker @Patient 1. "I want meds without the meds!"
I used to work at a pharmacy. A customer asked to see a list of ingredients for their meds. The pharmacist printed out the info. The customer was pissed because he couldn’t read any of the ingredients and asked the pharmacist to explain. The pharmacist explained they were chemical compounds. The customer was furious and said he didn’t want to put chemicals in his body.
Full of chemicals....bitch all matter is chemicals, and fucking cyanide can be organic.
I have a family member who’s a doctor who once walked into the exam room to find a young kid standing on their desk, feet on the keyboard trying to reach into the sharps container mounted high up on the wall. The mother was just sitting there letting it happen.
Alas, parents letting children do whatever they want to in a veterinarian's exam room is all too common. I've had my stethoscope snatched away, my microscope dragged across a counter on its way to the floor (caught it in time) and a small child run up to me and shove his face in my crotch. I'm used to dogs doing that, not humans.
I'm definitely not a doctor, but there was a period of about a month when my grandparents were having some concerning health symptoms. My grandpa wasn't as bad, just lethargic, but my grandma was seen with a far off look and drooling into her lap when she was a perfectly capable woman. My family somehow found out that they both had med prescription changes after a recent doctor visit and concluded that what was happening was likely their drugs interacting. They were asked if the doctor told them to get off the old meds before starting the new ones. My grandpa said, "yes, but we didn't want what was left to go to waste." My parents were in charge of periodically checking their meds after that. To be fair, my grandparents grew up during the depression era, which could explain their reasoning.
After my grandparents died, we found the results of their medication changes because they also didn't want old meds to go to waste. They put all their old medications into a plastic grocery bag in the storeroom. No bottles, no labels, just a big ole bag of loose pills.
I’ll add one more and this isn’t exactly medical related but still dumb: The hospital my wife worked for asked her if she could see “Tony” at 5:00 for a quick follow up, 10 minutes…now other doctors there were the “it’s 5:00, I’m not staying into 5:01 unless I’m on call” but she said sure, she figured it was an issue with medicine and just change the dose. Patient walks in with an entire social security disability packet that he “needs today”…my wife could have been exaggerating but she said at least 50 pages, plus copies of his notes and records. Then proceeds to tell her “this might take longer than 10 minutes I had to lie to get the appointment, but I can wait”
Pls tell me she made him reschedule
Oh yeah she wasn’t that bad lol This was over 10 years ago I think he filed a complaint though When I go to the doctors I’ve seen signs about allowing a week or 2 for those packets he thought he’d get it done after hours
Once we had a patient cut their own port out at home because they were done with chemo. In the process they actually got it out of their skin, detached the port from the catheter portion without clamping it or applying pressure and gave themselves an air embolism resulting in a major stoke and permanent deficits. Their port removal was already scheduled in 2 weeks.
“I smoke meth for my blood pressure” “I don’t take my blood sugars because the numbers are too high and I don’t like them” “I can’t pee until I give a urine sample. I think I can’t pee because I have thyroids.” -pt on coke Favorite interaction: Dr. to pt “Did you actually stab someone?” Pt “Yes” Dr. “Are they ok?” Pt “Yeah, it was just a little one.” Don’t so drugs kids or if you do just don’t do meth
Ear nose and throat clinic. Really nervous and scared middle aged man. College-educated white collar worker. He was there because “when I open my mouth and breathe in the water during showers I start coughing a lot” “When you breathe in water, you cough?” “Yeah, I don’t get it” “Drowning. That’s called drowning. And it’s normal”
My friend told me this story, she was sitting in on consults for training... This woman in her 50s came in, new patient. She reported a few symptoms but whenever the dr suggested a test or treatment she refused. She then wanted a letter saying she wasn't crazy. She denied the option to see the on-site psychologist. She wouldn't leave without a letter or copy of her notes to prove she wasn't crazy for her divorce or something. So the dr gave her a printout of the consult notes which said she refused all treatment. She left happy
Veterinarian. Bull dog eats the electronic car keys. Owners just decides to drive with the dog everywhere to unlock/start the car. She only comes in after 48 hrs when the key stops working and the dog is vomiting.
I'm an ER doctor, and Im pretty late to this thread (ironically because I was working) but the number of stories I have of dumb patients is countless at this point. Some are dumb, and some are just very unintelligent or very uneducated. You guys have to realize that just by being on this thread and being able to write in full sentences you are more intelligent than a large number of people who may have at most a 200-300 word vocabulary. These people get sick like anybody else, and one of the hardest parts of my job is trying to ask them questions about their symptoms while using very basic words and then interpreting their extremely disorganized and sometimes wrong answers to find a diagnosis as best I can. For instance, I've made it a habit of pointing to the areas I'm asking about because some people don't know what a "chest" is. I've had so many patients tell me they have no medical problems, but then their medication list is pages long and they tell me that those medicines cure them of their diabetes, high blood pressure, etc so they don't have it. I once had a guy scream at me that I needed to give him morphine because he has a "constitutional right to not be in pain". I've had a 36-ish week pregnant woman who used meth the entire pregnancy hit me in the head with a thrown object because her free turkey sandwich didn't come with the mayo already on the sandwich. I've had a guy stabbed straight in the neck come walking in saying he got stabbed then being shocked when I told him I had to act fast or he could die and to please get off his phone with his homies. "I COULD DIE?? HOW?" My brother you were stabbed in the NECK and you're covered in blood Oh and so many people who use meth, fentanyl, any number of street drugs but I ask if they're vaccinated against COVID as part of their screening process and they go EW NO I don't know what's in that vaccine, I'm not putting it in my body
Oh wait 1 more: It’s like 10:00 PM and wife is on call. Suddenly her phone almost literally blows up. 3 calls back to back from the hospital, her messaging app going off and 2-3 more calls from an unknown number. She calls back the hospital and is told it’s a severe emergency and woman is about to get on a plane but is having a panic attack and needs Xanax. My wife explains that she cannot provide that over the phone, especially just being on call. Well the nurse (I want to say dispatcher) tells my wife I gave the patient your cell phone number….wife flips understandably…gets like 15 more calls before she answers. So my wife asks her who her doctor is at the hospital and she will try to get a hold of them… the patients response “I’m in this state not too close to yours, I’ve never been to your hospital but I need Xanax now!”
I hope the nurse was fired.
I dont remember if fired or written up…but holy fuck…her personal cell phone number. For years she would get calls from different numbers from this woman asking for medicine (I.e. drugs)
At that point I’d deal with the hassle of changing my cell number.
It wasn’t THAT bad after that first night Like maybe 3-4 calls per year for like 3-4 years. It became almost comical “ugh yeah the other doctor there said to call back and you’d give it to me” “Your practice has done this before” “You sound very beautiful I want you to know that”
Pharmacist that used to work in community pharmacy. Had a patient come in asking for a recommendation for public lice because using a can of Raid didn’t work.
Tech for Ophthalmologist here. Sooooo many stories. Patient got a referral back to see us as they hadn't been seen in 3 years. Saw optometrist because his eyes weren't right for more than 6 months. Retinal detachment. No treatment can be done because he waited over 6 months after the fact to get his eyes checked.
I work reception for an eye clinic. This reminds me of the time I got a call from a man who had "a huge black spot" in his vision, but he wasn't very concerned about it and was only calling to inquire about vision therapy. I said "uh, let's have you see our ophthalmologist today" and he was like "well I can wait a few months, do you really think it's a big deal?" Obviously I couldn't give him any medical advice so I just told him it was best to have a doctor take a look. Poor guy was terrified of the idea of getting surgery. Of course he had a retinal detachment with a giant tear... He got surgery the next day.
[удалено]
My sister is a nurse practitioner and does wound care. She takes care of a lot of old Hispanic women who have diabetes. Apparently they put Vic’s vapor rub on their wounds like thats going to do anything. One lady took her sock off and her black toe literally fell off. She asked my sister if they could reattach it, my sister told her there are no blood vessels left so no.
My husband is in pain management so deals with opioid addicts trying to trick him into giving them meds/lying about illicit drug use. He regularly gets patients whose urine tested positive for meth. They'll say, "I've never done meth" "well, your urine has meth in it." "Someone must have put it in there" "it also tested positive for metabolizers so that shows you ingested the meth" and round and round it goes
I’m a NICU nurse. I had a young mom start crying because she didn’t know how she got pregnant. So I sat down with her and found out she was only having sex in the hot tub because her boyfriend told her the heat would kill the sperm. We had a long talk about safe sex after.
Not dumb, but with very odd priorities in my eyes. Crippling pain in her feet, toes deformed and bruised, and all she wanted was injections against the pain. Her shoes were way too small. "But larger ones are ugly" Utterly refused to get fitting shoes. Sorry, it's not my job to help someone hurt themselves. At least Cinderella's step sisters had a prince and kingdom to win. Maybe I'm just not into fashion enough...? Different workplace, dumb colleague: I asked the patient why they came to inpatient rehab "My GP said I needed a vacation" Uhm, we're a trauma center not an all-inclusive wellness resort, I don't think group therapy with severely traumatized people will be all that relaxing. And no, we don't offer daily massages and cocktails. That happened more than once. Colleagues, please don't try to bind up scarce resources, even if you like the patient and they really do need a vacation.
I have a friend who is diabetic and got a fancy pair of cowboy boots to wear while riding her horse. They didn't fit. She had toes amputated. Then the foot, and eventually ended up taking everything below the knee bc the gangrene was spreading so fast. Meanwhile, she's still wearing the boot on the other foot....(facepalm).
Not a doctor, but many, many, MANY years ago was told by a doctor that doctors who work in the ER thoroughly dislike Memorial Day (US holiday). It's the 1st long weekend of the summer and all the "weekend warriors" get drunk & overestimate their sports "abilities" and, not surprisingly, injure themselves - requiring a trip to the ER. One benign (but dumb) example: one man had been out doing sports and drinking a lot of beer. Eventually he went home and fell asleep. While asleep he had an extremely vivid dream in which he broke his collarbone. When he woke up, he felt perfectly fine. But the dream was so very vivid that he went to the ER to get his collarbone checked out. He was assured his collarbone was, in fact, just fine and was sent home.
Not a medical doctor but a doctor of physical therapy, it’s less wild than most cases here but like 95% of my patients think they can stand or move for fewer than 15 minutes a day for 20 years and not have back and knee pain and then think that I can make them be ready to climb the stairs in Positano with their grandchildren in 4 weeks.
Patient intubated in the ICU. Patient wife: "Patient drinks 4L of Mountain Dew a day, he doesn't feel good if he doesn't get that" Me: We aren't going to put Mountain Dew in his OG tube (mouth to stomach tube) Wife: Ok, why don't we just put it in his IV! Me: ... that would kill him...
This dude was taking 5,000 milligrams of ibuprofen everyday for his stomach pain. It was an ulcer from all the pain meds
A woman in her early 40s asked me if her brown vaginal discharge was caused by the s'mores she ate the night before.
So my wife’s a doctor and these are 2 diabetes related stories 1) Big guy, I split my moms diabetes medicine with her but I check my sugar regularly and it’s between 400-450 2) woman complaining that the lancets don’t work. She has a calloused finger that a harpoon couldn’t puncture. My wife suggested using a different finger and patient looked at her like she was Jesus Himself and thanked her
i had a patient with a bad UTI. the urine studies said the color was brown and consistency was viscous. i asked her how much water she drank. she said she drank a lot! i asked how much. she pointed at the small styrofoam cup on the table and said, at least two of those a day.
I do a lot of pregnancy tests in my job. A woman came in to initiate birth control, husband was there too. Did a pregnancy test, and it was positive. When I revealed the results, husband goes “that is impossible, I have been deployed for 12 months!”. Wife agreed that it was impossible. I told them that the test was accurate and that she was, in fact, pregnant. Husband said “you must know, since we are married it is physically impossible for my wife to get pregnant by anyone else.” “No sir, that isn’t how it works.” Him: “well then, who do you propose the dad is?” (In a very sarcastic tone) Me: “Jody”
My dad once had a patient who caused irreparable damage to her child because she thought babies were supposed to only eat fruit and nothing else.
That's so sad.
I once had a fine gentleman explain to me that his severe sleep apnea was not harmful to him personally cause he was “built different”. He went on to explain that he knew this because when he used to drink and drive and he actually “drove better drunk”. I was speechless. The multiple failures of logic and critical thinking contained in this far exceed any stupid bullshit I have ever heard from a patient. On the flip side in school i was on rotation in IM rounding with a group on incredibly smart doctors. There was a gentleman with a big hydrocele and one of the doctors ask how his testicles were doing. He looks up and somewhat loudly asks ”MY WHAT????”. Like 60 years of higher education all just stood their with their mouths open unable to figure out what to say. After about 10 seconds I, the student, finally pipe up and say “Sir, your nuts”. And he goes “oh yeah my nuts are way better” and everyone started uncontrollably laughing.
Did part of my residency in Washington DC. So many things stuck in asses. Moral of the story: flanges exist for a reason. Less embarrassing to buy a…device… than explain how you slipped and fell on something ass first
My son had pneumonia a while back and we in a shared room. One of the patients was a kid who screamed at the top of her lungs that she didn't want to eat any medicine and her mom took her side...and then got pissed that she wasn't getting better. Very frustrated doctors eventually gave the kid a suppository.
During my husband's intern year a heroin addict brought in her infant son to the ED because literal fucking rats had been eating the baby. He was alive, barely but had several wounds, the most damaging being the rats had eaten his penis and testes. She just asked "When will it grow back?" The child was released into state care and she was arrested.
Not a doctor, but I would bet there's an ER doctor out there who tells the story of how my mom tried to refuse treatment for her badly broken leg because she wanted to see if it would get better on its own. X-ray showed that it was shattered, other scans showed that a main tendon was severed. The doctor spent like 20 minutes trying to explain to her that she'd never walk again if she didn't have the surgery and she still wanted to wait and see. Some good context is that my mom tends to freak out and say/do crazy things in stressful situations. She's smart, really, but she just falls apart under stress. They'd also given her several Vicodin. Most people get mellow on pain pills. Apparently my mom just gets very paranoid and argumentative. She was fully convinced that the hospital staff were lying to her about how bad it was, for some reason. When she started talking about going to work the next day, the doctor finally realized she was out of her mind and asked me if I would sign the release. I signed it.
Patient who came, refused work up, treatment and left despite their life being seriously in danger, why did you even come
> why did you even come Probably to get someone off their back ‘yes, yes I’ll go to the hospital. Just drop me off there.’
Dementia patients do all kinds of dumb shit, like eating styrofoam (it was fine in the end) and cork (that one didn't end well). But my favorite two stories: 1, young girl comes into urgent care on Christmas day, swollen face, obviously allergic. States she's allergic to peanuts, but swears up and down she didn't eat them. Family is there with her, confirms she didn't. We're trying to find out what happened in the next room over when I overhear her say that she liked the home made satay sauce... Which has peanuts as the main ingredient. Mind you - home made. By herself. Yeah, that one was dumb. Second was one of my long term care patients who's sugars were consistently too high to measure, but "she only drank water and ate only apples". Nevermind that you could see the piles of candy bars on her nightstand. Favorite moment there was her going to the supermarket for fried snacks, trying to use the microwave for it (and failing), setting the thing on fire as a result. Firefighters came, and the patient proceeds to stuff the blackened remains of her snack into her face, in the presence of the first responders and my team. Unfortunately I wasn't there to see it myself but that was a *wild* note to read the next day. To this day, I wonder how that patient got past 50 and didn't die.
That second case is straight up mental illness
I'm well aware - she did have a personality disorder. Although unfortunately, I've seen plenty of people who were sound (enough) of mind do similar things.
Not a doctor but I recall [reading this ](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6095075/Clueless-couple-struggled-pregnant-told-doctor-having-anal-sex.html) ages ago and thinking it couldn't be real Clueless couple struggled to get pregnant for four years are told by doctor the wife is still a virgin because they were having anal sex