“I just ate the toothpaste, will I be okay?” When it comes to asking doctors questions, most of us don’t shy away from asking even the tiniest things. After all, when you’re worried about your health, there’s really no such thing as a question that’s too small. But every now and then, people manage to come up with questions or situations that leave even experienced doctors wondering how they got there in the first place.
That’s exactly what happened in a Reddit thread where doctors were asked to share some of the dumbest patients they had ever encountered. From hilariously obvious questions to decisions that probably should have involved a little more common sense, the stories had plenty of people laughing—and occasionally shaking their heads in disbelief. Keep reading, Pandas, to find out what doctors had to say about some of their most unforgettable patients.
#1
Turns out using cement as a DIY cast for your broken (but not reset) leg is a bad idea. Turns out the chemicals in the cement irritate and dissolve your skin. He became septic and almost died by the time he presented for medical care. Emergency Medicine – preventing natural selection one stupid person at a time.
Image source: fleur_essence, Jvalenciazz Jhon / Pexels
#2
14 year old couple…splitting birth control pills to be extra safe…girl gets pregnant…boy gets gynecomastia.
Image source: Drugachussetts, Pavel Danilyuk / Pexels
#3
Girl came to the ER for nausea/vomiting. Tried to give her some Zofran. “No thanks, I’m not really a medicine-type person. My body rejects chemicals.”.
Image source: drkrunch, RDNE Stock project / Pexels
We spend so much time taking care of our bodies, yet there’s still an incredible amount we don’t know about what’s happening beneath the surface. For instance, most of us know that an adult human skeleton has 206 bones, but did you know that babies are born with around 300 bones? As they grow, some of those bones gradually fuse together, eventually forming the 206 bones found in the typical adult skeleton. These bones are divided into two main groups: the axial skeleton, which contains 80 bones and forms the central axis of the body, including the skull, spine, ribs, and sternum, and the appendicular skeleton, which contains 126 bones in the shoulders, arms, hands, pelvis, legs, and feet.
#4
Had a patient who was convinced that drinking grape juice with baking soda was helping him fight prostate cancer.
“But your cancer is actually getting worse.”
Him: “I’m gonna stick with my plan, I really feel like it’s helping.”
Edit: Yes, it is kind of like Steve Jobs. You can all stop replying that now, because we all get it.
Image source: YoungSerious, 🇻🇳🇻🇳Nguyễn Tiến Thịnh 🇻🇳🇻🇳 / Pexels
#5
Had a girl in the ER who got beer poured over her while at a party. She went to the bathroom to clean herself but didn’t find anything to wash herself with like a sponge or something.
So she used the next best thing she found and meticulously scrubbed her chest with steel wool.
Image source: AustrianReaper, Pavel Danilyuk / Pexels
#6
I worked at the ER during my internship and met a girl who had increasingly painful and red eyes since a couple of days back. The last 24h had been horrible. I asked about all the normal stuff, and she claimed to have no idea why she had this eye problem – she had never had anything wrong with her eyes. I proceed to drop some dye in her eyes to check them in a microscope, and when I do I realize she’s wearing contacts.
She didn’t like her natural eye colour, so she had bought a set of blue coloured lenses 8 months earlier. Never removed them, not even during night time. Didn’t even think to mention this to me, claimed to have no “foreign materials” in her eyes.
Needless to say, I gave her quite the harsh lecture and a referal to an ophtalmologist.
Image source: fracturedfigment, Tom Caillarec / Unsplash
Interestingly, even some basic facts about our bodies aren’t as well known as you might expect. A USANA-sponsored survey of 2,000 Americans conducted through OnePoll found that 35% of respondents didn’t know their own blood type. The survey also found that only about one in 10 people knew that O-negative is considered the universal red-blood-cell donor type, while just one quarter correctly identified the four main blood groups: A, B, AB, and O. Knowing your blood type can be useful information, particularly when it comes to blood donation, pregnancy care, and medical situations. Of course, hospitals still test and confirm a person’s blood type before giving a transfusion, but knowing your own can certainly be helpful when you’re trying to understand your health.
#7
I met one who was taking lactulose (extra strength laxative) for her lactose intolerance.
Image source: Anitsisqua, magnific / Magnific
#8
GP here. The most outrageous thing I’ve heard was from a boy who was something like 20-22 years old. Very poor, illiterate family. The boy had a bad case of tonsilitis and refused to take any meds because all he needed to do was “bite the sun”. Basically at noon he had to look up to the sun, open his mouth as wide as possible and “bite” the sun several times so it would “burn” his tonsils and cure him over the course of a couple weeks. When that wouldn’t work, plan B was to do the same at night but only under a full moon.
TL;DR: Bite the sun and cure you tonsilitis.
Image source: Valproic_acid, Nazila Azimzada / Pexels
#9
I was an intern in the ER. I have seen a lot of stupid people; it was a small town and all. The worst I think was when I walked in, and the floor smelled like… I don’t even know. It was by far the worst thing I had ever smelled.
Well, the doctor is preparing to go into this room, but I did not expect what would happen next. He opened the door, and I almost barfed. It was extremely hard to keep my professional composure.
The guy had his leg wrapped up. The doctor asked him to unwrap it, and it was gangrene. From his foot up to the middle of his thigh. The smell I had been smelling was rotting flesh. The cause?
“The four-wheeler I was riding caught fire six months ago.”.
Image source: Soruger, Dariusz Czapski / Unsplash
And sometimes, the best way to appreciate just how fascinating the human body is is to look at it from a completely different perspective. That’s exactly what Bill Bryson does in The Body: A Guide for Occupants, a lively and often funny exploration of how our bodies work and what makes them so remarkable. The book is packed with fascinating, mind-boggling, and occasionally gross facts about human biology, including one particularly fun question: How much would it actually cost to build a human being from scratch? Citing a Royal Society of Chemistry calculation, Bryson notes that the 59 elements needed to construct a human body, using Benedict Cumberbatch as the example, would cost around $151,578. Of course, that price only reflects the estimated value of the raw elements—not the rather more complicated task of turning them into a living, breathing human being.
#10
Surgical resident here, one that comes to mind while I was on the cardiothoracic service was a gentleman that came in through the trauma bay with a stab wound to the chest. He reported (after we fixed the rather large hole in his right ventricle) that he was just visiting a friend and while on the stoop of the building, a random stanger stabbed him with a sword from a 1st floor window. He proceeds to laugh, get back in his car with his buddies and drive home, despite the rather profuse bleeding from his chest. He drives home for some period of time and then eventually decides he should go to the hospital. Drives BY HIMSELF to the hospital. Last thing he remembers was being on the way to the hospital. He was found in the parking lot, had passed out in his car. Eventually made it to the OR and walked away just fine.
Image source: TheDoctorOfLove, Getty Images / Unsplash
#11
I am an ER doc. I once had a 20 year old and his girlfriend come in at 2 am freaking out becuase “something had tore his throat open”. He seemed fine. No blood. Breathing fine. I had him open his mouth, saw nothing. So didn’t want him to lose confidence in me, clearly something had happened, so I’m looking, and looking….there is nothing wrong with this kids throat. Finally I say look, it seems ok…what do you feel or see? “I dont feel it but LOOK ITS RIGHT THERE”. WHERE??? Looking, looking. It was his uvula. Somehow this kid had gotten to the age of 20 without ever noticing his uvula. Girlfriend was also horrified….I told them it was normal. Did not believe me. So I told them I was about to blow their minds and showed him his girlfriends uvula. Minds blown, another life saved in the ER.
Image source: Hathathn, cottonbro studio / Pexels
#12
We had a patient once on a PCA (a kind of pain medicine pump with a button that the patient pushes to dispense more medicine). She thought she had to physically lick the button in order to get the medicine. It was weird.
Image source: bawlrange, RDNE Stock project / Pexels
And the more you learn about the human body, the more you realize that even some of our most familiar sensations are not quite as straightforward as they seem. We cannot actually feel wetness directly. Human skin doesn’t have specific receptors dedicated to detecting “wetness.” Instead, researchers believe that the brain works out that something is wet by combining other sensory information, particularly changes in temperature and mechanical sensations on the skin. That’s why water can feel wet even though your skin is really detecting a combination of different signals. In other words, that familiar sensation of being wet is partly your brain making sense of the information your skin is sending it. Pretty impressive, considering how effortlessly we experience it every day.
#13
There was the guy whose elderly mother suffered a massive brain hemorrhage and I had to tell him there was nothing surgically we could do for her. He tearfully told me, that he would do anything for his mama, and she could have his brain to save her life. Dude wanted us to do a brain transplant. I had to tell him that no, unfortunately that would not be possible.
Image source: KosstAmojan, Vitaly Gariev / Pexels
#14
There are several close calls…
– The patient who fixed an appointment for a pedicure the day after open heart surgery. He said that he’d just sneak out of the ICU and that nobody would notice.
– The patient who had an amputation of half of his foot and decided that it would be a good idea to walk to the toilet after returning to his room, covering the floor in bloody footsteps because the suture ripped open again.
– The patient who said that he didn’t have any previous operations, but was basically covered in scars… when asked about each of them, he suddenly remembered having about 15 surgeries for various accidents.
– The patient who forgot that he had his kidney, spleen and part of the colon removed (because of a tumor).
– The patient who decided that he’d never take more than three pills a day. He was on four or five different meds at that time, and basically just chose at random which meds he was going to take which day.
Image source: Iylivarae, José Antonio Otegui Auzmendi / Pexels
#15
Not a doctor, but as an Army medic, I have had some dumb patients.
One of the first guys I treated got really bad road rash from a motorcycle crash and decided to treat it himself by pouring whiskey on it. By the time he came to the medics, it was pretty bad and I had to do debridement with a scrub brush: basically scrubbing the bad parts off with plastic bristles. He was in a lot of pain and I was trying not to laugh at him.
A lot of people don’t respect medics at all even when we are very good at our jobs. One guy came in with fluid filled bumps on a red base around his mouth-textbook herps. I asked him if it was his first herpes outbreak and he started yelling at me for saying he had herpes. He refused to listen to anything else I said and asked for the PA, who took one look at him and asked if it was his first herpes outbreak.
We once had a guy who had the tip of his finger amputated. His first question was, ‘will this grow back?”
One guy had a sore back, and while I was doing the physical exam, he said, “Doc, my spine is curved (it wasn’t). That’s why my nose is crooked.”
Medics all have lots of fun stories.
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When you zoom out from how the body experiences the world to what it’s actually made of, the answer is surprisingly simple. You might not have enjoyed studying the periodic table at school, but those chemical elements are literally what make you, you. Just six elements—carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus—account for roughly 99% of the human body’s mass. Oxygen and hydrogen are especially abundant because the body contains a large amount of water, while carbon forms the backbone of many of the molecules that make up our cells and tissues. Nitrogen is essential for proteins and DNA, while calcium and phosphorus are particularly important for bones and teeth. So, despite being an incredibly complicated biological system, the human body is built largely from a surprisingly small collection of elements.
#16
We had a woman that went through 3 hospitalizations for diabetic ketoacidosis in 6 weeks. Her glucose was up to 1100.
Her explanation is that she didn’t like her endocrinologist, so she refused to go back.
Image source: Anitsisqua, Pavel Danilyuk / Pexels
#17
Had a marine once who came to me complaining of a rash to his right forearm c 2 weeks. This was his first visit for the issue, and hadn’t had anything like this before and was worried, since he reported worsening symptoms since initial onset.
When asking about prior skin issues, he told me he had ring worm just prior to THIS rash.
Look at his arm, it looked like a mild second degree chemical burn in a rather circular shape, with blisters on the edges. What got me was the exact definition in the burn edge. Asking the young LCPL how he got that he replied:
” well that’s the burn I got from the bleach I poured on my arm”.
When I asking him WHY he poured bleach on his arm:
“Well how else was I going to get rid of the ringworm?”.
Image source: DocMichaels, Liliana Drew / Pexels
#18
Dentist here. I had a patient a few years ago who could not understand how she had gum disease on her upper teeth. She though gravity would pull all the bacteria down onto her lower teeth, leaving her top teeth plaque free.
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We use the internet every day and are used to information traveling almost instantly, but our own bodies have an impressive communication network too. Nerve signals can travel at speeds of around 120 meters per second, or roughly 430 km/h, in the fastest myelinated human nerve fibers. These electrical signals allow your brain and body to communicate incredibly quickly, helping you move, react to danger, feel sensations, and coordinate everything from walking to picking up a cup of coffee. So while your Wi-Fi connection might occasionally let you down, your nervous system has been running its own high-speed communication network inside you all along.
#19
I had a patient who came to the emergency department vomiting so much I had to admit him for intravenous fluids. I took the usual history, including what he’d eaten recently – nothing out of the ordinary. A few hours later, he calls me over. ‘Doctor…. I did eat some chicken and rice earlier. My girlfriend made it yesterday and we left it in the pan on top of the stove overnight, and I ate it this afternoon. (This was in a July heatwave.) Do you think that could have been it?’
‘Yes. Yes, I do.’ *sighs* We had a little talk about food hygiene.
Image source: forest_rose, Andres Segura / Pexels
#20
As a med student myself and another student took a history from a guy who drank several (10+) cups of tea a day with 6 sugars in each one “for my thirst” and had 6 meals a day of 4 bacon sandwiches, with butter, “for the energy”.
That’s all he had every day. That’s it.
He couldn’t understand why his heart disease wasn’t getting better, why he’d put on weight, why he was now showing high blood sugar and was borderline diabetic.
Edit: Seriously guys – to the people telling me “but bacon isn’t bad food!” or whatever; I never said it was. Read what I posted, especially the bit where I said “That’s all he had every day. That’s it.” because if you can’t process that with the rest of what I’ve said, I think you’re in danger of becoming a patient mentioned in threads like this.
Image source: SoForAllYourDarkGods, Nicola Barts / Pexels
#21
Had a 70 year old female come in with a broken rib and clavicle after falling. Tells me her only medications are insulin and Tums. While taking her history she seems off. She’s acting confused, her voice is deep, her face is swollen and she’s had been having balance problems, textbook hypothyroidism. Turns out she had her thyroid removed a year ago. When I asked her if she was taking any medications for that she tells me “Yes, the Tums, I need the calcium for my thyroid.” Where she came up with the idea that tums were a great substitute for your thyroid I will never know. Needless to say she left with a new synthroid Rx.
Image source: Pamlico, cottonbro studio / Pexels
#22
While in nursing school I had a patient who had wounds on his leg and refused wound care because “Hospitals are clean and you can’t get an infection in a hospital.” He refused even after having me and then my instructor explain to him about hospital acquired infections and the need for wound care.
Image source: mursican, Getty Images / Unsplash
And then there’s your heart, one of the hardest-working organs in your entire body. An average adult heart beats roughly 100,000 times a day, which works out to more than 36 million beats a year. Over a typical lifespan, that can add up to well over 2.5 billion heartbeats, depending on factors such as your resting heart rate and how long you live. Think about that the next time you feel your heartbeat—it has been quietly doing its job thousands of times every day, without you having to consciously tell it what to do. It’s one of those everyday things we rarely think about until we stop to appreciate just how remarkable it really is.
#23
This happened in a rural area, and this was at the indigent hospital. A man came in who had been chopping wood. The ax slipped, hitting his leg. He poured gasoline over it to try to “disinfect” it, and stop the bleeding. Then he lit a cigarette. We were treating him for a very badly infected leg, which was also severely burned.
Also – there is a saying in rural areas, that “it hurt so bad I could have shot it off”. A woman came in who had sprained her ankle. She couldn’t take the pain, so we ended up treating her for a self inflicted gunshot wound to the foot.
Image source: sanna43, Ivan S / Pexels
#24
Had an old coot (best possible description of the man) who was sweet but had clearly spent his adult years drinking away whatever brain cells he started with… he presented with a chief complaint of “I can’t drink beer any more. Every time I drink one, I just throw it back up a few minutes later.”
Well… turns out Cooter hadn’t been able to eat actual food in months, was subsisting on pretty much just beer, and hadn’t pooped in over two weeks. But that didn’t bother him a bit… until he couldn’t have the beer. *Then* it was an emergency!
He had a big ol’ tumor blocking the distal part of his left colon (so near the end of the road, intestinally speaking), and everything gradually got backed up all the way to his stomach. That’s why he couldn’t keep a beer down–there was just no more room at the inn.
I fixed him with a colostomy, and he got better and left. He refused chemo and I figured he’d just go home and pass away of cancer. But then, almost exactly one year later, he came back to me with just about the same complaint… obstructed to the point of not being able to drink beer.
Except this time, it was that his ostomy had essentially retracted into his abdomen and the skin had nearly grown shut over it. He was pooping out of a teeny-tiny hole in his skin.
Even my oldest partners had never seen anything like it, but once again Cooter wasn’t remotely fazed. He just wanted us to fix it so he could go home and keep drinking.
I did. Haven’t seen Cooter since. I kind of hope he’s still out there, treating his cancer with Budweiser and just blissfully ignoring the Grim Reaper.
Image source: janedjones, RDNE Stock project / Pexels
#25
We had a patient come in for theatre. When asked if she’d followed the fasting instructions she said yes but luckily the nurse didn’t believe her. With some prodding the patient eventually confessed to having 6 chocolate bars and an orange juice for breakfast. Obviously the surgery was delayed.
Image source: meowfacenator, Getty Images / Unsplash
#26
I had a patient in her 30s complain of monthly rectal bleeding that would last 4-6 days and stop on its own. It started when she was 11. She just thought she should get checked out. It did stop for a while when she was pregnant.
Image source: SaintKavorca, Getty Images / Unsplash
Ultimately, the human body is far more complicated (and fascinating) than most of us realize. We may know the basics about bones, blood, muscles, and organs, but there are countless strange little details hiding beneath the surface that many of us don’t know. Coming back to today’s post, the questions and things people shared highlight just how much we can misunderstand about our own bodies. Some are genuinely surprising, while others are bizarre, or downright confusing. Which one of these shocked you the most, Pandas?
#27
Optometrist here. Had a guy come in for a glasses exam for the first time in ten years and I discovered he had full blown glaucoma going on and I asked him if I could run a test to help confirm. He got super angry with me and demanded his prescription. I said I’ll give that to you but I need to prescribe you medicine to help save your sight. His response was “Well if the good lord wants me to lose my sight then who am I to stop him.” I made him sign a waiver and he left. I’ve never been so frustrated at a patient.
Image source: Talisker12, Antoni Shkraba / Pexels
#28
Maybe not the dumbest patient I’ve ever treated, but certainly a memorable one.
While working a nightshift in the ED, I grabbed a chart for a P&B (our shorthand for pregnant and bleeding). I walked into the room and came across a young woman who was laying on the stretcher with her legs open in a pool of blood and … tissue. She was about 20 weeks pregnant and had been bleeding for almost 3 days before she decided that it was time to go to the hospital.
When I asked why she didn’t come in sooner, she replied that she thought it was just her period, since she had heard that “you can still be pregnant even if you get your period”. For medical clarity, yes, having a menstrual cycle shortly after unprotected intimate relations does not mean you are in the clear and definitely not pregnant. … Once you have a confirmed bun in the oven, it don’t work that way.
After having to explain to the poor daft girl that she was, indeed, pregnant, I then had to spend the next 10 minutes pulling from her vaginal canal the remaining products of conception from her miscarriage.
Image source: SharpWingDoc, Pavel Danilyuk / Pexels
#29
I have the grandma, the mom, and the teen in the room. The teen is pregnant, but this apparently is a good thing. There are no fathers/grandfathers/boyfriends/jobs in the picture, but everyone decided it was about time a new generation was added to the family lineage. Apparently the teen did not appreciate the fatigue, full bladder, back pain, etc that go along with being pregnant and is also experiencing some cramping pains. She demands that we do a C-section because she’s tired of being pregnant (even though she’s still not far enough along) because then we can just hook up the premie in an incubator to finish growing and the government can just pay for the [incredibly expensive] ICU stay. My jaw just dropped.
Then there was the lady wearing short shorts and no underwear who raised her leg and showed me the puss-filled wound on her labia … while in the middle of the waiting room.
I don’t miss rural OB/Gyn experiences.
Image source: fleur_essence, Yan Krukau / Pexels
#30
R leg necrotic with maggots. Has been this way for >30 days. Wrapped t-shirts around the leg, and when the outer layer was soaked with pus they threw another one on top. He finally called 911 for shortness of breath. He passed from septic shock.
“My breath smells like trichomonas”
Pt gets told she required urgent surgery after a bad home-birth, give her instructions including nothing to eat. Walk in to bring her to the OR and she’s scarfing down burger king, tries to hide it after she sees me.
Pt is informed to begin taking Eliquis IMMEDIATELY (anticoagulant, they just got a cardiac stent placed) and told the risks of delaying taking that medication. The pharmacy was out of it for the weekend, she comes in 3 days later with “the same chest pain as before, I thought you fixed me, is my doctor stupid?” MI.
Image source: BChannel, Tim Samuel Follow / Pexels
#31
When I was doing rounds in the ER for my medic I encountered this woman. She was in her early forties and was apparently a frequent flyer for pain meds. Since she had become known in the community (this was a small city in West Michigan) she was no longer able to trick doctors into giving her meds. So what does she do? She pulls out her own teeth. She had tried to do a couple but they wouldn’t come all the way out. She did eventually get one out bit this was after a few attempts. This isn’t the stupid part however. She felt that this may not do the trick. So she waited for a few days knowing she would get an infection and we would have no choice but to give her what she wanted. Well it didn’t work they gave her NSAID’s and antibiotics.
Image source: zoey8068
#32
So; guy comes in with lumbar compression fractues after being pushed off a 2nd story balcony by his girl. Hes told by more than one person to leave her, including doctors and cops, he doesnt press charges. Comes in a year later stabbed in the back with a kitchen knife that went all the way through his chest and was sticking out the other side. who was he srabbed by? The same girl. He lived was lucky the knife missed his vital organs.
Image source: goodguy_asshole
#33
Took care of a patient who we (I) diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. This sweet woman was is her late 20s. For those that don’t know, NHL responds pretty well to chemo. Her father-in-law had a business selling camels milk. She opted for a camels milk treatment plan over chemotherapy. She was convinced that camels milk can treat ANYTHING. She said she came to the hospital just to find out what it was that she was going to treat with the camels milk. Smh…
She had a 2 and a 4 year old. Fortunately, I could convince her to only try camels milk for a finite amount of time and then follow up with our oncologist to see if camels milk did the trick.
Image source: BLF786
#34
Once a boy had a cut on his skull due to head injury, and his parents applied tea powder to stop the blood flow!
Image source: jardosh
#35
Common situation: do you take any medications? Just asprin. K great. .. Later on, do you have any numbness or tingling in your legs? Yes. From the diabetes. Oh your diabetic? Yeah but I’m taking meds for that. 😔 ok sounds good. Any other medications? No. K. .. Later on, how much are you exercising? Well, I try to walk a couple times per week because of my blood pressure. Oh you have high blood pressure too? Yes. Are you medicated? Yes. 😣
Image source: buffbroSPT
#36
Not a doctor. But EMT. I was working in the ER and a homeless guy comes in. Not unusual. He looked completely fine, but he’s was complaining of unbearable leg pain. My job in the ER basically is to do initial assessment/vitals and to get patients settled in. So I go to check out his legs. I cut thru his pants and he’s wearing knee high socks. As soon as I cut thru the elastic on the socks….maggots. Like a waterfall of them. Turns out he was wearing the same socks for 6 months and they cut into his skin. Good knees north surgeon said he could save his legs thanks to the maggots.
Lesson is change your socks regularly.
Image source: CelphCtrl
#37
Peds patient’s parents were given the usual pre-op instructions. Blah blah blah, patient needs to be NPO the usual eight hours prior to surgery, clear liquids only-“you can see through it.” Parents the next morning during admissions said they followed the instructions to the letter. They only gave the patient donuts…because they could see through it.
Image source: anon
#38
Not a doctor, but work at a pharmacy. Once heard the story of a woman who came in ask the pharmacist what she should ask the doctor to prescribe for a different kind of birth control as she was having a hard time swallowing the one that she was on. So the pharmacist looks up what she was taking, only to find out that this woman had been swallowing her Nuvaring.
Image source: Adundiddlydooman
#39
The lady who thought she had “a pa-na-men-own-ya” She didn’t end up having pneumonia.
Image source: brians7772
#40
I had a pt. with c/c of back pain. I casually asked if he ever passed the stone. The replay was: no doc, but wait, I did once. I’ve farted and had a stone in my undies. I had a trouble to keep my face straight.
Image source: Dilantin01
#41
Happened when I was an intern. Guy came in for some random complaint, got admitted for sepsis. Saw him in his room, which had an oddly pleasant odor. Kinda odd but didn’t think much of it. Started to examine him and saw lots of bandage on his lower leg. Asked him why, and the dude said he had a wound and he wrapped it himself. So I started to take off the bandage, and started to see blue. I was like, what? More and more blue bandage, and even his skin ulcer was blue. So, turns out, he thought since you would use windex and Lysol etc to clean tubs and drains, that would also be a great idea on his wound. Took a great while to convince him to stop. Not entirely sure I succeeded.
Image source: Topher3001
#42
Once had a patient keep refusing he ever had hip surgery despite multiple CT scans showing hardware in his hip. Sat down and showed him each one spanning multiple years but he kept refusing he ever had surgery.
How do you forget hip surgery!?
Image source: phoenix_md
#43
I’m one of those idiots who went to the ER because of something minor. One of my ears closed and I couldn’t hear out of it. Apparently, it’s one of the symptoms for an allergy I have and it’ll go away after a day or two. The doctor told me that and let me out the back door so that way I didn’t have to pay for that ER visit. LOL.
Image source: anon
#44
I am a nurse practitioner. I did a pelvic exam on a young woman and removed a home made ceramic, satanic doll. It had the head, horns, and hooves of a goat, the body of what seemed to be the cookie monster, and she had tied a felt cloak around its neck. I used forceps to extract this amazing art project and asked her, “Do you want to keep this?”.
Image source: nellirn
#45
Gastroenterologist here. 2 similar patients, years apart. First one came in with signs and symptoms of cirrhosis. Said he only drank one drink per day, and insisted on it, and how could he get cirrhosis on one drink per day (by the way, women have been reported to get cirrhosis on as little as TWO drinks per day, but it’s pretty unlikely). Anyway, his wife comes in later and tells me he bought a large glass that holds 32 oz of fluid, and that is his “one drink.”
Years later I diagnosed another man with alcoholic cirrhosis, and he, too, was incredulous. How could he get cirrhosis–he didn’t drink at all? “Just beer.” How much? A case per day. Well, that’s not really the “stupid” part. He drank during the day, on his job. As an electric company lineman, working on “hot” power lines 30-50 feet up. He would drive his truck from one site to the next, drinking beer between each site, and by the end of the day, the case of beer would be finished! Amazing he made it long enough to get cirrhosis… Actually, he was one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet, so it was really too bad.
Image source: OldEars
#46
I’m not a physician, but I am a healthcare professional. I once had a chest-pain patient who came into the Nuclear Medicine department for a typical MPI and he had a very pungent, disgusting smell to him. I work/go to school at a university medical center so we serve the locals and indigent patients mostly. Finally I get him to acknowledge the small and he says his toe has been “feeling funny”. Turns out he cut it or something and an infection engulfed that toe and began eating part of his foot. It seriously might have been gangrene. I immediately called our nurse who notified about 3 different physicians who took samples and immediately rushed him out of our department.
Image source: greeniphone33
#47
“Peter, We’re going to have to cut you toe off. I sorry, its the diabetes.”
” I can’t believe, Doc., I just can’t believe it!”
“Peter, have you noticed that we’ve already cut two other toes off … and all of the other leg.”
Same patient, 45 minutes after getting back to the ward, took himself downstairs- bleeding through the bandages- for a smoke and a coke. Wasn’t actually dumb, just a selective believe system.
Image source: Ja-TorKie
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