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Doctors of Reddit, what is the biggest lie your patient has ever told you?
- When I was an intern I was doing my ER rotation and a woman in her late 30s or so came in complaining of nausea and lower abdominal discomfort for the last few days. I did the dilligent history taking and of course, asked her about the possibility of her being pregnant.
She lost her shit and went off on me...said she was a lesbian woman and had not been with a man for 10 plus years. Yelled at me to get my boss and let an "adult" treat her.
I reported back to my attending and delineated the tests I wanted done. He was like..."I didn't hear a plan for a pregnancy test." and I was like: "I don't think that's needed...she's a lesbian and hasn't been with a man in 10 years.". My attending smiled and said: "Humor me."
Bitch was pregnant as fuck. Went back to her room and there were two dudes mean mugging one another about to fight. She couldn't even look me in the eye.
— PhillipLlerenas
- EMT,
Not the patient. But, the wife.
Was getting the patient to take him to the doctor. I asked him if he could stand. The wife told me he hasnt walked in 30 years.
The dude stands up unassisted and walks to the stretcher.
Ive been in this work a long time and simply dont give a fuck about a lot of stuff.
So. I just blurt out "HOLY SHIT, ITS A MIRACLE!!"
I was prepared to get in trouble....never happened...
— thejaypalmershow
- Patient presented with unrelated complaints but on the standard intake for our clinic we were to ask whether the patient had used any injected drugs in the last month. He was wearing a short sleeved shirt. As I asked he looked down at his arms, exposing his numerous "track marks" or syringe puncture wounds on his arms.
He then looked up at me, crossed his arms obscuring many of the track marks, and proudly stated: "Nope, never".
— teacherteachher
- A few years ago, a man came in complaining of a terrible cough, chest pain, and fatigue. I asked him if he had a history of smoking. Naturally he said no. Around an hour later, on my way home, I stopped to get some food and there he was, smoking outside McDonalds.
— king12435
- "I don't drink a lot of water." The patient was drinking 21 bottles of water a day and was making herself hyponatremic (low sodium in the blood). She was basically diluting herself. This can lead to lethargy, seizures, death. The medical diagnosis is called psychogenic polydipsia.
— Ravager135
-
My dad laughs at this all the time but my mom is nurse at an urgent care. Anyway, we have a neighbor who is constantly smoking. Like every time we drive by their house to pull into our drive way this lady is smoking. She comes in one day for something and my mom asks her standard questions. One is if she smokes. She says no. Unfucking believable.
— zahid406
- Not a doctor, but in college, my roommate (who I wasn't particularly close to) showed up in our room stumbling around drunk. There had been a home football game, so I didn't think anything of it. An hour later she's acting dangerously drunk, but was insistent she didn't have anything to drink, so I decide to take her to the ER.
Turns out she's diabetic and didn't think that was an important detail to mention to the doctors at any point in the three hours we'd sat there. The doctor only realized it when her blood tests came back, although she admitted that she's known for years and took daily insulin shots (that she also never told them about).
— Dalyro
- Not a Doctor but I work in an ER, had someone come in and was acting erratically from the get go, went back into his bay and he was with his lady friend and they were looking at mosuquito bites along their arms and legs, he went on to tell me about how they go hiking every sunday and get torn up by bugs but every single bite on both of them was scabbed and along a vein.
— Eggsland
- I’m a veterinarian and people do the same shit. Dog comes obviously intoxicated with something and you ask if he could have possibly consumed “x” drug (depending on the dogs symptoms) and people don’t want to admit anything. I don’t care wtf you do to yourself, have at it, but don’t let the dog suffer by not being honest and therefor preventing or at the very least delaying appropriate treatment.
— amharise
- Only a medical student but a patient I took history from wanted Ativan for anxiety, she was telling me about how her panic attacks are so bad she gets into car accidents with casualties every week. I mean a lot of patients will tell lies or play coy to get controlled substances but she was the only one who admitted to multiple counts of vehicular manslaughter.
When I presented her case to my attending she showed me a note in the EMR from another doctor stating this was a regular tactic of her's as well as an extensive online list of every scrip different doctors had given her for controlled substances.
She didn't get an Ativan prescription that day.
— Ipsenn
- I had a lady in the hospital who was several days post op, and had met all criteria for discharge. This can be a somewhat difficult situation, because you want to maintain a good relationship with your patient, but at the same time can't inappropriately use hospital resources. I told her that if there's no medical necessity, insurance could deny payment for the extra night in the hospital, to which she said:
"Oh, my health insurance agent was just up here and he said I should stay another day"
I just stared at her for a minute since I have never seen an insurance representative in the hospital, and don't even know if health insurance agents exist. She then admitted that she just made that up.
— boondock_saint
- Not a doctor but I was an ER scribe. I would follow the doctors around with a laptop and do all of their electronic charting, ordering tests, note taking and stuff like that.
Had a patient, probably around 18-20 year old male. Complaining of a foreign object in his…male organ. He had a set of iPhone headphones stuck up his penis. And when I say stuck up there, I mean all the way to where the single cord splits in two for the two earbuds. Out of precaution we did an x-ray and sure enough, you could see the knotted up cord in his lower abdomen and it was going to require surgery to remove due to it being tangled.
He said that he was at a party with some friends and that he got drunk and passed out and his friends shoved it up there as a joke while he was passed out. Luckily the doctor I was working with had seen this guy for the same thing not long ago except before it was a wire coat hanger. She recognized there was a bigger issue and convinced him to have an inpatient psych consult in the ER after surgery so they could get him the help he needed.
Not a single person in that exam room bought his story that his friends did it to him though.
— txharleyrider
- Patient came in breathing through his mouth. His mouth was as wide as he could stretch it. His breath sounded like sucking that last bit of liquid through a straw.
He snorted 9 ounces of cinnamon when his mum's boyfriend dared him to.
He then tried to snort water to wash it away.
His mucus became like a biscuit. He had a cold too.
Tried very hard not to insult their collective intellect.
— zahid4015