When it comes to medical care, we expect adults to have a certain level of understanding and knowledge. However, sometimes the conversations doctors have with their adult patients can be beyond bizarre, and even downright unbelievable. From questioning the purpose of a rectal thermometer to mistaking their belly button for a tumor, doctors have heard it all. In this article, we explore some of the most surprising and shocking conversations that doctors have had with adult patients. Get ready to be astounded by these strange and amusing stories straight from the mouths of medical professionals.
As a dentist, I examined a 1-year-old child that had cavities on all 4 of his teeth. (He’s only had teeth for a grand total of 6 months). I ask mom what in the diet could be the cause and she replies that she “just can’t keep him away from that Coca-cola, if he sees a can or a bottle or the fountain he’ll just scream till I give it to him.” Also, she wasn’t brushing his teeth.
So, I had to tell mom that 1-year-olds shouldn’t be drinking soda and that parents are supposed to brush their children’s teeth.
A patient comes to ER, a 19-year-old male, I’m getting his history. Why are you here today? “Every morning when I wake up my stomach hurts.” How long has it been hurting? “All my life.” Well, what is different today that’s made you come here? “My girlfriend doesn’t think that is normal.” More questions, an exam by ER physician, and lab tests. The abdominal pain always goes away after he eats. Always. He wakes up hungry. He thinks it is pain.
A surprising number of people don’t know that a broken bone and a fractured bone are the same things. You try to tell them in layman’s terms that a bone is broken. The immediate response is, “well, at least it’s not fractured.” Other times, you say, ” yes, your bone is fractured.” In a relieved tone, they reply, ” at least it’s not broken.” There is no winning here.
My friend is a student doctor and is on placement at a small-town doctor’s office. She had a 70-ish-year-old woman come in with complaints of a small but painless growth that was visible at the back of her throat.
Turns out it took her 70 years to notice her uvula.
We had a diabetic patient who kept coming back with extremely high sugars. We asked him if he was following the regimen we taught him…testing his blood sugar, using the sliding scale, measuring the correct dose of insulin in the syringe etc. He went through all the steps and it sounded like he was doing everything right.
We asked him to demonstrate the steps he took so we could observe and correct any mistakes he may have been making. He did everything right until the very last step. He drew up the insulin in his syringe, pulled an orange out of his bag, injected the insulin into the orange, and then ate it.
Turns out when he was taught to practice how to give himself subcutaneous injections with oranges he didn’t realize he actually needed to inject himself for the insulin to do its job.
Coming to the ER for a pregnancy test is a very very expensive way to do it. Apparently, she didn’t know you could buy one at the Rite-Aid down the block. Seriously, don’t come to the ER for a pregnancy test, cause the test results won’t be the only surprise you’ll be getting.
When I was an Internal Medicine resident I came across a very nice 50-year-old Dominican lady, she was well-mannered but one could tell she was not the sharpest tool in the shed. As I was prepping her chart for our first visit, I noticed that she’d been seen by every single digestive disease MD in our hospital system. Not only that, she’d had EVERY SINGLE PROCEDURE IN THE BOOK. Ranging from endoscopies up both holes and culminating in an exploratory laparotomy (you’re opened up to basically look inside you when we have no clue what’s going on). All of this is because for years she had one single complaint, she reported severe gnawing pain in her stomach. At this point, I should mention that she was Spanish-speaking only. Not only that she had a very heavy Dominican accent, and I was the first Hispanic doctor to ever see her. My first language is Spanish and even I had difficulty understanding her. So she comes in and after exchanging some first-time pleasantries I politely ask her how she’s doing. Sure enough, although she was smiling and said she felt well she pointed at her belly and said “it” was biting again, and asked for the cream to kill “it”. At this point, I got intrigued. Her medication list only mentioned a cream used for herpes breakthroughs. The previous fellow only mentioned in his note that on every single visit, she only asked for the cream and nothing else. When I asked what she meant by the biting and what she intended to do with the cream, she very calmly tells me she intended to stick the cream up her *ss in order to kill the bird living inside her. After delving more deeply into her story, it turns out she didn’t have a medical condition. Ever since she was a little girl, she believed that after eating a whole quail egg, the bird had spawned inside her and gnawed away at her insides whenever she was very hungry. After a short visit to psych, she was diagnosed with a somatic type delusional disorder. No amount of medication or psychotherapy will cure her, but she was still a fully functional mother of 2 who paid her taxes and had two part-time jobs. I reached out to every digestive disease doctor in our hospital system once more, to make sure she never receives an inappropriate invasive intervention. I’ve been following her now for three years and she’s happy as one can be, considering she has a bird living inside her.
A mother came in with her son to discuss treating his acne. Son was about 15 years old and didn’t really care about the acne but mom did. After going over treatment options she asked if he just needed to “do it” to get rid of the acne. A grown woman with a child thought that by him having sex his acne would magically go away…smh
I don’t want my baby to get a vaccine because Jenny McCarthy’s book says her son got Autism from the Thimerosal in his MMR vaccine.
Jenny McCarthy is a one-time playboy model who wants to sell you her books.
MMR is a live vaccine and does not contain Thimerosal.
Thimerosal contains Ethylmercury which clears from your body in 10 days, unlike methylmercury which stays for months and actually causes damage.
Measles killed 135,000 people in the world LAST YEAR
Autism has a strong genetic component. If one identical twin has it, there is a 75% chance the other will as well.
Andrew Wakefield faked the research linking autism to the MMR vaccine, lost his license to practice medicine and made millions helping lawyers sue and selling books. He lives in a mansion in England.
I went to school for 11 years, spent 10,000 hours studying and just want to make sure your child stays healthy. Quit thinking your 5 minutes of internet research means anything, get over yourself, and vaccinate your d*mn baby.
I’m a paramedic and recently transported an idiot who self-presented to the local hospital, they found he was having a heart attack (stemi) and needed him sent to a bigger hospital for treatment.
During my assessment, I asked him how long he’d been having chest pain. On and off for twelve months, he tells me.
Any family history? (One of the biggest indicators). Oh, yes. Dad died of a heart attack. My Brother died of a heart attack. Both of them had a first presentation, stone dead on the spot, no f*cking about.
So… you have a 12-month history of intermittent chest pain, and a family history of your closest male relatives spontaneously chucking hearties and dying, and you’ve never got it investigated. Furthermore, the only reason you came to the hospital tonight is that your family badgered you into it.
I told him he needed a solid kick in the arse. To his credit, he agreed.
Lady had a broken jaw. She comes in after 2 weeks with an open mandible fracture. Referred her to the hospital for immediate surgery. She never went because it “doesn’t bother her and she’ll see if it gets better”.
Had a patient in our high-priority area for DKA. Sugar was in the 800s. Stomach pain, nausea, vomiting and the such. Pulled Burger King and gummy worms out of his backpack and proceeded to eat them. Like bro do you even know what diabetes is? Noncompliance and lack of medical knowledge is a big thing in Detroit.
My mom tells it so much better, but here’s a try: My mom was the head nurse at a clinic here in Houston in the 80s. She worked for an old WWII doctor that had gone into private practice (old school GP) when he returned back to the states. Well, one afternoon she told me that they had a patient come in that was running a high fever and was complaining of pain in her pelvic area. Mom also tells me that there was a stench coming from the woman’s lap that could only be described as enough to Gag a maggot off a meat wagon. She begins to interview the patient who told her that she and her boyfriend had been sexually active and that she has been in pain since. She thought that the woman may have contracted an STD and asked her to undress and wait for the doctor to examine her. The doctor arrives and closes the door, only to re-open it a few seconds later mentioning about the need for fresh air.
The doctor noticed that there was a vaginal discharge and began to question the patient about her sex life, whether was it protected, non-protected, etc… According to the mom, the patient told her “No doc, we always use a rubber.” The doctor looked down then noticed that there was a small rubber band extending from the woman’s vagina. The doctor reached in with his gloved hand and pulled it out. What came next can only be described as a magician pulling the magic cloth out of someone’s mouth… one rubber band after another came out over the course of the next 10 minutes. Finally, once they were all removed, the Doctor had “the talk” with the woman about sex education and that rubber bands were not a successful contraceptive and not what they meant by “wearing a rubber” and then wrote her a prescription for Abx.
My mother is a doctor. She once told me this story about a patient she had (she serves low-income people, so typically immigrants/minorities, usually without health insurance). The man is from Central America and is there for a normal check-up. Typical of most patients, he has fairly high blood pressure. However, this man is also having bowel problems. So my mother asks, “What color and consistency is your feces when you need to use the bathroom?” The man has no idea what she’s talking about. My mom tries again: “Your poop. What color and/or consistency is it typically?” The man still has no clue what she’s saying (he understands a bit of English). She tries again. “Your doo doo.” Nothing. “Your fecal matter.” Nothing. “Your poo.” Nothing. “Not number one, but number two.” Nothing. Finally, she asks, “It’s not liquid when it comes out, but it’s more solid, you know?” The man has an epiphany. “Ohh, you mean sh*t!” he says. “Yes, your sh*t.” So my highly educated, professional mother has to continue the rest of the checkup asking about his sh*t. “What color is your sh*t?” “Is it more wet?” “Does it hurt when you take a sh*t?”
This went on for a fair amount of time. My mom nearly burst out laughing by the end of it. Absolutely amazing what a minor language barrier can do.
That a vegan diet is not a substitute for dialysis.
Had a patient come into the hospital, pale as a ghost, in a wheelchair, looking 40 years older than he was. I can’t remember what was wrong with his kidneys, but two years before, his nephrologist had told him that it was time to start dialysis. He was upset about this, so he went to another nephrologist who told him the same. So he decided to stop seeing doctors altogether and went on a vegan diet instead. That wheelchair? Oh yeah, he bought it half a year ago when he couldn’t walk anymore for some reason.
I wish I had taken a picture of his lab results. The only one I can still remember is Creatinine, which was above 5000 umol/l. Potassium was somewhere in the “certain death” range, and hemoglobin was ridiculously low. He was taken to the ICU and finally got his dialysis, but his body was pretty damaged at this point. Don’t know what became of him (it was during my training and I left soon after), but he didn’t look like he could ever recover.
My brother is a general practitioner in rural Tennessee. Enough said, right?
He says most of his patient visits go about like this:
MD “Well, person, you’re pre-diabetic, have high blood pressure and are complaining about joint pain. Have you been exercising and cutting out sugar and carbs?”
Person “yeah I have, doc, but it doesn’t seem to help. Do you have any better meds you could prescribe?”
MD “well, let’s talk about your diet. How much water do you drink a day?”
Person “I don’t like water, so I get extra ice in my sweet tea every day to make sure I get enough water.”
MD (explains how that’s not enough water by a long shot) “how much sweet tea are you drinking every day? Those can have a lot of sugar in them.”
Person “well I get a large one from Hardee’s/McDonalds/ wherever on my way to work with my breakfast and another one on my way home for dinner. Then I have a glass or two when I get home.”
MD “well, that’s a lot of sugar. And a lot of fast food if you are eating it twice a day. What do you eat at home?”
Person “I don’t like to cook so I usually don’t eat anything but little Debbie snack cakes at home.”
MD “those have a lot of sugar too…”
Person “I thought that all I had to do was cut out Mountain Dew! Now you’re saying I can’t eat my food or my snacks?! What are you suggesting I do? Eat salads for every meal?! Why can’t you just up my meds?!”
My sister (who is a new redditor and hope she sees this) is a doctor and 25 years ago when she had her very very first patient out of residency and this patient refused to allow her to see her breasts (which were sore and needed a mammogram to check out a lump). So sister asks why and this girl who is about 30 and single said matter of factly “oh. That’s lesbian. We can’t do that. It’s against the Lord’s wishes.” She loves telling this story at the dinner table at family gatherings. Especially to our religious side.
I think the most frustrating I’ve seen since I was a resident was a very pretty (like stunningly pretty) 17-year-old with what appeared to be normal, loving, affluent parents. She had a tumor in her pelvis (rhabdomyosarcoma) that we could resect to potentially cure her. The parents declined, also declined chemo and said they want to try holistic medicine because that made more sense to them.
I last saw her 3 years ago, she was getting huge lymph nodes removed from her groin because they were unsightly. Obviously metastatic disease. The parents did not want the primary tumor removed and again declined chemo.
I see 100 patients/week probably, lots of devastatingly sad cases. But I still think about that girl, listening to her parents, costing her life. I bet she’s dead now.
I can assure people, doctors are not trying to swindle you, give you unnecessary care, or have some ulterior motive in this sort of setting. 99.99% of doctors are treating patients the same way they’d treat family, so try not to be dense, we want to help.
My dad is a pediatrician. He told me the story of a teenage boy (around 13 y/o) who was referred to him (something unrelated, can’t remember what). When he asked him if he was on medications, the boy’s mom pulled out some birth control pills. Apparently, his family physician suggested birth control as a way to treat his acne.
Yes, you read that correctly. A licensed doctor told a teenage BOY that was just going through puberty to take female hormones as acne treatment.
I think he had been taking them regularly for the past year…
While on dermatological rotation, a Middle Eastern patient saw me with what she described as some funny, itching growth in her butt crack. Some quick investigation revealed it to be a severe case of genital warts. I explained the diagnosis and that it was an STD until she shockingly assured me that she was still a virgin. Now virginity is a big issue for young Muslim women (or perhaps their families even more), but apparently, that doesn’t cover anal sex and therefore no birth control in the form of, say, condoms was needed.
EMT here, I had a grown adult trying to explain to Me that someone else sh*t his pants. Got toned out for finger pain at a homeless shelter at 0200, we get there and the guy jumps in the truck with very mild swelling to the tip of his right index finger. Here’s how the conversation went:
Me: so what happened?
Patient: I smoked some meth and then I fell asleep in my bunk and I woke up next to my bunk and my finger hurt and there was poop!
Me: there was poop..? Did you fall in poop..?
Patient: no no, like in my pants!
Me: so… you pooped your pants?
Patient: no! It wasn’t me!
Me: so let me get this straight… you smoked meth, took a nap, rolled out of bed in your sleep, hurt your finger, and someone ELSE came along and sh*t in your pants before you woke up…?
I was working in GP and had a patient scheduled for an appointment. Looked through his notes to gain an idea of why he may be seeing me and saw he’d been seen a few times with knee pains/shoulder pains and the like. The guy is in his 70s so probably just arthritis. I’m thinking I’ll do an examination of his sore joints and ask a few questions, prescribe some painkillers and it’ll be a quick one.
Call him in and he walks in sits down and is cheery as anything.
“What seems to be the problem then, sir? I notice you’ve had some issues recently with sore joints” I ask.
He then proceeds to tell me about this sore knee. So I check his knee and take a history and it all seems fine. Ask anything else and he’s like oh actually my neck is sore too. So I check his neck and nothing untoward was found there either. At this point, he’s like ok well thanks doc I’ll be off then.
I say to him oh good glad we could help. And you have no other pains at all before you go? He then sits back down and tells me he’s been having central, crushing chest pain radiating down his left arm and into his jaw since last night and has been feeling breathless and when it happened he had an impending sense of doom.
I know a lot of you won’t be doctors here but I’m sure you all recognise signs of a Myocardial Infarction there. He had all the classic textbooks symptoms.
Called an ambulance and he was rushed to the hospital for Percutaneous Coronary Intervention.
Well, here in Mexico we have something called social service (Our college education is free in some institutions, so we have to pay for it with one year of free work in a rural area).
So the first month a woman in her 30s came to consult because she was feeling weird in the mornings since forever. I asked what her symptoms were and she told me that every day she wakes up feeling her mouth dry and that feeling disappears in about one or two hours. “well lady, how much water do you drink?” “Hmm, one or maybe two glasses, one at breakfast, and one middle day”
“Do you know what thirst is?” “Yeah, when you drink water so you can piss”
So I had a conversation that took one hour long about what thirst is and how it feels, also I had to tell her that she needed to drink more water.
I was a newly minted graduate with fresh and optimistic views on my life as a doctor. Second week in came this old lady and her very dysfunctional family.
They would argue and complain about everything, from the food, the nurses they didn’t like and every single medical decision we made. She was very very sick so her management was just as complicated.
She had several children and they all didn’t like one another and would not talk to one another. Each time we would have to explain a long update to every single one of them because they “are entitled to hear it from a doctor”.
One of these stories being sitting down and explaining why you don’t give Gatorade as an IV drip. They did not understand why we were giving “salt water” to her.
Conversation with her son:
“Look she likes Gatorade, she is drinking it so why can’t you give it to her through her drip?”
We explain why.
Son frowns. “But it’s isotonic.”
We explain again.
“Yes but Gatorade has more electrolytes.”
We explain again.
“Salt water just seems to be too cheap. Cant, you give her something else closer to Gatorade? That has electrolytes?”
Continues for two hours. Wash and repeat every day during her admission.
Afterwards, I told my fiance. He opened up a scene from Idiocracy on youtube and I just sat there with my mouth open for a while.
Not a doctor (yet) but an ER tech for ~2 years. Mom comes in with her baby plus two more older kids. Complains that the baby hasn’t pooped in a while and won’t stop crying. As I’m settling them in with one of the nurses, the baby is bawling, like an opera singer’s lungs bawling. Suddenly mom whips out a white plastic shopping bag and sticks an end in the kid’s mouth, saying “this is the only way she stops crying.” The nurse and I share a look and immediately order an emergency x-ray of the kid’s stomach. Turns out she had ingested a good amount of these bags and it was blocking up in her stomach. Big deal, potentially life-threatening. When we confront the mom about her baby’s feeding habits her only words of defense are “Well I checked all over the bag and I couldn’t find anything that said “non-edible”
During a residency in an urban NE USA city, I was in a clinic. A very pleasant 50s-something lady came in for a physical. Everything was going fine when she casually asks if there are any new vaccines out. She was up to date with everything so I asked if she had any specific concerns. She was casually asking to see if she could vaccinate her gay adult son against homosexuality. Very nice, and always had a smile on her face, even when I broke the “bad” news to her
I’m a paramedic. I delivered a baby in the back of the ambulance and placed it on the mother’s chest. I asked her what its name was (can’t remember if the was a boy or girl) and she looked at me and said “I thought you named it”
I really should have run with it but I was too surprised that she actually thought that.
I had a 20-something-year-old patient that came into the community OB-GYN clinic and was found to have chlamydia and gonorrhea infection. I looked in her chart, and she had been treated already for both in the past numerous times. And, looks like she had gotten pregnant and had a kid. I had the “condoms prevent PREGNANCY AND STDS talk” with her. Apparently, no one had ever told her that before, she had no idea. Made me realize community health is a huge problem, especially in low socioeconomic areas.
As an optometrist, I’ve had several patients come to me for an exam because “the medicine ran out of my glasses”. I still wonder if it’s just an expression they have, or if they really believe there is medicine in the glasses that runs out.
In medical school, I did a forensic psychiatry rotation. Part of this rotation involved working at the courthouse trying to do assessments of people accused of crimes in an attempt to see if they were competent to stand trial. Sometimes those with severe mental health issues obviously aren’t competent to stand trial. Sometimes, those accused were obviously trying to fake being mentally ill to try to get out of the trial. But in a few cases, there were people with some issues, but they weren’t really bad issues, they just needed a little education on the US judicial system and how it works. So they put together a class on the judicial system for the prostitutes of DC with no mental health issues, but just no education on how a trial works.
And who would be the best person to lead these classes? The rotating medical student of course.
“So, my name is medical student Knight_in_gale, and we are here today to talk about how the trial system works. Let’s start with going through the courtroom and talking about who is who. For instance, who is the person who sits behind the big bench at the head of the room?”
“The judge!”
“That’s right! And what does the judge do?”
“He says ‘ORDER IN THE COURT!'”
“Yes…he does. But he also is the person in charge of the trial, and in many cases, he is the person who you need to convince that you are innocent of a crime. Who is the lawyer that sits next to you.”
“He’s the f*cking man!”
“Yes, he is. He’s your defense attorney. He is there to help you plead your case about why you are innocent or why you don’t deserve harsh punishment. Who is the other lawyer in the room?”
“The prostitution!”
“No, actually, you are the prostitution in this case. He is the ‘prosecution’, though to be fair some people don’t see much of a difference.”
That was a long rotation. I learned a lot about the difference between doctors and lawyers, and how being uneducated leads not only to poor medical care but also to not being able to defend yourself in court.
I was consulted on a patient in the ER who had eye pain (I am an ophthalmologist, different from an optometrist). It ends up that he had worn a contact in his eye for 8 months without removing it. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he had found this contact on the bathroom floor of a club…popped it in and it helped him see better. I didn’t ask a lot more questions about the specifics. He had a rip-roaring corneal ulcer. I gave him some antibiotic drops and set up a follow-up. Didn’t see him again until about 7 months later, when he showed up in the ER again after wearing a new set of contacts for 6 months. These ones he had found in a dumpster behind a drugstore, albeit they were unopened this time… We had another conversation about sleeping in contacts indefinitely.
I am a physical therapist who was on a clinical rotation in a hospital on the ortho floor. There was a patient who left the hospital following a total hip replacement and dislocated the hip in a fall at home. She was brought back to the hospital and I saw her in her room to walk her around the floor. She was convinced she was kidnapped from her home and brought to a fake hospital where she was being held, hostage. I had to sit there for a half hour and try to convince her of what actually happened, and that she was in a real hospital with real people that weren’t all actors. She had some really good points though and made me really question my reality.
Son of a physician here. Was told an interesting one a while back.
Basically, there were some patients who would have rings put around the top of the stomach in an attempt to make it so they couldn’t eat as much food (they’d get sick if they had more than could pass through the ring if I recall correctly). The idea was that this would help in reducing weight in patients who drastically needed it down so as to help with their health issues.
Well, some of them would learn that if you ate only a little over what the ring would allow at a time, you’d eventually be able to eat ridiculously large servings again. This was because the ring would stretch out over time.
You can imagine what the conversation between the doctor and the patient was like when the doctor found out what the patient had been doing.
I’m not a doctor but my friend is. This is one of my favorite stories. A couple came in because the woman was getting sick. The doctor asked if she could be pregnant. They said there is no way because she is on birth control. My friend said are you taking it every day at the same time. She said no, it was making me feel sick, so my husband has been taking it for me. My friend said she almost started laughing but somehow held it together.
Dental hygienist here. It’s unbelievable how many people tell me they “had a toothache so they took some leftover antibiotics from their last sinus/bladder/whatever infection.”
I’ve started telling them: “Please don’t do that anymore. You are the reason MRSA exists. Don’t self-medicate. Antibiotics aren’t a magic fix-all pill. And for god’s sake, finish antibiotics that are prescribed to you.”
Parents do this to their kids. Adults do it to themselves. People pop antibiotics like candy and then don’t finish the dosage administered because they feel better..
I had a guy in his mid-fifties come in for a blood sugar screening. He was at ~18 mmol/l, which is VERY high. He didn’t have any symptoms and claimed to have a fairly regular diet. Then he remembered that his wife had made a batch of pralines (basically pure sugar) and he had eaten “about 35” in the hour before coming in. He was beyond perplexed when I told him to never again eat a f*cking pound of sugar in an hour.
Emergency nurse practitioner here. Had a patient once with a bowel obstruction, and we were placing a nasogastric tube to suction so the patient didn’t have to continue puking their guts up. The family (consisting of an adult daughter and son) wanted to know why it was necessary to put the patient through an NG tube. This is totally a reasonable question because placing an NG tube is pretty traumatic!
I explained that because the gut contents cannot move forward past the obstruction, they were backing up and causing the patient to vomit. They stared at me blankly. I asked a few questions to clarify what part they didn’t understand…and it turns out they didn’t have the basic fundamental understanding that the food you put in your mouth travels downward through the stomach and intestines, then exits as feces.
I tried to explain this process very quickly, very basically (think elementary school, health class). I was met with further blank stares, then “Could this be because of some cold cuts they ate this morning?”
I couldn’t bring myself to just say “YES, IT WAS THE HAM.” I just didn’t say anything. Just told them “No, not really” and left it at that.
My friend’s mum works with couples sort of at the first stage of infertility treatment. She tells this story about a young couple, from quite a strict religious background who came in for treatment as they had been married for a year and had been unable to conceive. She had almost finished asking the questions, and after a few quite innocent responses to questions, asked if they had actually had sex… And they hadn’t. Bless them, no one had ever explained it to them! So she had to give them a quick sex Ed class and send them on their way.
I had a mom call our triage line because her 1-year-old daughter had been diagnosed with an ear infection and she was concerned that the doctor prescribed an “overdose” of antibiotics.
I pulled up the record and her daughter had indeed been seen in the office the day before, diagnosed with an ear infection, and given a prescription for amoxicillin suspension (the kind that’s bright pink and tastes like bubblegum), 2 teaspoons twice a day.
I explained that this looked like a perfectly reasonable dose for an ear infection.
She said, “but 2 teaspoons don’t even fit in her ear!!!”
I had to ask to put her on hold for a minute so I could figure out whether I wanted to laugh or cry.
Had a guy with severe congestive heart failure. Already had some sort of bypass judging by the zipper scar on his chest. Swore UP AND DOWN he ate healthily.
“No salt nurse I promise”. I don’t eat a lick of it. I just go to Panda Express. I looked at him thinking he was joking.
Nope. The man eats at Panda Express 3 days a week. Then his brother sold him out and said he ate Mcdonalds’ that morning.
I had a guy come into the emergency dept, who stank to high heaven, that gangrene foot smell we all become so accustomed to. I asked, “what’s the problem?”
“Well, doc it’s my foot, it’s been bothering me for a while” The odor from this guys foot could strip paint from walls, I have no idea how he has ignored it, he goes on to explain he’s been “dealing” with it, read ignoring, for a few months, to the point that his trainers squelch with PUS when he steps.
“So…why did you finally come in today?”
“Well, doc I woke up and realized I only had 9 toes” “Well…..where did you leave it last time you used it”
Once I had a patient with an abscess on her hand. And mind you, this is India, where the rural people are superstitious. I asked why did you wait for so long? She said this is actually our Goddess giving me punishment for something I had done. ‘Then why come now? Won’t the Goddess treat it?’, I said. She said, no the Goddess gives only punishment. I shook my head and began draining it, incapable of further conversation.
I had to explain to a patient that pasta doesn’t count as a vegetable and that, consequently, 400g of pasta per day wouldn’t meet the recommended daily amount of vegetables.
I had to tell a patient at the department for vascular surgery, who had been smoking for decades, had been told a thousand times to quit and had already had a movement of a pulmonary lobe done because of cancer, that his leg had to be removed below the knee because the blood wasn’t going through his vessels to the foot anymore.
His only reaction was the question: “but I can continue smoking, right?”
Counseling a woman on nutrition (her 8-year-old son was morbidly obese), asking her if they ate vegetables. She said he won’t eat vegetables. She said the only way she ever got him to eat vegetables was by baking corn into brownies, and even then he just picked the corn out and ate the brownies. At least she was honest.
Basic education about nutrition is sorely needed in this country. All it would take is a few short sessions with a dietician, but insurance almost never covers that. They’ll gladly pay for most diabetes, cholesterol, and blood pressure meds, though.
I had to inform my 22 yr old cousin that the rule her bible college had of “boys and girls must sit at least 3 ft away from each other in a hot tub” did not mean it was possible for a girl to become pregnant if she sat too close to a boy.
Had a 33 yr old female explain to me in the clinic that she was having abdominal pain, bloating and cramping. It was usually mild and occurred like clockwork every month, a couple of days before she would start her period. This is how she knows that her period was going to start. She wanted to know if this was normal, or a sign of something more sinister.
I thought most women figured this out at about age 13. (Also the age of her menarche).
