Doctors Share Their Encounters With The Dumbest Patients

In the fast-paced world of medicine, healthcare professionals encounter a vast array of patients, each with their unique needs, concerns, and sometimes, puzzling moments. While most interactions are marked by professionalism and a shared goal of well-being, there are instances that leave doctors scratching their heads in disbelief.

These are the stories that highlight the quirkiest, most perplexing, and yes, sometimes downright dumb moments in the realm of patient care. So, sit back, and prepare to be amazed by the tales of medical marvels and the doctors who navigated them with wit, patience, and the occasional facepalm.

1. The Case of the Forgotten Cast

A patient came in stating that he couldn’t bend his knee.  

I asked him to remove his trousers so I could examine his leg.  After he removed his trousers the reason that he couldn’t bend his knee was that he had a plaster cast around his knee.

Checking his notes, he had been sent numerous letters asking him to come in for removal of this plaster cast, and as he hadn’t attended any of the outpatient clinics the hospital had assumed that he had removed the cast himself.

Ochib

I had a mom and grandma bring their 12-year-old daughter/granddaughter to the emergency room because she was bleeding. 

Not from trauma or a wound mind you, the poor girl had started her period and the mom didn't want to explain what was  happening or started to happen, nor that it would continue to happen (as mom and grandma well knew.)

On the upside, it was a very quick ER visit once they were seen.

oracle9999

I had to explain to a 17-year-old girl and her mother that she was not in fact "allergic" to alcohol, but she was just hungover.

She complained that on nights when she drank too much vodka, usually on an empty stomach, she would feel nauseous, flushed, and sometimes vomit in the morning. 

But it didn't happen all the time, and there were no other typical symptoms of an allergic reaction.  

glioblastomamulti

Irate mom wanted to speak to the doctor because we took an "unauthorized" urine pregnancy test on her 16-year-old daughter just before the x-rays.

"I never consented and now she's traumatized." Explained that it was a standard in females of child-bearing age and that consent to treatment was signed upon entrance to the facility. 

Not good enough. They were rich Southeast Asian and I suspected that this routine was perceived as an insult to their status. 

Melecheveryday

I once had a child who swallowed a sizable magnet that passed to the intestine and we were just waiting for it to pass in the stool.

 The next day when he came for follow-up we just found out that he swallowed another one that got stuck to the first magnet in the intestine through the stomach wall resulting in intestinal obstruction and he was transferred to or immediately to have them surgically removed.

velvetrevolver7

I worked at a pain management clinic. In an attempt to combat opioid use/addiction/abuse, a lot of patients were prescribed a medicated cream. It looked a lot like sunscreen, and you just rubbed it onto the hurting areas. 

I watched the nurse carefully and slowly explain how to rub it onto the skin, using small, uncomplicated words and going through the motions of applying it several times... 

But every so often, patients would complain that their cream "tastes bad".

Erisianistic

Paramedic….

Got a call for a stroke. The patient had facial droop and slurred speech and said that it felt just like the last time she had a stroke (ten years ago). 

Says that the symptoms came on about "four days ago" and she knew the moment it was happening that it was a stroke, but didn't go to the hospital because she "thought she could make it go away on her own."

SeitedeMarie

There was a 24-year-old patient who was brought in from a jail in a rural country. He was working at the roadside cleanup when he found a bottle in a ditch that he thought contained alcohol and he quickly chugged it down. To be fair it did look like whiskey. It wasn’t.

It turned out it was a substance that contained sulfuric acid. Its pH was less than 2.5...it just ate up the litmus paper. So shortly after he gets to the ICU he is in excruciating pain and vomiting blood.

The gastroenterologist took him to do an EGD (basically a procedure where they can look at the esophagus, stomach, and duodenum with a camera attached to a flexible tube) and the pictures were horrendous. 

You could see his stomach and esophageal mucosa eroding.

He had to be sent off to another hospital where they had an esophageal surgeon who could repair the mess. He of course needed multiple surgeries and had a very long hospital stay. 

I saw him a few months later when he was admitted for another issue. He was down to 90 lbs (from about 150) and was getting fed through a PEG tube. 

He was very lucky to be young and otherwise healthy (but not very smart).

LedRaptor

Paramedic here:

Called for a diabetic. I get there and the patient is an older gentleman who is lying on a bed with what looks like a white mask on. 

I asked what was going on, and the family goes on to explain that he's diabetic and the doctor told them to give him frosting if his sugar got low because the sugar content would perk him up. 

Turned out he didn't explain that they should put it in his mouth. 

That's right. They put a white frosting mask on this poor guy. Shocker: It didn't work. 

BeefyMcPissflaps

Not a doctor but a dental nurse. 

My favorite was a 30-something-year-old woman who came in for a check-up at the emergency low-cost clinic I worked at. 

Her teeth were broken and almost black and her gums were angry swollen, bright red, and bleeding by just moving her tongue against them, needed multiple scaling/hygienist appointments and a debridement (honestly YouTube has some amazingly disgusting videos of this treatment but maybe keep the sound off if you don’t like the scraping sound). 

X-ray showed she had all but her wisdom teeth and 10 fillings, root canals to try and save some teeth, and extractions for I think 3 but more if the RCT didn’t work. 

Explained everything and did the usual explanation of proper oral hygiene. 

Asked her if she had any questions to which she said...

“it’s okay if I lose this set of teeth, my others will come through”. 

Me and the dentist just looked at each other probably a lot longer than we should have. No words. I couldn’t think of anything to reply to that comment. 

I had a lot of weird and disgusting things happen at that clinic. I miss working there. 

darkerthanmysoul

My wife is an RN who works at an outpatient surgery center.  Cataract surgery is one of the common surgeries that they do.

Patients are told that after the surgery, they should put eye drops in  4 times a day for one week, so 28 drops altogether.

One patient asked if it would be okay to just put the 28 drops in all at once so they didn’t have to deal with it for a week…

barto5

My mum works in a hospital, and the techs from radiology always have the best stories.

Last week they had a male patient with a huge carrot up his butt.

He came from a conservative area, by bus, standing cause could not sit. It was a 3-hour bus ride.

If I ever could change my job I wanna be a radiology tech.

BlueberryKind

Oh no if we're talking stupid ED visits. 

A woman came in because she got stung by a bee, was not allergic, and had no reaction. It just hurt. 

A woman brought her kid in because he got stung by a bee, not allergic, and did not react.

An entire family came in because they found a dead mouse in their apartment. 

A woman came in for a 2nd degree burn on her arm. That was roughly the size of a tic tac. 

A woman spent like 5 minutes explaining to me that because of all the vaccinations we give dogs we're seeing a rise in doggie autism. (I like to call it autism)

Nurum

Not a doctor, but work at an ER. I was putting in charges one night and one of the doctors had forgotten to mark the chart appropriately, so I looked at the diagnosis. It read "Imagined object in a female reproductive organ". 

I went back to joke about this and got the story. A woman came in and said she'd accidentally sat on a cactus and had spines in her reproductive organ.

The doctor (with a female nurse in the room) had to go looking and never found a single thing, including any wounds or signs of irritation. 

When I asked why someone would do that (sarcastically) the doctor at the time said "Well, I guess if you've got nothing better to do on a Friday night" 

Patitomuerto

A 20-year-old girl came in with abdominal pains. We did a pregnancy test and she was pregnant. 

She acted surprised because she was on pills. I asked her how long she'd been on it and if she had been taking it daily, as prescribed. 

As if it were the most logical thing on the planet she said she did not take it daily because she did not have to sleep with someone daily. 

I looked at her trying hard not to laugh. She only took them right after she had slept with her boyfriend, "so maybe a couple of times a week". 

aniwrack

Had a guy come into the ER for hiccups one day lol

I just got a million messages as to why hiccups almost killed people or some guy they know. Holy crap. 

This was not the case. No acute symptoms, no abdominal or thoracic complaints, no pain, no SOB or dyspnea, no abnormalities, normal rad exams.

He just came in because he was hiccuping. He was not dying. It wasn't a vagus nerve tumor or acute pancreatitis. It was hiccups. Just. Hiccups. Calm your tits Jesus lmao. 

rileyharp88

I had a patient on my OB-GYN rotation who was in her 50s and decided that her clitoris was growing and needed to be removed. She came in 3 different times to talk to different residents over a month and would never understand that she’s always had it and it’s supposed to be there.

We even printed off a diagram of normal female anatomy to explain. Then she started saying her urethra was growing and she wanted that removed. We explained she wouldn’t be able to empty her bladder without it and she then demanded her bladder be taken out too.

I think she should have been referred to psych…

so-lissencephalic

Dental student. I have a patient who claimed to have gone to medical school. Here are some gems from this patient:

Patient: Hey doc do I need to move my head medial or distal? Me: no. Move your head to the right. 

Patient: Do you remember the Matt Hassleback equation from organic chemistry? (This is the Old QB of the Seattle Seahawks).

Patient after looking at the X-ray or a radiopaque (has density) mass in their mandible: Doc this is a malignant mass because I don't have the... The... Lymphadenopathy. (Malignant means the bad cells can invade other areas. Aka it's bad. 

The mass in the X-ray was a supernumerary tooth aka extra tooth. It is within the spectrum of normal) 

Patient: Can you adjust my lingualized occlusion, please? My mesiodistal cusps are fracturing. (There is no such thing as lingualized occlusion. There are no "mesiodistal" cusps. The patient has severe bruxism.)

TLDR; The patient claims to have gone to medical school but uses phrases that would indicate otherwise.

Macabalony

MD here:

I saw a young woman in the Emergency Department.  Her primary complaint, per the triage nurse's note, was "lethargy" but she was awake and alert when I went to see her. 

 I told her that she didn't look lethargic, and most patients who are lethargic come by ambulance rather than walking into the ED, so I was wondering what she meant.  She started to tell me, "Well, last night while I was sleeping...", and I interrupted her because, of course, people are a bit lethargic when they are sleeping. 

But I caught myself and asked her to continue. She then tells me this story: "So last night when I was sleeping, I was talking in my sleep.  People have always told me that I talk in my sleep: my family, roommates, you know.  So anyway, I was talking in my sleep, and I was saying, 'Mary, (that's my roommate's name), Mary - Wake me up!'  And it was really hard for her to wake me from sleep."

Me: "And that's why you're here today?"

Her: "Yes."

ToxDocMD

A friend of mine is a gynecologist and she told me that once she had a patient come in and tell her that she cannot sleep with anyone anymore because her partners complain that her reproductive organ stinks badly but she’s never noticed. 

So the doc asked questions like ‘Have you been using any new soaps or creams?’ ‘Are you allergic to anything?’ and the patient said no.

Doc examined the patient's private part and the smell was so unbearable, that she suspected a major infection. Then she realizes that she can't see inside properly, and she grabs her tweezers (idk the proper name) and prods - she hits something cushiony. 

She started to pull gently and extracted a tampon, a month-old tampon that was black and green and smelled foul. 

The patient says oh, I thought it had fallen out when I had my last period!’

mygumbopot

I had a fella come into the ER who was stone sober, but only because he had spilled all of his rubbing alcohol onto his pants, which meant he couldn't drink it. 

The reason why he was in the ER in the first place was that he tried to burn the alcohol off of his jeans by lighting the alcohol on fire, thinking the alcohol would burn and not his pants. 

He had some pretty rowdy burns from the calves down because he couldn't get his pants off of his shoes. 

To be honest, pretty nice guy.. absolutely the kind you'd expect to light themself on fire, but he was very pleasant considering the circumstances. 

MildyInnapropiate

Had a patient who was coming back post-lap band for a check-up. What we usually do is revise the patient's weight, etc, and 'tighten' the band or 'loosen' it as needed.

Now the thing to remember is that getting a lap band isn't as easy as just throwing down some money. For six months, the patient must meet with a psychiatrist and a dietitian to understand what they're getting into and if they can adjust their lifestyles and commit. 

A weight loss target (ex: lose ten pounds) is usually set for the end of the six months to ensure the patient is serious. So after all of this rigorous evaluation, a patient is deemed fit for an operation.

Enter my patient 'Sylvia'. I checked her chart, BMI before surgery was 40, she was morbidly obese, and now had come in for her first follow-up to ascertain if she'd lost any weight.

 Well, I put her on the scale, calculated, and what do I see? Her BMI was now 45. Perplexed, I asked her to explain her diet to me.

Sylvia- Well I've been doing a liquid diet just like you all said

Me- Very good! Can you maybe what you have?

Sylvia- I make smoothies and have them whenever I feel hungry.

Me- So what do you put in your smoothies?

Sylvia- Cake and ice cream.

Me- .....

Yup. She was serious. Somehow it didn't occur to her that this wouldn't be healthy. We reversed her band.

Tl;dr: Patient on lap band gains weight having ice cream and cake shakes.

dudeimmadoc

An older lady was brought into the ED barely conscious by her husband. In a very thick Italian accent, she told the doctor she was dying. She had complained of feeling tingly and having a dry mouth prior to passing out. 

The doctor sat the husband down and they did a history. No serious medical problems and she was very fit. She spent the morning cleaning her son's bar, as she often did on a Sunday morning. 

Considering her age they took these symptoms very seriously and began running tests to find the source of her ailments. 

The son came in to visit his mother, and on the way, he bypassed his bar. 

He noticed that his mother had helped herself to some of the 'treats' prepared the night before. 

The son, the apple of his parent's eye, had to then explain to his father and the doctor that the treats she had enjoyed were space cakes. And she enjoyed them as she ate quite a few. 

They then had to sit down and tell this elderly lady that she was not dying and that she was stoned! 

Fortunately, she was still high enough to see the humor. 

TL;DR- an elderly lady was convinced she was dying but later found out she was just stoned. 

undertheraduh

Had a little boy with very little intestine left after many surgeries had removed dead or non-functioning bowel. 

So he could not eat by mouth or stool out of his rectum, he was fed a high-calorie, highly nutritious formula through a tube in his stomach, which then went through for absorption, ending in his ileostomy bag. 

As you can imagine, it was very hard for his body to retain calories or nutrients so his growth and development were very behind. 

One day he was brought into the ED by his mom because he was dumping too much liquid stool into his bag.

He was brought in on a gurney, holding a bag of Cheetos and drinking Pepsi in a baby bottle.

SheWhoComesFirst

Dentist here.  In school, I had a 70-year-old pt who was still in the dating game and looked like that old lady who just died who played the Genie.  (I was thinking of Joan Rivers) 

She's got a ton of acid erosion on her teeth.  Tells me she drinks on "3-O" water.  Didn't know what was in it.  We looked it up on Google. That'd be a pH of 3. All of her water. Plus,  she likes to put lemons in her water. 

I told her that it was also acidic. She told me I was wrong because her friend who took a few nutrition classes said that as soon as lemon juice gets into the body,  it turns basic.  

I told her I had a biochemistry degree...  And that was wrong.  

Also, her blood pressure is super high every visit.  She tells me that she stopped taking her BP Meds because she thought they were unhealthy.  I told her that her method wasn't working at all.  

A few weeks later,  she strokes out and never gets out of a wheelchair again.  

I'm friends with/ her online now. It's just sad.  

spastic_raider

I'm a student and my GP supervisor was involved in a scheme to reduce A&E waiting times by having a GP in A&E to take patients who weren't actually in an accident or an emergency.  

As none of the patients were dangerously ill I was doing the consultations with the doctor supervising, double-checking, signing prescriptions, etc.

A guy in his late 20s walks in, looking very healthy, and sits down.  "I was stung by a bee this morning".  *ok*  "Where?"  "On my cheek"  *There's no swelling or anything visible.*  "How long ago was this?"  "Well it took me about half an hour to get here and then I've been waiting another three and a half hours"  *I wonder why.*  "Did it stop you from swallowing or breathing?"  "No."  "Are you allergic?"  "No." *Umm...* "What would you like us to do?"  "Check I'm ok."...

At this point, I turned around to my supervisor attempting to say WTF do I do here?  He says "You're ok, go home."

It was the most surreal consultation I've ever had.

Rob_da_Mop

I work as a receptionist/office assistant at a large clinic, so I'm not a doctor but I do deal with a lot of patients. I haven't been doing it for very long but I have a couple of interactions that come to mind.

One was a lady wanting to know if our clinic would do a "reproductive test" on her because her PCP told her they don't do that. It took me way too long to explain it's not a real thing. 

  Another lady needed to get tested for STDs, not weird, but she said she needed us to send the results to her prospective employer. Uh, why?? We told her we wouldn't do that but she could come get a copy of her results and do whatever she wanted with it.  

She did but came back later the same day and said we gave her the wrong test results. We double-checked, and nope, those are definitely her test results. 

Trying to sort this out with her, I asked her why her employers would want an STD test anyway.

She said it's to make sure she doesn't have "tubulars" Then it dawned on me. She meant Tuberculosis. She needed a TB test, not an STD test. She gets angry and yells that we're just trying to trick her into taking more tests so we can charge her more. 

Then she stormed out… 

Charlie351b

I’m a medical student and I have seen a fair number of dumb people already in my first 6 months. 

Young (20s) diabetic girl wasn't compliant with her treatment and all of the dialysis clinics in the city won't accept her anymore. Now she can't/won't go to the suburbs for her dialysis and will likely die within a few weeks unless that changes. 

My advice: if your kidneys don't work, you should probably show up for your dialysis appointments. 

A severely obese man was in the hospital after he fell, needing his edema, heart, and lung problems to be treated. Insisted that he only needed help with his legs, and started raising his voice and refusing to answer questions because he said they weren't relevant. 

Then at the end of the interview, he started complaining about his shortness of breath. It was all a mess... 

And then there's the psych patients but that seems like it doesn't count.

Totodile_

I work in the ED and I had a shift in pediatrics. It was a particularly busy day and people were overflowing out of the chairs so it took a while to get to the non-critical patients. 

One mom had been sitting with her daughter for 2 hours (not too long considering how busy it was) and insisted that her daughter be seen. 

Me: So what brought you in today

Mom: *angrily* I have been waiting for over an hour and no one has come to help my daughter and she is dying!

Me: OK! let me see if I can help what seems to be the problem?

Mom: She has a headache

Me: OK.. tell me more about the headache

Daughter: Well I don't have a headache anymore...

Mom: What?!?!

We have been waiting here so long my daughter doesn't even have a headache anymore! I want to talk to your supervisor. 

Me: ......

elementalwason

I'm a postpartum nurse. This isn't so weird as sad, but I've never forgotten it.

I had a patient ask me, "Do you ever feel like everyone is watching you and judging you?" I told her, yes, I suppose everyone feels that way sometimes.

Then she said, "And when you feel that way, don't you just need a little cocaine?" To which I answered 'um, no,' while thinking 'If I did, would I tell you?'

Also, she kept fiddling with her plain fluid IV to make it run faster. I'm pretty sure she thought there was something in it. I had to put it on a pump.

The people judging her were her parents. Who had custody of her children? Because she was engaged to a man who molested one of them. After I found that out, I kind of judged her, too.

rixie_rhee

Physician here: Worked in the ER when an older couple came in after the gentleman sustained a fall at home. The couple retired and lived by themselves, and the wife drove him there. 

He never lost consciousness but we checked him out and ran all types of blood tests from his vitamin levels to syphilis including head CT, etc. Anyways everything came up negative including a somewhat thorough physical exam. 

There was a smell coming from him that we just could not figure out what it was. I noticed that we never took his socks off. 

Upon further inspection, it seems he was wearing two socks on the left. I proceeded to remove the socks and out fell 2 of his toes from the left foot and the rest just stuck like glue to the sock. 

We proceed to ask them questions about how they never noticed his toes getting to the condition where they are falling apart and to this his wife says, [paraphrase] 'Doc we didn't think it was that important, we couldn't stand the smell so I told him to just keep the socks on and never take them off'. He kept trying to ward off the smell by just adding another sock on top of the one that had gotten glued to his toes. 

uniquver1837

In my first week as a junior doctor, I was asked to bleed a patient who had been admitted with abdominal pain, (? appendicitis).

The tests were routine biochemistry and hematology to check her blood count and inflammatory markers. 

Explained all this to her but she still asked am I taking the "bad blood away". Once again I explained the reason why I was doing the blood test but it just wouldn't sink in. 

Didn't help that she had around 5 family members all around her and it was difficult to bleed lots of "subcutaneous tissue" covering her veins. In the end, I managed to successfully get blood from a vein in her foot. 

Her dad said, "Thanks doctor, now that bad blood is gone it should mean she doesn't need surgery right?..." Trying my best to keep a straight face; I replied that I'll be back with the results in half an hour or so and got the heck outta there. 

moozdee3

Med student here.

I was working with an endocrinologist in her outpatient clinic. This patient was being treated for her diabetes. 

She had long been noncompliant with her diet and medications. We had tried everything and the patient was just not doing anything about her disease.

The doctor being fed up told her what was going to happen to her if she didn't start caring for herself. They got mad at the doctor and drove to the store, came back with a bag full of candy bars and decided to sit outside in the waiting room and eat her candy to spite the doctor. 

I just don't know sometimes.

daklaw

I'm a pharmacist from Ireland so not a doctor. But I remember a colleague telling me about one story.

  She asked a patient where the suppositories she had been prescribed benefitted her condition (I think they were anti-inflammatory) She replied "Useless! I might as well have stuck em up my butt" 

I honestly think patients aren't really stupid but more so they haven't had their conditions explained to them correctly or else don't want to admit or believe they have a chronic illness. Adds more stress to an already stressful life :(

budderisback

Optometrist here. 

"Better 1, or 2?"

"FZBDE"

"Better 1, or 2?"

"FZBDE"

"Better 1, or 2?"

Alternatively: "1 is sharper, but 2 is bolder"

FacePalm...  Every damn day.

That or "There is bleeding in the back of your eyes and your blood pressure is 205/110 and I'm sending you to the ER. I'm calling ahead so they know what to expect"

"Yeah, I feel fine so I'm not going. Thanks".

liarliarplants4hire

(Only been working 2 years but damn do I have a lot of stories for this exact topic) I'm a rural family doctor doing locums and was working at a city family practice clinic when I saw this patient.

21 y/o female, not overweight, in no distress, and appears quite well

Me: "So what brings you in today"

Pt: "I'm pretty sure I had a heart attack"

Me: "Okay, tell me more about why you feel that. what does this pain feel like"

Pt: "like a heart attack"

Me: "Oh I see. When did you last have a heart attack that this feels like"

Pt: "I haven't had one before. But I get this pain every time I have my period. And I've sent my mom to the ER twice with the same pain before so I know it's a heart attack"

She was a non-smoker who had no comorbidities, very non-cardiac sounding chest pain, and no risk factors her mother who was sent into the ED, had an EKG, no bloodwork, and was sent home shortly after (though the patient swears both episodes were heart attacks). 

As I'm about to leave the room and reach for the door she also says "I've also had a stroke about 10-12 years ago..."

tl;dr

A healthy 21 y/o female has chest pains associated with her periods that believes wholeheartedly are heart attacks every month. Made for a very frustrating visit. 

NBNotMyRealName

Paramedic from the UK.

22 year old female

'I keep getting this bleeding from my private part!'

'Oh? Is this a regular occurrence ?'

'Yeah I keep getting it every month, and my stomach !! I call an ambulance every time in case I die from blood loss! It's been going on for 10 years now!'

*applies palm to face*

This woman genuinely had no idea what menstruation was. She was not a smart woman. 

cptgonad

I'm not a doctor but I am an optician. 

I had a guy come in raging that his lenses were scratched and he bought the scratch resistance so this shouldn't happen!

 First off, we give you the scratch resistance for free, it isn't called "scratch impossible" for a reason. 

Second, we also give you a free warranty with a purchase that covers scratches and breaks for an entire year. So it's pretty generous and can be used multiple times a year. 

Turns out his glasses were just dirty. Not a single scratch beneath the filth. I'm not a doctor but I am an optician. 

smokesmagoats

The doctor here, fresh off ER rotation. 

a 60-year-old lady comes in saying she was stung by a wasp on her neck. I saw her after a 3-hour wait. 

"Yep, that looks like a wasp sting, you're not allergic are you?"

"No, do I need anything for it?"

"No"

"OK" *happily leaves*

My other favorite is the genius who called an ambulance because he burnt his mouth on hot pizza, then came running into the department shouting when the ambulance refused to take him 400 yards from his apartment to the ER.

TommyMac

I've worked in a dentist's office for about 10 years now. Just doing computer stuff and insurance checking and all that jazz.

I'll never forget the time one of our patients came in, blood all over her mouth like a vampire walked in.

She wanted pain pills (later on we figured out she sold them) so bad that she took a butcher knife to one of her teeth to try and force it into getting pulled. 

I couldn't imagine the determination she must've had to jam a knife into her teeth. The situation still screws me up.

rhynotheimpaler

I'm a nurse in a ward where anyone with a heart condition is welcome. 

Got a call from the ER: 

Male nurse: "Name, age, yada-yada, has cognitive heart failure"

Me: "CONGESTIVE heart failure??"

Male nurse: "YES"

Me: "Are you sure this is what it is? The doc said that?"

Male nurse: "YES"

Me: "... alright...send him up..."

Oh boy.

The diagnosis was of course supposed to be _congestive_ heart failure.

PM_ME_YOUR_FUNNY

This happened to a friend of mine when he was in training to become a paramedic. He was on a ride along, basically, and they had received a call where a woman fell down the stairs. 

They get to the address and knock on the door. The woman who called was inside folding clothes. 

She had been drinking on her medication. Twisted her ankle and called for an ambulance.

 So they asked her if she wanted to go to the hospital. She says yes, then proceeds to the fridge to poor "One more for the road."

Higher_than_you

Nurse here. Had a patient come in for hyperglycemia and high blood sugar. In the 800's (normal is 70-100). After her blood sugar stabilized to a whopping 300, this obese snitch ordered Chinese food, and a medium pizza was delivered to her room. After eating all of it, calls and asks me to bring her some cereal. 

I told her no and I'm checking her blood sugar instead. She proceeds to come out of her room at 1 am screaming " I need my goddamn cereal, I eat my cereal every night. 

You people are trying to starve me, don't you know I'm diabetic" 

No amount of education in blood sugar levels would satisfy the patient who stated "If my blood sugar is less than 300 it's too low and I have to eat". The charge nurse tries to talk to the patient and she signs herself out against medical advice. Are you kidding me? I could write a book on idiot diabetic patients.

Lulu096

My father is an ER doctor, and he also used to be the doctor for fans at the old Brewer Stadium (County Stadium).  He got seats right behind home plate for free but had to answer a walkie-talkie in case a fan was hurt, usually just drunk and in need of a nap.

The most memorable patient at a Brewers game was the guy who was complaining of abdominal pain and extreme nausea.  

Turns out the moron had lead poisoning.  He had just left the hospital without discharge because he "didn't want to waste the tickets."

 Dad had to contact the ER at the nearest hospital to get him readmitted and his stomach was pumped since he had also drunk 8 or 9 beers. It was the 2nd inning.

Ynomeikiba

I had to talk to two dumb idiots who happened to be gay about their lab results, one was 40 and his partner who was even dumber was around 30, overweight, and probably never exercised a day in his life.

The younger one had a triglyceride level of 4000. When I told him this, his older partner said the following. 

“See I told you!” 

Then he looked at me

“Tell him doctor right? Instead of having a triple meat, he should have a-"

Looks at me with a serious face and I think he is going to say a “salad” or something 

Turns back to his overweight partner 

“Double meat?!”

 I smiled, thanked them for their time, and  walked out of the room

tjvick

During my husband's intern year, an addict brought her infant son to the ED because literal freaking rats had been eating the baby. 

He was alive, barely, but had several wounds, the most damaging being the rats had eaten his private parts. She just asked, "When will it grow back?" 

The child was released into state care, and she was arrested.

[deleted]

Not a Doctor, but EMT.

Had a woman who was in active labor, despite insisting she couldn't be pregnant. 

She said her last period was "like ten months ago," so she'd gone through menopause.

She was 25.

Kaylinwriter14

RN here. I had a pregnant patient who called our L&D unit asking if she should come into the hospital. From her explanation, the midwife on call decided that she should indeed come in to be evaluated, as it sounded as if she were in active labor. 

The patient became concerned and asked if she had enough time to drive home to feed her dogs first. 

Long story short, we told her she could do whatever she deemed necessary at her own risk, though we strongly advised her to find alternative care for the pups because she was a good hour and a half from the hospital.

UniqueByDesign

A female patient presented to the emergency department with severe pain. The patient informed the nurse she had wanted to get 'one of those iuds' so she couldn't get pregnant but couldn't afford it. 

So she did the next best thing. 

She put superglue into her private part and tried to seal off her cervix. Oddly enough, it was causing significant irritation.

Raincoats_George

Not a doctor, but I work in a doctor's office as an MOA. Specifically pediatrics.

A secretary buzzes back to me that there's a call on line two that needs medical advice. I pick it up, and one of our patient's mother is on the phone having a panic attack. She is hyperventilating into the phone. 

I asked her if she was alright, thinking maybe she needed an ambulance, and through her breaths and now tears, she started telling me that she thought her four-year-old son had a skull fracture.

I asked if he fell. No.

I asked if he was conscious. Yes.

I asked if he was breathing. Yes.

I asked if he was bleeding from his ears, eyes, nose, mouth, and scalp. No.

I asked if there was any visible wound. No.

I asked why she thought he fractured his skull. Because underneath his eyes is red and puffy, and Google says that's a skull fracture.

I told her to go to the ER for proper assessment (we don't do MRIs, X-rays, CT Scans).   

She doesn't want to. She says she was supposed to take her kids to the beach. Mind you, she is still crying and breathing heavily at this point. I told her to come right over then but warned her we would probably have to send her to the ER.

She shows up 15 minutes later, cradling the child and crying. The little boy was crying, too, and screaming, "I don't want to die, Mommy!" She kept hushing him and saying, "Mommy loves her strong boy, no matter what!" Which only made him cry harder.

I pulled her back into the room, and she just dissolved as she told me how she looked at him in horror this morning and saw the guaranteed signs of a skull fracture. She swears he must have hit his head yesterday at swim practice.

The little boy is crying hard, but I can see the noticeable swelling and pinkness under the eyes that she is referring to. I went to get the doctor and told her what I thought. She went in and came out about ten minutes later, shaking her head. She had the same diagnosis.

When you wipe your eyes after swimming, do you usually wipe under your eyes, too? The kid must have wiped off his sunscreen around his eyes the day before. All the pinkness and puffiness were from a mild sunburn under his eyes.

bb_or_not_bb

The patient came in with a rash around her mouth; she was going on about how she had it 14 years ago, and the dermatologist prescribed a certain antibiotic to cure it and diagnosed her with "perioral dermatitis." She's showing us pictures on Google. 

Okay.

The doctor diagnoses her with impetigo and prescribes her an antibiotic ointment. She leaves and fills the prescription and comes back, flipping her crap. She googled impetigo and, with the help of WebMD, came to the conclusion that it was a children's disorder on the arms and legs that can only be contracted from children, and she wasn't around children.

Insists that what she believes she has (perioral dermatitis) is a "woman's disorder" and she doesn't have this "children's disease." 

Says that the antibiotic he prescribed isn't on the list of treatments (thanks, WebMD). (It's on the top of the list, actually, of, you know, actual medical books, but whatever)

The whole time, she's showing us these pics off Google of "perioral dermatitis," saying it's a woman's disorder. Half the pictures were of men. Now, one thing you should know is that perioral dermatitis means a rash around the mouth. That's it. 

It doesn't mean crap. It's not a type of rash. It's not only cured by a specific antibiotic. It's just a rash that happens to be around the mouth. She was furious, shaking with rage, and about to start throwing crap bc the doctor wouldn't prescribe her this certain antibiotic. 

The doctor told us to call the cops if she came back. People are crazy.

cynta

I don't have to deal with people's patients, but I helped out a vet for a while, and there are a lot of dumb pet owners. 

We had one lady who was really concerned about her obese lab getting hiccups. 

The vet let her know the dog was overweight, and she told him he was wrong and then insisted we do diagnostic tests to "figure out" the hiccups.

greychem

This isn't exactly what the OP wants, but I feel it suits the theme. It didn't happen to me but to colleagues in the medical center where I was working. 

So, around 11 pm, 4 men entered the medical center in panic, screaming, "The child, the child, help the child," and carrying something. 

Obviously, the child was wrapped in blankets. 

So they entered the examining room, de-wrapped the child, and well, it was a child, but a calf, not a human.

ofsummerrain

Had a patient refuse a blood draw because he said the blood was his, and we weren't allowed to experiment on him

This patient had no known diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. People can be stupid. 

Many are.

Other stupid patients include a guy who came in to have his head measured for a hat he wanted to buy on Amazon. I referred him to Lids at the local mall. Second, Lady came in drunk, 12 weeks pregnant. She thought that because she was young, her body was able to reduce the teratogenic effects on the fetus.

FatherSpacetime

My dad is a doctor. He told me a story about two parents who brought their child in because she was having seizures almost every day. 

He told the girl that he was going to squeeze her "seizure gland," which would probably trigger one in her. 

He pinched her shoulder, and she went into a seizure. 

It was some placebo crap.

tealleaf

These stories make me chuckle. I'm also a paramedic and was called out for a stroke. Clearly, the man was having a stroke. Upon doing a stroke screen, it looked like the patient had something large in his mouth. 

  Thinking maybe this guy had some sort of oropharyngeal cancer or mass, I asked his wife if this was indeed the case, and she looked at me with a very puzzled look.   

She said no, and then I said what is in his mouth? His wife then says she shoved a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in there. 

When her husband's symptoms started, she thought it was just that his blood glucose was low, so she tried to force-feed this poor man an entire sandwich before she called 911. 

Ah, job security.

DGSDE98

I posted this a while back, but it's too good not to share it again.

20 year old girl and her fiancé find out that she's pregnant

Me: (part way through taking her history) Do you smoke cigarettes

Her: Yeah, about a pack a day

Me: You should definitely stop that

Her: Well, my sister told me that if I stopped smoking, the baby would go into withdrawal and die

Me: wha-

adipds

I have a few examples: A patient who had recently been diagnosed with diabetes, we needed to adjust her blood sugar levels, but she kept eating sweets. So we had a talk for about 30 minutes with her about not eating sweets and so on, and she seemed to understand. 5 minutes after the conversation, she went around drinking a soda.

Another guy had a benign arrhythmia (the heart beats irregularly). He knew that he could get the arrhythmia from time to time, but as long as he didn't faint or get any pain in the chest, he could just take a beta-blocker and let it pass. But he went to the ER like 6-7 times before he understood that we couldn't do anything.

One patient came in for something (can't remember what), and when we ran the test, we found that he had a pH of 6.97!! That is on the border of what the body can have and still have any function at all (read, he should be dead). But he was awake and clear. 

We wanted to admit him to the ICU and adjust it with utmost care. But he needed to go home... To eat a shrimp sandwich... Yes, it's a shrimp sandwich. We sat down and talked to him and his mother for 30 minutes, saying that no shrimp sandwich in the world is worth your life, and if there is something else you need to get help with, we can help him. 

But nope, he left. He came back a couple of hours later, and we cured his acidosis. But that must have been a mean shrimp sandwich.

Xyzar

Had a patient and his girlfriend complaining of fleas. They were covered in red spots that they were picking at constantly. 

They were meth heads that were picking their skin off and imagining bugs were crawling on them. 

They were adamant that they had seen these bugs and pulled them out of these sores. Discharge instructions: stop doing meth.

jsc35080

Not a doctor, but I work in Ultrasound. One day, I had this couple who were asking about pregnancy. The conversation went:

Patient: “We have been trying to get pregnant for 5 years with no success.”

Me: Are you currently on any infertility drugs?

Patient: “No, but I have been on birth control for the last 7 years.”

Me: You are currently on birth control but also trying to get pregnant

Patient: “Yes, I like to know when my period is coming.”

wildrabbit07

Had a patient that got pregnant while on the pill. She was devastated and couldn't understand how it happened. I asked her how she took it. 

P: I just used one before doing it.

Me: Ma'am, you need to take a pill every day for 21 days for it to work, and then you are supposed to take a 7-day break while you have your period. 

P: What!? I am supposed to shove one of these up my private part every day!? 

Me: ._.

[deleted]

I’m not a doctor, but. I was told to go introduce myself to a patient, get vitals, history, more info on their chief complaint, start an IV, and draw blood for labs. They came in for arm pain, and it looked like they had a nasty bug bite on their arm. 

So the story was she was a stripper, and their Adderall prescription wasn’t doing the trick.

 So, they had an idea of how to make it more potent. They heard from a friend that if you crush it up, suspend it in water, and Inject it, it would be more effective. 

Except she used tap water to dissolve the Adderall before she injected it. This ended up causing a huge abscess and infection at the site of injection. She ended up losing her arm at the elbow...so now she’s a one-armed stripper.

csgreen2k11

Not a doctor, but when I was in college, this girl (white) I was dating called me all freaked out that her skin "Was turning black." This was mid-day during the week. She said she was going to the hospital. 

My house was across the street from the University hospital, so I decided to head over to see what was up. She was distraught.

I went into the examination room with her, and she explained her situation to the doctor and showed him her arm. The doctor just licked his thumb and rubbed her arm.

Turns out she was wearing a brand-new black sweater, and some of the fibers rubbed off on her arms.

lampshade2818

I used to be a pharmacy technician. We had a patient who thought he was only supposed to use a Lantus pen (insulin) ONCE and throw it away. When it was time for the next injection, he used a brand-new one. 

He was always witching that we only gave him 10 pens, which lasted 5 days. This idiot wasted thousands of dollars, yet insurance agreed to override "early fill" rejection.

There was a girl who thought she was supposed to take birth control tablets only on the days she got ‘busy’

Lastly, those people who believe the "vaccine will make you retarder" crown in general.

Idiotsandcheapskate

NAD; however, recently talked to a patient who is getting ready for surgery that involves the usage of robotic arms to help remove the tumors. Allows for smaller incisions and greater precision.

This patient started insisting on meeting the doctor when it seemed like the consult was wrapped up. So we get him back in there, thinking maybe she's got another question. The patient says, "I still want to meet the doctor." And the doctor points at himself and says, "I'm the doctor."

Patient: I know you're A doctor, but I want to meet THE doctor!  

Doctor: You've already met the resident. I'm the doctor doing your procedure.

Patient: No, not you! I want to meet the robot that's going to do my surgery! I feel like we should at least shake hands first!

Apparently, the patient was expecting some metal man to walk through the door. The patient also had "cancer cure" recipes and was insistent we take notes.

[deleted]

Had to explain to a nurse that what she was seeing inside her daughter's ear on an otoscope was normal (cone of light) and NOT a pimple as she had thought initially and that she should NOT pop it with a needle as she had originally planned.

Edit: she was my nurse at the time (I'm a PA), and she texted me the night before saying she found a pimple in her daughter's ear and that she was going to pop it with a needle. 

Called her immediately and told her to leave it alone and bring the child in the next morning for me to look at.

[deleted]

This was recent:

I had a patient who was paralyzed from a low back problem that was reversible by surgery. The night before surgery, his blood glucose was getting up pretty high, like 500ish, and climbing. I told him we had to start an insulin drip to control it. Wound healing and infection risk are greatly affected, and no surgeon would do this surgery with BG this high.

He then drops this line: "It is against my religion." Ok, in fairness, I get religious issues all the time, so I try to be a good doctor and ask.

He states his religion. It took me a freaking hour of my life at 3 AM to get him to take his insulin. He was ever so close to spending another day without the use of his legs because he made up a religious objection to insulin.

I can't fathom the stupidity that had to be conjured in order to roll that dude.

[deleted]

Not a doctor or nurse but a patient care assistant.

The guy came in for traumatic brain injury because he tried to rob a taxi driver, and the taxi driver ran him over. 

This man had to wear a helmet at all times but went outside to smoke, remove it, and lay on the concrete ground. 

He had a piece of skull removed to alleviate pressure, so any ounce of pressure directly to the brain would kill him.

kirst--

Couple of stories from med school residency rotation in a rural area of the state...

A woman brought her kid in because he'd been sick for a while. Examination didn't reveal any issues at all. The kid looked totally healthy.

 When told the kid was fine, she looked at the kid and said, "Dang it, I brought the wrong one."

Then there was the mom who, upon being asked her kids' names, thought for a moment, shrugged, and said, "I can't remember. My husband named 'em."

rak9999

I have a couple of crazy ones.

A teenager comes into the ER at 3 am for earache and stuffy nose.

Another one was a 30-year-old woman who came to urgent care demanding antibiotics for two hours of nasal congestion. 

Third, a young adult male comes to the ER complaining he lost sensation in his feet. It's cold outside, and he's working outdoors. 

Take a look at his legs; there is no sign of frostbite. "Oh wow, my feet are feeling a lot better now that I'm in the warm building." Just advised him to wear thicker socks.

The last of them was a young adult male who came to the ED for intractable bilateral facial pain. Claims it was caused by using a new soap product four months ago. 

Actually, I ended up being a psych patient, but still, it was odd.

tambrico

I had a patient present for a blue hand.

Good pulses. Normal temperature. Sensation and motor intact. Resolved with an alcohol prep pad. 

After that, we found out what caused the patient’s concern.

It was a garment dye transfer from her not-yet-washed denim jeans.

aetuf

Not a doctor but a friend of one.

He said that he got a call that said a parent had come in with their daughter, who was “having a seizure.”

He rushes out to the waiting room or wherever you take people having seizures. He sees this dad in a sort of panic. He looks at this girl who’s maybe 12-13, and she is shaking “badly” (as in obviously fake) and just keeps doing it.

Calmly walks up to her and asks what’s wrong. She answers in a perfectly level and steady voice, “I’m having a seizure,” while continuing to “shake,” which was more like a weird side-to-side motion.

Anyways, she “faked” a seizure to get out of going to school.

[deleted]

I'm an ICU nurse, but this exchange happened to me when I was helping the ER triage a 40-something-year-old patient.

Me: Do you have any medical history?

Them: No, I'm pretty healthy.

Me: I see you take metoprolol. What do you take that for?

Them: High blood pressure.

Me: So you have high blood pressure?

Them: No, because I take my pill.

Me:... So what would happen if you stopped taking your metropolol?

Them: (looks at me like I'm an idiot) My blood pressure would go up.

Me: (nods) So you have high blood pressure. What other medical history do you have?

You'd be surprised how many people think that their daily home medications "cure" them so that they no longer have any medical problems.

jareths_tight_pants

Had a young woman come in just recently with a sinus infection... After telling her as such and offering a script for Augmentin, she demands to be tested for HIV. Basically, she was concerned because she’s had 2 colds this winter, and that’s unusual for her. 

So, she put her symptoms into Dr. Google, who promptly told her she might be immunocompromised and have HIV. No amount of reassurance convinced her, so after much crying on her part, I ran an HIV test, which was shockingly negative.

Edit: Bonus story- on my ER rotation, I had a young woman come in with abdominal pain. Asked if there was a chance she was pregnant, which she denied.

Me: Are you on birth control?  

Her: No. 

Me: Then why are you sure you aren’t pregnant? 

Her: Because of him (indicates a 3-4 year-old playing on the phone) 

Me: You do realize it’s possible to have more than one, right?

Came back after obtaining a urine pregnancy test to tell her she was pregnant. She’s unconvinced, so we do another ultrasound and point out the nugget in her uterus. She starts crying and going on about how mad her “baby daddy” was going to be...

VaBookworm

I was at the children's hospital with my eldest when he was a toddler (ah, the day we found out he was allergic to penicillin) when a rushing team suddenly occupied the bed next to me with a limp, unresponsive infant.

This was a hot day in mid-summer. The baby was in a full Canadian winter-level snowsuit. After they got the baby's temperature down, I got to overhear.  The Dr lost his mind a little bit with the mother as she kept insisting she had to have her baby in the suit lest the baby risk feeling chilly.   

He explained that the minor discomfort of having to cry for a blanket did not trump the risk of death and the possibility of literally frying the kid’s brain.

He had to get quite nasty with his wording that she had almost killed her baby and might have given it brain damage.

kifferella

Work in the vascular office. A middle-aged woman came in complaining of numbness and tingling in her feet and legs. Happens frequently, is very painful, and can’t walk. 

Me: Do you notice these symptoms more when lying down or walking?

Her: Neither. It only happens when I’m sitting on the toilet. I like to play games on my phone, but my legs and feet go numb after sitting for a while. I’m afraid I have poor circulation.

Took everything I had to continue that conversation with a straight face.

collectedanimal

I saw an elderly woman in the ED who had a nosebleed for like 1 hour. She showed me three towels drenched in blood and told me that the bleeding wouldn't stop. I asked her what she had already done to stop the bleeding.

Her: I just held these towels under my nose.

Me: And did you pinch your nose?

Her: No, why would I do that?

So, after she was instructed to pinch her nose for 10 minutes, the bleeding miraculously stopped.

HollyMyCoolCat

I have one,

A patient came in because she bought a jar of tomato sauce from a store, which she opened and cooked by herself in her apartment where she lived alone.

She then tasted this sauce, looked at it, and decided it was contaminated with human blood.

Brought the cooked sauce to the ER for testing and wanted to get tested for HIV herself....

fardok

My daughter is a psychiatrist, and she’s told me many a story.

She had a mother bring her eight-year-old son in and insisted he had oppositional defiant disorder. She said she diagnosed him as being a regular seven-year-old who didn’t want to do things he didn’t understand the benefit of or sit still when he could be running and playing.

She said it was because she didn’t want to be judged as a bad mother for having a poorly behaved son and wanted to be able to attribute his behavior to an illness.

She came back again after two other doctors refused to diagnose him. So, my daughter explained to her there were parenting classes she could take and that the answer was not to have her child formally diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder on a record that would follow him for the rest of his life.

She asked if she could see a different doctor at the hospital.

ligamentary

I really hope this doesn’t get buried bc it’s too good.

I’m an RN, and I had a family member of a patient who kept trying to go outside and smoke. Our facility is very strict against smoking, so I told her I frankly cannot allow it. If patients leave without our consent, they will be considered leaving AMA (against medical advice). 

Also, they won’t be allowed to return to our unit, trespassing, $500 fine, etc.

She told me it was discrimination bc she has a real medical condition where she physically HAS to smoke cigarettes (I chuckled and said, “ya, I know addiction is real”) and goes on and on saying how rare it is, how only 3% of the population has it (aka SUPER rare).

She said if she stops smoking, she will get ulcerations in her mouth, esophagus, and lungs that will weep and cause her to DROWN.

The 30th specialist physician diagnosed her she saw. None of the doctors at Mayo, Johns Hopkins, or Stanford could figure it out, but THANKFULLY, a doctor “right here in (states our little normal town with mediocre healthcare) was able to figure it out” (I wanted to say, “was it a psychiatrist?”). It’s so rare that they don’t even have a name for it yet.

Like, how freaking stupid do you think I am? I went to college for 8 years (two 4-year bachelor's degrees), and I work IN HEALTHCARE, so obviously, I would know a thing or two about diseases.

[deleted]

I had a patient come in one day and tell me they were struggling to swallow their medication. On closer inspection, it turned out he was trying to swallow a suppository.

Had another patient come in who had recently been diagnosed with Asthma to tell me she was finding her new Ventolin inhaler to be ineffective.

 I asked her how often she was using it, and she said every few hours. 

Naturally, I got her to show me in case her technique was wrong. Lo and behold, she shakes the inhaler, takes off the cap, proceeds to lift up her shirt, and sprays it onto her chest.

smrtchm

Had a patient in the ER with four long, straight, deep cuts on the back of his hand. I could see all the scenes. I asked him how he got it (he was pretty wasted).

“Well, we had a competition who dared to cut their hand with a razor blade. I won”

Uhm, congrats??

SerialSpice

I worked as a patient care tech in a hospital. I had this patient who was diabetic and had been for the last thirty years of his life.

I check his blood sugar level after breakfast, and it’s SUPER high...like three times the normal amount.   

I asked him what he had - fruit, bread, and coffee with artificial sugar. He was shocked and thought that just because he didn’t have real sugar, his blood sugar was almost to the point of him passing out.

Lots of food is processed as sugar in the body!

SarahBusDepot679

Paramedic here. We had a patient recently call the ambulance because a tiny amount of blood had seeped through a band-aid that was covering the smallest cut on his toe. 

He kept saying, "I'm going into shock!" 

Never thought I would have to explain the structural limitations of a band-aid to someone.

Giant9999

Probably the woman who had all the heart risk factors you can imagine (age, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoker, complete occlusion of a carotid artery, and had a mini-stroke before) who had chest pain.

But decided to wait for 10 days before being seen because she was convinced it was her stomach. 

It turned out it was indeed her heart, and because she let it go on so long, she needed immediate bypass surgery and went into heart failure.

A lot of patients are in such denial that heart disease will actually happen to them when the reality is that heart disease remains the number 1 cause of death of all U.S. adults, and the sooner you get treatment, the better you do long-term.

thewayoftheturtle