Nurses Detail The Most Outrageous Things Patients Have Told Them

Working in the medical field isn’t easy. After years of schooling and crushing debt, you’ll also encounter grueling hours, a great deal of stress, and bizarre patients. Very bizarre patients. But it’s all worth it as long as you’re helping people, right? Maybe not once you hear some of these patient stories.

Medical professionals took to the internet to share the most outrageous things they’ve heard from their patients, and these instances range from dumb to dangerous to downright strange. Did you know that humans need oxygen to breathe? Read on for plenty of entertaining stories told by doctors, nurses, and EMTs.

Lord Molar Has Arrived

When I came out from having my wisdom teeth pulled, I apparently shot up, looked at the doctor, and said “Charlatan! I demand you return my teeth! They are mine, and I will choose where they are to be spent!” My dad said he couldn’t stop laughing because I wouldn’t leave without them.

When I woke up at home, I asked my dad why my teeth were in a plastic bag on the table. He told me everything and promptly started calling me Lord Molar for the rest of the night. Reddit user: CrossFox42

Movie Stars Don’t Need Glasses

Ophthalmologist here. I told one of my patients one day that he needed reading glasses, which he didn’t believe. I explained to him that everyone develops presbyopia (or the inability to see things up close) to some extent eventually. “Come on, George Clooney doesn’t wear reading glasses!” he shouted at me.

A) Yes, George Clooney does wear reading glasses, and B) I’m not sure why you’re comparing yourself to him. Reddit user: aworkingmom

Man Of Steel

One interesting patient was the ‘Man of Steel.’ He was the loveliest gent in the world, but he genuinely believed he was made of metal. He would tell me very kindly that he wouldn’t put up such a fuss about going in the MRI scanner if he wasn’t so worried he would break our very expensive machine.

He also reminded us that if we liked, he could punch a hole through the wall to show us how metal his hands were. Reddit user: [redacted]

Sniffing Around Down There

I was coming to just as my doctor was finishing my colonoscopy. Feeling some pressure “back there,” I reached down and patted the doctor on the head. “It’s OK, Yehudi,” I said. “Just go back to sleep.” Yehudi is the name of my dog. Needless to say, that was extremely awkward.

Thankfully, the doctor didn’t mention anything to me about it after I came fully around. Reddit user: sherrymoore

Princess Of The Nursing Home 

My mother is a nurse in elderly mental health and always tells me stories of the ward. My favorite was the ‘Princess of Russia,’ who called the nurses by country names (I suppose comparing the nurses to the countries), and my mother was always “You GERMAN.”

Apparently this was because she took nothing from the elderly woman when she got aggressive. She apparently didn’t mind dealing with the lady because she never caused any trouble. Reddit user: Lottia

Oops, She Did It Again 

I have epilepsy, and people like me have a fugue state after our seizures where we’re confused and loopy but it’s also blacked out in our heads, so I don’t remember this at all. Apparently, in the ambulance after the seizure, I was singing Britney Spears’ “Oops I Did It Again” in reference to seizing again.

The EMTs found it so funny that they made sure to tell me about it once I was in the hospital and awake enough to remember. Then a few weeks later, I got a package with a Britney Spears CD in it and a Post-It note saying, “Seize the moment. But seriously, take your medicine.” Reddit user: HatedSovietLion

All He Needed Was A Hug 

I work in an OR and had a teenage patient that weighed 150 kg (330ish lbs) and was a clinical psychotic. He was know to be violent on wake-up from anesthesia, so we were prepared with four burly guys (including me) surrounding the OR table at the end of the case. When he opened his eyes, they got really wide and then…he started crying.

Not just whimpering, but full-on lip quivering and tears; it broke my heart. So, as I was standing near the head of the table, I leaned down (probably not the smartest thing) and asked him, “Dude, what do you need?” To which he responded through those shudders you get when you cry-talk, “I JUST WANT A HUUUUUUUG!”

I reached down, gave him a big ol’ bear hug, and he quieted right down and relaxed. Got a bunch of awwwws from all the nurses in the room too. Reddit user: scrub-in

Getting Off The Ladder Now

I was on a ladder installing a wireless access point in the ceiling of a psychiatric locked ward of a geriatric hospital. One patient quietly shuffled up behind me and whispered, “Anyone ever pushed you off the ladder?” I looked down and locked eye contact with her. She looked like the sweetest thing ever.

I gently shouted, “Uh…nurse?” without ever taking my eyes off the woman. I was terrified. Reddit user: Forgainst_it

Munchkin Land

They were short on people in the psych ward, so I was put there for the day. Basically, all I was to do was to get water or snacks for patients who asked and watch movies with them in the movie room. Well, one of the nurses turned on The Wizard of Oz.

This one crazy little old woman walks up to me and holds my hand and says “I love you,” so I reply “Thank you!” and she sits back down. Then she gets up and sits beside me on the couch and says, “I’m in this movie.” Since I’m with a bunch of crazy people, I just go along with her and smile and nod.

So later, her family comes to visit, and the movie is still on. One of her family members says, “Did you tell them you were in this movie?” Turns out, she really was in the movie as a child. Reddit user: puppies22

 A Scary Scene

I work overnight in a nursing home. We use small nightlights over the beds at night so we don’t disturb people any more than necessary. It makes the room very dark and shadowy. This is normally fine; I’m not superstitious, so I don’t get freaked out easily. Anyway, I had this patient who was 75-85 years old, 80-90lbs soaking wet.

She was a tiny little non-verbal woman. She was fairly contracted, in a fetal position. I came in to give her meds, and since she was facing the wall, I leaned over her slightly to wake her. As I leaned over her, my body blocked part of the nightlight, leaving her face in shadow except her eyes.

I’ll never forget looking at her face and reaching out to touch her shoulder to wake her. Before I could touch her, her eyes snapped over to me, and she whispered “He’s the one…” I froze in shock, and before I could even react, she followed that up by whispering “You know now…” in a long whoosh. Other nurses have said they had similar encounters with her as well. Reddit user: [Redacted]

Unfortunate Mix-Up

My boyfriend is a paramedic in a shifty neighborhood. He ran a call on a middle-aged man who had apparently had too much to drink. The garage was littered with beer cans and he smelled strongly of beer, so it seemed pretty cut and dry. Turns out this man was a landscaper who was either too poor or lazy to properly store his Round-Up weed killer.

So as he explained the story, he wasn’t paying attention and accidentally ingested a whole can of Round-Up. Not sure how you get through a whole can of the stuff, but the guy ended up being ok. Reddit user: [Redacted]

Not Today, Satan

I was rounding on an elderly patient on the overnight shift. She was maybe 80-85 years old. She had some issues from a stroke but was generally pretty coherent and “with it.” She was lying down but opened her eyes wide and looked right at me when I entered.

She said, “The devil is in this room.” I’m not religious, but I promptly walked out after I checked on her. Nope, nope, not today Satan. Reddit user: tiny_pandacakes

Voices In Her Head

I had a patient who would speak in three different voices. Her normal voice, her dad’s voice, and a baby’s voice. Normally it was just inane chatter, but one night, she started talking in her dad’s voice saying to give the baby to him so he could “get rid of” it. The baby kept saying, “Please don’t hurt me,” and her voice was crying.

It didn’t help that this happened around Halloween. I went out and told a supervisor what happened. Reddit user: riverhill12

What Just Happened?

Not a nurse, but I worked as a janitor in a hospital. A patient asked me if she could just talk to me. Being a nice guy and having been told to listen to the requests of patients as long as they weren’t medical requests or in some way illegal or dangerous, I sat and waited. The lady started speaking.

It started with good English, if a little slurred because of the stroke that had put her in the unit… then she started speaking in tongues, her voice getting louder, eyes wide with panic, and she began asking for all sorts of strange foods. The machines started going nuts, and the nurses and other staff were in the room ASAP. Turns out she had had another stroke in that moment, and it involved her speech center. She got through it and ended up alright. Reddit user: [Redacted]

Sweet But Sad

I worked as a nurse’s aide for a summer. At night, it was common for older people to talk with their deceased spouse or family member. Kind of sad, but I could tell that they still loved them. I knew a lot of people who would do this, and it always seemed to give them a measure of comfort.

Hey, I’ll still take it over possessed old ladies. I’ve heard the stories that other people have to deal with. Reddit user: MNCPA

One Last Goodbye 

My dad is an ER doctor, and my mom is an ER nurse. Well one day, this 90-year-old lady just flatlined, and after 7 minutes of trying to resuscitate her, he called it. He went out to tell all the family assembled that their grandmother had passed away when a nurse sheepishly came out of the room and asked him to look at something.

He walked into the room to find this lady sitting up and talking as if nothing had happened. The family was able to have one last goodbye before she actually passed. Reddit user: [redacted]

Doctors Can Be Funny Too

A guy comes into the emergency department via ambulance with burns on his lower extremities. His shoes are charred, and the bottoms of his pants are definitely burned away, but his skin isn’t so bad. He had been trying to use a propane-powered weed burner in his yard (think flame thrower) and things got a little out of control.

I smelled alcohol on his breath, so I asked the guy if he had been drinking, and he looked me directly in the eye and said, “Nooooo.” I got drunk just standing next to him. It was a once-in-a-lifetime setup, and I couldn’t help myself. As straight-faced and professionally as possible, I said, “Sir…liar liar, pants on fire.”

The paramedics all turned at once and ran out of the room they were laughing so hard! The patient just stared at me. He was so drunk it went totally over his head. Reddit user: Sanfranshan

One Not-So-Sharp Specimen

“Here,” I say, handing a patient a urine specimen container. “The bathroom’s over there,” I tell him. A few minutes later, the patient comes out of the bathroom. “Thanks,” he says, returning the empty container. “But there was a toilet in there, so I didn’t need this after all.” He handed the cup to me and walked off.

Have you never done this before? Confused as heck, I didn’t even go after him because I was so dumbfounded. Reddit user: travisstork

Hard Of Hearing 

My patient announced that she had some good news…and also bad news. “The medicine for my earache worked,” she said with a smile. “What’s the bad news?” I asked, fearful of the answer. “It tasted awful.” Since she was feeling better, I didn’t have the heart to tell her they’re called eardrops for a reason.

Even if she didn’t have the time or energy to actually read the label, you’d think “ear DROPS” would have clued her in. Reddit user: [redacted]

Uvul – What? 

I once had a 20-year-old and his girlfriend come in at 2 am freaking out because “something had torn his throat open.” He seemed fine. No blood. Breathing fine. I had him open his mouth and saw nothing. I didn’t want him to lose confidence in me. Clearly something had happened, so I’m looking and looking…but there is nothing wrong with this kid’s throat.

Finally I say, “Look, it seems ok…what do you feel or see?” He huffs. “I don’t feel it, but LOOK, IT’S RIGHT THERE!” Looking, looking. It was his uvula. Somehow this kid had gotten to the age of 20 without ever noticing his uvula. His girlfriend was also horrified, but I told them it was normal.

They did not believe me. So I told them I was about to blow their minds and showed him his girlfriend’s uvula. Minds blown, and another life saved in the ER. Reddit user: hathathn

Seriously Bad Parenting

A woman came in for a baby check with her 6-month-old, and she had what looked like chocolate milk in the baby’s bottle. So I started explaining to her as kindly as I could that she shouldn’t be giving her baby chocolate milk. At this point, she interrupts me and says, “Oh that isn’t chocolate milk. It’s coffee! He just loves it!”

I can’t even imagine how fast that poor little kid’s heart was pumping after just a few sips of coffee. Reddit user: [redacted]

No New Teeth, Bud

While in dental school, my friend pulled out several bombed out (technical term) teeth on an adult male who had come in. After the procedure was finished and post-op instructions were given, the man turned to my friend and asked, “So when should I expect my new teeth to grow in?”

He was completely serious. I thought my friend would also have to tell him that the tooth fairy wasn’t coming to give him money. Reddit user: icecreamsoup

Clara Fication At Your Service

A gentleman calls our office with questions about an upcoming test he is scheduled for, and we talk at length about the procedure. Patient: “I’m sorry to have so many questions.” Me: “Oh, that’s no problem. You can always call and ask for clarification when you need it. I’m always glad to help.”

Patient: “Thank you very much, Clara Fication, You’ve been very helpful. I’ll let you know if I have more questions!” Reddit user: [redacted]

Starstruck

One day, a patient came in complaining of severe dizziness anytime she did basically anything, including standing, walking, or reading. I asked the patient, who was there with her small family, if she had ever been diagnosed with “vertigo.” The daughter chimed in and said, “No, no, she’s a Libra….”

I then laughed hysterically at her awesome joke. She was dead serious, so she wasn’t laughing. Reddit user: tbmtonada

Losing (Birth) Control 

One day in the pharmacy, a girl came to the counter requesting a refill for her birth control. We pulled up her profile and realized we couldn’t refill it because she just got a 28-day fill less than 2 weeks ago. When we asked what happened to the other one, she said she was out.

Apparently, both she and her boyfriend were each taking a pill and were adamant that was how they needed to prevent pregnancy. Reddit user: StrutThatCorgiButt

The Cost Of Vanity

I worked at the ER during my internship and met a girl who had increasingly painful and red eyes since a couple of days back. The last 24 hours had been horrible. I asked about all the normal stuff, and she claimed to have no idea why she had this eye problem; she had never had anything wrong with her eyes.

So I proceed to drop some dye in her eyes to check them in a microscope, and when I do, I realize she’s wearing contacts. She didn’t like her natural eye color, so she had bought a set of blue colored lenses 8 months earlier. Never removed them, not even during night time. Didn’t even think to mention this to me and claimed to have no “foreign materials” in her eyes.

Needless to say, I gave her quite the harsh lecture and a referral to an ophthalmologist. Reddit user: fracturedfigment

“I Know My Body” 

Doctor here. One we get commonly is “I know my body.” One time, I scoped a guy with knee pain; the joint looked perfect. I told him so after the surgery, and he told us, “No, my tendons are all torn. I know my body.” I told a lady she was pregnant. “No, I’m not. I just had a big lunch. I know my body.”

Absolutely, when something doesn’t feel right and your doctor doesn’t want to listen, seek a second opinion. You know how your body normally feels. But if someone has performed an invasive surgery to look at your joint, or has seen a fetus on an ultrasound, they probably know what they are talking about. Reddit user: IAMA_Proctologist

An Interesting Allergy 

I work in anesthetics, and it drives me absolutely mad the number of patients who want to have allergies; for example, antibiotics give them the shivers. No, that’s a side effect. Anyway, the anesthesiologist comes into the room one morning and asks me not to ask the patient about allergies.

I’m puzzled at this and ask her why. The patient was “allergic” to oxygen. Yes, oxygen. She was a fun patient. Reddit user: sevo1977

One Spooky Night

I was working in a nursing home, and we had a resident that was just all-around a terrible person. She’d cuss, yell, hit, spit, and accuse staff of awful things. None of the other residents were very fond of her. Additionally, the majority of the residents were also very superstitious.

One night around midnight, three residents (who all lived in different units and didn’t know or converse with each other) stated they had seen the devil; of course, staff didn’t know about this until we were giving a report to the oncoming shift the next morning. Shortly after midnight that same night, our rude resident ended up passing away. It still freaks me out when I think about it. Reddit user: sas1013

Dude, Where’s My Gallbladder?

One day, a patient comes in with severe abdominal pain. I’m thinking appendicitis and the like; you know, the most common things. “I think it’s my gallbladder,” they say. As I’m looking over their chart, I see that their gallbladder was removed 20 years ago, so that would be impossible.

I mention the fact that their gallblader was removed, to which they reply, “Yeah, but it grew back.” Reddit user: feeder_bands

Reaching New Heights

It was 3 am, and I’d been on duty in the emergency department since 8 am. I was exhausted. A well-dressed man came in with his 8-year-old, healthy-looking son. I asked him what the problem was. He said, “Well, I was at a wedding, and it occurred to me that my son is a little short.”

“Can you give him something right now to make him taller?” he asked. He was being genuine. Reddit user: [redacted]

I’m Here For My Manicure 

So, not a doctor, but I work at a hospital. We had someone come into A&E because they needed their nails redone. Like, not that their fingnails were coming off, or bleeding, or damaged. They genuinely thought it was a good idea to go to accident and emergency to have their fake nails taken off and redone.

Why? Because her fake nails had gotten too long and had become uncomfortable. Reddit user: TheEwokApocalypse

While some of these stories from nurses may have shocked you, you’ll never believe what kind of errors doctors have made when treating patients. From a dentist that extracted the wrong tooth to a doctor that prescribed medication at a dose that doesn’t exist, these doctors finally come clean about their mistakes…

When you go to see your doctor, your hope is that you’ll get the best possible care, right? You might also expect to get an accurate, thoughtful diagnosis of your issue, as well as a treatment plan, including any medication that might be necessary. After all, doctors always know the right thing to do, right? Well, that was a cute thought. The reality is that doctors are just as human as the rest of us, and just as prone to making mistakes – and awkward ones, at that.

If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of some less-than-stellar advice, or a real misdiagnosis, you know that going to the doctor might just end in an uncomfortable misunderstanding. Mistaken medication, unnecessary surgery, and missing medical equipment aren’t what you expect going in, but that’s just sometimes how things go. The following are stories from real doctors who are coming clean about the most awkward “uh-oh” moments they’ve ever had. Some of these are unfathomable…

If You’ve Used Dermabond…

Not a big mistake, but definitely awkward at the time. I was gluing up a laceration on a 14-year-old girl’s forehead. Anyone who has used Dermabond before knows that the stuff is runny and bonds very quickly. Well, I glued my glove to her face. Her mum was in the room, and I had to turn to her and say, “I’ve just glued my glove to her face.”

Fortunately, they ended up getting a good laugh out of it, but it could have easily gone a totally different way. I’ve seen patients and parents lose their minds over much less. The reason this was such an “oh, no” moment was that Dermabond doesn’t really have a solvent.

It’s meant to bond and stay bonded. The best I could do was cut as much of the glove off her forehead as I could. She had to walk around with a piece of glove on her head until the glue dried up. Probably didn’t do wonders for her social life. Reddit user: pikto

Five Years And 35 Meds Later

My grandmother has had diabetes for about 20 years and takes a handful of meds to help manage it. About 10 years ago, she developed a persistent cough. It wasn’t bad; she said it felt like a constant tickle in the back of her throat. She went to her doctor to find out what was going on, and he ordered a battery of tests, concerned that she was developing something more serious, like pneumonia, lung cancer, etc.

All the tests came back negative, so he prescribed a cocktail of pills to help combat it. Over the span of five years, she tried about 35 different meds and none helped. One day, when she went for a routine check-up, her normal doc was out and she saw one of the on-call residents. He looked at the barrage of pills she was on, and asked what they were for.

When she explained, he replied, “Oh, the cough is a side effect of this one particular drug you’re on to regulate your insulin. If we change you to this other one, it’ll go away.” You’d think that ruling out medication side effects would’ve been the first thing to consider, no? Reddit user: silence1545

Dentists Are Doctors Too

Dentist here. I was performing an extraction, and preparing for the case, not realizing that I had the x-ray flipped the wrong way the whole time. I’d been looking at the film backwards and ended up pulling out the wrong tooth. When I realized my mistake I started freaking out, only to find out that, by some dumb luck, the tooth I extracted had to go as well.

For the record, this happened in dental school, so safe to say it was a learning experience. It was my first and very last time to make that mistake… Upon extracting the correct tooth, I explained to the patient that his case had “changed” a little. I didn’t quite fully explain that I made a fortuitous mistake, instead telling him we had to extract more teeth than we originally planned.

He was fine with it. You’d be surprised how much more willing patients are to receive treatment when everything is free. Also, for anyone wondering why a dentist is commenting, dentists are doctors, too. Can you hear me saying that in a really whiny voice? Reddit user: YoureOnlyLameOnce

A Potential Career Ruined

I’m a surgical resident and my focus is on pediatrics. I’ve done a fair amount of surgeries so far, and have seen it all. But, the worst was a case with a then 8-year-old kid. I was operating on his ulnar (that’s med-speak for upper arm) and accidentally caused damage to the nearby nerve.

He lost about 20% of his sensory stimulus because of my slip-up. He wanted to be a violinist. Hopefully he was able to work around it. Kids are pretty resilient like that. But, I’ll probably never stop thinking about how I might have ruined the potential career of the next prodigy violinist. Reddit user: imsorryitsmyfault

I Thought I Could Save Some Time

When I was in training (I’m now a doctor), I was doing an anesthesia rotation, and the attending physician left me alone in the room with an ortho case undergoing surgery. While not my specialty, it’s just part of the training everyone has to do to understand how all the pieces fit together. Anyway, I’d done a few cases already, so they felt comfortable leaving me “in charge.”

The patient was getting his leg bone fixed in some way – it was a long time ago. I thought the case was almost over, so I started to wean him off anesthesia because I didn’t want them to be finished and the patient still under, thus keeping the room for too long. Anyway, I weaned too fast, and gave the reversal drugs. The patient woke up and started jerking his limbs so much that his pulse oximeter (the thing we clip to your finger) fell off.

I quickly re-sedated him. Not an ideal move, but it was either I put him back under or risk damage to his leg. Apparently, it’s a pretty common rookie mistake. I’d gotten too comfortable too quickly, and thought I’d found a way to save time. I have nothing but respect for anesthesiologists. Reddit user: bummer01

Don’t Touch Your Face

I remember back in medical school the first time I actually got to scrub in on a case. We were removing a small bowel obstruction from the patient and, about midway through the procedure, my face mask started to fog up. At this point in my training I didn’t have the common sense to realize or remember that my face mask wasn’t sterile.

Needless to say I went ahead and “face-palmed” myself trying to adjust it – both literally and figuratively. My gloved hands were all over that mask, pulling at it and trying to get some circulation going. The scrub nurse lost her mind on me, and I had to go re-scrub. The whole ordeal was pretty embarrassing at the time, but I learned a valuable lesson: don’t touch your face while you’re in surgery. Reddit user: Heal_With_Steel

That’s Not How You Drink Orange Juice

My brother finished his residency last year. During his residency, I got to hear a lot of stories of mistakes residents had made. I guess one time a doctor told a first day resident to give the patient orange juice but, since the patient was sleeping, she put it in his IV. Personally, I don’t think that it takes a genius to realize that’s not how you give someone juice.

She went through rigorous years at medical school only to end her career on the first day. Needless to say, the patient unfortunately didn’t make it, due to this error. I’d always thought that attending doctors were so hard on residents, but that particular story made me realize why that’s what’s actually necessary. Reddit user: aquarient13

He Didn’t Want To Shoulder The Burden

I had a doctor tell me that I’d never be a rower or be able to play tennis again. I was 15 and had broken and dislocated my shoulder in a horseback riding accident. Turns out, he just didn’t want to be bothered with setting my humerus correctly, or order ordering an MRI to see if there was soft tissue damage.

He told my mother that he didn’t think that women really needed to be athletes, anyway. So, what better course of action than to sabotage one? I still have pain on a daily basis because of the carelessness with which he treated me. I couldn’t do pushups for five years, and I’ll never be able to do a pull up; I can’t hold anything above my head because my shoulder doesn’t have much upward mobility.

I doubt he ever really thought of that as a mistake, but it directly led to him being ousted and blacklisted. I eventually found a female former Olympian who also happens to be an orthopedic surgeon. She saved my athletic career when I was 18. I now guide kayak tours, row on a varsity collegiate level, and can finally do 10 pushups. I’d love to go “Pretty Woman” on him and show up with a medal or something and go, “Remember me? Big mistake.” Reddit user: malobaby

Third Time’s The Charm

Scrub nurse here. A patient had gone in for surgery on their right knee. The surgeon did his job and everything was fine, except … it turned out he did the surgery on the wrong knee. The patient was really good about the whole thing and had a bit of a laugh (I wouldn’t have been that chill). Fast forward a few days and the patient returned for surgery on the correct knee.

The surgeon repeated the surgery on the patient’s knee, and this time he forgot a sponge in the knee. But, guess what? It was still the wrong knee. So, the poor patient had to come back a third time to get his knee surgery. The last time, they finally got it right. Granted, they also insisted that a different surgeon handle it. I’ll always remember what the guy said the last time he went into the OR, “Third time’s the charm, right?” Reddit user: altiif

He Forgot To Breathe

I’ve been practicing anesthesiology for about 12 years. I work daily around specialty nurses in the recovery room on a daily basis, and nurse anesthetists who routinely administer powerful narcotics in a closely monitored OR environment. I’d gotten very comfortable walking through the recovery room and giving verbal orders to cover situations that went beyond normal criteria.

A patient was in a fair amount of pain, and the normal level of narcotics weren’t keeping him comfortable. The nurse caring for him described the situation to me, and I said, “Let’s give him some Dilaudid.” Those were my words, and they’re NOT how to give a verbal order for such a powerful narcotic. I didn’t take into account that this was a new nurse, and she was unfamiliar with Dilaudid.

About 20 minutes later I was called to a cardiac arrest on the floor. The young nurse had administered 2mg of Dilaudid (a relatively small volume, but also the full amount in the vial and a WHOPPING dose) to the patient. When he got comfortable, she took him back to his room, where the Dilaudid kept him so sleepy and comfortable that he literally forgot to breathe.

We were able to save him, and later I had to explain to the nurse that it was in no way her fault, and that if a doctor ever tells her to just “give them this,” she should question them and ask how much. Thankfully disaster was averted that time – but it was close. Reddit user: surfwaxgoesonthetop

Our Mistakes Can Really Hurt Someone

I left a swab in a patient once – those wads of cotton that we use to mop up fluids during surgery. He had a pacemaker and it was a complicated operation. We just lost count of the swabs. Unfortunately for the patient, his wound became infected and it only became apparent that there was still a swab in there when we went back in a few weeks later.

Luckily, because we were honest with the patient and open about the error, it was only a slap on the wrist. I’m now paranoid about swab counts and demand rechecks every time. I suppose it’s made me a better doctor, though. Mistakes are how you learn, but it does suck that my mistakes can actually really hurt someone. Constant vigilance. Reddit user: bushio_underwater

Because I Didn’t Speak Up

My biggest mistake was not disagreeing with a patient’s attending doctor over how to treat a patient. The attending made a bad call in the treatment of the patient. I could have confronted him about it, but I didn’t because he was popular and well respected.

I was just a second-year resident. I went along with the major error he made, but thought I could help by changing another minor error. About 10 hours later, the patient was gone. The attending blamed me based on the minor change I’d made, and I was made to take the fall so that he didn’t lose face.

Even though in private all the local physicians said that they agreed with me, I was still forced to take the blame. What made the whole ordeal even more awkward for me was that the attending doc never even figured out what his mistake was. Reddit user: drmike0099

It Was A Happy Accident

I’m a registered nurse. I had two patients in rooms next to each other. They had similar conditions –hypertension and AFib (both cause an irregular heart rate) but were being treated with different medications. I accidentally gave patient A all of patient B’s meds. About 10 pills in total. Fortunately, I realized it as soon as she swallowed the cupful of pills.

She was elderly and had dementia, so she didn’t question what meds she was taking. Thankfully it was nothing she was allergic to, and she didn’t have an adverse reaction. I had to call the doctor and inform her family. The doctor was understanding, telling me to just make sure I monitor her blood pressure and heart rate. I was practically in tears when I told the family, who were also very understanding.

I learned not to rush, and triple check everything. The patient was okay. Her blood pressure was actually better than it was on her usual meds. So, there was a silver lining to it all. She ended up having her medication changed and, from what I’ve heard, is now doing better. All in all, a happy accident. Reddit user: squattmunki

Always Check And Then Check Again

As an intern, I was told to round on a patient who was admitted for a workup due to coughing up blood. It was 6:00pm and I’d been up for about 20 hours. I went up to the floor and grabbed her chart. I briefly scanned through it and noticed that the oncologist had confirmed the diagnosis of small cell lung cancer.

I went to the 88-year-old lady and her 92-year-old husband and informed them that she had small cell lung cancer. Her husband was a retired pediatric surgeon. The news struck him as unusual, considering both were never-smokers. I told him I was incredibly sorry, that these things happen, and the oncologist did confirm the results.

The husband then proceeded to start quizzing me on all of my medical knowledge. Long story short, I had the right chart but I just happened to have the wrong room. I told someone they had cancer when they didn’t. Always triple-check your charts. Reddit user: Medigeek

He Was Extremely Cool-Headed About It

During my first week of intern year I was on the ICU team. A patient who just got out of open heart surgery ‘coded’ (his heart stopped, aka asystole). The surgeon opened him back up in the recovery room and put in a pacemaker. He asked me and my fellow intern if we wanted to close – meaning put the last layer of sutures in. We jumped at the chance.

As I was tying a suture I mistakenly yanked the pacemaker wire out, and the guy’s heart stopped again. I could have quit right there. Instead the surgeon said “no problem” and just stuck the pacemaker wire back down into the guy’s heart and let me finish suturing. I’ll never forget how chill that surgeon was. He could have easily ripped me a new one. Instead, he stayed calm and let me keep learning. Reddit user: Healyb

His Intern Questioned It And Saved A Life

During my first year of residency I wrote a prescription for medication at a dosage that didn’t exist. Thank heaven for that, because if they did make it at such a high dosage, there’s no way the patient would have lived. I was completely exhausted. I know that’s no excuse, but that’s how it happened. That’s how a lot of mistakes happen in the hospital.

The pharmacist called to check on the dosage after one of his interns questioned it. Those are the moments you realize you need to sleep occasionally and stop running on auto-pilot. It’s the most terrifying moment to realize that you almost took someone’s mother from them. I haven’t made that mistake again, but I’m so grateful to that pharmacy intern for asking the question. Reddit user: DoctorChick

I Lost A Tooth Over It

I was putting Lidocaine (a numbing medication) in a soldier’s big toe to remove his toenail. I pushed the needle down too far and hit the nerves on the bottom of his toe. He kicked me with the foot that had the needle sticking out of it; the needle wobbled back and forth, still sticking out of his toe.

He gritted his teeth and let me get the needle out, and then had a good laugh about how ridiculous he must’ve looked with the syringe dangling from his toe. Easy for him to laugh, though; I later lost a tooth because of the impact. Yup, he’d kicked me right in the face. Not that I didn’t kind of deserve it. Always pay attention to what you’re doing. Reddit user: [redacted]

All Because Of A Typo

I was working in a call center where we gave pathology results and advice to doctors. The problem/mistake escalated to me, as I was the supervisor of the team, and it still makes me shake my head. This one doctor has the histopathology result of a breast lump. The summary of the result reads “There is evidence of malignancy.”

The result is sent to the specialist, the specialist calls the patient to come in for immediate surgery, and she’s prepped for surgery. Then, before they start, a fax comes through to the OR. It’s the same report again, except there is one minor change. There’s an extra word in the summary…. the word ‘no.’ “There is NO evidence of malignancy.” It was a typo from transcription of the histopath’s report. This poor woman almost had an unnecessary surgery over a typo. Reddit user: [redacted]

He Wasn’t One Of The Most Promising Students

I’m in dental school. For those of you who don’t know, the third and fourth years of dental school involve providing treatment to real patients in the clinical setting. We do all of the procedures that a dentist does, but under the supervision of professors. It’s a lot like a medical residency. Our residencies consist of specialty training, or continued improvement on general dentistry technique and efficiency.

I was a first year student assisting a third year student. He ended up drilling the wrong tooth, and was put on clinical probation. This is very uncommon, I will say, but he was not one of the more promising candidates at my school. So, in retrospect, it wasn’t a total shock. Obviously this is a giant no-no for us, akin to a surgeon operating on the wrong leg. It was a great lesson for me. Reddit user: [redacted]

It Made Me More Willing To Act Immediately

I’m a physician assistant and I work in a dermatology private practice. We do full body checks (essentially assessing the skin for moles, cancer, or other abnormalities), and our practice has a reputation for being quite conservative with biopsies. Now this can be a good or a bad thing in the long-run. If nothing’s wrong, then we didn’t waste your time or money. But, if it’s actually something, then we get to feel dumb.

Several months ago, my colleague did a full body check on a middle-aged male. He saw a dark brown 4mm mole with a speck of black in it on the left shoulder. It had regular borders, so the only indication for biopsy would be the variegated colors. He opted to be conservative and monitor the mole for a few months.

Any time we monitor something, the medical assistants are supposed to make their notes in the patient’s chart so we can remember on the patient’s next visit. This particular mole hadn’t been mentioned in the chart, and the spot was never re-checked at his follow-up.

Fast-forward six months and this poor guy now has a malignant mole on his left shoulder and has to have surgery to remove it. What stuck with me was that he blamed himself for not having it re-checked. After this I’ve become a bit more aggressive about biopsying something with only one criterion of abnormality. Reddit user: ShangryYoungMan

Don’t Expect To Be Perfect, Just Better

I used to work at a hospital as an orderly; the biggest mistake I ever saw was when a surgical intern was doing an arteriogram on a patient in the ICU. (You run a line into an artery and pump dye into it – think of it as a heavy-duty X-ray, or lightweight surgery.)

He messed it up, nicked the artery, and almost ended the patient’s life. It was very dramatic because the senior doctor observing him had to jump in and take over, basically performing surgery on the patient in the hallway. He saved the guy’s life, but the intern was really torn up.

He asked the doctor if he should quit medical school (after five years, literally a heartbeat away from being an M.D.) The doctor was actually really compassionate and told him mistakes happen to everyone and not to expect to be perfect, just train to be better. Reddit user: JimmyJazz2000

He’d Woken Up In Worse Places

There was that one time I accidentally left an elderly patient in the MRI tube overnight. It was late and I was tired. Don’t judge me. Everything had gone smoothly and the patient had been super quiet the whole time. I honestly thought that the nurse had come and taken him out of the machine, but turns out he’d fallen asleep.

I can’t imagine how scary it was for him to wake up and still be in that tube. He was a really, really good sport about it, but I felt so bad. I made a point to find out what his favorite books and snacks were and sent him a huge gift basket to apologize. He sent me back a lovely letter saying that he’d made far worse mistakes and woken up in far worse places. Reddit user: CypressBalto

He Continued To Ask For Everyone Else’s Meds

On my first day as a camp nurse for people with intellectual disabilities, I gave nine pills to the wrong guest. I didn’t know who I was looking for and asked my colleague to send in the next guest. His roommate – who has a lot of drug allergies – walks in and tells me he’s the person I’m looking for. The same colleague confirmed, from afar, that he was the right person.

Stomach dropped when the actual person I was looking for came in a few seconds later. We called poison control and, luckily, most of the pills were vitamins. The ones that weren’t vitamins were either similar to meds the guy was already taking, or in therapeutic low-dose form. He was fine and still continued to ask for everyone else’s pills at all times just in case he “had something new.” Reddit user: ironmaven

They Saw My Mistake As A Life Lesson

Psychiatry resident here. I ordered q2hr (vitals to be taken every two hours) on a patient who was withdrawing from alcohol, which can be fatal. Both nursing and I screwed up by completely forgetting about the patient for over four hours. That may not sound like a big deal, but it is. In a withdraw patient, vitals can change rapidly.

The patient ended up living, but spent some time in the intensive care unit due to our negligence. Now, I use my smartphone to set alarms for really important patients so I don’t miss stuff like that. Honestly, I’m surprised that his family didn’t try to sue the hospital. They spun it as a life lesson. A reminder of what addiction can do. Reddit user: jamesinphilly

I Still Remember The Fear

It was my first year on the job. I was an intern and I was on call. I gave a confused and aggressive dementia patient an antipsychotic dose of haloperidol, and put him to sleep for four days straight. He developed bed sores and possibly pneumonia. I was too scared to follow up what happened to him afterwards, but I’m sure he was angry.

That was the first and the last time I made that mistake. You never forget your first really big “uh-oh” moment as a doctor. Fortunately, mine didn’t result in loss of life like some of my fellow interns. I’m an attending physician now, and I always remember to be compassionate to interns. I still remember just how terrifying it is. Reddit user: trustydoctor

If He Hadn’t Admitted His Mistake…

I worked in a pharmacy and the pharmacist dispensed the wrong strength of antibiotic syrup for a baby – it was a higher strength, but there was no risk of overdose. The dad was a high profile lawyer, and he came back and confronted the pharmacist. (Just so you know, insurance companies tell pharmacists to never admit guilt. Ever. Not even if you made a mistake. Just don’t admit it, let our lawyers take care of it.)

So, the lawyer is confronting the pharmacist and the pharmacist says, “I’m so sorry, I admit I made a mistake. I thought I double checked my work, but I made an error. I have no excuse other than I’m tired. I have to take responsibility for it. Did you give any to your child?” The lawyer responds, “If you hadn’t admitted your mistake, I’d have sued you.” But, because the pharmacist admitted his error, the lawyer let it slide.

Also, they hadn’t given any to their kid, thank goodness. They’d actually read all the information on the bottle before doing anything – which is something I’d advise everyone to do with any med, particularly before giving anything to a child. So, it wasn’t my mistake, but it was a lesson to us all to not overwork ourselves. Reddit user: [redacted]

It Still Bugs Him To This Day

I’m only a med student, but I used to work for a family practice physician back in high school. He claimed he’d been practicing medicine for 51 years, and I’m inclined to believe him. Anyway, I can be sort of an arrogant person, so he’d tell me stories about the times he screwed up as a way of keeping me on the straight and narrow.

It worked, too. One of the stories he told me was back when he was a young doc, not too long after he got out of the army, and a 19-year-old kid presented clinically with a persistent cough. Thinking nothing of it, he sent the kid off and told him to come back in a week if it didn’t clear.

Sadly, the kid ended up passing away a day or two later from CHF (congestive heart failure). Apparently he was a diabetic that either was undiagnosed or did a poor job of managing it, but it still bugs him to this day that the doctor missed it. Reddit user: [redacted]

Too Much Of A Good Thing

Not a doctor here, but I did witness a pretty good medical screw up first hand. Years ago, my father was taken to the hospital as he was complaining of chest pains. My mother was very concerned so she took him to the ER, got him checked in, and then picked me up from school so we could be with him at the hospital.

He’d been there for a few hours and the chest pains had subsided. A nurse came to check on him and asked how he was doing. He replied that he was feeling better as far as his chest was concerned, but he was feeling dizzy and light headed. The nurse left and returned with another nurse who checked my dad’s IV.

Apparently they had given him much more blood thinner than needed, and were slowly turning his blood into water. They promptly fixed the IV and then kept him for a few hours longer to make sure he was okay. He chalked it up to “too much of a good thing.” That’s my dad for you. Reddit user: Qwoperative

The Best Sleep They’d Had In Years

Not a doctor or even a registered nurse, but I gave medication to the wrong patient in a care home once. I was working as a care aide, and it was during my first few weeks at work. I phoned the administrator, the pharmacist, and the family. I felt really, really bad but other than being really sleepy, the resident suffered no ill effects.

What astonished me about the whole thing was just how graceful they were about it. No grudges, no ill-will, just a plain old “these things happen” kind of attitude. We’re not always so lucky with residents and their families. I’d have completely understood if they lost their minds over it. The resident joked with me for a few weeks about how it was the best sleep they’d had in years. Reddit user: warmhandswarmheart

Hot Under The Collar

I’m not a doctor, but I’m an EMT. While doing my EMT clinicals I was observing a spinal tap in a patient. I figured it’d be really cool. I’d get to see a crazy precise procedure. The doctor starts tapping the metal rod in and I start feeling hot. And I mean blazing hot. The doc slid out the inner rod and left the outer tube in the patient’s back. Another tap, and clear fluid started pouring out. Still, I’m feeling really hot.

Suddenly, I passed out and knocked the doctor over while he had his hands on the patient. I woke up in the break room, lying on my back, with a few concerned students sitting nearby. Luckily I didn’t harm the patient in any way. That is my biggest mess up. In a hospital, anyway. I’ve made plenty of mistakes as an EMT, but that was the only time I ever passed out. Reddit user: [redacted]

She Never Blamed Me For What Happened

As a very young doctor in training, I misdiagnosed a woman with epilepsy. A few years after that, she began to have spells which included bizarre sensations, altered awareness, and a pounding in her chest. She had to sit down, stop what she was doing, and couldn’t speak when it happened. These were odd spells, and I assumed she’d developed frontal lobe epilepsy from the scar on her brain.

Increasing doses of anti-seizure meds seemed to work initially, but then the spells came back. A couple years after my diagnosis, her endocrinologist – who treated her for diabetes mellitus –checked her thyroid. It was super-high. The spells were manifestations of hyperthyroidism. She got on thyroid replacement therapy and felt well thereafter.

No permanent harm was done, and she was able to come off the anti-epilepsy drugs. The lady was an employee of the hospital where I trained. One day she gave me a hug and let me know how this had all gone down. She made a point of wanting me to know she didn’t blame me, “because I always seemed to care about her and what happened to her.”

It was SO awkward, but it made me feel better. I think about her – how I screwed up her diagnosis and set back her care – almost every day. I’m a much better diagnostician now, but I always remember this case and it reminds me not to get cocky or be too sure that my working diagnosis is correct. Reddit user: brainotron

The Last Thing You Want To Hear

Not me, but my mom. She just retired after a career as an OB/GYN and she told me about a time, early on in her career, when she almost ruined the operation. She was performing a C-section, I think, and she dropped her scalpel on the floor. Before she could think, she blurted out, “Oh, no.” It was a total knee-jerk reaction.

The mother, thinking something was wrong with the baby, started panicking. It took a team of nurses, the husband, and the mother of the patient to calm her down. My mom says that she’ll always feel horrible about that. The baby and mother were fine, but can you imagine hearing “Oh, no” during that kind of operation? Yikes. Poor mom – both mine, and the mom on the table. Reddit user: monstercello

There Was One Missing

Fun story: while my wife was having her C-section for our daughter, she overheard one of the nurses say “There’s only nine,” and my wife thought they were talking about my daughter’s fingers or toes. So, she’s freaking out that our daughter is missing a finger or toe, and I keep assuring her that our daughter was perfect, which she was.

We found out about 10 minutes later that the nurse was talking about the surgical tools that were supposed to be accounted for, and one of them was missing. So my wife got to spend the next two hours in x-ray because they thought they had left a tool inside when stitched her up. They found the missing tool – not inside my wife – a couple hours later, so that was a relief. Reddit user: [redacted]

He Almost Didn’t Make It

When I was a medical student, I was on a vascular surgery rotation, and a patient came in with aortitis – a rare and extremely severe infection of the aorta. However, he was doing pretty well and we were treating the infection conservatively with antibiotics, and hoping we wouldn’t have to operate. My job on the team was to take the patient’s vitals a couple of times a day, and examine them to see how they were doing.

When I went to examine this guy, he was lying flat on his back, so I said I’d sit him up in bed to take his blood pressure. I raised the head of the bed, and a few seconds later he started to complain of severe pain, and passed out straight after that. He was taken straight to the operating theatre and opened up. It then became apparent that his aorta had ruptured due to the increase in abdominal pressure when I sat him up. He almost didn’t make it. Oops? Reddit user: [redacted]

We Found It 17 Years Later

I saw a patient once, years ago, for abdominal pain. She’d had an IUD placed back in the 70’s, one called a Dalkon Shield. Upon follow up, the GYN couldn’t find the string, so he told her she must have passed it. Turns out she’d passed it, alright. We found it in the retroperitoneal space near her right kidney … 17 years later. That was an awkward conversation.

She so desperately wanted to sue the original doctor, who had placed it, but he’d retired and no one knew where he was. I’ve heard a lot of horror stories from that time period about almost the exact same thing. The doctor can’t find what they’re looking for, so they just assume that the patient “passed it,” only for a new doctor to find decades later in another part of the body. Reddit user: MatrixPA

It’s The Mistakes You Don’t Know About

ER PA (physician’s assistant) here. I’ve made lots of mistakes, but the biggest one I can think of offhand is missing an open (compound) fracture. The guy ended up needing surgery, and had to be put on antibiotics before his wrist was repaired. Whoops. I’ve had so many that I sent home after a specialty consult only to have them pass away a week or two later.

Sometimes there’s nothing we can do, but the scary thing isn’t the mistake you know you made – it’s the ones you never discover or learn from. It might sound callous to say, but when I make a mistake I take comfort in the fact that I get to learn, so that I never make the same mistake again. I’ve known so many doctors, nurses, and fellow PA’s who’ve let a mistake destroy them. Reddit user: NicholasCageHairClub

I Was The One Who Had To Tell Her

I had a patient who missed her follow-up. Pathology showed colon cancer, but somehow she was never called by the clinic to reschedule, nor did she call in herself. So, she got no treatment whatsoever. She came back one year later for repeat consultation. I read her chart and discovered the oversight. I felt so bad for her.

I actually have no idea what happened to her. My manager and her specialist took it from there. I just remember the worst “uh-oh” feeling I’ve ever had in my life so far. What made it even more “uh-oh” was that I was the one who had to explain that she really should have had a follow-up a year ago. I got to watch her eyes get round and her face turn white. It wasn’t even my original mistake. Reddit user: Kartinka

The Peanut Gallery Knows A Few Things

A few years ago I worked for a medical device company and got to observe an invasive surgical procedure on a patient’s brain. My co-worker, who had observed 30+ times, recommended to the surgeon to increase the patient’s posture angle to 60 degrees rather than 45.

The surgeon ignored the advice. Fair. We were technically the peanut gallery. Fast forward about 50 minutes, and the surgeon takes a bad drill angle, and pulls the drill out too soon before the brain’s internal pressures can even out naturally. The human brain is floating in cerebral fluid, so you can probably imagine what happened next.

Not only is this a chemical hazard nightmare, but it’s not at all fun to watch. Moral of the story? Sometimes it pays to listen to the peanut gallery. Occasionally, we do actually observe enough to make an informed suggestion. I’ll bet that investigation was really awkward for the surgeon. Reddit user: Decker87

That Was An Uncomfortable Conversation

Medical scientist here. I once missed an incorrect low calcium reading on a patient’s blood biochemistry. The clinician responsible for the patient didn’t query it, despite it being clearly an error, and infused the patient with calcium. Fortunately, the patient was fine, but this is still too close a call for comfort. I now know to check everything twice.

It might not sound like a big deal, but it can have disastrous effects on your health to have too much calcium in your blood. It can give you hypercalcemia, which can weaken your bones, cause kidney stones (ouch), and even interfere with your heart and brain functions. Obviously, it was a pretty uncomfortable conversation with the patient. Reddit user: daveofreckoning

While some of these doctors’ errors might have disturbed you, you’ll never guess what symptoms people have made up when seeking medical attention. From faking seizures to paralysis, these medical professionals reveal the insane and non-existant symptoms they’ve heard throughout the years…

Healthcare is a serious thing. Doctors, nurses, and EMTs have made it their life’s duty to try to help people with their ailments, whether it be a heart attack or intense pain. But sometimes, they get some not-so-genuine patients: some whose intentions can never be understood, while others are way too clear. Either way, these people end up faking their way into medical facilities all over the world.

And the medical professionals of the internet have shared some of their stories today. These fakers come in all shapes, sizes, and ages and have a list of non-existent symptoms that doctors see right through (and quite quickly, too). If you’d like to read about some of the crazy, funny, weird, and unbelievable fakers that medical workers get to treat on a daily basis, just keep scrolling.

Simon Says

My husband is a firefighter and EMT.  He once told me about a time where they were called for a man seizing. When they got there, a guy was lying face-up on the floor not moving and then started faking a seizure. Like, as soon as they walked in and he had all their attention, the man started with his episode….

It was so obviously fake that they decided to play along. They stood there saying things like, “Oh wow. This is a bad one. But if they did X, then we would really be worried!” The patient would suddenly start doing X behavior. Apparently, this went on for a while until he miraculously woke up in the ambulance asking for painkillers. Reddit user: [redacted]

Finding the Fakes

I’m an audiologist, and it’s fairly common to have people fake hearing loss. With adults, it’s commonly for worker’s compensation/benefits. Children do it for attention or to get out of school for a day. They are fairly easy to spot…patients will come in, conversing with me very normally, but the audiogram will show a profound hearing loss….

We all have our tricks to get them to slip; I like to lower my mic volume to a normal range and mention that they dropped something when they’re in the booth. They instinctively reach for it, forgetting that they shouldn’t have heard it because of their “loss.” A Stenger Test can identify those fakers that only have “hearing loss” in one ear….

My favorite is when testing kids that are clearly faking; part of the test requires me to have them repeat words. So I present them at a normal volume, and the kids are REEEAAALLLYY straining to hear them, then I slip in funny words like “buttcrack” and watch to see them smile because they clearly heard it. Reddit user: Mynameiskelli

Pronunciation Is Everything

I’m a scribe and didn’t witness this myself, but one of the neurologists was telling me this story. A patient came in with frequent seizures (a couple of episodes every hour). He knew they were pseudo-seizures because the patient did not exhibit a post-ictal state following the episodes. So finally, one night, he got tired of getting pages from the nurses telling him the patient was having another seizure….

So he took one of the residents into the patient’s room during one of her episodes. He held up a syringe and said, “This is a new miracle drug called normasaline (pronounced nor-ma-sa-leen) that should cure all seizures immediately. As soon as we administer this drug, we should see a stop to all seizure activity.” Sure enough, he administered the drug and all seizure activity stopped….

The patient started crying and saying she was so grateful for him. All he did was flush her IV with normal saline. Pronunciation is everything. Reddit user: mtip33

How Can You Run?

I’m a physical therapist who has seen more than a few of these fake cases. We had a patient in the ICU who was obviously faking a stroke. She would always test really weak when asked, but if you made her do something functionally, she managed to find the strength to complete the task: something that was really weird and at odds with what she said had happened to her….

When she was told by the doctor that she needed to discharge, she got so upset that she ran out of the room after the doctor to argue the discharge. Which was another sign. Sorry lady, people who have had strokes with complete hemiplegia can’t run, nice try. She was discharged even sooner thanks to that running after the doctor stunt. Reddit user: jyzenbok

Get on the Gurney

I’ve had the same conversation with some homeless people who were clearly trying to get a bed on a cold night. Now I don’t blame them at all, because most of the shelters suck, and a warm bed is much better than a cold street. So I asked, “What’s bothering you today sir?” The homeless guy said, “I’m sick man, I got chest pain….”

I said, “Sigh, do you really have chest pain? Because if you do, there’s a whole bunch of stuff I have to do, including poking you with needles and giving you medication. So please be truthful with me. Do you really have chest pain?” To which he gave a long pause and finally said, “Naw man, I don’t have chest pain.” I responded with an, “Ok. Get on the gurney.” Reddit user: [redacted]

Dates and Being Catatonic

It’s so tough for me to choose just one story because there are so many, but here goes. It’s probably the 39-year-old woman who was having “seizures.” She would have another every time the ER tried to discharge her, magically woke up when her husband proposed going out on a date, and she never remembered any of what happened. Video EEG was negative, of course….

There was also an old lady pretending to be catatonic (i.e., was not limp). I was helping transfer her from the wheelchair to the bed and when we held her hand over her face and let go, she dropped it to her side; if she were truly out, it would have smacked her. I had to try not to laugh. Reddit user: MoobyTheGoldenSock

Caught in the Act

I was an intern in a busy trauma ED when a guy walks up the ambulance bay and screams he needs to be seen immediately. They take him back, and he starts telling everyone he was in a car accident last night going “100+ mph” on the interstate but did not go to the hospital because he was worried about his friend, the driver….

But now he’s losing feeling in his legs and has severe back pain and needs to be seen. So, of course, the story is super fishy, but we put him on a backboard/collar and get some x-rays of his chest and pelvis (our protocol for any severe trauma). The radiologist who is stationed in the ED flags me and asks when our patient got a CT scan….

He shows me his pelvis x-ray, and his bladder is super bright; it’s filled with the iodine contrast agent they inject in your veins when you get a CT, which is then excreted by the kidneys over the next few hours. So, we confront our patient about why he didn’t tell us about being seen at another hospital and getting a CT….

He launches into a rambling explanation about concussions and amnesia. He has, of course, also exhibited several other seeking behaviors in his short time in the ED. He decides to leave, but not before asking the nurse directions to the nearest hospital, presumably to try the same trick. Reddit user: CasualAwful

Forgetting Something

I had a patient that walked with a cane, limping badly, and moaned and groaned loud enough to be audible throughout the whole office. She had a myriad of problems that I line by line discussed with her. At the very end, as I started to walk out the door, she asked me if she could have something for the intense pain….

I gave her our standard guidelines for pain management (OH guidelines). It turns out that because of the things she was “experiencing,” there was hardly any medication she could take, because they would all make her ill. She did not get the prescription. She walked out in a huff, and my nurse ran after her up to the waiting room saying, “MA’AM YOU FORGOT YOUR CANE!” Reddit user: OMGWTF-Beans

Going a Little Too Far

There are so many stories that I can tell, but this one sticks out the most. I’m a nurse who works at a hospital, and I’ve seen a few things. I once had a gentleman who presented with terrible pain in his abdomen. He screamed in agony almost non-stop for 30 minutes, so we ordered some tests for him. Full tests were done, and nothing came up….

As usual. He was a frequent flyer who came in once a week to do this. I started the process of discharge, but then he realized what was happening. He proceeded to pull out a sharp object from his bag and dismembered his private area. Suffice to say he ended up getting the pain relief he wanted when we had to reattach it. Reddit user: Rominions

No Backpedaling Now

I work as a doctor at a popular hospital in the Midwest. I once had a patient fake Guillain-Barré Syndrome: ascending paralysis. She ended up in the ICU, and I was her physician. I was a new grad and had to put a catheter in her bladder as part of the treatment. Because she was faking her paralysis, she had to pretend she couldn’t feel a thing….

The thing was that I could see the pain in her eyes. It turned out (when we got the truth out of her) that she got into a fight with her husband, and as he was walking out of the house, she fell on the floor to make him stay. I don’t think she meant to take it so far, but she didn’t know how to back out. Reddit user: queenkittenlips

Good Memory

This happened when I was working in the ICU. I had this patient; she was a nurse on disability and would fake seizures, which are really hard to fake. She would hold her breath and shake and roll around on the bed. Her O2 saturation dropped to the 70s from not breathing (and maybe the sensor wasn’t picking it up well, as she was shaking)….

We told her we’d intubate if she couldn’t protect her airway, and she would miraculously stop seizing. Never acted post-ictal and could remember the whole seizure and everything that was said, which is not at all how seizures work. She told me she would call my manager since I said during one of her “seizures” that I knew she was faking it. Reddit user: queenkittenlips

The Magic of Being Cured

There are some fun ones in psych. The patient went into her room and, in a very obvious stage voice, started saying random, unconnected sentences/phrases. Then she immediately came out, walked straight up to us, and asked, “How do I know if the voices are real?” She would act perfectly normal when she thought we weren’t looking, but as soon as we walked loudly up to her door, she’d start “talking to herself” again. That’s not how psychosis works….

There was the girl who pretended to knock herself unconscious. There was no pressure whatsoever on her throat/neck. The doctor quietly snuck up to her, then smacked his hands together in a single giant clap. She jumped. It was just hilarious how loudly she screamed when he clapped feet away from her face. Needless to say that she wasn’t very pleased when she was outed….

There was also this other patient who had “seizures.” She would lie in bed, twitching, when I called her for lunch. For some reason, the seizures always happened around lunchtime. She didn’t respond to me, so I said alright, but if you lie there for too long, you’re going to be stuck with the vegetarian option. The seizures magically stopped. Reddit user: Merceri

10/10 Pain

I’m an EMT, and the one story that sticks out is this one. I get called out to a residence at 2 am (because of course, it’s always 2 am). The guy says he’s having 10/10 finger pain and gingerly holding his hand in the air. He says there was no trauma, that it just started suddenly, and it’s unbearable. So we load him up and take him the 25 minutes to the hospital….

The entire time, he’s holding his hand in the air. But we have a full conversation, talk about football…never once does he complain about pain. We wheel him into the ER and literally the second we walk through the door, this guy starts writhing in pain. He says he can’t sit still because the pain is unbearable. He even stands up, screaming at the nurse to help….

Then he turns to the nurse and says, “I had this same issue at a different hospital two weeks ago. They couldn’t tell what was wrong. They gave me some strong painkillers, and those worked amazing.” And then he goes back to moaning in pain. The nurse and I just looked at each other; we put him in a bed, and I drove the 35 minutes back to the station. Reddit user: razelbagel

For the Love of X-Rays

I’m an X-ray tech. The emergency department is one of the few in my area that will have patients that come in seeking things. These patients will have a bunch of X-rays ordered, and when you first start the exams, they will be in all sorts of pain; they’re crying out and can’t position any body part. Some of them even fight and beg not to do it….

Then after about 15 minutes, when they notice you’re going to do your job, they stop the charade and get through the stack of images ordered on them. It’s quite incredible really. I’ve never really understood why they do it, since they have to pay (or their insurance does) for their order anyway. It completely beats me. Reddit user: AllGenreBuffaloClub

Too Much Oxygen

I once had an employee that was “allergic to everything” and was a huge hypochondriac (overly anxious about her health). She was such a headache that we ended up having to move her desk waaaaaay away from pretty much anyone else so she would stop complaining about possibly contracting tetanus from brand new paper clips and other near-impossible things that she would concoct….

One day, a lady walks by with a strong perfume, and our lovable hypochondriac falls out. Predictably, EMS is called, and by this point, our employee is lying on the ground rolling her eyes back in her head. It was scary stuff if you didn’t know she was literally insane. So EMS puts an O2 meter on her finger, and she’s choking through her speech when they’re asking her if she can breathe or not….

The O2 saturation was at like 97% or something like that. The medic goes, “Ma’am, there’s no reason why you should be having trouble breathing right now.” They hung around for another couple minutes, then bounced. Reddit user: ryan_m

Chest Pains

My mom is a cardiovascular care nurse, meaning she works with patients who have heart problems. She used to see this patient every once in a while. He was a convict from the local jail who would often complain about chest pain, so obviously they’d quickly take him to the hospital.  He’d be fine, spend a few days there, and go back to the jail. And he never had any real symptoms other than his chest pain….

Finally, my mom said something to one of the guys escorting the convict about how the next time he came in complaining about chest pain, the jail should pack food for him to eat. As soon as he wasn’t allowed to eat hospital food, he was “cured.” He was faking chest pain to go to the hospital, sleep in a comfy bed, and eat nice food. Reddit user: AwkwardViolinist

Seizures

Another paramedic piping in! One day, I go out to a “no tell motel” at about 3:30 pm for seizures. When we get there, a 25-year-old guy is sitting on the bed; his girlfriend described “his whole body shaking, and it stopped just before you got here.” He’s completely alert and oriented (people who have seizures generally take a while to ‘wake up’), and they describe a vague seizure history, no diagnosis or meds….

We finally walk him out to the ambulance, and the girlfriend asks if she can come too. I tell her of course, and the real reason comes out. Apparently she’s on a pass from the same hospital we’re transporting to and has to be back by 4 pm. There’s only one unit that does passes like that: psychiatry. Reddit user: SillySafetyGirl

A Double Dose of Diarrhea and Constipation

This is really sad, but every so often, we have people who are either homeless or have nowhere else to go coming out of prison/shelters. It’s really heartbreaking because all that some of them really need is a second chance sometimes. This one lady I was taking a history from said she had a lot of pain and that she couldn’t sleep….

I knew it was crap because the nurse had told me she was snoring every time she checked up on her. Going through my routine questions of symptoms, I asked her if she had diarrhea. She said yes. I asked her if she was constipated. She said yes. I asked her if she was constipated and having diarrhea. She said yes. We followed through with the discharge. Reddit user: ccrepitation

The Medication Is in My Moving Box

I’m a pharmacist and deal with these people all the time. In fact, my coworkers and I often compare stories, and there’s a monthly winner for whoever has the best story. The weirdest one from recent memory was a patient who wanted to get his meds two weeks early because “I recently moved to Highland Park to buy a house and everything in my mansion is in boxes and I don’t know which box has them….”

One, he’s on Medicaid, so he can’t afford a mansion in Highland Park. Two, who packs their medications in boxes when they move? Who doesn’t at least label the box if they actually do that? I should mention that I work in Dallas. The average home price in Highland Park is $900,000, which he most likely did not have. Reddit user: azwethinkweizm

Seizures on the Spot

I work at a hospital as a pediatric nurse. A kid once came in for an ADHD recheck. The kid was adamant that he’d been having seizures, although his mother knew nothing about it. The doctor knew he was lying about his illness straight away; the child had been his patient for 13 years, so he knew him well enough to know he was full of it….

The doctor told the kid to stop lying. He then proceeded to throw himself on the floor wiggling his arms around and flopping like a dang fish. We just sat and watched. The kid stopped and immediately, got up, and said, “See, I’m not lying, that’s a seizure!” Where he was wrong, besides the fish dance, was that you can’t just get up from a seizure like that. Reddit user: ishihtzunot16

To Not Pay the Bill…

I’m a paramedic. One time, we get called to a local Waffle House for a seizure. We walk in to find a man lying on the floor, not moving, but breathing. We start talking to the waitress, asking what had happened. While talking to her, we occasionally look down at the patient and find him with one eye barely cracked open, watching us….

When he sees us looking at him, he closes his eye. This happens a few times. Then the cops show up and find out what’s going on. One of the officers asks the waitress, “Did he (patient) eat here?” “Yes, he did.” “How much is his bill?” “Fourteen dollars.” At this point, the officers roll the patient over and find his wallet; the guy has a $20 bill in it….

One of the officers takes out the $20, gives it to the waitress, and tells her, “Keep the change.” You could see the anger in the patient’s face when he realized he’s not getting out of paying his bill. He ended up faking a seizure on the way to the hospital too. I’m not sure what he was trying to accomplish. Reddit user: bigbabysurfer

Stroke Symptoms

I work in a hospital for prisoners. They will frequently fake chest pains to get into the hospital, but sometimes they will try to fake other things if they feel like the chest pains are overdone. One time, we had a guy trying to fake stroke symptoms.  He claimed he couldn’t move his leg after getting sudden pains in his chest area, near his heart….

The doctor examined him and told him everything looks fine, but the prisoner insisted he couldn’t move it. Five to ten minutes later, I looked in the room, and he was walking to the bathroom on his own, zero assistance. When he saw me, he immediately started limping and acting like it was hard to walk. Pretty sure he was discharged shortly after. Reddit user: dumperking

Unconscious Until…

This isn’t my story, but my dad works in A&E (accident and emergency) and gets a lot of people wandering in for attention. There’s no set protocol on how to handle them, because different cases require different things, but my dad and his coworkers do find it funny sometimes. There was one time: imagine, a guy is driven in pretending to be unconscious….

The kicker is that the same guy pulled this trick the week before, but they’re not allowed to turn these people out. My dad, knowing this, says something like, “Hey, isn’t this the idiot from last week?” The guy then miraculously wakes up and starts hurling insults and has to be held back. Charming, but makes for a good story at least. Reddit user: ghostcandi

Hamming the Ankle Up

I was a student nurse at the time, but this happened when I was at the gym. The guy next to me fell off the elliptical, somehow got his foot trapped between the foot pedals, and went sideways. The surprisingly inept PTs (personal trainers are usually well-trained in first aid) were freaking out, and this guy was really hamming it up.  Talks of calling an ambulance were thrown about. I offered to step in….

I kneel next to him. “Hey bro,” I greet him. He’s so surprised that I’m there (came up from behind) that he forgets to groan. “How much does it hurt on a scale of 1-10?” “Erm…8,” he says. I look at his ankle. There’s a scratch on it the size of a penny and superficial, hardly any blood. There’s a little red area around the scratch, and the ankle isn’t swollen….

I ask him if he can point and flex his foot and rotate his ankle, which he can do with zero difficulty. I figure he’s probably hamming it up cuz it’s embarrassing falling off a machine in front of everyone, so I get him an ice pack (mostly for show) and tell him he’ll be fine. His sister comes to pick him up in her car, and he limps out on the wrong leg. Reddit user: TossItThrowItFly

Seeking Meds

When I worked ER, “seekers” would come in faking seizures to get Ativan, etc. We called them seekers because most of them just did it for attention. Others did it to try to get free meds. The point is that they were always looking for something, so the name fit. Most of them never got the symptoms for their ailment right, so we knew right away who was genuine and who wasn’t….

Someone experiencing a seizure has no control over their movements and does not respond to pain. So, we would pinch the heck out of these idiots, and they would immediately snap out of the seizure, yell at you, and then immediately start seizing again. They would leave when we refused to give them what they were seeking. Reddit user: Buddin3

Partial Paralysis

We had a lady when I was in nursing school who had been in the hospital a multitude of times for various (actual) neurological conditions. On top of this, she had borderline personality disorder and was extremely manipulative. She had had a full neurological exam on so many occasions that she could actually mimic a problematic exam and make you believe that she was having a stroke or some other issue….

Problem was, on an occasion I witnessed, she’d forget to be consistent with the side that she was feigning weakness or paralysis on. So she’d sit, only move one side of her face, one side of her body, etc., but then would forget and move a finger or something on the side that was supposed to be paralyzed. Reddit user: CoconutsDoMigrate

A Prolapsed Attitude

When you work in an ER as long as I have, you tend to learn a few things. There was this lady who was at ANOTHER ER and called 911 because the wait at the first was too long. The ambulance actually brought her to us; her complaint was a prolapsed uterus. She got out of her bed and stood in the doorway to yell at staff. But that wasn’t all….

She then walked around the unit and made herself coffee at our coffee station: pretty impressive for someone whose uterus is falling out, right? She demanded the resident give her some pain medication before receiving a pelvic exam. Long story even longer, the resident agreed to give it to her. As soon as she got it, she walked out. Reddit user: Disulfidebond007

Really Bad Back Pain

There was once this patient who insisted she could not walk due to back pain. She was on heavy pain meds, both IV and patch, but would still cry that “it hurt.” She paid for a motorized scooter because she insisted she was unable to walk. But when no one was in her room, she would walk around, tidying up after herself….

I caught her several times. She would jump back into bed and scream in “pain.” Almost as if the shock of seeing me reactivated the back pain that seemed to be fine just moments ago. When enough of the staff caught her, we were able to get her out of the room and give it to someone who actually needed it. Reddit user: citrinemoonbeam

Fakers Never Win

I once worked as a medic at a summer camp for kids 12-18. And there were more than a few times where I got a couple of fake seizures, which were such obvious fakes. Lots of kids faking passing out from heat exhaustion to avoid doing the outdoor activities, but they were somehow all completely responsive (and angry) as soon as they were given pain stimulation….

It got to the point where I started to look forward to the calls with kids passing out, because it taught them a really good lesson about faking illness and wasting my time. Nothing like a good sternum rub to give them a jolt of pain they won’t forget. I had to try hard not to laugh when I saw their faces contorting in pain. Reddit user: flotiste

I Lost It…Again

I work in a psychiatrist’s office. It’s curious how many people “lose” their prescriptions, or even their whole bottles of medication, almost every month. In a lot of ways, it’s sad, because it makes things harder for those who genuinely misplace their prescriptions. But that’s life, I guess. We’ve heard some good excuses over the years, and here are a few of the go-tos….

Lots of them “lose” their bottles by dropping them into the toilet. We now tell all patients, especially college-aged patients, that they need a police report stating that their meds were stolen to get a refill if it’s too early. It’s always the same people who do this time after time too. Reddit user: tanyanubin

10/10 Pain

I’m a nurse, and I see these excuses every day. My favorite was the patient in 10/10 pain, hobbling to the bathroom with their walker, almost crying in pain. I got their pain meds ready and waited about 10 minutes. Finally, to make sure the patient was OK, I went to check on them in the bathroom and let them know that their medication was ready….

There he was, standing on the toilet, smoking a cigarette and dancing, all at the same time. With 10/10 pain too! I told him to get down, put out the cigarette, and then I threw all his medication down the toilet right in front of him. All while he came back walking down the hall almost crying in “pain.” Seriously though, who dances on a toilet? Reddit user: Metallicreed13

An Unreal Crisis

I’m in my 4th year of MD school. I had a patient come in complaining about a sickle cell crisis. It was really normal and part of the course at the hospital, but he was an adult with no history at the center. He claimed he had no primary care doctor or hematologist and wouldn’t give us a clear idea of where he normally went when he had a crisis….

He actually didn’t seem to know anything about the disease other than where the pain was supposed to be and a bit about his medications, including the list he was allergic to. But the weird thing is that he knew exactly which ones he wanted. I got someone to discharge him and warned him against faking something like that again. Reddit user: Dr_D-R-E

In Need of Attention

My dad is an ER doctor, so he has had a lot of good stories. One time, a patient came in and claimed lower back pain. There was no evidence to suggest he was actually in pain. In fact, one of his neighbors was the security guard at the hospital and informed my dad that this gentleman had recently bought a trampoline to jump on, which was currently in his backyard….

Anyway, he was denied the attention he requested. The patient, albeit poorly, pretended to be having a heart attack. My father and all the people around him saw right through it, and when that failed, he pretended to have a seizure. Nobody fell for it. He absolutely refused to leave the premises; the police were called, and he was arrested. Reddit user: deepfeels96

When Seeking Medical Care Reveals Too Much

A nurse friend told me this one, which happened about a few months ago. A woman and her boyfriend were rushed in by ambulance after being in a car accident. My nurse friend was with the boyfriend, who kept yelling about his baby. It took a minute to calm him down, but my friend gathered that the guy’s girlfriend was pregnant….

So they check for a heartbeat but don’t hear anything. The woman keeps asking the doctor to check again. Both she and her boyfriend are in tears. Finally, another nurse comes in with some of her test results and announces that the woman wasn’t ever even pregnant. It turns out a few months back her boyfriend tried to break up with her, so she lied about being pregnant to get him to stay. Reddit user: Carabou11

An Intense Pain in the Knee

I’m a medical student. About a month ago at the ER, a mother came with her 10-year-old son who claimed to have monstrous knee pain and that he couldn’t move. When we came to his room, he was lying down. The X-ray was normal, and his knee was normal. But each time we would touch his knee or try to move his leg or his thigh, he would scream like we were torturing him….

But with every test being normal and no explanation to this pain, we were confused. So we asked him to try to move his leg on his own, and he would barely move it and scream. Then we asked him if he felt pain when standing up; he said yes. We then asked him to get up, and surprise: he got up by bending his knee….

It was quick, but we saw it; he was trying to simulate, but he didn’t fully succeed. I mean it was so obvious. He almost made a 90° angle with his knee, and as soon he touched the ground and got up, he started to scream, etc. All of that was just the little boy simulating to avoid going to his football training. Reddit user: alexouxou

A Missed Opportunity

When I was a medical student, a homeless patient came in who was ‘unconscious.’ Except, she wasn’t. I mean, obviously wasn’t. The doctor would hold up her limp arm, position her hand over her head, and let go. If she were truly unconscious, her hand would hit her in the face. Somehow, every time he let go of her hand, it would swerve and miss her face….

In an effort to rouse her, the doctor loudly asked me to go and get “the biggest needle you can find.” When I returned, he asked me if I’d ever taken blood before. I replied that I had not. He said that as Miss X was unconscious, this would be an excellent opportunity for me to have some one-on-one teaching on the subject….

He also said that this would ordinarily be extremely painful for someone with such a large needle being used. Unfortunately, she ‘woke up’ at that point, so I didn’t get to learn how to take blood. Reddit user: [redacted]

Stroke Symptoms or Not

I was a physical therapy tech in a big hospital once upon a time. My responsibilities were to mostly just move patients from rooms and back. And I saw lots and lots of stroke victims. This one champion came in reporting stroke symptoms and numbness in his entire left side. I went up unannounced to try and bring him to see the PT and he was gone….

The nurses and doctors had no idea where he had gone. Now this was serious, because if he was having a stroke, he would need immediate treatment. Homeboy was found leaning up against an awning outside having a smoke like he was just waiting for a bus or something. He was discharged shortly after, presumably out of a cannon. Reddit user: Jesster714

Falling for Cheeseburgers

I worked on a psych unit, and as a nurse, I had access to the video cameras. A resident approached my desk claiming he fell and wanted to be sent out to the hospital where earlier I had heard him mention they had better food. Suspicious, I decided to follow my gut by doing a bit of investigating of my own….

I went to view the video and watched him looking around, taking off his baseball cap, and lying down on his side. He didn’t even bother to throw some water down for the pretense of it, or even a banana. But I knew I had him. I approached him with this information; he admitted it and added he was in the mood for a cheeseburger tonight. Reddit user: Nikkiafterdark

But How Do You Know?

In addition to being a nurse, I’m also a paramedic. We’ve had more than a few false claims in our facility, but this one may just take the cake. One day, a lady was faking a seizure in the back of my ambulance. With experience, you learn to tell a fake seizure from a real seizure. And this one was most definitely not genuine….

So she’s wiggling all around, and my driver hears the commotion and yells back to me, “Is she having a seizure? Do you need me to come back there and help?” I yell forward, “No she’s not, but thanks!” The lady then sits straight up and says, “How do YOU know I’m NOT having a seizure?” Because of that, lady. People having seizures don’t sit up and talk. Reddit user: [redacted]

Fitting the Criteria

I’m a doctor who had the displeasure of dealing with the worst mother on the planet. Her kid was small, but not that small (around 6th percentile), and he didn’t weigh much (5th percentile). All of these factors, with a right arm length 2 cm more than the left side, were borderline criteria for Silver-Russell. We did genetic testing, which came back negative, but 30% of cases are negative….

So the deciding factor was one of the “soft” criteria of hypoglycemia. Once she heard about this (she printed out 30-40 articles on the disease), she came back with the kid in a coma. But when the kid was in the hospital, he was never hypoglycemic. He went home and came back in a coma a few weeks later….

Again, as soon as he was eating normally at the hospital, he was never hypoglycemic. She basically brought him to us after making sure he fit the criteria for the disease. She was also a “bougon,” people who live off welfare and make a game out of it. It was horrible that she would do this, but that wasn’t the half of it….

She was in a wheelchair when at the hospital. Once, I had enough of her nonsense; I walked into the room after only knocking once. She was walking around normally and jumped into the wheelchair as soon as she saw me. I believe it was for money since in Canada/Quebec, you get money when your child has a genetic disability. Reddit user: [redacted]

While some of these outlandish fakers probably made you laugh, just wait until you hear these experiences that nurses and doctors have had to deal with. From an unexpected delivery to putting ice cubes where the sun doesn’t shine, these medical professionals reveal all the crazy stuff they had to learn on the fly…

Going to school or university can only teach you so much, and this is especially true for medical professionals who have to deal with absolutely wacky, unusual, or mysterious cases on a daily basis. Study all you like, but when a patient comes in with a My Little Pony eraser stuck so far up their nose you can’t find it, you might find yourself having to think on the fly…. 

People are weird, and that often results in pretty weird injuries that send them into the care of doctors and nurses who…aren’t often prepared for what they see. Thanks to their carers’ quick thinking and years of experience, though, these patients end up walking out just fine. These medical professionals got together to share all the crazy times when they just had to mutter to themselves, “Well, they never taught this in school.”

Making Beer from Your Body 

A patient in the ER gets a standard urine drug screen. It was positive for ethanol, which is a type of alcohol. The patient insists he doesn’t drink alcohol. The test is repeated. It’s positive. The patient is upset because he doesn’t drink alcohol. A blood test is drawn, and it’s negative. We checked everything we could think of. Did we have the right urine and the right blood?

It should be impossible to test positive on urine and negative on blood. Elevated white cells mean you need to look at it under the microscope because they probably have an infection. It’s loaded with yeast. The man was diabetic and had high glucose in his urine, along with a yeast infection of the bladder. The yeast was fermenting the glucose to ethanol within his bladder. He was The Man Who Peed Beer. Reddit User: emmster

Constantly Drunk

There was a guy in the UK that had to stop driving because he has auto-brewery syndrome. Basically, the makeup of his digestive tract turns anything sugary/yeasty like bread into alcohol. He got stopped by the police and blew over the drink-drive limit.

Took quite some time to prove he hadn’t been drinking and that it was a medical condition….He didn’t know he had it at the time when he kept being pulled over by the cops in the beginning, but eventually, after doctor visits, we managed to sort him out.

They definitely didn’t teach this to us in medical school, and we only found it thanks to research. Obviously, your body constantly being a bit drunk isn’t great for your liver, so he’s on a special diet to counteract the effect. Reddit User: Vectorman1989

An Unexpected Delivery

I was in my first year out of family practice residency. The specialists like to refer to us as jack-of-all-trades/master of none sneeringly. I was on call from the ER. A normally unshakable ER doctor was beside himself. I had a very preterm mom in active labor.

And fog wouldn’t let us fly her out. He was the only ER doc, and the transferring facility wouldn’t take her in transport without a physician on board….On the way, I was trying to coach her to breathe through the contractions. But she felt something coming out. I looked and saw a foot.

So we’re in the back of an ambulance delivering a footling breech preemie. We delivered about a minute or two out of the hospital. They were expecting a mom in preterm labor. Not a micro-preemie. That was 12 years ago. She survived and is doing great. Reddit User: KamranTechInfo

A Comedy of Errors

Nurse here. A very panicked nursing assistant came running to the desk one day, saying, “You have to come to see this! I don’t know what this is!” The NA brings me into a patient’s room where she’s giving a bath and points to an area on the patient’s buttocks. “What is that?” I lean in for a closer inspection….

The patient starts to turn back around and says, “Is that my eye?” Sure enough, I didn’t receive in the report that my patient had a prosthetic eye, which at some point came out of the socket and became suction-cupped to her buttock. I left the room and have never laughed so hard in my life. I was never prepared for something as funny as that. Reddit User: xx__Jade__xx

Something From A Nightmare

When my mum was fresh out of nursing school in the ’80s, she got a job at a hospital that had a high concentration of geriatric patients. One particularly frail man took out his dentures before sleeping. During the night, he unfortunately ended up passing away. This was the same night that my mom was working the night shift, so she found him….

His cheeks were so alarmingly sunken in, my mum and another nurse tried to put the dentures back in so as not to horrify the family. However, rigor mortis had already started to set in. This made it impossible for them to put his teeth back in, and the family had to see him like that. She said nursing school definitely didn’t prepare her for that nightmare. Reddit User: [redacted]

Get Ready for a Fake Eye

They never prepared us for how to put a fake eye back in. A patient came in from a not-so-nice nursing home with a multitude of problems, one of which was a disgusting, draining fake eye that had to be removed for treatment. Upon discharge, we had to put it back in. Simple enough, we thought. But we had no idea how and struggled to figure it out…. 

I suppose that’s why the nursing home staff never took it out to clean it. Let me preface this by saying that this was decades ago. Fake eye technology is probably much better today, and this most likely won’t happen to anyone else. It’s the seemingly simple stuff like that that trips up a lot of people in the medical profession. Reddit User: allthedifference

Learning Outside the Classroom 

I didn’t learn how to react when a patient’s bowels pop out of their incision. This happened when I was a brand new nurse but off orientation. Quite a learning experience but came in handy because a few years later, it happened to a different patient, and I knew what to do. You have to keep the bowels very moist, covered with sterile gauze….

And then the patient is rushed to the OR. Some of you may have learned about this back in school. I think I remember learning about it but never learning what to do if it actually happened to a patient you were busy working with. You definitely learn a lot more when you’re actually working in the field rather than when you learn in a classroom. Reddit User: track_gal_1

Rewarding and Tough

Respiratory therapist here! They don’t teach you how to act when we unplug the ventilator to let go of a patient, especially when the family is around. To their defense, they do warn us it’s going to happen, but it’s never until you actually do it that you realize the weight. I like to talk to my patients, even if most are already brain dead at this point….

Although I did have to unplug conscious patients; that was hard, to say the least. This gives me a sense that at least if even a small part of their consciousness is still alive at this point, they know they’re not alone. I tell myself that at least from now on, they won’t be suffering anymore. It’s a tough place to work but also very rewarding at times. Reddit User: 2pass2

The Most Memorable Stories 

Number one most memorable: A cardiac massage for ten straight minutes while a guy was bleeding to death from multiple gunshot wounds. I had to stick my fist up through someone’s left lung to locate the heart and to directly give them CPR. I was literally pumping this dude’s heart so it can keep circulating blood. I felt like I was making a fatality move in Mortal Kombat…. 

It was surprisingly small and very squishy. They never teach you to expect the unexpected. I got floated to the ICU on a slow day, and they immediately gave me a patient who was violently hemorrhaging out of his mouth while all of the family was inside freaking out with me. He died an hour later. I also had two patients come in with knives in their eye sockets, awake too. Reddit User: BerserkPotato

Being a Human Stressball

If you have a patient in labor or in any painful procedure who wants to hold your hand, only let them hold two fingers. They can’t squeeze them too hard and break the bones. They still get the comfort of human touch. I’ve had patients in labor pinch me, pull on my clothes, and squeeze my two fingers as hard as possible….

Some are just panicked, but some seem to be angry and want to hurt someone. I calmly ask them to stop with the pinching or pulling on my clothes because that isn’t helping them. These are often people who have refused an epidural because they’re afraid of needles, and I understand that, I just am not going to be black and blue. Reddit User: pitpusherrn

Some Crazy Stories 

I had a patient with horrendous teeth; we reckon he was most likely a user. A couple of teeth fell out during the intubation, so they sent him up with them in a denture cup. That was a really awkward conversation when he woke up. Another time, there was a 100-year-old grandma in the hospital who ended up breaking her hip from falling out of bed….

The real shocker was that the bed she was falling out wasn’t hers, wink wink. On a more serious note, the “your loved one is gone” phone calls. You can never be prepared for something like this, and I don’t think it ever gets any easier. This is usually done by the doctors, as I feel it should be, but sometimes nurses do it. Reddit User: Spikito1

Perform an Exorcism 

I had a 60-something-year-old female patient show up for a same-day appointment to establish care from out of state. No medical records, denied any major medical history or medications. Never smoked, drank, or did drugs. Midway through the exam, she starts telling me that she sees “evil lines” all over her house. She states she’s unable to cross these lines….

And thus, she’s unable to access parts of her house, including her bathroom. She hears voices coming through the walls. Thinks the neighbors are hexing her all the time. She starts talking about the occult and freemasons ruling the world. She suddenly stops mid-sentence, stares at me without blinking, and wants to know if I could perform an exorcism. Err…sorry. I missed that section in medical school. Reddit User: dagayute

Learn CPR and First Aid 

I took a CPR class and learned basic first aid. Google and learn about living wills, advanced directives, and DNRs. Talk now to your loved ones about what you want to happen when you’re no longer able to care for yourself/be kept alive via machines/able to make decisions. And please know that people in the medical community are overworked….

They’re also underpaid, miss their families, probably have to go to the bathroom desperately, and are here for you and your family. These are things that you don’t need to go to medical school for, but it makes our jobs easier if you do know how all of this works and have everything in order; otherwise, we’re stuck making the tough decisions. Reddit User: Helloitsmommy

Experiencing Patients With Dementia 

People with dementia sometimes forget some or all of their own family members and also forget common social decorum. I can’t go a week, and it never gets easier, but one of these patients will openly talk about the attractiveness of an adult grandchild. But let me backtrack; by the time the patients are with us, the family realizes that the end is near…. 

So a lot of people that weren’t always present in the patient’s life start showing up, and obviously, the patient has deteriorated since their last visit. The grandpa, grandma, mom, dad, whatever they are part of their life is gone. The patient kind of becomes their true unfiltered self in a way. Some families get the fortune of kind of getting to see this person as how their friends see them. Reddit User: Jfhuss

The Importance of Life Conversations

One thing you don’t learn about is dealing with patients with no hope of recovery in the ICU. It’s difficult from a resident standpoint, as I don’t want to see these people suffer indefinitely because I know that I wouldn’t want that for myself. Regardless, I would say that most families are full-court press in resuscitation even though it won’t change anything for them in the long term….

Every time these patients pass, people are either grieving or grateful that their loved one is no longer suffering. What they don’t teach you in med school is that people are people. It’s their dad dying, and they won’t be the one to say let him go no matter how bad the pathology, and that’s not their fault. I never realized in school how important goals of life conversations would be. Reddit User: gn4rcot1cs

The Labor Stories 

As a student nurse, I observed a cesarean d/t preeclampsia. The lady is awake with an epidural in place and a screen in front of her. All went well, nothing dramatic there. The uterus was sewn back up, and I was starting to relax and look around when the surgeon asked the med student at the foot of the bed to step aside…. 

He then reached in and pumped the uterus twice and hard, forcing the remaining after products out of her vagina fast; the wall wasn’t that far from the foot of the bed, and that student had definitely been in the line of fire. The pt didn’t notice, and the husband didn’t seem to. The med student and I looked at each other, and she just said, “I guess that’s logical enough….” Reddit User: Tomgang

You’ve Either Got It or You Don’t 

I’m not a nurse or doctor, but I’ll never forget the comment my labor and delivery nurse made. I had been laboring in the tub at the hospital but wasn’t supposed actually to birth in it. When all of a sudden, I could feel the baby coming, my husband pulled the emergency cord, and the nurses rushed into the room…. 

Through the haze of baby crowning pain, I heard a panicked nurse say, “I don’t know what to do. What do we do?” I distinctly remember laughing to myself and heard my midwife’s calm voice say, “It’s okay, I’ve got it” as she moved past the nurse and took over. These are things that can’t be taught in med school; you’ve either got it or you don’t. Reddit User: OhMyOprah

Ice Ice Baby 

Long story short, a resident at a nursing home had hemorrhoids, and they were noted to be bleeding at the beginning of my shift. I stated to my CNAs that they were to notify me when they change her so I can scale the amount. Orders for the medicine were sent in.

Nothing from the CNAs, but the resident was fine when I checked on her. I pass on the info to the next shift and go home…. I get called into the office the next day to be yelled at about it. I followed protocol and charted accurately; medicine is not available at this time, none in the backup.

So they then ask me why I didn’t put an ice cube in her. An ice cube? Yes, they say. They ask if I learned about that in school. Ummm, no…. We have to have orders from a doctor for a cold pack, let alone put an ice cube where the sun doesn’t shine. Reddit User: ladyPHDeath

The Effects of Anesthetics 

Some people talk while under anesthesia. Some people even scream. I used to go home in tears especially after very vocal patients. The only thing that helped was when patients would wake up and tell us, “Thank you so much. That went so fast.” Post-op checks a week later where I could see the patients were still okay helped too….

I remember asking the doctor over and over when I first started, “Are you sure they’re under, are you sure they’re numb?” Now after a few years of experience, I understand how much local anesthetic he used and that patients were likely numb for a few hours post-treatment. I’m a dental assistant who worked for an oral surgeon. Reddit User: throwaway61419

A Smile Makes It Worthwhile

Training really emphasizes procedures: things we do to patients. We’re expected to be good at them and to want to be good at them. What we’re not taught is that we may well find that this isn’t what makes your day. I’ve delivered hundreds of babies, responded to codes, attended patients in the ED and ICU. It’s all very exciting and gratifying….

On the other hand, what gives me a sense of satisfaction in treating depression, chronic heart and lung disease, and helping patients deal with cancer? I guess I just feel better about helping someone breathe or feel better in their lives without doing invasive things to them. Seeing someone smile for the first time in months makes the whole day worthwhile. Reddit User: RichardBonham

It’s the Job of the Doctor 

I’m a nurse. They don’t teach you how to maintain honesty when your doctor skirts around a cancer diagnosis. I’ve had a few cases where a physician avoids patients’ and families’ questions and tells them to wait and see what pathology shows. The doctor will spend 30 seconds in the room, giving vague information and leaving me to pick up the pieces….

Patients often ask, in your opinion, what is this most often? What did it mean when the doctor said this? And my response is almost always “when it presents like this, this is usually cancer.” I then spend the next 30 minutes educating the patient and offering resources on what the next steps would be. The doctors should really be the ones doing this instead. Reddit User: hfranks84

The Experience of a New Nurse 

I’m still a pretty new nurse, but I was a psych nurse for nearly two years, and honestly, we learn very little about psych in school. The clinical was basically useless. So there was a lot I had to learn as I went. Like how to stay calm when you’re trying to talk someone into putting that sharp object in their hands down…. 

Or how to deal with a psychotic teenager who’s bigger than you punching holes in the drywall and then using the pieces as a weapon. Or what to do when you walk into the dark day room at 3 AM to find your patient perched on top of the giant TV near the ceiling like he’s schizophrenic Batman. I miss psych, honestly. It can make med/surg seem so boring sometimes. Reddit User: duuuuuuuuuumb

The Priest and the Nail Clippings

I used to be a pathology collector (phlebotomist that also collects all the other bits), and two patients come to mind. The first was a fella who needed some nail clippings/scrapings done for fungal testing. This guy needed it for his hands. His nails were yellowed and starting to deform, and there was a smelly cheese-like substance under them. First and only time I ever had to try not to dry retch in front of a patient….

The second was a different guy, having pain when urinating, so the doc sends him in to do a standard UTI and STI panel. Poor guy was so uncomfortable, not that I blamed him, but my hardest task was explaining it all with a straight face. He had come from work, so he was still in ‘uniform.’ He was a priest. Reddit User: Micromoo_

The Maggot Misconception

I don’t think I was adequately prepared to see stuff crawling out of someone’s wounds. Or for the smell of people who have that. I’ll never forget this one poor woman who’d had a stroke and became unable to walk, but her partner didn’t realize and so just kept giving her wine for about a week, breaking down the skin and opening wounds for flies to lay eggs into…. 

So by the time someone called an ambulance, she was in an extraordinarily awful state. The stuff crawling did keep the wounds cleaner than they would have been, but it still took weeks of intensive wound care to get her anywhere near right. Both of them were alcoholics, which is why the guy didn’t notice her issues. Reddit User: sojahi

The Tougher Side  

So many things; you get told bodily fluids might get on you, but I wasn’t quite prepared for urine to go in my eye…twice. That some people will ask you for a bed bath and pretend they can’t get up so that you’ll clean them, then walk around the ward later and laugh in your face. That you can end up very injured; I got two black eyes, and a friend had her wrist fractured….

That you never forget the first person you lose, that their last words stick with you; someone who was mentoring me at the time taught me it was okay to cry when this happens. That you have to keep on smiling after you do lose someone because if you go into the next room crying about someone that died, it only reminds them that not everyone gets better. Reddit User: hollabile

A Change in Departments 

On my first day in a new ward, an older woman rang the buzzer in the bathroom. I was keen on impressing her, so I ran straight to her. I was confronted with a wall of smell and what looked like an explosion of…well, you can imagine… everywhere, up the walls, and just everywhere. It turns out she didn’t think she needed her laxative the past few days and hid them….

The doctors, wondering why they weren’t working, increased her dose, then she took them all at once when she felt bunged up, she had also been eating an abundance of fruit. I had to use several disposable mops to reach parts of the wall. I’ve never seen anything like it. Luckily I work in neonates now! Reddit User: Pondering_mymind

Dealing With Beer Withdrawal 

I cared for a patient on the med/surg floor of the hospital. Diagnosis: gallbladder disease. About 3 days into his stay he complained of bugs in his room, then rats, soon becoming agitated and hostile. We weren’t aware that alcohol withdrawal could set in 3 days later, and his intake interview recorded “sometimes a few beers after work.” The patient threatened all who approached him….

He refused all meds, including sedatives that are used to treat DTs. Soon he moved his roommate’s bed, with the roommate in it, to the room’s closed door and barricaded them both inside the room. The roommate was quite ill with COPD, had IVs running, and needed a breathing treatment. I was really worried about both of them and clueless how to deal with this. Reddit User: quaquero

The Moral of the Story 

I work on a surgical floor with mostly general surgery patients. We also get patients who haven’t had surgery but are under the care of a general surgeon for one thing or another. We get a ton of GI bleeds, and the worst ones are always the alcohol-induced ones where you damage your liver so badly that the blood can’t get through, and the pressure builds up in the portal vein….

This causes the veins to grow and bulge in the stomach and esophagus. I’ve seen about four people bleed out in less than 20 minutes from one of those bursting. One of them we already took out his IV because his ride was there, then he all of a sudden felt funny, we laid him back down in bed, and then it was like a fountain of blood sprayed from his mouth. The moral of the story is: if you’re an alcoholic, you should get help before you get cirrhosis. Reddit User: nursekitty22

The Emotional Side of Medicine 

You learn everything about the human body anatomically, physiologically…you know it. However, you don’t learn about the real emotional side of health care until you actually get out there. I had a patient who was depressed and got into a physical altercation, and the county jail brought him to our hospital for complaints of chest pain….

He was a lawyer many years ago, and during a case where gangs were involved, the gang he was prosecuting shot up his law office, killing his assistant. He had a psychological break. Lost his law license and has been bouncing around, hanging with the wrong crowd. The guy’s lack of emotional stability has resulted in him not being able to catch a break. The tox screen was clean. He just couldn’t get himself out of this hole. Reddit User: JustCallMeYarr

Keeping a Poker Face  

My young, newly married patient got in a bad motorcycle crash with her husband. She survived, and her husband didn’t. She wakes up and starts yelling, “Where’s my husband?” We can’t tell her that he didn’t make it, only the doctor can do that. The doctor couldn’t come up for 3 hours, and we couldn’t tell her anything. So I would walk into her room knowing that her life was about to be destroyed….

My gut still hurts thinking about that. “Can I get you anything, ma’am?” “I just want to know where my husband is, is he okay?” I would just tell her that I wasn’t sure, but no matter how hard I tried to poker face it, I think she could tell in my voice that he was gone. There’s no chapter on that in Med Surge. Reddit User: GhettoBuddhaKinda

The Flying Oysters 

You aren’t prepared for patients ripping their call light out of the wall and swinging it over their head like a lasso, yelling variations of “c’mon little piggy!” to any staff member who tried to intervene. You aren’t ready for bath salts/PCP/etc. and the absolute absurdness of trying to treat people high on them….

You don’t expect “flying oysters,” aka the sputum that comes out of a tracheostomy and flies through the air. Actually, that one I did learn while still a nursing student, but I hadn’t been told not to stand at the foot of the bed of a trach patient, and while it takes a lot to gross me, out, receiving that “oyster” straight to the v-neck of my scrubs is actually the closest I’ve come to losing chunks. Reddit User: dandelion_k

A Good Old Nokia 3310

I’m a radiographer. This happened about ten years ago. Occasionally we x-ray prisoners. A female prisoner comes in with two guards for a check-up on the femoral nailing. She gets changed and hands her clothes to her guard. We take an x-ray of the hip and see some sort of device over her bladder. Confused, we take another picture focusing on more of the pelvis…. 

She had shoved a mobile phone up herself. Prisoners aren’t allowed mobiles in prison, and they get confiscated if found. It was the one hiding place she had after giving her clothes to the guard. Interestingly, it was an old Nokia 3310, it had a hand free kit wrapped around it, and ironically, she was on Virgin Mobile. Getting it out and giving it to the guard was interesting. Reddit User: NinjaRadiographer

Feeding the Elephant 

This story is from a friend who is finishing her rotations. She’s working ER for the morning, and she gets a gentleman who comes in with the issue that he’s unable to urinate. So they do the initial barrage of questions and decide that since they can’t find anything visibly wrong, they need to move the next step and go internal…. 

The first thing they try is to insert a catheter, but in the process, they realize something is going wrong: they can’t get the catheter in. After some uncomfortable moments, they retract the clips to see a peanut at the end of the tool. At this point, the patient then remembered having a romantic evening with his wife, and after consuming a bit too much alcohol, they decided to play “feed the elephant.” Reddit User: mulltalica

How to Cope 

Oh so many stories to share. How to keep the ex-wife, the current wife, and the two girlfriends apart until you’ve had a chance to tell him he has to let each of them know the others exist; they got on eventually. How to stop a manic old guy braining your ward clerk with a stick….

And don’t forget how to debrief your junior on really awful pediatric results they got caught up in more or less accidentally. I could go on and on, but I can’t blame my med school. I’m not sure you could learn this stuff from a book. It really takes years of working hard and seeing stuff like this that helps you to learn coping mechanisms; you definitely need them. Reddit User: humanhedgehog

We’re Well Into The 21st Century, People 

It’s a moment that’s happened to me a number of times, even as recently as a few weeks ago. This is none other than getting asked to work a fax machine. Yes, I know it’s insane, but for some reason, we still use fax machines in the NHS. In all fairness, though, there’s a plan in place to phase them out over the next couple of years….

It’s not like I have to relearn how to use one each time, nor are they particularly difficult to figure out, but using one just seems so out of place in the 21st century that I’m taken aback whenever I have to do so. Sometimes the number you’re trying to send the fax to is engaged; that’s when I usually start swearing loudly. Reddit User: dAdi88

Marrying a Patient 

A dying patient wanted to marry his partner while bedridden in the hospital. I’d developed a real fondness for him and got to know his family over a number of prolonged inpatient stays and surgeries. It was apparent that he was deteriorating and had a big problem with anxiety, but I seemed to be one of just a few who was able to calm him down at key moments….

His partner was spending a lot of time at his bedside, as you’d expect, and he ended up asking her to marry him. I got roped into marrying them. They were 100% aware that I’m not experienced, legally or not, in wedding couples, but in the absence of something better, because I had a bond with them and because it was a dying man’s wish, I agreed to do it in the presence of their family at the patient’s bedside. Reddit User: juiici

A Syringe in Hand 

Well this is something I did learn in school but was not expecting whatsoever. First day of school, I was in the VA and was making rounds with my nurse. He was explaining to me that they had a patient that they were suspecting of drug usage but didn’t get a urine sample from. When we opened the door, the patient was cooking his substances on some tinfoil….

He was using his syringe and was doing this on the bedside table in the ward. He saw us and just threw everything out of the window and denied every bit of it. He ended up being taken into custody after. I couldn’t believe that he had ended up in the hospital for this and was carrying on doing drugs. Hard drugs are the scourge of the earth. Reddit User: thetalkingbush

The Feeling of Running a Code 

They don’t teach you the feeling of running a code on a pulse-less patient and “calling it” your first time. My knees started trembling after I lost him, and I couldn’t stand up. It’s one thing being on the sideline as an intern and someone telling you what to do and a whole different feeling leading it as a senior. It was a real learning curve….

Every single person is relying on you and following your command. The hard part is not the medicine of it; running codes is not hard. But gosh, this is a human life in your hands. I was able to bring him back once, but the second time I was unable to. I felt like I aged 50 years in that 45-minute span. Reddit User: beard_game_strong