RARE PHOTOS: Stupidest things patients visit doctor - The Real Truth

I don't like speaking ill of my patients mainly because I think we all neglect our health to a certain extent volitionally, and that can be viewed as "dumb".

But the winner is Aristotle*. Aristotle is a 35 year old highly functional corporate lawyer. Aristotle has G6PD deficiency and (in his case) he develops mild hemolysis when exposed to certain foods, including fava beans. Every year for his birthday, Aristotle goes to the fancy Greek restaurant and gets gigandes plaki, his favourite dish. Every year he develops mild hemolysis with mild jaundice and dark urine. Every year he comes to see me, his gastroenterologist, urgently and without an appointment on the day after his birthday -- bull-in-china-shopping my clinic, yelling at the secretary and other patients if he could be seen first. Every year he repeats his highly anxious concerns that his liver is screwed up because he's mildly jaundiced and has dark urine. Every year I tell him it's from the gigandes plaki. Every year he resolves never to eat it again and is fine for the rest of the year on his G6PD diet.

And every year on his birthday, he forgets. And then the cycle continues.

*Name changed.

I work as a receptionist/office assistant at a large clinic, so I'm obviously not a doctor but I do deal with a lot of patients. I haven't been doing it for very long but I have a couple interactions that come to mind. One was a lady wanting to know if our clinic would do a "virginity test" on her because her PCP told her they don't do that. It took me way too long to explain it's not a real thing. Another lady needed to get tested for STDs, not weird, but she said she needed us to send the results to her prospective employer? Uh why?? We told her we wouldn't do that but she could come get a copy of her results and do whatever she wanted with it. She does but comes back later the same day and says we gave her the wrong test results. We double check, nope, those are def her test results. Trying to sort this out with her, I asked her why her employers would want an STD test anyway. She said it's to make sure she doesn't have "tubulars" Then it dawned on me. She meant Tuberculosis. She needed a TB test, not an STD test. She gets angry and yells that we're just trying to trick her into taking more tests so we can charge her more. Then she stormed out...

Admittedly a medical student but had a conversation like this on respiratory ward:
"Are you smoker ? "

-No

"Have you ever smoked?"

-Yes

"How long were you smoking for?"

-50 years

" When did you give up? "

-Two days ago.

Not a Doctor, but EMT.

Had a woman who was in active labor, despite insisting she couldn't be pregnant. She said her last period was "like ten months ago" so she'd gone through menopause.

She was 25.

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

A secretary buzzes back to me that there's a call on line two that needs medical advice. I pick it up and one of our patient's mother is on the phone having a panic attack. She is hyperventilating into the phone. I asked her if she was alright, thinking maybe she needed an ambulance, and through her breaths and now tears, she starts telling me that she thinks her four year old son has a skull fracture.

I ask if he fell. No.

I ask if he's conscious. Yes.

I ask if he's breathing. Yes.

I ask if he is bleeding from his ears, eyes, nose, mouth, scalp. No.

I ask if there is any visible wound. No.

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

I tell her to go to the ER for proper assessment (we don't do MRIs, X-rays, CT Scans). She doesn't want to. She says she was supposed to take her kids to the beach. Mind you, she is still crying and breathing heavy at this point. I tell her to come right over then but warned her we would probably have to send her to the ER.

She shows up 15 minutes later, cradling the child and crying. The little boy was crying too. She kept hushing him and saying "Mommy loves her strong boy, no matter what!" Which only made him cry harder.

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

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

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

I work in a burn unit.

Had another hospital FLY, yes FLY as in $50,000 helicopter ride- a patient over.

Patient ended up having what looked like a bad tan on a small portion of their body.

There were a couple little blisters on their leg, and they wouldn't stop screaming for pain medication- and claiming that they were in 12/10 pain. Fairly sure that sending ER was just trying to dump them on us.

Edit: everyone can stop telling me how super serious and special their sun burns were. You still don't need a helicopter.

Alot of patients come to the hospital because they are "sick" but refuse to do any tests or take any medicine. Do people expect healthcare workers to do a ritual dance and chant around them and magically heal their illnesses?

I am not a doctor but as a paramedic I once had a patient who crushed his forearm in a steel press. I could literally see every bone in his arm at this point (compound fracture). He looked at me and asked "can I go back to work tommorow?". I had to explain the severity of the situation to him. I realize he was likely in shock. The patient went on to tell me he was trying to make enough money to buy his children christmas presents. I still feel bad for him to this day.

I'm a little late to the party here, so I'm not sure if anyone will see this, but anyway...

I'm not in the medical field at all, but my wife is a nurse practitioner who regularly works with youth in the local juvenile detention facility where underage suspects/criminals are sent to await trial and serve their sentences. One young lady in custody was pregnant and didn't know who the father of her expected child was, but she told my wife not to worry about it. Apparently she would be able to deduce the father's identity based on the child's *accent* after birth.

Yup.

I'm a student and my GP supervisor was involved in a scheme to reduce A&E waiting times by having a GP in A&E to take patients that weren't actually in an accident or an emergency. As none of the patients were actually dangerously ill I was basically doing the consultations with the doctor supervising, double checking and signing prescriptions etc.

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

At this point I turn around to my supervisor attempting to say what do I do here? He says "You're OK, go home."

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

There was a guy who came to the ER because his iPhone app told him his sleep was poor quality.

I once had a patient with a cancer diagnosis completely depressed about not being able to see their family anymore. I was confused because I had spoken with this individual's spouse and extended family who seemed supportive; there wasn't any indication of family problems, etc.

It turns out that this individual thought "genetic" and "family history" had meant something similar to "contagious", leading them to the conclusion that one should stay away from loved ones lest it be spread through the family.

That was one clarification I was so happy to give.

Dentist here. In school I had a 70yr old pt who was still in the dating game and looked like of Joan Rivers

She's got a ton of acid erosion on her teeth. Tells me she drinks on "3-O" water. Didn't know what was in it. We look it up on Google. That'd be a pH of 3. All of her water. Plus, she likes to put lemons in her water. I tell her this is also acidic. She tells me I'm wrong, because her friend who took a few nutrition classes said that as soon as the lemon juice gets into the body, it turns basic.

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

Also, her blood pressure is super high every visit. She tells me that she stopped takin her BP Meds because she thought they were unhealthy. I tell her that her method is not working at all.

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

I'm friends w/ her on Facebook now. It's just sad.

When I worked in a&e, had a patient with the complaint of "neurology" in minors. She tells me she cant feel the tip of her pinkie. A vague 0.2cmx0.2cm patch right at the top. No sensation there whatsoever. No other history or symptoms. I grabbed a needle, poked it and cured her.

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

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

Me: So what brought you in today
Mom: *angrily* I have been waiting for over an hour and no one has come to help my daughter and she is dieing!
Me: Ok let me see if I can help what seems to be the problem?
Mom: She has a headache
Me: OK.. tell me more about the headache
Daughter: well I don't actually have a headache anymore...
Mom: WHAT?!?! We have been waiting here so long my daughter doesn't even have a headache anymore! I want to talk to your supervisor.
Me: ......

ER Nurse here! I have a million of these! This is my favorite in recent history:

A woman checked her 9 year-old son in to the ER because he was upset he didn't win an award during an academic award ceremony at school. She wanted someone to "talk to him or something, I can't deal with him". She basically wanted us to parent her child for her because she didn't want to be bothered.

Paramedic here. Had someone come into the ER because they were gay.

Had a male take his wife's birth control because she wasn't good at remembering when to take it.

I'm not a doctor (I work in the ER) but a patients complaint was that she had Seasonal Diabetes.

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


Doctor diagnoses her with impetigo and prescribes her an antibiotic ointment. She leaves and fills the prescription and comes back flipping out. She googled impetigo and, with the help of WebMD, came to the conclusion that it was a children's disorder on the arms and legs that can only be contracted from children and she wasn't around children. Insists that what she believes she has (perioral dermatitis) is a "woman's disorder" and she doesn't have this "children's disease". Says that the antibiotic he prescribed isn't on the list of treatments (thanks WebMD). (It's on the top of the list actually, of you know, actual medical books, but whatever)


Whole time, she's showing us these pics off google of "perioral dermatitis" saying it's a woman's disorder. Half the pictures were of men. Now one thing you should know, perioral dermatitis means rash around the mouth. That's it. It doesn't mean anything. It's not a type of rash. It's not only cured by a specific antibiotic. It's just a rash that happens to be around the mouth. She was furious, shaking with rage and about to start throwing things bc the doctor wouldn't prescribe her this certain antibiotic. Doctor told us to call the cops if she came back. People are crazy.