This article is based on the AskReddit question "Medical professionals: What was a time you were skeptical about what a patient was telling you, only to find out the patient was right?"
Source can be found at the bottom of the article.
1/16. Guy came in for an arteriogram. He kept telling me he bleeds really easily. Like if he cuts himself shaving the bleeding won't stop. I mentioned this to the doctor but all the patients lab results were normal so we didn't worry about it. After the procedure this guy bled EVERYWHERE.
-ThouShaltNotFa
2/16. This elderly lady kept screaming periodically about the men looking in her window. I go in to reassure and reorient her, and almost have a heart attack when I see a face in the window. I call security, some stupid college kids thought it would be funny to run around on the first floor roof (the first floor of the hospital is larger than the other floors, you get the picture).
The best part was that the patient totally made fun of my reaction. She laughed all night about it and kept teasing me "remember when your face did this, and you said "what the F**K?!?" Yes, Mrs. Smith, if only you could please forget that by morning.
-123poppy
3/16. I had this patient who was a really nice guy but had pretty severe untreated mental illness and was always telling me stories about his celebrity friends, how he was producing a Broadway show, just really grandiose stuff that there was no way it could be true. He was just scraping by, he was always dressed very neatly but his clothes were very worn and he had Medicaid and an alcoholic roommate.
Anyway, at one point he needed a colonoscopy and I tried to send him to a clinic where I knew they would take Medicaid but he said he had been in a medical research study with a Park Avenue gastroenterologist and the guy told him he would do free colonoscopies for life. Right, I thought, and resigned myself to having this conversation again in three months.
Three weeks later a colonoscopy report from a Park Avenue practice arrived on my desk. I've always wondered how much of the rest of it was true.
-terracottatilefish
4/16. Had a patient who thought she had tetany. Very skeptical at first since it is so rare in the area. She got admitted and turned out she had tetany due to vitamin deficiency.
-makyman1234
5/16. I work in psych and we had this one patient who was psychotic and delusional run out to the nursing station at one in the morning screaming that there were naked people stealing their things. Due to the patients history of, well, being delusional, we were definitely skeptical. Threw out a few words and reassurance and agreed to check the room to ensure there weren't any people stealing things from room.
Walk down the hall with the patient and go into the room and there was a demented patient walking around butt naked with an arm full of items.
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Our facility has rooms set up so two rooms of two people have one shared bathroom that connects each of them together and the demented patient has apparently disrobed and wandered into the adjoining room.
-platypust
6/16. Had an odd 74 year old patient keep telling me her mom died upstairs last night, and her mom's lover, "a 51 year old Mexican man," would be down to bother her, and we were not to let him in her room. I deal with a lot of dementia patients, so I treated all her comments like I would any other patient making odd claims.
Turns out her 94 year old mother really did die on the unit above us the night before, and that 94 year old really did have a 51 year old Mexican caretaker/alleged lover who was turned away from the daughter's room the next shift.
-CuddleLumpkin
7/16. I'm a paramedic. A 15 year old female called 911 for a headache. History of migraines, didn't take any meds. She was in wrestling practice when it the headache started. She said it was worse than a normal migraine. She was on her period so we assumed it was hormones because she was being very emotional.
Turns out she had a massive brain bleed. Fortunately it was caught early before onset of things like pupil changes and stroke symptoms. Edit: we took her to a stroke receiving hospital just to be safe despite our wrong assumption.
-Hiwheel
8/16. Had a woman come in, usual drug seeker, writhing in the floor and putting on a show. Come to find out she had a rupture in her stomach that was leaking gas into the peritoneal space. Serious medical condition that required pretty acute surgical intervention.
-WesTheGreat
9/16. I am a Labor and Delivery Nurse and I had a patient come in to the hospital about 20 weeks pregnant complaining that she thought she felt her bag of water "coming out" after having sex. She said she felt into her vagina after having sex because something felt weird and she thought she felt a bubble there. I highly doubted that her bag of water was truly bulging considering her early gestation, but assured her she did the right thing coming in to get checked out. After talking with the doctor on call and explaining the patient's story, the MD examined the patient and found that the patient was exactly right. Her cervix was dilated about 4cm and the bag of water was bulging into the vaginal canal.
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We immediately put her in reverse trendelendberg and started antibiotics. Our only hope was that maybe the bag of water would fall with gravity back up into the uterus and we could place a cerclage, but unfortunately she delivered shortly after and the baby passed. It was a really sad case. I had to reassure her that the sex didn't cause the pre term delivery. I'm sure her cervix was thinning and dilating LONG before she had sex, but it was difficult to convince her.
-rnmalnb90
10/16. A few weeks ago I was dispatched to our local casino for a 30 y/o "having a stroke."
Yeah right, I thought, as I approach the guy, who was an obviously fit and athletic dude pacing up and down a hallway. He reeked of alcohol and had apparently spent the whole morning on the slots before coming up to security and announcing that he was having a stroke. I did my assessment, and besides the typical slurred speech of an intoxicated person and some lethargy, nothing was especially worrisome, but we transported him anyway because he was insistent, had started to make a scene, and you don't really fuck around with strokes. But there was no way in hell in my mind that this healthy-looking athletic young dude with completely normal vital signs and very little medical history was having a stroke.
And by gosh golly, he was having a stroke. Never before in my career have I been so dramatically proven wrong.
-now_I_feelafel
11/16. Was talking to an elderly lady who had known dementia about her pending hip fracture surgery (her son as NOK had consented for her surgery).
She was very confused and said she already had her surgery. I smiled kindly at her and her roommate and gently reassured her that I had talked to her son and everything was OK.
That's when I picked up her observation chart at the end of her bed and saw a discrepancy with the name above her bed.
I took a deep breath (it was the end of a 16hr shift), apologised and told her that I was looking for a different patient who had dementia and that I was told they were in this room. She and her roommate burst out laughing and told me that the nurses had switched a few patients rooms around and that the confused lady I was looking for was in the next room.
Luckily she was lovely about it ... even asked whether I was quite sure that I didn't have dementia.
-frangipani_c
12/16. I work as a paramedic doing critical care transport. Most of our work is from a semi-rural hospital about an hour away from the closest city.
Anyway, a woman came into the emergency room with back pain. The hospital staff thought she had a kidney stone. Patient didn't think so, but they worked her up for a kidney stone anyway.
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CT scan didn't show a kidney stone, but showed a massive dissecting abdominal aortic aneurysm. By now she had been in the hospital for a couple hours, and we had to get her to the bigger hospital for surgery before she bled out into her abdomen.
She lived, but it definitely could have gone differently.
-pair_a_medic
13/16. I work in Palliative Care/Hospice, where delirium is extremely common. It presents itself differently in different people, but delusions and hallucinations aren't uncommon. We had a guy who was clearly delirious--agitated, disoriented, and unfocused. That said, many delirious patients have clear patches. But one day, he tells me that he's waiting for a visit from [past Prime Minister of Canada]. We sort of chuckle to ourselves and play along, since it's dickish to be mean to patients. It gets put in the notes that he's started having delusions.
Until, of course, a security detail shows up with [past PMoC], and they spend a few hours visiting. Turns out this guy was a staffer for multiple past PMs, but was especially close with this particular one. Egg on my face, for sure.
-Punderstruck
14/16. My family's pediatrician was on vacation for a couple weeks and had a doctor filling in for her. My little sister had intense stomach pain so my mom (who is the opposite of a hypochondriac...gash on the head? Just butterfly it. Knocked out your front teeth? Sigh, I'll call the dentist) took my sister to the substitute doctor and he was like "She's being a dramatic 7 year old; she's fine."
A week later, my sister still wasn't doing well so my mom took her back and he said the same thing. Once my normal pediatrician came back, my mom took my sister back AGAIN and the second she saw my sister, my pediatrician was like "To the hospital, NOW!"
Long story short, she had freaking cancer!! A tumor the size of a melon in her little 7 year old belly. The substitute paediatrician came to the hospital in tears to apologize a couple weeks later!
-Ttruncatus
15/16. Me to school nurse: "I think I broke my arm." Nurse: "You probably didn't, I'll get to you in a minute." Me, waking up on a cot: "What happened?" Nurse: "You passed out because you broke your arm."
I should probably look her up and write her a thank you note for instilling a healthy skepticism of doctors at an early age.
-Ariar
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16/16. Ex-Paramedic in Melbourne Australia. (PTSD issues after a kid, different story) Cheerful guy we get called to, very friendly. Says he's feeling very suicidal. We talk for a while, he definitely seems ok, very happy, quite amicable. Me having had very little experience with how depression can hide in people (at that time at least) wasn't exactly sure how to handle it. Didn't really see many issues to be frank. He seemed fine in every aspect, lucid and happy. We are almost wondering if it's a prank. Original call out was for a hanging, so we are kinda relieved to see a healthy looking and friendly dude.
He asks us if we would like some cake. Sure, why not (slow day, and there was two teams on so we were covered). So he gets this lovely giant chocolate birthday cake out of the fridge and then gets a knife to cut it. We sit at the table looking forward to tasting this gorgeous looking thing.
And then he promptly jams the knife about 3 inches into his neck. Twice.
In the space of what felt like 30 seconds we go from having a pleasant conversation, to having my fingers in his neck trying to hold an artery shut. Blood is fucking everywhere, I've never seen that amount come out of someone without ending up with a corpse. He survived, but ended up with slight brain damage due to lack of oxygen to the brain. Or maybe it was something else that caused it, clot or something. I dunno.
I met him again a few months later when I visited another psych ward patient I knew, no other major mental illnesses had been diagnosed at all, just depression.
Still the same funny, amicable and lovely guy, but slightly slurred speech and a couple of great big scars.
I think what shocked me the most was how fast the situation changed, how it went from stand still to on the very edge of life in a couple of seconds.
I see a psych now and that one comes up occasionally.
Sorry if I disturbed you, but I think this was actually helpful for me. Thanks.
-Ilovecatstew
(Source)
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Experiencing death is a fascinating and frightening idea.
Who doesn't want to know what is waiting for us on the other side?
But so many of us want to know and then come back and live a little longer.
It would be so great to be sure there is something else.
But the whole dying part is not that great, so we'll have to rely on other people's accounts.
Redditor AlaskaStiletto wanted to hear from everyone who has returned to life, so they asked:
"Redditors who have 'died' and come back to life, what did you see?"
Sensations
Happy Good Vibes GIF by Major League SoccerGiphy"My dad's heart stopped when he had a heart attack and he had to be brought back to life. He kept the paper copy of the heart monitor which shows he flatlined. He said he felt an overwhelming sensation of peace, like nothing he had felt before."
PeachesnPain
Recovery
"I had surgical complications in 2010 that caused a great deal of blood loss. As a result, I had extremely low blood pressure and could barely stay awake. I remember feeling like I was surrounded by loved ones who had passed. They were in a circle around me and I knew they were there to guide me onwards. I told them I was not ready to go because my kids needed me and I came back."
"My nurse later said she was afraid she’d find me dead every time she came into the room."
"It took months, and blood transfusions, but I recovered."
good_golly99
Take Me Back
"Overwhelming peace and happiness. A bright airy and floating feeling. I live a very stressful life. Imagine finding out the person you have had a crush on reveals they have the same feelings for you and then you win the lotto later that day - that was the feeling I had."
"I never feared death afterward and am relieved when I hear of people dying after suffering from an illness."
rayrayrayray
Free
The Light Minnie GIF by (G)I-DLEGiphy"I had a heart surgery with near-death experience, for me at least (well the possibility that those effects are caused by morphine is also there) I just saw black and nothing else but it was warm and I had such inner peace, its weird as I sometimes still think about it and wish this feeling of being so light and free again."
TooReDTooHigh
This is why I hate surgery.
You just never know.
Shocked
Giphy"More of a near-death experience. I was electrocuted. I felt like I was in a deep hole looking straight up in the sky. My life flashed before me. Felt sad for my family, but I had a deep sense of peace."
Admirable_Buyer6528
The SOB
"Nursing in the ICU, we’ve had people try to die on us many times during the years, some successfully. One guy stood out to me. His heart stopped. We called a code, are working on him, and suddenly he comes to. We hadn’t vented him yet, so he was able to talk, and he started screaming, 'Don’t let them take me, don’t let them take me, they are coming,' he was scared and yelling."
"Then he yelled a little more, as we tried to calm him down, he screamed, 'No, No,' and gestured towards the end of the bed, and died again. We didn’t get him back. It was seriously creepy. We called his son to tell him the news, and the son said basically, 'Good, he was an SOB.'”
1-cupcake-at-a-time
Colors
"My sister died and said it was extremely peaceful. She said it was very loud like a train station and lots of talking and she was stuck in this area that was like a curtain with lots of beautiful colors (colors that you don’t see in real life according to her) a man told her 'He was sorry, but she had to go back as it wasn’t her time.'"
Hannah_LL7
"I had a really similar experience except I was in an endless garden with flowers that were colors I had never seen before. It was quiet and peaceful and a woman in a dress looked at me, shook her head, and just said 'Not yet.' As I was coming back, it was extremely loud, like everyone in the world was trying to talk all at once. It was all very disorienting but it changed my perspective on life!"
huntokarrr
The Fog
"I was in a gray fog with a girl who looked a lot like a young version of my grandmother (who was still alive) but dressed like a pioneer in the 1800s she didn't say anything but kept pulling me towards an opening in the wall. I kept refusing to go because I was so tired."
"I finally got tired of her nagging and went and that's when I came to. I had bled out during a c-section and my heart could not beat without blood. They had to deliver the baby and sew up the bleeders. refill me with blood before they could restart my heart so, like, at least 12 minutes gone."
Fluffy-Hotel-5184
Through the Walls
"My spouse was dead for a couple of minutes one miserable night. She maintains that she saw nothing, but only heard people talking about her like through a wall. The only thing she remembers for absolute certain was begging an ER nurse that she didn't want to die."
"She's quite alive and well today."
Hot-Refrigerator6583
Well let's all be happy to be alive.
It seems to be all we have.
Trying to lose weight is a struggle understood by many people regardless of size.
The goal of reaching a healthy weight may seem unattainable, but with diet and exercise, it can pay off through persistence and discipline.
Seeing the pounds gradually drop off can also be a great motivator and incentivize people to stay the course.
Those who've achieved their respective weight goals shared their experiences when Redditor apprenti8455 asked:
"People who lost a lot of weight, what surprises you the most now?"
Redditors didn't see these coming.
Shiver Me Timbers
"I’m always cold now!"
– Telrom_1
"I had a coworker lose over 130 pounds five or six years ago. I’ve never seen him without a jacket on since."
– r7ndom
"140 lbs lost here starting just before COVID, I feel like that little old lady that's always cold, damn this top comment was on point lmao."
– mr_remy
Drawing Concern
"I lost 100 pounds over a year and a half but since I’m old(70’s) it seems few people comment on it because (I think) they think I’m wasting away from some terminal illness."
– dee-fondy
"Congrats on the weight loss! It’s honestly a real accomplishment 🙂"
"Working in oncology, I can never comment on someone’s weight loss unless I specifically know it was on purpose, regardless of their age. I think it kind of ruffles feathers at times, but like I don’t want to congratulate someone for having cancer or something. It’s a weird place to be in."
– LizardofDeath
Unleashing Insults
"I remember when I lost the first big chunk of weight (around 50 lbs) it was like it gave some people license to talk sh*t about the 'old' me. Old coworkers, friends, made a lot of not just negative, but harsh comments about what I used to look like. One person I met after the big loss saw a picture of me prior and said, 'Wow, we wouldn’t even be friends!'”
"It wasn’t extremely common, but I was a little alarmed by some of the attention. My weight has been up and down since then, but every time I gain a little it gets me a little down thinking about those things people said."
– alanamablamaspama
Not Everything Goes After Losing Weight
"The loose skin is a bit unexpected."
– KeltarCentauri
"I haven’t experienced it myself, but surgery to remove skin takes a long time to recover. Longer than bariatric surgery and usually isn’t covered by insurance unless you have both."
– KatMagic1977
"It definitely does take a long time to recover. My Dad dropped a little over 200 pounds a few years back and decided to go through with skin removal surgery to deal with the excess. His procedure was extensive, as in he had skin taken from just about every part of his body excluding his head, and he went through hell for weeks in recovery, and he was bedridden for a lot of it."
– Jaew96
These Redditors shared their pleasantly surprising experiences.
Shopping
"I can buy clothes in any store I want."
– WaySavvyD
"When I lost weight I was dying to go find cute, smaller clothes and I really struggled. As someone who had always been restricted to one or two stores that catered to plus-sized clothing, a full mall of shops with items in my size was daunting. Too many options and not enough knowledge of brands that were good vs cheap. I usually went home pretty frustrated."
– ganache98012
No More Symptoms
"Lost about 80 pounds in the past year and a half, biggest thing that I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen mentioned on here yet is my acid reflux and heartburn are basically gone. I used to be popping tums every couple hours and now they just sit in the medicine cabinet collecting dust."
– colleennicole93
Expanding Capabilities
"I'm all for not judging people by their appearance and I recognise that there are unhealthy, unachievable beauty standards, but one thing that is undeniable is that I can just do stuff now. Just stamina and flexibility alone are worth it, appearance is tertiary at best."
– Ramblonius
People Change Their Tune
"How much nicer people are to you."
"My feet weren't 'wide' they were 'fat.'"
– LiZZygsu
"Have to agree. Lost 220 lbs, people make eye contact and hold open doors and stuff"
"And on the foot thing, I also lost a full shoe size numerically and also wear regular width now 😅"
– awholedamngarden
It's gonna take some getting used to.
Bones Everywhere
"Having bones. Collarbones, wrist bones, knee bones, hip bones, ribs. I have so many bones sticking out everywhere and it’s weird as hell."
– Princess-Pancake-97
"I noticed the shadow of my ribs the other day and it threw me, there’s a whole skeleton in here."
– bekastrange
Knee Pillow
"Right?! And they’re so … pointy! Now I get why people sleep with pillows between their legs - the knee bones laying on top of each other (side sleeper here) is weird and jarring."
– snic2030
"I lost only 40 pounds within the last year or so. I’m struggling to relate to most of these comments as I feel like I just 'slimmed down' rather than dropped a ton. But wow, the pillow between the knees at night. YES! I can relate to this. I think a lot of my weight was in my thighs. I never needed to do this up until recently."
– Strongbad23
More Mobility
"I’ve lost 100 lbs since 2020. It’s a collection of little things that surprise me. For at least 10 years I couldn’t put on socks, or tie my shoes. I couldn’t bend over and pick something up. I couldn’t climb a ladder to fix something. Simple things like that I can do now that fascinate me."
"Edit: Some additional little things are sitting in a chair with arms, sitting in a booth in a restaurant, being able to shop in a normal store AND not needing to buy the biggest size there, being able to easily wipe my butt, and looking down and being able to see my penis."
– dma1965
People making significant changes, whether for mental or physical health, can surely find a newfound perspective on life.
But they can also discover different issues they never saw coming.
That being said, overcoming any challenge in life is laudable, especially if it leads to gaining confidence and ditching insecurities.