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
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For many childhood memories are overrun by living nightmares.
Yes, children are resilient, but that doesn't mean that the things we see as babes don't follow us forever.
The horrors of the world are no stranger to the young.
Redditor -2sweetcaramel- wanted to see who was willing to share about the worst things we've seen as kids, so they asked:
"What’s the creepiest thing you saw as a kid?"
Serious Danger
"Me and my best friend would explore the drainage tunnels under the Vegas area where we grew up. These were miles long and it was always really cool down there so it was a good way to escape the heat of our scorching hot summers. We went into this one that goes under the Fiesta casino and found a camp with a bunch of homeless people."
"Mind you we are like 11 years old lol. And we just kept going like it was nothing. It wasn’t scary then but when I look back at it we could have been in some serious danger. Our parents had no idea we did this or where we were and we had no cellphones. We could have been kidnapped and never have been found."
oofboof2020
Waiting for Food
"I was at a portillos once when I was 12 and I was waiting with my little brother at a booth while my parents got our food. This guy was standing with his tray kind of watching me then after a couple of minutes he started to walk over really fast not breaking eye contact with me."
"He was 2 feet from the table and my dad came out of nowhere and scared the s**t out of him. He looked so surprised and just said he wanted to see if I’d get scared or not. He left his tray full of food near the door and left. My folks reported him but we never went to that location again since we found a better one closer to home."
nowhereboy1964
Captain Hobo to the Rescue
"When I was a pretty young teen, my friends and I were horsing around in San Francisco and started hanging out to smoke with some homeless guys. Another homeless dude came up and began aggressively trying to shake us down for anything (money, smokes, a ride, drugs- all of it) and wouldn’t take no for an answer."
"We got in over our heads and could tell this guy was now riling the other 2 guys up and they were acting like they wanted to jump us. Some grandfather-looking old homeless man appeared out of nowhere and yelled at us to get the f**k out of here- nice kids like us don’t belong down here at this hour!!"
"Captain Hobo saved our lives that night. My parents sincerely thought we were at a mall all day lol."
FartAttack911
Survival
tsunami GIF
Giphy
"I was 7 and survived the 2004 tsunami in Thailand. Witnessed the wave rise way above the already massive palm trees (approx. 40ft?) and my family and I watched/heard the wave crash into the ground from a rooftop."
faithfulpoo
These Tsunami stories are just tragic.
On the Sand
Scared The Launch GIF by CTV
Giphy
"We were a group of kids who went to swim in a local lake. And there was a dead body on the beach with their hands raised and their legs bent unnaturally that local police just took out of the same lake. I've never put my foot in these waters again."
oyloff
Be Clever
"I was walking to school and I was about 5 or 6 years old and some guy pulled up beside me in his car and asked if I would get in. He also offered me sweets to do so. I said no. The creepy bit was when he calmly said ‘clever boy’ to me, then drove off. I’ve never even told my parents or anyone else about this as it would most likely freak them out."
OstneyPiz
Bad Jokes
"Dad's side of the family pranked me by burying a fake body on our back property and had me dig it up to find valuables. Was only allowed to use a lantern for light. They stuffed old clothes with chicken bones. Sheetrock mud where the head was... Random fake jewelry as the treasures... I was like maybe 10 or 11.. I remember digging up the boot first and started gagging because it became real at that point."
Alegan239
YOU
Who Are You Reaction GIF by MOODMAN
Giphy
"Woke up to find my little brother staring at me in the dark, asking, Are you really you?"
PrettyLola2004
Siblings can really be a bunch of creepers.
No one should talk to others in the dark though.
Not all pet owners have the same relationship with their pets.
While anyone who decides to become a pet owner, or pet parent as some say, love their pets equally, some never ever let them leave their side.
Taking their pet with them to work, running errands, even on vacations.
Many pet parents even allow their pets to share their bed with them when going to sleep.
For others though, this is where a line is finally drawn.
Redditor Piggythelavasurfer was curious to hear whether pet owners allowed their pets to share their bed with them, as well as the reasons why they do/don't, leading them to ask:
"Do you let your pet sleep in your bed? Why/why not?"
The Tiny Issue Of Water...
"Absolutely not."
"I have fish."- Senior-Meal3649
Everyone Gets Lonely Eventually...
"I adopted an eleven year old cat the day before Halloween."
"She has mostly lived in my closet since I got her, and she hasn’t been too interested in coming out."
"Last night, she came out of my closet and jumped up on my bed, and crawled under my covers and curled up by my feet to sleep."
"I was so happy!"- YellowBeastJeep
The Comforting Reminder That You're Not Alone...
"I recently lost my Greyhound but I used to let him sleep on my bed with me."
"The company was nice and he was no trouble to have on my bed."- HoodedMenace3
Hungry Cookie GIF by De Graafschap Dierenartsen
Giphy
What Do You Mean Allow?
"I have no choice."
"She is a cat, cats do whatever they want."- Small_cat1412
"He lets me sleep in my bed."- Poorly-Drawn-Beagle
Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way
"I carry my old boy upstairs to bed every night."- worst_in_show
Hug GIF by The BarkPost
Giphy
Who Needs An Alarm Clock?
"I let my two cats sleep with me."
"They're so full of love and just want cuddles all the time."
"And so do I."
"We've all developed a lil routine."
"Get to bed, oldest sleeps on my feet to keep them warm, youngest lies in my arm while I lie on my side (she the little spoon), then when I snooze my alarm for work in the morning the youngest paws at my face and meeps loudly to wake me up."- GhostofaFlea_
Whose Bed Is It Anyway?
"Yes."
"They're also kind enough to let me squeeze into whatever space they've left for me."
"Although I do get a few dirty looks off them."- Therealkaylor
"I found this tiny kitten screaming her head off under a car."
"Would not come out."
"Got some food and some water in dishes."
"I stood by the tire so she couldn't see my feet."
"She got curious about the food and water and started gobbling it down."
"I thought she would bolt when I squatted down."
"She was too busy eating."
"I grabbed her by the nape of the neck and all four legs went straight out and she tried to scratch me to death."
"I got her in the door and tossed her toward the couch."
"She ricocheted off the couch as if she was a ping pong off a table and I lost sight of her."
"I put out food and water and a sandbox and did not see that kitten for three days."
"On the third day, I came home and she was on my bed pillow."
"I thought she would bolt when I came near, but she didn't."
"I wanted to sleep so I tried to scoot her little butt off my pillow."
"She would not go."
"I put my head down to sleep and that is the way it was from then on."
"She ran the roost."- Logical_Cherry_7588
sleepy kitten GIF
Giphy
Sleeping Is A Prerequisite...
"No, he's a cat and he cannot keep still during the night."
"He walks across the headboard, opens the closet doors, jumps into the windows and rustles the blinds, etc."
"If he would sleep he could stay, but alas, he's a ramblin' man."- Spong_Durnflungle
Saying No Just Isn't An Option...
"'Let'."
"Lol."
"It's a cat's world and I'm happy to be on her good side."- milaren
Felines Only!
"The cat does, the dog doesn't and the horse certainly does not either."- Xcrowzz
Angry Tom And Jerry GIF by Boomerang Official
Giphy
Is That My Hair On That Pillow?
"My dog is perfect."
"She comes up, cuddles til we start to fall asleep, then gets down to sleep on her bed so she doesn't get too hot."
"Jumps back up in the early morning for wake up cuddles."
"The hair everywhere is the only downside but she is so cozy, what can you do."- HoodieWinchester
It is easy to understand how some people are able to fall asleep more easily knowing their friend and protector is there, in bed, with them.
Though we can't blame others who don't want to run the risk of being scratched or bitten in the middle of the night either...