Spoiler alert: you should just tell the doctor what really happened. For one thing, they're only trying to help. And for another, they have access to an x-ray machine.
Source at the end of the article.
1/17. Woman came in with $9,000 in cash which she had wrapped in plastic and shoved up her hoo-hoo. Her acids disintegrated the plastic wrap, and she had to be anaesthetised to get it all out. $20s and $50s.
-Dr_Snow
2/17. I admitted a guy for pneumonia, which was odd because he was young and strapping, no other medical issues, x-ray didn't look quite right. The pieces just didn't add up, so I started questioning him more closely.
Do you use any drugs? "Drugs! That's disgusting. I'm no f*cking druggie! I've never touched drugs in my life."
I move on to other questions and suddenly: "Look, doc, I just want you to know I may have used cocaine once or twice years and years ago. I just snorted it though. That wouldn't cause this, right?"
Me: How long ago?
Patient: Like ten years, maybe longer.
Me: It shouldn't be affecting you after this long.
Patient: More like five.
Me: Years?
Patient: Uh, like five months ago.
This goes on forever, until he admits he just got off a massive crack binge the day before, where he spent the past three days in a hotel with some women smoking crack non-stop. He finishes with: "But I don't want you to think I'm one of those dirty druggies."
No, I think you're the idiot who lied and was getting treated for pneumonia instead of getting the proper treatment for crack lung, which is what he had.
Here's a tip: I genuinely don't care. I'm not your momma, your spouse, or your priest. Don't waste my time and endanger your health spewing bullsh*t. Whatever horrible twisted thing you think is too shameful to talk about, I promise you, I've seen worse.
-glumapple
More cases on the next page...
3/17. A patient came in with chest pain. Said they'd fallen and hit their chest on a table. Xray was performed to evaluate for a rib fracture or collapsed lung.
The xray instead showed a long metallic foreign body in the left chest, within the heart. When questioned further the patient admitted to lying, and that they'd actually shot themselves in the chest with a nail gun.
The wound was not bleeding nor really noticeable. They were taken to the operating room and did quite well after open heart surgery.
-Smeeee
4/17. Actual conversation I had with a guy a week ago.
Any past medical history?
"High blood pressure. That's it"
No other history?
"Nope. That's it."
(Proceed to take off his shirt.)
Sir. What is that huge scar on your chest?
"Oh that's from my triple bypass."
That's medical history sir. Anything else you want to add in now?
"Oh does congestive heart failure and diabetes count? I have those also."
-YouarenotLaBoeuf
5/17. Guy came in with burns to his entire willy. He tried to say he got it by trying to shoplift a hot bbq chicken from a deli down his pants. What he was really doing was f*cking the chicken.
-SpinningDespina
6/17. Internal medicine ward outside of NYC. 55 y/o lady was mute in the ER, but severely constipated. Severe abdominal pain, needed rectal disimpaction and more than just an acute workup, so gets admitted reluctantly to surgery.
Next morning on rounds she is talking a mile a minute - full of detail about her diet and symptoms and family, etc.
Afternoon - back to mute, and back to abdominal pain and constipation. Two more days - same pattern. Team is stumped. She is blown away that we can't figure out what is wrong with her, and we feel the same way. Labs, imaging, consult teams - all coming up empty.
Keep reading on the next page...
Strict ins and outs, strict dietary restrictions, everything we can think of.
Janitor comes in by chance and is pissed he has to change the paper towels "so many goddamn times" in this one room. It seems like the whole floor is stealing them from her.
Sure enough, the patient has been eating about 2,500 paper towels per 24hrs.
Psych team comes for the obligatory consult, and of course she is mute. How do we get her to talk? One paper towel at a time.
-missing18minutes
7/17. I once saw a high school aged kid come in with a dinner candle stuck in his rectum. He reportedly was using it to reach an itch.
Apparently the itch was in his spleen because that thing was deep. Mom told me the story, and how she had previously asked him to not itch himself with other things of hers.
I didn't ask for any more details. I honestly think she believed that he was just really itchy.
-Smeeee
8/17. Not a doctor but an EMT. I had a guy who tried to tell us he fell while playing softball and hurt his ribs and arm. This was ten o'clock at night.
Come to find out, he tried to screw his drug dealer out of some money and the guy chased him down with a bat and beat him with it. So I guess he was kind of playing hardball.
-Oodles_of_noodles_
9/17. A case of teenage pregnancy, where Madame Momma was present. Patient presented with amenorrhea and fatigue initially.
Patient became visibly annoyed when the first test suggested is a pregnancy test. Patient (and mother) insisted that she never had sexual intercourse. Angrily, if I may add, even when the test results turned back as positive.
"No, no, you QUACK. I'm tellin' you she never had no sex!"
-Lampyris
More cases on the next page...
10/17. Not a Dr. But in Afghanistan our platoon set up a medical clinic for a day with a bunch of our medics at this remote village.
We had, I kid you not, 24 males come forward needing cream or antibiotics for some gential infection. Our medics weren't 100% sure what it was but did the best they could.
Talking to our Afghan interpreter later, he said nearly all of the males who had the penis infections were, you guessed it, goat herders...
-GunsOfNavarone
11/17. Lady presented multiple times requiring admission for systemic infection found to be a weird ameobiasis. Docs were very confused. This was in the middle of a US suburban area.
Eventually we figured out that she was drinking the water from her fish tank.
-killdevil
12/17. When I was a fourth-year medical student, doing a rotation at the veterans administration hospital, a patient came to the emergency room complaining of stomach pain.
We did an x-ray, which showed 2 toothbrushes in his stomach. He explained to us that he had The sensation that there was something on the back of his throat, and used his toothbrush to try to get rid of it and accidentally swallowed the toothbrush. The same thing happened with the second one.
We consulted gastroenterology, and the toothbrushes were removed via endoscopy. He was admitted to the hospital for observation overnight. The next morning he complained of stomach pain again.
Keep reading on the next page!
A follow-up x-ray revealed that he had swallowed his entire convenience kit at the hospital, including the small toothbrush, small tube of toothpaste, and even his plastic razor.
Needless to say, we called psychiatry for consultation. It turns out this was not the first episode for this guy. He just liked to swallow things.
-Afterbirthsoup
13/17. I work in the the lab. The pathology department gets the foreign body items removed from a patient's body after surgery. Most recent one was a chorizo sausage. Glad I wasn't there that day.
-rayray1214
14/17. We had a pastor from a local mega-church come in with 28 inches of pool noodle up his *ss. Had to go into surgery to have his colon and small intestine repaired. Said he needed to get home before his wife came back from Europe so she wouldn't find out what the "devil" was making him do while she wasn't around.
-NarcanBlowgun
15/17. An old woman came into the ER with a high fever, abdominal pain, dizziness, etc. She's showing signs of toxic shock syndrome (like when you leave a tampon in too long).
So the doctor decides to check the woman to make sure nothing got stuck up there. Sure enough, she looks up there and half sh*ts her pants when she sees two beady little eyes staring back at her!
Keep reading on the next page...
The doctor begins to pull it out, to which the old woman responds, "put it back!"
Turns out the old woman (well past menopause) had gone to a witch doctor to help her get pregnant. Her recommendation: put a (now dead) turtle up there for a few days and she'd regain the ability to get pregnant.
-Cmonster194
16/17. I drug tested a patient who should test positive for opiates as I had prescribed them. The urine looked totally normal but the test came back bizarre.
Had an insanely high specific gravity (means there was a lot of stuff dissolved in it), sample was positive for opiates but had zero confirmatory metabolites (what your body turns the drug into) in it.
It took me a couple minutes to figure out how this was possible. The patient was selling their pills instead of taking them, and didnt want to get caught. They crushed up the pill and put it into the urine.
-viridianlion
17/17. Patient came in complaining of abdominal pain.
Ultrasound revealed a belly full of blood; ruptured spleen. Ran back to surgery, encased spleen in mesh, stabilized.
On waking, patient confesses that he was cheating with another mans wife, man came home, ran patient over with his truck. Patient attempted to walk it off, went home and bled internally for a while, then came to the hospital hours later.
-Saint947
