Doctors Divulge The Biggest Lies Their Patients Have Ever Told Them
_PEOPLE! No matter how scary it is you must, MUST be honest with your medical professionals. It serves no purpose to lie to a doctor. It doesn't save you from your condition. Lying only impedes the process and your recovery. Don't worry, it'll all be fine. I guarantee you God is already judging you for far worse then why you're at the doctor's. _
Reddior _\CrayCon _**wanted some medical truth by asking... **Doctors of Reddit, what is the biggest lie your patient has ever told you? Maybe also see a therapist upon release as well.
LAZARUS!!!!
EMT, Not the patient. But, the wife.
Was getting the patient to take him to the doctor. I asked him if he could stand. The wife told me he hasn't walked in 30 years. The dude stands up unassisted and walks to the stretcher.
I've been in this work a long time and simply don't give a damn about a lot of stuff.
So. I just blurt out "HOLY CRAP ITS A MIRACLE!!" I was prepared to get in trouble....never happened...
PAGING DR. MAURY!!!
When I was an intern I was doing my ER rotation and a woman in her late 30's or so came in complaining of nausea and lower abdominal discomfort for the last few days. I did the dillegent history taking and of course, asked her about the possibility of her being pregnant.
She lost her s**t and went off on me... said she was a lesbian woman and had not been with a man for 10 plus years. Yelled at me to get my boss and let an "adult" treat her.
I reported back to my attending and delineated the tests I wanted done. He was like..."I didn't hear a plan for a pregnancy test." and I was like: "I don't think that's needed...she's a lesbian and hasn't been with a man in 10 years." My attending smiled and said: "Humor me."
She was pregnant. Went back to her room and there were two dudes mean mugging one another about to fight. She couldn't even look me in the eye.
FOLLOW THE TRACKS...
Patient presented with unrelated complaints but on the standard intake for our clinic we were to ask whether the patient had used any injected drugs in the last month. He was wearing a short sleeved shirt. As I asked he looked down at his arms, exposing his numerous, or syringe puncture wounds on his arms.
He then looked up at me, crossed his arms obscuring many of the track marks, and proudly stated: "Nope, never."
ARE YOU A CHIMNEY?
My dad laughs at this all the time but my mom is nurse at an urgent care. Anyway, we have a neighbor who is constantly smoking. Like every time we drive by their house to pull into our drive way this lady is smoking. She comes in one day for something and my mom asks her standard questions. One is if she smokes. She says no. Unbelievable.
YUCK!
I work in an ER, had someone come in and was acting erratically from the get go, went back into his bay and he was with his lady friend and they were looking at mosquito bites along their arms and legs, he went on to tell me about how they go hiking every sunday and get torn up by bugs but every single bite on both of them was scabbed and along a vein.
JUST THE FACTS PLEASE...
I had a lady in the hospital who was several days post op, and had met all criteria for discharge. This can be a somewhat difficult situation, because you want to maintain a good relationship with your patient, but at the same time can't inappropriately use hospital resources. I told her that if there's no medical necessity, insurance could deny payment for the extra night in the hospital, to which she said:"Oh, my health insurance agent was just up here and he said I should stay another day." I just stared at her for a minute since I have never seen an insurance representative in the hospital, and don't even know if health insurance agents exist. She then admitted that she just made that up.
DO I SMELL....
Me : Do you smoke?
Pt: I'm afraid so, doc (looks sheepish)
Me: Do you smoke anything other than tobacco? (then explaining to medical student how cannabis is associated with certain conditions)
Pt (shocked and virtuous) Oh no, doctor! (the very idea!)
5 minutes later...
Me: Mr Pt, when i asked you to get undressed I meant that I would need your T-shirt off
Pt (channels 5 year old child, looking at the floor and mumbling), takes shirt off... to reveal a MASSIVE cannabis leaf tattoo on his chest.
I SEE YOU SIR! I SEE YOU!
A few years ago, a man came in complaining of a terrible cough, chest pain, and fatigue. I asked him if he had a history of smoking. Naturally he said no. Around an hour later, on my way home, I stopped to get some food and there he was, smoking outside McDonalds.
I NEED A XANAX JUST HEARING THIS!
Not a doctor but I was an ER scribe. I would follow the doctors around with a laptop and do all of their electronic charting, ordering tests, note taking and stuff like that.
Had a patient, probably around 18-20 year old male. Complaining of a foreign object in his... male organ. He had a set of iPhone headphones stuck up his urethra. And when I say stuck up there, I mean all the way to where the single cord splits in two for the two earbuds. Out of precaution we did an x-ray and sure enough, you could see the knotted up cord in his lower abdomen and it was going to require surgery to remove due to it being tangled.
He said that he was at a party with some friends and that he got drunk and passed out and his friends shoved it up there as a joke while he was passed out. Luckily the doctor I was working with had seen this guy for the same thing not long ago except before it was a wire coat hanger. She recognized there was a bigger issue and convinced him to have an inpatient psych consult in the ER after surgery so they could get him the help he needed.
Not a single person in that exam room bought his story that his friends did it to him though.
NO PILLS FOR YOU!!
Only a medical student but a patient I took history from wanted Ativan for anxiety, she was telling me about how her panic attacks are so bad she gets into car accidents with casualties every week. I mean a lot of patients will tell lies or play coy to get controlled substances but she was the only one who admitted to multiple counts of vehicular manslaughter.
When I presented her case to my attending she showed me a note in the EMR from another doctor stating this was a regular tactic of her's as well as an extensive online list of every scrip different doctors had given her for controlled substances.
She didn't get an Ativan prescription that day.
I'M NOT STUPID SIR... YOU ARE!
Patient came in breathing through his mouth. His mouth was as wide as he could stretch it. His breath sounded like sucking that last bit of liquid through a straw. He snorted 9 ounces of cinnamon when his mum's boyfriend dared him to. He then tried to snort water to wash it away. His mucus became like a biscuit. He had a cold too. Tried very hard not to insult their collective intellect.
SHADY, SHADY!
Nurse practitioner, I work with patients with substance use disorder, many of them must have their urine spiked by our staff, or someone slipped drugs in their food or drink.
METH IS THE DEVIL!
In my first crappy job I would take sickdays constantly. I learned how to fake certain symptoms, have a cracked voice and all that.
I always wondered if the doctor saw through me but did not want to call me out or just did not give a crap at all. Because one day I went to another doctor, he called me out and sent me to work. Funnily enough I actually became sick the very next day with flu, came back to the same doctor and he apologized that he never knows for sure and there are a lot of people faking symptoms to get things in flu medicines that you can make meth out of.
HOW ABOUT CUTTING BACK ON THE SNICKERS?
Pretty much every episode of 600 pound life: I'm tellin' you doctor, it's water weight.
GUILTY!
I tell my dentist that i floss regularly.
LIGHTS RISE...
Yikes I don't understand why people would lie to their doctor, at best it makes their job unnecessarily difficult and at worse the treatment could be wrong or dangerous.
I really did get a light bulb stuck up my butt from falling onto it though. I don't recall why I wasn't wearing any pants.
SOME PEOPLE SHOULDN'T BE ALLOWED TO PROCREATE...
Does Munchausen by proxy stories count ?
One of my father patient kept coming back with her daughter's mysterious illness. The kid was grey.... like from head to toe, her skin had a grey/ blue tint. Mother swore it happened overnight and nothing could explain it...
Yeah right...
My father recognized silver poisoning and had the kid tested. A few calls to his colleagues in the area confirmed that the woman had been touring doctors, disappearing every time argyrism was diagnosed. The mother was feeding silver powder to her kid for attention.
STOP GRINDING!
I was waiting at the dentist's (I arrived way too early) and a teen and his mom comes in. They talk to the dentist and his mom says he has been grinding his teeth. He acts like she attacked him and was like _"I do not, I never grind my teeth!!!!!" Then 10 minutes later the dentist comes back with the kid out to the waiting room and tells the mother there is severe grinding happening and he is at risk of getting severe cavities since all the enamel is gone and he is wearing into the teeth. The look on his face was priceless. He then said they would have to go upstairs to the orthodontist and get a mouth guard for sleeping and that the kid will always have to be vigilant that he isn't grinding for the rest of his life (or something like that).
ANIMALS ARE PEOPLE TOO!
I'm a veterinarian and people do the same stuff. Dog comes obviously intoxicated with something and you ask if he could have possibly consumed "x" drug (depending on the dogs symptoms) and people don't want to admit anything. I don't care wtf you do to yourself, have at it, but don't let the dog suffer by not being honest and therefor preventing or at the very least delaying appropriate treatment.
LETS STARVE YOU!!
"He only got sick yesterday" Haha no, he was probably like this for months, you just had time to come in today. At this point, there's really not much I can do.
Also, parents of SAM kiddies. Lol he really didn't get sick yesterday, you haven't been feeding the kid for months.