Recently, Reddit user u/babyhippo01 posted in r/AskReddit asking medical professionals to share their most shocking patient stories that actually left them speechless. Here's what they revealed:
1. "Optometrist here. If I had a nickel for every time someone said they use urine for eyedrops, I would have $0.10. Which is not a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice."
2. "I had a patient come in for facial burns because he smoked while wearing his oxygen...twice...in the same week."
3. "I used to be a medical oxygen tech, mostly doing in-home work. One guy was on such a high concentration that he would have drawn nearly zero oxygen from breathing regular atmosphere. This required two heavy duty machines hooked up in tandem just to keep him barely alive. This was explained ad nauseam to him and his wife with full signed documentation of every conversation. They'd shut one machine off because they decided it was too loud. He'd take his mask off because he decided it was too cold. She would unplug the hose if she decided it was in the way. So on and so on, they did literally everything you could think of that would restrict or cut off his oxygen intake."
"Then, they would panic and call our emergency service when he started to have a reaction to no oxygen intake. I lived not even five minutes away right beside our EMS/fire station, and the call would always come to me to 'fix' the machines at random times of the day and night, three to seven days a week. They refused to call 911 because they 'didn't want to make a scene.' This went on for ages — well over 18 months — until he was having trouble sleeping one night and shut the machines off before going back to bed. It's been years, and when I still see the wife around town, she always glares at me as if I'm the one who killed him."
4. "Former practicing surgeon. I had a man come in with a small bowling pin up his backside...for the third time!"
5. "I work in the ER. The one story that left me dumbfounded was the time a woman was brought in by her sister for pelvic cramps and amenorrhea for three months. Lo and behold, she was pregnant. The sister then informed me that she slept with the Brazilian construction workers building the condo complex next door. I asked if they had any questions, and the patient asked me if her baby would come out speaking Spanish. After a long pause, and her sister staring at the ceiling, I told her, 'No, because they speak Portuguese in Brazil.' The patient seemed relieved, and the sister hustled her out of the ER before I could discharge her."
6. "'So, you're lactose intolerant, and you knew this before, and you still drank a large milkshake?' 'Yes.' The rest of the night, the kid was obviously screaming and groaning in the emergency department waiting room."
7. "I worked in an emergency department for 10 years. One of the worst was when we had a guy come in who had a twin. He told us he needed to get checked for STDs because his sister apparently just got one. We, of course, had to ask if he has had sex with her, and he said no, but they were twins, so whatever she had, so did he. After a collective sigh of relief, we had to educate him that that is not how it worked at all."
8. "The patient who always sticks in my mind is one I met during my early years on a palliative care ward who had terminal cancer. She was only in her early-30s, and the only reason her illness had gotten so severe was that she had relied on the healing power of crystals rather than, you know...chemotherapy."
9. "In med school while I was on my OB/GYN rotation, a patient asked me: 'Who’s the baby gonna look like? The dude who got me pregnant or the guy who I've been sleeping with these last few months?' I was utterly speechless, but managed to respond: 'The baby should look like the people who conceived it.' Yeah, this person is now a parent."
10. "I'm a nurse. This isn't about a patient, but rather my dad. He is convinced that insulin is what is giving people diabetes and doctors are prescribing it just to make money. After 30 minutes of telling him why that's wrong, he said not to be so liberal, and that I didn't understand because I'm not a doctor."
11. "I once had an elderly patient come in with concerned family members because the patient had run over a large pop-up tent on the side of the road. Luckily, no one was hurt, but the family was worried as to how the elderly driver missed a large tent in the middle of the day. It was then that the elderly relative admitted to having spent the last three years driving 'from memory.'"
12. "I'm an optometrist. I had a patient booked in for an emergency appointment with a raging red eye. It was clearly very painful. When I asked what had happened, they said that it was their niece's wedding that Saturday, and they had wanted to tint their hair and eyelashes to match the light blue color scheme of the wedding, so they used the same dye for both. When I asked if the dye contained ammonia, they said they were pretty sure it did. The ended this exchange by asking, 'Do you think my eye will be better by Saturday? Will it match the color scheme?' I then replied: 'Unless you can convince them to change the color scheme to red, no.'"
13. "I had an adult male patient who needed a Foley catheter. I informed him and his mother both of the order for a catheter, how it works, and why it was needed. His mother stated, 'Well, he’s still a virgin, and I’m not sure I’m comfortable with his virginity being taken in a hospital.'"
14. "I went to go see a patient in labor. I talked her through all the risks, benefits, and the overall process of a labor epidural. I finished up the procedure and secured the epidural catheter to the skin. Then, her husband asked, 'How is she supposed to pee through that small of a catheter?'"
15. "My sister told me a story of a woman with chronic blisters and lesions on her lips. They couldn’t figure out what it was for weeks — it would heal and come back, heal and come back. Turned out she would jam out on, like, three bags of salt and vinegar chips a day for weeks at a time until the sores hurt too bad to continue. Then, she’d go to the doctor."
And finally:
16. "I saw a chart once where a person came in for a burn to their eye. They told the doctor that they'd read online that warm milk in the eye can help with irritation, and their eyes were irritated. So, they BOILED milk and then poured it in their eye. Burned it all."
Answers have been edited for length and/or clarity.