Medical professionals are the unsung heroes of our society. They experience things that would make most of us run away screaming, but they do it anyway because they care about helping others. But they also witness some of the most shocking things imaginable. From the bizarre to the heartbreaking, they’ve encountered it all. And sometimes, the things they bear witness to are so unbelievable, they’ll leave you speechless.
For several years, I worked as a medical technician in a large ophthalmology clinic. We had a 21-year-old woman come in one day as soon as we opened, frantic and crying that she couldn’t see and couldn’t open her eyes without extreme pain and light sensitivity.
Come to find out that rather than taking her daily disposable contacts out and replacing them with new ones as directed, she just kept putting a new set on every day, one on top of the other…for 24 days.
By the time she came in, the bottom contact had adhered to her cornea, causing severe erosion and a hideous ulcer. She screamed so much during the exam and kept pushing the doctor away that she had to be heavily sedated at the neighboring hospital to remove them all. She caused permanent damage to the cornea and worsened her vision, and it took months to heal.
She then asked for a contact prescription on her last visit, which the doctor couldn’t get over that she had the gall to ask, and he promptly denied the request (also, her cornea was so damaged she couldn’t wear regular contacts anymore).
I’m a vet. A few years ago I had a client bring his young cat in complaining of lethargy. Besides being a bit underweight, the physical exam was unremarkable so I asked more questions about the cat’s diet:
Me: What do you feed the cat?
Owner: [online trendy raw food brand]
Me: How is his appetite? Does he finish what you feed him?
Owner: Yes, he always eats everything.
Me: How much do you feed him?
Owner: 1/2 cup.
Me: Once or twice daily?
Owner: Once every 3 or 4 days.
Me: …….. You only feed your cat twice a week?
Owner: I believe in a more natural feeding approach, and based on my research that’s how often cats eat in the wild.
This owner was slowly starving his cat to death based on some c*ckamamie idea he’d made up by watching National Geographic. I had to explain to him that domestic cats are not tigers, and that small wildcats eat 10-20 small meals daily. Surprise surprise the cat’s lethargy and weight improved with regular feeding.
I’m in the ER. So many stories. The one that left me dumbfounded was a woman who was brought in by her sister for pelvic cramps, and amenorrhea for three months. Lo and behold, she’s pregnant. Sister informs me that she sleeps with the Brazilian construction workers building the condo complex next door. I ask if they have any questions. 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.
Optometrist here.
The patient booked in for an emergency appointment, with a raging red eye. Clearly very painful…
Look under the microscope and the cornea is really not happy, wobbly reflexes, haziness, the works.
Me: “What happened?”
Patient: “It’s my niece’s wedding this Saturday, and I wanted to tint my eyelashes to match my hair and the colour scheme of the wedding [light blue], so I used the same dye for both to match the colour”.
Me: “Does that hair dye contain ammonia, by any chance?”
Patient: “I think so. Do you think my eye will be better by Saturday? Will it match the colour scheme?”
Me: “Unless you can convince them to change the colour scheme to red, no”.
Rural ER doc here: A 35-year-old female walks in with right-sided jaw/neck swelling. “ I think it happened because I ate some meat yesterday that my body is reacting to” … 10 minutes later: “Oh yeah, and I accidentally swallowed a bee and it stung me in my mouth right before this happened. Sorry I forgot to mention that”
I am a dermatologist in India. As is the culture here, people eat with their hands, and almost all of our curries or even other dry side dishes have a lot of turmeric. It is common knowledge to anyone born and brought up in India, that this means the nails of your dominant hand (statistically the right hand) are going to be yellow-stained because we have seen this happen since our childhood. Usually, this wears off in about a day and a half if you wash it a couple of times.
Cut to the first patient in my OPD, a young girl in her early 20s, very anxious.
Me: “What brings you here today?”
Patient: “Doc, my right-hand fingernails keep getting yellow discoloured.”
Me: “Only right hand ?”
Patient: “Yes. And only after meals.”
Me: “Erm..do you eat with your hands?”
Patient: “Yes, always.”
Me: “So…You know it’s just turmeric right?”
Patient: “Yes, but can you make it stop happening.”
Me: “For God’s sake, use a spoon.”
Patient: “So you mean there is no medicine to make it stop?”
Me: ….
Patient: …..
Me: NO!
This might hit home more with people of South Asian cultures or people who habitually eat turmeric-cooked food with their hands. Anyway, for a grown-a** person to complain of this was just surprising and a little ridiculous.
My wife was in a meeting with a doctor who had a patient argue that she DOES eat vegetables because she always has ketchup on her cheeseburgers.
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. Turns 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.
I worked in ED for 10 years. Everyday. Every day people come in and it shocks you how they managed to evade death for that long.
One of the worst was we had a guy come in. He was 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 had had sex with her and he said no, but they were twins so what she has, so does he. After a collective sigh of relief that this wasn’t some weird Alabama your my sister sh*t, we had to educate him that is not how it worked at all.
Paramedic. An elderly woman complains that her mouth is dry and she felt a bit dizzy climbing the stairs earlier. Go through the whole rigamarole of getting a medical history, vitals, and more details on symptoms. Ask her what she’s had to drink today.
A cup of tea, ten hours ago.
Any water? No.
Guess what fixed it within five minutes.
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 2 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, 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 5 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, 3-7 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 I still see the wife around town, she always glares at me as if I’m the one who killed him.
Saw a chart once where a person came in for a burn to their eye. They told the Dr they 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 into their eye. Burned it all.
A woman comes in with no prenatal care for labor and delivery in labor.
OBGYN Resident taking a history: Do you have any allergies?
Patient: Yes I’m allergic to water
Resident: …ok… what kind of reaction happens when you drink water?
Patient: Oh it makes me pee
Yeah lady that’s a feature, not a bug
My wife who is a vet: had a client who got mad at her because he didn’t realize that once he neutered his dog he wouldn’t be able to breed it.
This happened in med school on my OB/GYN rotation.
Patient: Who’s the baby gonna look like?
Me: What do you mean?
Patient: Well is it gonna look like the dude who got me pregnant or the guy who I’ve been with the last few months?
Me: utterly speechless The baby should look like the people who conceived it.
This person is now a parent.
A lady brings her baby into the ER with a rectal temp of 103. The kid’s tacky as heck and looks like sh*t.
Refuses all medications. Says she doesn’t believe in them and wonders why her herbal tea (she brought a jug of it) isn’t working.
Wants us to just check her out. Thinks a children’s emergency room just checks them out.
Try to explain why the kid needs an NSAID. Keeps refusing. Says she doesn’t know what’s in it. I bring up the fact she had her kid in a hospital, and that she recovered medication herself (IV, epidural, etc.). Doesn’t budge.
Only concerned for herself, told her that when the kid has a seizure or goes unresponsive she calls 911, and she can expect the medics to give the kid everything it needs regardless of whether you like it or not.
Only when the doctor threatened to contact social services for child endangerment and abuse did she start to listen. For like 5 whole seconds.
Left against medical advice. People like this exist and breed.
“So, you’re lactose intolerant?”
“yes”
“And you knew this before?”
“yes”
“And you drank a milkshake?”
“yes”
“What size?”
“Large”
The rest of the night was the kid screaming and groaning in the ED waiting room.
EMS Here. Had a diabetic in his 30s-40s who refused to take insulin since 2012, it was 2020 at the time. When I took his blood sugar it only read as “HI” meaning it was over 700 for glucometer to not read it. Upon seeing this, he asked me if that was high and then went “Is this cause of all the ice cream I ate”. Played a Facebook Messenger video with his girlfriend the entire time. Met him later in the parking lot after he got discharged, and it took this man less than fifty paces from the ER door to rip off the bandage covering his IV and play with the IV wound until it started bleeding all over the place again. Knocked on our ambulance door and asked for a bandaid to fix it. We had to walk him back into the ER and bandaged his entire arm with gauze so that, hopefully, by the time he got it off it would’ve clotted enough for him to not end up exsanguinating himself.
Not a personal experience, but one from a colleague of mine (I only saw the pics).
So this 60-something-year-old suffers from an acute complication and gets a Pacemaker to solve the problem. Everything goes normally and as planned, he recovers, every care and meds that he needs to take are prescribed, and explained and medical appointments with a Cardiologist/Arthritmologist are scheduled so that he may get the follow-up he needs.
The man then proceeds to never show up to any appointment and never answer any calls from the hospital to know of him and reschedule. This went on for around 3 years. Until he shows up without former warning and asks to talk with the doctor who did the procedure to put in his pacemaker. People are weirded out but seeing that on that day the doctor was present and this patient was in clear distress, they talked to him and managed a couple of minutes to have the doctor check on him.
Inside the appointment room, the doctor takes notice that this man is wearing a bra inside his shirt. The man explains he has been wearing his daughter’s bra for 3 months after his “problem” got worse. The shirt is asked to be taken off and there he stands, the shirtless man wearing his daughter’s bra, showing off the pacemaker, that should have been kept inside his body, dangling outside of it, being held by the left bra cup, with a big infected open wound above it with the pacemaker leads still inserted onto his veins and connected to his heart.
Nobody has any idea how the man let that situation come to be or how he didn’t die of sepsis or any other health problem that may appear for that matter.
I’m a pharmacist. One evening shift I was working a relief shift (not my usual pharmacy). A man comes in looking distressed.
Man: I had sexual relations with a woman I do not intend to pursue a long-term relationship with. (Yes. He said it just like that)
Me: Okay. I’m assuming there was an accident or it was unprotected. How long ago did it happen?
Man: Last night, at 7 pm on the couch. (Woah TMI, I just need to know the approximate time to know if plan B will work)
Me: We have this medication called Plan B, and since the incident happened within 72 hours-
Man: Oh yes, I got that for her already yesterday right after we finished. We want to know if there is anything we can do to know if she is pregnant now.
Me: unfortunately not. She’ll have to wait 3 weeks or so to see if she gets her period, and if she doesn’t then she can do a pregnancy test then. Theoretically, you could do a blood test for faster results, but that would also not be until a couple of weeks, at least.
Man: We’re just really anxious because she really doesn’t want to be pregnant. Is there anything that she can take to prevent the pregnancy? Any multivitamin? Minerals? Food?
Me: She’s already taken it, which was the plan B. There are some other options but those are prescriptions. And no, there are no over-the-counter products she can take.
Man: What about me? Is there anything I can take now to prevent the pregnancy? Any multivitamins or minerals?
Me:……………………………..No sir. There isn’t anything you can take now
I overheard a conversation between a nurse and a doctor and a patient in the ER. They were trying to figure out if he was very stupid or had a head injury. It was both hilarious and sad.
He kept telling them that he was there for a hurt leg. He couldn’t explain why his leg was hurt, how it was hurt, how he got there. Nearly anything. I heard them talking in a hallway to each other. The nurse was convinced he hit his head. The Doctor said “No he is just an idiot”
Turns out the Dr was right. They get ahold of the guy’s wife. She basically told them in the hallway he is always this dumb and if she leaves him he would get lost in his own house and starve.
This was one of the funniest yet cutest ones, was a student doing a shift in Andrology/reproductive health
Doc: So you’re trying to have kids but not managing to. So do you have any other kids?
Patient: Yes
Doc: I have one. Okay so we need to do this and this and that
Patient: OK great
Then he proceeds to visit him and stuff, after which he goes away.
After a couple of seconds, he knocked on the door again saying:
Patient: Hello Doc, my wife told me that it would be relevant to you that the son I have is adopted, but that makes no difference to me I always considered my own son!
Not me, but my sibling – I don’t think he’d mind me sharing the story just on the off chance it prevents someone else from making this mistake. Lots of surgeons have a similar story, but thankfully this one doesn’t end in someone’s death.
Parents claim their child hasn’t eaten anything before surgery, as they were carefully directed. Turns out they thought the surgical team was just being cruel to their child and when she said she was hungry that morning, they detoured on their way to the surgical center and got her a full Southern breakfast. She nearly died aspirating biscuits and gravy.
I’ve rarely seen my brother so angry (and disgusted – somehow biscuits and gravy look even more nauseating the second time around) and he was just recounting what had happened. I have no doubt he tore a strip off the parents once their five-year-old was stabilized, and they probably still felt justified and angry at the surgeon for telling them what they could and could not feed their child right before anesthesia.
ETA The parents did in fact feel justified and hard-done-by, although afaik they didn’t express anger at my brother (knowing him, they didn’t get a word in edgewise). Definitely, no acknowledgment or realization that they could easily have killed their own child or that they’d made a bad decision. I remember they were annoyed by her whining for food.
I worked in cancer research/surgery a couple of years ago. There is a good amount of people who will refuse to have a small removal/surgery because they think holistic medicine or praying it away will work. They always come back and we always have to remove so much more. One time a patient had a melanoma on their calf and the doctor wanted to do a simple wide excision, but they left because they wanted to pray it away. Came back a couple of months later because it got bigger and we had to amputate their leg. Pretty sure they had positive lymph nodes at that point too.
Physiotherapist.
For those that don’t know, after a total knee replacement, you basically have a 6-week window after the surgery to regain the range of motion. If you don’t regain the range in those first 6 weeks, it ain’t coming back.
Had a patient who was a farmer, who was very enthusiastic about regaining the range because he needed to be mobile for his work. Saw him the first time about 5 days after surgery, showed him all the basic exercises, told him to not do any farm work for at least 6 weeks, and told him to come back to see me once a week for the first 6 weeks.
He disappeared and came back about 8 weeks later. His range was non-existent, maybe 30 degrees of range in total. He was visibly mad at me as if it was my fault, actually shouting and calling me incompetent. Our conversation went something like this:
“Have you been doing the exercises?”
“No”
“How often are you doing farm work?”
“Every day”
“Why haven’t you come back since the first appointment 8 weeks ago?”
“Too busy with farm work”
“So to summarize here, you did absolutely nothing that I told you to, and this is somehow my fault?”
Never saw him again.
When I was an intern posten in the Obstetric department, I saw a 42-year-old pregnant woman who came for an antenatal check-up. This was her 7th pregnancy and she had only one living child. She had 5 pregnancies previously which failed (3 spontaneous abortions and 2 stillbirths). The 6th one was high risk too and she had to get cervical cerclage done (they stitch the cervix because it is too weak to actually hold a baby in till term). When the Obgyn asked her why she would put herself through pregnancy again instead of being content with her daughter, she replied ‘My in-laws want us to have at least 2 children’.
Biggest Pikachu face moment in my life.
Not a medical professional, but I used to volunteer at a free medical clinic to take vitals and histories. A woman came in with pneumonia and wanted to know why her normal treatment of drinking half a bottle of Listerine and smoking a pack of cigarettes a day wasn’t working. I asked why she thought smoking was a good treatment for a lung infection and she said, “Indians used to purify the ground by burning all the weeds away before planting, so I’m smoking to purify my lungs.”
I left that one to the doctor.
Just got reminded of the time I got the highest priority call to someone who was actively choking.
Rush to the scene. Going through the protocols en route – plans for if we needed to perform CPR.
Pull up. Rush in.
Dude sat on the sofa, fully alert.
NOT CHOKING
“Ah you’ve managed to clear it, great” – me
“No I’m still choking” – they said with no hint of choking – Also if your airway is occluded you can’t speak.
The story is, he’d been to a local carvery for lunch. Ate a big bit of beef that he felt was too big to swallow… but swallowed anyway.
After a short while he felt it was still not fully descended to his stomach, so he drove himself home and called 999.
I explained that it was a large bolus of food in his (for simpleton speak) food pipe, not his air pipe.
He needed to drink water to wash down and next time either cut into smaller pieces or not swallow.
He had 2 young children and a 3rd on its way.
These people are allowed to vote, drive and reproduce.
I work at a hospital and I legit had someone who believed that the only way to improve their eyesight was to close their left eye and squint with their right. When asked about glasses she said ‘ I’m not into that fashion trend’
Pharmacist here.
I had a woman bring in a literal sandwich bag [unseperated] which she kept all her meds in. She needed help seeing which meds she was low or out on and asking different questions about the medications. When she pointed to an opaque stating it was her blood pressure medicine I immediately became concerned as to why pet medicine was in her bag [also why she Is mixing all her meds in a bag in the first place] only to find out that she had been throwing her pets med inside her bag of medicine. So lord knows what she’s been giving her dog or taking herself. I immediately stressed how important it is to keep medicine in its original container to protect the medicine and herself and to know the directions of how to take it. I’ve seen her a few times since then and am glad to see she has since taken my advice. But how any Pharmacist or doctor hasn’t advised her on this before is beyond me.
Someone asked me how you catch a stroke. This is because the partner of said person was on the floor unable to stand due to left-sided weakness/no power. They both thought he could sleep it off overnight and be fine in the morning, 12hours later they decided they’d phone the doctors to ask if there was anything the doctor could give the person on the floor who was also now incontinent. They didn’t even get worried during the previous day when his face drooped on the left side and he was slurring his speech.
I said he had had a stroke,
“Oh, how do you catch one of those?”
I work in home health. At my last job, I had a lady call saying she was returning my call specifically. I don’t recall her at all and when I check for anything on her, it shows we have never received a referral or anything for her. Which I tell her. She gets mad and starts screaming at me, won’t let me get a word in to tell her to call the discharge planner at the hospital. Like a good 8 minutes of her screaming at me, calling me heartless, an idiot, you name it. Whatever, it’s slow and these calls are usually good for a laugh. She takes a breath, and I say “Ma’am, I’m not sure who called you, especially since we haven’t heard of you before now…” She interrupts with “No, it was definitely you, you said your name was Shelliton and you were calling from Advanced Home Health!” Ah, we have detected the problem! I tell her “I see what’s going on, you accidentally called Ambercare Home Health, let me get you Advanced’s number.” Then she says “I have it. They didn’t pick up the phone, so I called you guys.”
I was not expecting that one.
I work in veterinary medicine and clients are absolute idiots who are convinced that they are the smartest people in the world.
It is amazing that pets actually manage to stay alive.
People will believe just about anyone else over the advice of their veterinarian. Their breeder, their relatives, their lawn mower, the person bagging their groceries.
I had a client blind their cat with tea tree oil because they read about it on the internet.
Clients change their pet’s medication dose for whatever reason. That’s really fun when it is insulin.
Not follow post-op instructions causing their pet to pet to eviscerate itself or blow the knee we just repaired.
Feed their dog pot roast with garlic and onions as their “bland diet” for gi upset.
Heck, last week I had a client scream at me because we didn’t give her an exam room with a view. We don’t have exam rooms with outside windows.
I work in orthopedic rehab. Had a patient with a common fracture of the wrist the doctor sent over since she was inexplicably getting stiffer and stiffer.
I spent 17 sessions with her, 40ish minutes each 1-1 time. Instead of just bending her wrist she would contort her entire body. She had a career, married, raised kids, and seemingly functional adult. I tried everything to have her actively use her muscles to move her wrist. In front of a mirror, videos of myself doing the exercise, her doing it, and trying to spot the difference of moving your shoulder vs. your wrist. The last time I saw her I even strapped her arm to a chair and she didn’t understand she was just trying to move her wrist.
I will never understand it.
Dentist here. Once a stressed receptionist asked me to help her interpret a call. I thought maybe the patient was speaking some foreign language. No. She just wanted me to confirm that the patient was asking for the property back, that we ”took” from him last year. Last year actually being 4 years ago but I guess time flies. And his property being a tooth we sent to grind into slides for analysis. While explaining that it was impossible for us to return his tooth he started going on about ”his rights” and ”his property”.
A family member worked at a hospital and had a patient come in with really strange physical and seemingly neurological issues.
Couldn’t figure out what was causing it. Didn’t match anything he knew of and tests were inconclusive.
He asked her to walk him through her day. Turns out she was drinking a cup of bleach a day and bathing in it to keep clean and healthy her whole life. Same with her family…. Who all died very young.
She could not accept that drinking bleach was bad for her health.
Had a patient when I was a pharmacy resident get repeatedly admitted to the hospital due to CHF complications (shortness of breath, fluid overload, etc.). She had been advised to follow a low-sodium diet but no one had asked her what she had actually been eating. I asked what she usually ate for lunch and she said instant ramen noodles every day, but she only added the seasoning packet and a little salt.
Paramedic, and had this call while I worked on a rural fire/EMS service.
A call came in for an allergic reaction. Arrive at a rural farm and find the patient in the kitchen on the ground wheezing. The husband says she took Sulfa, which she’s allergic to, and after grabbing her BP we hit her with epinephrine (Same as an epi-pen) and Benadryl. Her breathing improves, and she starts to be able to answer questions.
Me: So, you’re allergic to Sulfa?
Patient: Yeah
Me: And you took Sulfa?
Patient: Yeah
Me: Was it mislabeled or in the wrong bottle?
Patient: No.
Me: ….
Patient: ….
Me: Was it your husband’s prescription?
Patient: No, it was for our horse.
Me: Was….wait, did you say a horse? You took Sulfa prescribed for a horse?
Patient: Well, I only took half
Me:…..you only took half because a horse is much larger than a person
Patient: Yeah
Me: ….okay. Were you intentionally trying to hurt yourself?
Patient: No, of course not
Me: But you know you’re allergic, right?
Patient: Yeah. I just have a cold and thought it would help me breathe better
Me: So you took horse Sulfa, which you’re allergic to, because you had a cold and thought it would help your breathing?
Patient: I took HALF a horse Sulfa
Me: Sorry, half. Gotchya. Let’s go to the hospital.
Ophthalmology surgery tech: glaucoma patient in her late 50s going blind despite drop therapies for the past 6 months.
Pressure is consistently in the 30s and 40s. I ask her if she’s using her drops regularly (twice daily) and she says yes. I ask, politely as I can, if she’s missed any doses in the past month. She says no. I ask if she’s using them properly and she gets super offended. Asks me very rudely: “Do I look like an idiot to you?” I say “No, but I just need to be sure. Sometimes patients think they’re doing it right but they can easily miss. Can you show me how you use your drops?” She takes out her drop bottle, gives it a good shake (so far so good), looks up at the ceiling (also a good sign), opens her MOUTH and swallows 2 drops. I got in trouble, but my OD backed me up and told her that’s the stupidest thing he’s ever seen in 25 years.
She cried and said we were bullying her, and the drops burned her eyes so she didn’t want to put them in there. Since eyes, ears, nose, and throat were all connected, why did it matter where she put them??? (This is not how glaucoma therapy works) she needed a shunt implant and we were able to save about 30% of her visual field, but yeah, drinking her drops and going blind.
I watched a woman come into our ER off and on over the course of a couple of years to have her “cockroach bite” on her breast treated. It was breast cancer that she refused to accept, despite many efforts and involving her family… Complete denial. Each visit, the “bite” grew and grew until one day she stopped coming in. I still cannot fathom her reasoning for not letting her brain accept it as anything more than a simple bug bite. Sadly, lower-class minorities and elderly. Everyone tried very hard to convince her but even her family stopped trying and she just wasted away as that cancer grew.
I had a patient who had a bullet lodged in her leg. We had the surgeon come and assess her. Based on its placement, he suggested leaving it because removing it could cause even more serious danger. We discharged her. She immediately walked to the ER in the same hospital to complain of leg pain. She had prescriptions and wound supplies in her hand. They brought her back, discovered the bullet wound and called for a surgical consult. The exact same surgeon was on-call and came to assess her. Guess what!? Same suggestion to leave it. We educated her EXTENSIVELY about never getting an MRI or the bullet will fly out of her skin. She returns a few months later to a sister hospital complaining of a headache. Admitted inpatient and you guessed it. They did an MRI. The bullet ripped out and the MRI machine was down for almost a week!
Optometrist here. Most of the facepalming stuff I see is from contact lens wearers abusing their lenses. For those wondering, wearing your contacts incorrectly can cause severe problems up to and including blindness and corneal transplants.
I had a college student come in with a corneal ulcer. She would put her contacts in and not take them out for a good 6 months at a time. She showed up still wearing them, and I had to basically peel the contact off her eye. After taking it out, there was a clear compression ring of where the lens was. As I’m walking her out of the clinic with her medication script in hand and clear instructions to not wear contacts until I say so, she says, “You threw my contact away. Will you give me one I can wear out tomorrow?”
…..NO, NO I WILL NOT.
Guy came in with a particularly bad pneumonia. They do all the typical questions in the ER, but it’s not exactly exotic, so no one really questions it too much. I swing by and ask my respiratory questions, including whether he wears a CPAP at night. Turns out, he does! He never got a sleep study done, but he found one at a thrift store and has been wearing it for a week! He didn’t even know you had to change the water, so he’s been using the humidifier with whatever water has been sitting in the reservoir for god knows how long. His respiratory culture came back positive for every bacteria under the sun.
So a commercial fisherman (it’s relevant) comes into the ER complaining of dizziness for multiple days, with no other complaints. He comes back, takes off his coat, and we all immediately recoil. His right arm is completely black and peeling from the elbow down. Think zombie flesh. There were parts you could see muscle and bone. His arm was literally rotting away
We ask him about it and he says he was stung by a saltwater catfish at least a month before and just assumed the salt water would heal it. He was completely unconcerned about it. We tried to explain to him that the dizziness was probably because he was septic from the infection (he was) and there was a high likelihood he would lose his arm.
He looked at us like we were crazy. He couldn’t understand how the arm could cause his dizziness, and that this wasn’t what healing looked like. Luckily he allowed us to admit him and all he lost was his arm, because he definitely would have died.