A while back, redditor the-mailman38 asked, “Doctors and nurses of Reddit, who was the dumbest patient you ever had?” And…wow. People REALLY need to learn how to do a simple Google search before going to the ER. Here are 63 bafflingly dumb patients.We also used replies from these threads.1. “I’m still a student, but a professor of mine once told me about a patient complaining about the pain in her lower belly and vagina. He took his speculum to check it out and saw a ridiculous amount of pus and a whole bunch of strings. Pulling them out one at a time, he realized there was a solid dozen old tampons in her. She was confused because it said ‘biodegradable’ on the box.”—[deleted]2. “A patient broke an insulin bottle. Instead of throwing it away, they scooped up the liquid into a container and continued to inject. Logical conclusion: fungal infection and probable micro-fragments of glass. Life pro tip: Insulin needles don’t filter glass.”—u/Cha_cha_marg3. “I am an ER doc. I once had a 20-year-old and his girlfriend come in at 2 a.m., freaking out because ‘something had torn his throat open.’ He seemed fine. No blood. Breathing fine. I had him open his mouth, and saw nothing. I didn’t want him to lose confidence in me. Clearly, something had happened, so I was looking, and looking…there was nothing wrong with this kid’s throat. Finally, I said, ‘Look, it seems okay…what did you feel or see?’ ‘I don’t feel it, but LOOK, IT’S RIGHT THERE.’ It was his uvula. Somehow, this kid had gotten to the age of 20 without ever noticing his uvula. The girlfriend was also horrified…I told them it was normal. They did not believe me. So I told them I was about to blow their minds and showed him his girlfriend’s uvula. Minds blown, another life saved in the ER.”—u/HathathnPixproviderAB / Getty Images/iStockphoto4. “We had a female patient come in for a seizure during sex. Turns out she had never had an orgasm before. One of the nurses had to explain it all to her and her boyfriend; the kicker was that she was pregnant at the time.”—u/Letmetellyowhat5. “I worked as a telehealth triage nurse for a while. I once had a pregnant woman call and ask if she was sleeping with a new partner, not the baby’s daddy, if the baby would become her new partner’s child, genetically.”—u/Married_With_Child6. “I’m a medical student. A pregnant woman who’d had unprotected sex with two different guys in the past month came in. She explained to me she’d find out whose it was once the baby started talking. I was so confused. Turns out one of the guys was Latino, and she was gonna wait to see if her kid would speak Spanish…”—u/bloobb7. “I had a Marine once who came to me complaining of a rash on his right forearm for two weeks. This was his first visit for the issue, and he hadn’t had anything like this before, and was worried, since he reported worsening symptoms since the initial onset. When asking about prior skin issues, he told me he had ringworm just prior to THIS rash. I looked at his arm; it looked like a mild second-degree chemical burn in a rather circular shape, with blisters on the edges. What got me was the exact definition in the burn edge. I asked the young LCPL how he got that. He replied, ‘Well, that’s the burn I got from the bleach I poured on my arm.’ When I asked him WHY he poured bleach on his arm: ‘Well, how else was I going to kill the ringworm?'”—u/DocMichaelsZay Nyi Nyi / Getty Images8. “Respiratory therapist here. I was working in the ER and was told we were getting a patient in respiratory distress. When she got in, she was having problems breathing and needed oxygen. I placed an oxygen mask on her, and she yelled, ‘I’m allergic to oxygen!’ I heard the doctor laugh behind the curtains.”—u/Hoax13Related: “33 Toxic In-Laws Who Stepped Way Too Far Out Of Line”9. “Emergency surgeon here. I got called at 2 a.m. because a patient demanded to see me because ‘her daughter’s farts smelled too bad.’ I kept a straight face.”—u/LatuSensu10. “My dad is an orthopedic surgeon who does a lot of hips and knees and cries with laughter every time he tells the story of a woman who didn’t understand how hip surgery works and thought they were going to take her leg off, fix the hip, and then reattach her leg.”—[deleted]11. “I had a patient in her 30s complain of monthly rectal bleeding that would last four to six days and stop on its own. It started when she was 11. She just thought she should get checked out. It did stop for a while when she was pregnant.”—u/SaintKavorca12. “I work in the ER. We had a very pregnant patient come in needing stitches in her vagina. Turns out she was a realtor and didn’t want her water to break while she was showing a house, so she put a glass cup in her pants to catch the water. Instead of using a pad or an adult diaper, she went for a GLASS CUP. She sat down while showing a house, and sure enough, it broke and cut her up pretty badly.”—u/lmao_turkey13. “There was one who was very upset to find out that she was pregnant again because she’d used her diaphragm EXACTLY as she’d been told. She carefully inspected it for holes, applied the spermicide, placed it, wore it at night, then took it out, cleaned it, and put it away each morning… And then her husband arrived home from his night shift.”—u/Anitsisqua14. “I worked at the ER during my internship and met a girl who had increasingly painful and red eyes for a couple of days. The last 24 hours had been horrible. I asked about all the normal stuff, and she claimed to have no idea why she had this eye problem — she had never had anything wrong with her eyes. I proceeded to drop some dye in her eyes to check them in a microscope, and when I did, I realized she was wearing contacts. She didn’t like her natural eye color, so she had bought a set of blue-colored lenses eight months earlier. Never removed them, not even during nighttime. Didn’t even think to mention this to me, claimed to have no ‘foreign materials’ in her eyes. Needless to say, I gave her quite the harsh lecture and a referral to an ophthalmologist.”—u/fracturedfigment15. “Patient was a young woman with no STIs but recurring UTIs that began after a recent partner; I went through the standard questions trying to figure out what could be causing them, and eventually found out she had been lubricating with jelly. Not K-Y Jelly. The mix-up had literally been a joke on House. It took me some effort to keep a straight face, but we eventually resolved the problem, and she stopped getting UTIs.”—u/rawrthesaurus16. “I’m a dental nurse. A 30-something-year-old woman came in for a check-up at the emergency low-cost clinic I worked at. Her teeth were broken and almost black, and her gums were angry, swollen, bright red, and bleeding. She needed multiple scaling/hygienist appointments and a debridement. We did root canals to try to save some teeth and extractions for the others. I explained everything and did the usual explanation of proper oral hygiene. I asked her if she had any questions, to which she said, ‘It’s okay if I lose this set of teeth, my others will come through.'””The dentist and I just looked at each other, probably for a lot longer than we should have. No words. I couldn’t think of anything to reply to that comment.”—u/darkerthanmysoul17. “A 20-year-old girl and her fiancé found out that she was pregnant. Me (partway through taking her history): ‘Do you smoke cigarettes?’ Her: ‘Yeah, about a pack a day.’ Me: ‘You should definitely stop that.’ Her: ‘Well, my sister told me that if I stopped smoking, the baby would go into withdrawal and die.'”—u/adipds18. “My dermatologist told me he had a patient freak out over ‘horrible red bumps’ all over her one summer. They were mosquito bites.”—u/msstark19. “A 14-year-old couple was splitting birth control pills to be ‘extra safe.’ The girl got pregnant…the boy got gynecomastia.”—u/Drugachussetts20. “We had a patient come to the emergency department at 3 a.m. because she woke up 20 minutes prior with itchy/watery eyes and nasal congestion. It was spring. She literally came in for seasonal allergies.””I asked what medications she tried to relieve the symptoms. She said, ‘My husband told me to take some allergy medicine he has at home, but I didn’t take it.’ So, you’re going to pay a hospital bill for the same antihistamines that you have at home? 🤦🏼♀️”—u/Ohh_Nurse21. “My family member is a surgeon. A guy came to the ER with his arm all torn up. He had gone to shoot the neighbor’s dog because it was barking/being a pain in the ass and missed. The dog got his arm and chewed him up good. He was patched up and released. Two hours later, the same guy was back with his other arm chewed to bits. He went home to finish the job, missed again, and the dog got his other arm.”—u/omglolthcRelated: I’m Sorry, But I’m Pretty Sure It’s Actually Physically, Mentally, Emotionally And Spirtually Impossible Not To Laugh At Any Of These Text Messages22. “There was a guy who came to the ER because his iPhone app told him his sleep was of poor quality.”—u/XLpho23. “A patient thought taking a vitamin B6 double dose was the same as taking a vitamin B12.”—u/fresubinjucy24. “I work in radiation oncology, and one of our docs had a patient come in for a consult for low-grade prostate cancer. We got everything ready for his treatment, and the day before treatment started, he canceled. And we never heard from him. A year later, he showed up with much higher-grade prostate cancer and was heavily tanned. Like a leather handbag wrinkly and tanned. He decided to treat with ‘natural’ radiation therapy, i.e., sat in the sun for eight hours a day for several months. Riiight. Now he’s got a prostate the size of a grapefruit and is high risk for melanoma.”—[deleted]25. “I work as a scribe in the ER, and we had a guy come in asking to be tested because he may have an STI. So we started asking him if he had had unprotected sex and multiple partners, to which he answered yes. Next, we asked if he had any itching, rash, discharge, etc., to which he answered no. Turns out this guy thought he caught asthma from having sex with some chick who had asthma. He thought it was an STI.”—u/HipHop__Opotamus26. “I once had a child who swallowed a sizable magnet that passed to the intestine, and we were just waiting for it to pass in stool…the next day when he came for a follow-up, we just found out that he swallowed another one that got stuck to the first magnet in the intestine through the stomach wall resulting in intestinal obstruction, and he was transferred to OR immediately to have them surgically removed.”—u/velvetrevolver727. “I had to explain to a 17-year-old girl and her mother that she was not, in fact, ‘allergic’ to alcohol, but she was just hungover. She complained that on nights when she drank too much vodka, usually on an empty stomach, that she would feel nauseous, flushed, and sometimes vomit in the morning. But it didn’t happen all the time, and there were no other typical symptoms of an allergic reaction.”—u/glioblastomamulti28. “I had a patient come in stating that he couldn’t bend his knee. I asked him to remove his trousers so I could examine his leg. After he removed his trousers, the reason that he couldn’t bend his knee was that he had a plaster cast around his knee. Checking his notes, I saw he had been sent numerous letters asking him to come in for removal of this plaster cast, and as he hadn’t attended any of the outpatient clinics, the hospital had assumed that he had removed the cast himself.”—u/Ochib29. “Nurse here. I worked at a nursing home and had a mid-60s man in for rehab following a knee replacement. I walked in one evening, and he was in his bed and had passed away from an unrelated heart attack. The family was called. They came in, obviously heartbroken, as this was unexpected. They knew he had heart issues, but nothing this bad. The man’s wife was in the early stages of dementia and was upset and saying things in the room like, ‘Why did you leave me, you bastard?’ The 40ish-year-old daughter pulled me aside, very concerned, and asked me, ‘My mom is saying some very nasty things, do you think he is still able to hear her?’ Trying to be a pro, I thought for a second and answered, ‘In the sense that Jesus can hear you, maybe. In the sense that you can hear me, no.’ She immediately hugged me and said, ‘Oh, what a relief.'”—[deleted]30. “Not a nurse or doctor — I was the patient. I was about 30 weeks pregnant, and it was difficult to have sex and actually orgasm due to the awkward positioning because of my huge belly. So I bought a toy; while using the toy, I had an extremely intense orgasm that resulted in me squirting for the first time in my life. I called crying that my water broke, went in only for them to tell me that my water was not broken, and what had happened was completely normal. I’ve never been so humiliated in my life.”—u/cvep31. “I was asked by a patient, on the respiratory ward, if I thought his lung cancer might have had anything to do with his 50-a-day smoking habit. Because he smoked rollups, and he wasn’t sure if they counted.”—u/vc-1032. “A young woman came into the ER screaming bloody murder about her mother, who looked like she was in mild pain but was walking fairly normally. The daughter was hysterically screaming, crying, and literally pushing us toward her mother. The mother denied needing a wheelchair, and we asked what we could help her with. The mother said, ‘I accidentally douched with Drano.’ The daughter passes out cold. Other staff helped the daughter, and we took Mother to the back. She basically had massive corrosion in her hoo-ha. I know she went for emergency surgery and lost multiple organs, but I really don’t know what happened to her. We still talk about her and how it would be possible to ‘accidentally’ douche with Drano.”—u/Smilesunshine57Related: “The 35 Funniest Posts By Women On The Internet This Week”33. “I work in a hospital in the neuro (brain) unit as a tech and answer phones and stuff. One time, I had somebody call in saying they were a patient a year ago and had a procedure where they had a piece of their brain removed. They wanted it back. I was stunned silent. The person then asked me to go to the brain room to see where we had it. They legit thought our hospital had a brain room with shelves of brains kept in jars that we’d keep on the off chance that they were ever needed after being removed.”—u/Hero_-534. “This is my dad’s favorite story to tell; he’s worked in the ER for 30 years. Sometime in the mid-’90s, he was working in triage as the first medical person you talk to when you go into the ED. A mother with three kids came in and stated that they all needed to be seen. He asked what the issue was. They were in a grocery store the day before and accidentally got sprayed by water in the produce section. They weren’t getting sick. They didn’t have rashes. They got sprayed by water 24 hours before, and she took them to the emergency room.”—u/royal_rose_35. “When I was a medical student, a guy (obviously male) in his late 50s came in and complained that he had never had a Pap smear and that he was afraid of getting cervical cancer. A few things went off in my head: 1) Maybe he means prostate exam? 2) Maybe he wants a colonoscopy? 3) Maybe he actually does have a vagina? 4) Maybe he’s just severely and utterly confused and undereducated? It was number four.”—u/Butt-butt-but-but-b36. “A diabetic patient came in with a blood sugar of 39. ‘What happened?’ ‘I wanted to eat a slice of birthday cake, so I took my whole bottle of insulin.'”—u/NurseNikkiLee37. “A girl went to the emergency room at 2 a.m., afraid she was pregnant because her boyfriend ejaculated in her mouth.””I usually don’t care if people are less intellectually inclined, but this same girl complained of waiting too long (around 10 minutes since she came in) to me (while I was attending to an arrested patient).”—u/lastroids38. “Care aide here. We had someone come into the emergency room once because their lips were chapped.”—u/SeptemberCharm39. “A 20-year-old girl came in with abdominal pains. We did a pregnancy test, aaaaand she was pregnant. She acted surprised because she was on the pill. I asked her how long she had been on it and if she had been taking it daily, as prescribed. As if it were the most logical thing on the planet, she said she did not take it daily because she did not have sex daily. I looked at her, trying hard not to laugh. She only took them right after she had sex with her boyfriend, ‘So, like, maybe a couple of times a week.'”—u/aniwrack40. “There was a 24-year-old patient who was brought in from a jail in a rural county. He was working on a roadside cleanup when he found a bottle in a ditch that he thought contained alcohol, and he quickly chugged it down. To be fair, it did look like whiskey. It wasn’t. It turns out it was a substance that contained sulfuric acid. Its pH was less than 2.5…it just ate up the litmus paper. So shortly after he got to the ICU, he was in excruciating pain and vomiting blood.””The gastroenterologist took him to do an EGD (basically a procedure where they can look at the esophagus, stomach, and duodenum with a camera attached to a flexible tube), and the pictures were horrendous. You could literally see his stomach and esophageal mucosa eroding away.He had to be sent off to another hospital where they had an esophageal surgeon who could repair the mess. He, of course, needed multiple surgeries and had a very long hospital stay. I saw him a few months later when he was admitted for another issue. He was down to 90 pounds (from about 150) and was getting fed through a PEG tube.He was very lucky to be young and otherwise healthy (but obviously not very smart).”—u/LedRaptor41. “I work in ultrasound. Patient: ‘We have been trying to get pregnant for five years with no success.’ Me: ‘Are you currently on any infertility drugs?’ Patient: ‘No, but I have been on birth control for the last seven years.’ Me: ‘You are currently on birth control but also trying to get pregnant?’ Patient: ‘Yes, I like to know when my period is coming.'”—u/wildrabbit0742. “A guy had previously had an anaphylactic reaction to a foodstuff, but he wasn’t sure he was ‘really allergic,’ so he thought he’d test it out by bringing some to the ER waiting room and eating it. Spoiler: He was really allergic.”—u/lasaucerouge43. “A patient was given a small camera the size of a large pill to look for a GI bleed. It is disposable, and the pictures are stored on a belt-like device. Upon reviewing the film, I saw the pill had taken two trips through their GI tract. Patient ate the camera, shit it out, then ate it again because ‘it went through too fast the first time.'”—u/feeder_bands44. “A female patient presented to the emergency department with severe vaginal pain. The patient informed the nurse she had wanted to get ‘one of those IUDs’ so she couldn’t get pregnant, but couldn’t afford it. So she did the next best thing. She put superglue into her vagina and tried to seal off her cervix. Oddly enough, it was causing significant irritation.”—u/Raincoats_George45. “Back when I was an ophthalmic nurse, a patient phoned up complaining of eye soreness after cataract surgery. I went through the usual questions, including ‘Are you having trouble seeing things clearly?’ His *totally serious* answer ‘Only when I close my eyes.'”—u/faelavie”I work in optics; patients say these things seriously on a daily basis. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve had people say, ‘My glasses are great, but I have a problem, I can’t see when I’m not wearing them.'”—u/josh996146. “A guy came into the ER one time because he noticed dandruff. Dandruff. Like, have you not heard of Head & Shoulders?”—u/pineapplepizza_zz47. “RN here. I see some wild stuff, but one thing that stands out was the time I was admitting a guy to the hospital who had obesity, diabetes, heart disease, among other things. I was at the computer, going over some admission questions with him and his 10 family members who were crowded in the room with him. A few minutes in, he started complaining that he was thirsty. He needed something to drink IMMEDIATELY. So I got on my phone and called the nurse assistant and asked her to bring in some ice water. As soon as the words were out of my mouth, the whole family screamed ‘NOOOO! NO WATER! HE’S ALLERGIC TO WATER!'””Turns out the guy had been drinking nothing but Sprite and sweet tea for years because of his ‘water allergy.’ The next question the wife had was, ‘Where are we all supposed to sleep?’ The whole family, 10 people, were planning to stay at the hospital with him. You can’t make this shit up.”—u/jsellars848. “I was working at a clinic. I was speaking with a non-controlled diabetic patient about her sugar intake, and she said she drinks a 32-oz. soda every day. I asked her if it was regular or diet, and she replied with: ‘It’s half-regular. I let the ice melt first so there isn’t as much sugar in it.’ Sorry, but that isn’t how it works.”—u/FriskypharmerRelated: “21 Chilling Stories From People Who Knew Real-Life Murderers, And Wow”49. “My friend is a doctor on the children’s ward in a rural hospital. These parents brought in their child, whose hair was infested with lice. The lice were visible to the naked eye and could be seen crawling on the child’s clothing. While the medical staff examined the child, in order to determine a course of action, they discovered the child was covered in a white powder and smelled heavily of chemicals. They asked the parents what the substances and the smells emanating from the child were. The parents said, quite matter-of-factly, that it was Sevin powder and flea and tick spray they used on their dogs on the family’s farm. Needless to say, social workers were notified about this case.”—u/habitual_wanderer50. “A 16-year-old boy presented to the ER with an extremely swollen, discolored penis. Apparently, he had been using his mom’s insulin needles to draw blood out of his arm and inject it into his own penis. He thought that adding blood would help increase his size. His penis was terribly infected, and he was hospitalized for a week or so.”—u/StrutThatCorgiButt51. “I had a young man come into my ER one day, complaining of dental pain. His wisdom teeth were coming in, and turns out he had tried to cut them out with a steak knife. He was confused as to why this hadn’t made his pain better. When I asked why he hadn’t gone to his dentist to have them removed, he said something along the lines of, ‘I’m really scared of needles.’ Because a fucking steak knife is less imposing than a needle.”—[deleted]52. “We had an ambulance calling over the radio for a ‘foreign body in the left eye.’ We started mobilizing, called the ophthalmologist on call, and were ready for shrapnel, a big-ass tree branch, something big. We got a woman with an eyelash in her inner eyelid. She got an AMBULANCE and PRIVATE ER for an EYELASH. Our only consolation was thinking of the big-ass bill she probably got.”—u/alksreddit53. “I’m a nurse who worked in the OR at a trauma center. I was doing surgery on a 19-year-old who tested positive for meth and cocaine, who was grilling the anesthesiologist about every drug we were going to use in surgery because ‘he doesn’t like putting chemicals in his body.’ Gotta stick with that organic, fair trade, non-GMO cocaine.”—u/CalvinsStuffedTiger54. “I had a patient present to the emergency room with a chief complaint of passing out. He reported that he would just ‘pass out’ in the evening. I asked him if he had ever fallen and hurt himself. He said no, that he is in bed when it happens. I asked him how frequently this happens. He said, ‘Every night.'”—u/Tjb1155. “I once had a patient with a cancer diagnosis completely depressed about not being able to see their family anymore. I was confused because I had spoken with this individual’s spouse and extended family, who seemed supportive; there wasn’t any indication of family problems, etc. It turns out that this individual thought ‘genetic’ and ‘family history’ had meant something similar to ‘contagious,’ leading them to the conclusion that one should stay away from loved ones lest it be spread through the family. That was one clarification I was so happy to give.”—u/JamesJMedina56. “My wife is an RN who works at an outpatient surgery center. Cataract surgery is one of the common surgeries that they do. Patients are told that after the surgery, they should put eye drops in four times a day for one week (so 28 drops altogether). One patient asked if it would be okay to just put the 28 drops in all at once so they didn’t have to deal with it for a week.”—u/barto557. “I recently talked to a patient who was getting ready for surgery that involves usage of robotic arms to help remove the tumors. It allows for smaller incisions and greater precision. This patient started insisting on meeting the doctor when it seemed like the consult was wrapped up. So we got him back in there, thinking maybe she had another question. The patient said, ‘I still want to meet the doctor.’ And the doctor pointed at himself and said, ‘I’m the doctor.'””Patient: I know you’re a doctor, but I want to meet THE doctor!Doctor: You’ve already met the resident. I’m the doctor doing your procedure.Patient: No, not you! I want to meet the robot that’s going to do my surgery! I feel like we should at least shake hands first!Apparently, the patient was expecting some metal man to walk through the door.”—[deleted]58. “I’m an EMT. I had a woman who was in active labor, despite insisting she couldn’t be pregnant. She said her last period was ‘like 20 months ago’ so she’d gone through menopause. She was 25.”—u/Kaylinwriter1459. “I’m a paramedic. I got a call about a stroke. Patient had facial droop and slurred speech, said that it felt just like the last time she had a stroke (10 years ago). She said that the symptoms came on about ‘four days ago,’ and she knew the moment it was happening that it was a stroke, but didn’t go to the hospital because she ‘thought she could make it go away on her own.'”—u/SeitedeMarie60. “I had a guy with an ICD in place. For those who don’t know, it basically shocks your heart if it goes into a funny rhythm. He would regularly come into the hospital to have it turned off because he would do a ton of cocaine, and the thing would keep firing due to his high heart rate. I told him not to do cocaine. He kept doing cocaine.”—u/blahblahyaddaydadda61. “I work in the ER. A patient complained she had ‘seasonal diabetes.'”—u/Foren-Sick62. “Me: ‘Any chance you’re pregnant?’ Patient: ‘No.’ Me: ‘Are you sexually active?’ Patient: ‘Yes.’ Me: ‘Why is there no chance you’re pregnant?’ Patient: ‘Because I’m not married.’ Me: ‘Pee in this cup.'”—u/TheStaggeringGenius63. And finally… “Paramedic here. I had someone come into the ER because they were gay.”—u/SstviagraDo you work in healthcare? Who is the most shockingly dumb, misinformed, or just plain uninformed patient you ever encountered? Let us know in the comments or via this anonymous form.Your daily brain workout: This 25-Word Chain Can Only Be Solved By Truly Intelligent PeopleAlso in Internet Finds: 40 People Who Woke Up One Morning And Promptly Had The Most Painfully Awkward And Embarrassing Day In Human HistoryAlso in Internet Finds: “A Woman’s Question To Men Exposed Why So Many Women Feel Unsafe”Read it on BuzzFeed.com
