Kate Hackett
Doctor-anxiety is so real, but there’s got to be a line somewhere between feeling anxious to reveal some of your deepest secrets and the doctor’s job. They need to know some stuff that might be a little hard to admit, so it’s only natural to get a little squirmy when faced with their questions. However. There’s “a little squirmy” and then there are some of the answers to this Reddit thread from u/KyeLindsay, which wanted to know the dumbest things patients have lied about to their surgeons and doctors.
So take note: if you lied about anything on this list? They know.
1. Diabetes
“Do you have any medical problems?”
“No”
“So no diabetes?”
“No diabetes”
“What medications are you taking?”
“Metformin. For my diabetes.”
I facepalm every time
2. Not a bike accident
Guy came in for a wound on his lower leg that he said came from a biking accident. X-ray revealed a bullet inside his ankle joint. The wound was from shooting himself by accident while holding a gun. Still don’t know how he didn’t fracture anything.
3. An orange
Woman comes to emerg with complaints of vaginal discharge and discomfort. Pelvic exam initially reveals significant yeast infection, but there appears to be a foreign body in her vagina. “Is there something stuck inside?” “No, I don’t know what’s in there…” Speculum examination reveals a very soft mandarin orange, peel still on. “Oh, that! We heard it would improve our fertility…”
4. Wasn’t him!
I had a guy insist that someone else put cocaine and heroin in his urine. Even after I tried to move on with the conversation.
5. Up the butt
My little brother was a nurse for about a decade. He has said many times that people stick anything up their butts. From lightbulbs to hairbrushs to a golf shoe. And at first it’s hilarious. Then after a year or so it’s not funny because you’ve seen way too many distended buttholes.
Then after a decade or so it starts to get funny again because you think you’ve seen everything and then one day a 45 year old man is driven to the hospital by his wife and he has a golf shoe up his ass and he told his wife that he and the boys were golfing and he slipped in the locker room and it got rammed up there completely disregarding the fact that the part of the shoe that is inside him is covered in Vaseline…
6. Stop eating corn
Part of my job is dealing with medical records- my favorite part is when you are reading the doctors notes and you can tell they are fed up with the patients bullshit from their tone.
“Patient in for routine colonoscopy, asked if solids consumed in 24 hrs prior, patient confirms no. In process of procedure, several dozen kernels of corn are discovered in colon and cannot continue. Patient specifically instructed not to consume corn beforehand as this happened prior visit.”
7. Ask the sexual history!
I had a hypothetical patient during residency that was a very manly veteran and I was admitting him for rectal bleeding. He was in the age where it more than likely colon cancer, so I didn’t think it was necessary to ask a sexual history. Folks at this particular establish were known to at times be homophobic and I had been yelled at by patients previously for asking “do you have sex with men, women or both?” It ate away at my conscience, though, so I went back in absurdly nervously and asked him. He answered “son, I’m as gay as a rainbow. I’ve been at the bathhouse for the last couple of nights but I wasn’t sure how it would go over to admit it. That’s when the bleeding started”
8. You did though
Patient: “I haven’t drank alcohol in months!”
Patients family: “It’s true I’ve been with her the whole time.”
Me: “Ma’am your alcohol level is 325.”
Patient: “Impossible! I would never lie to you!”
9. More booze
My instructor shared a story once of a patient that kept insisting she never drank alcohol. It turned out she didn’t consider wine to be alcohol, because it was served in church. Only distilled spirits and beer were alcohol, so her 2 bottles of wine a day didn’t count.
10. Congrats
“Do you smoke cigarettes?”
“No, I quit!”
“When did you quit?”
“This morning”
11. Herpes?
I had a lady tell me she had no idea how she got a rash she had on her face. I left the room, gave report to the MD and when I walked back in with the doctor she looked at me and said “I didn’t think you’d be coming back in the room” and then proceeded to confess that she’d been cheating on her husband and thought she had herpes. She did not have herpes.
12. Um. This would’ve been important.
Penis modification. The case was an elective above the waist surgery, and he denied piercings. However, when the nurse went to place the foley she found the patient had modified his penis and it was split/bifurcated with multiple piercings to look like a cobra. The nurse did not know how to insert the foley. The piercings also limited the ability to use electrocautery. In addition, he also imbedded a metal implant inside his testicle that looked infected with a possible abscess. Canceled case, called urology consult for infection/abscess evaluation.
13. Smoking
A common one is about their smoking. Smoking is an enormous risk factor for fracture nonunion, meaning a fracture that doesn’t heal. When I walk into a nonunion patient’s exam room and it smells like a cigar den, I know they smoke. But they’ll tell me they don’t right to my face. Before signing them up for revision surgery I’ll commonly order a urine test for nicotine metabolites. Often it’ll turn out positive and suddenly surprised pikachu face.
14. A miracle!
One dude lied about being paralyzed after a lumbar puncture. Get a call from nurse patient says he can’t move legs following a lumbar puncture (spinal tap). I called the team that did the procedure and they assured me there was no indication of this sort of injury happening during the procedure but agreed with my plan to get an urgent MRI. I go to examine him and nurse says she thinks he moved one of his feet. Next thing I know he says he can actually move his legs again but they are feeling weird. Then this weird feeling turns into intense pain and he asks for intravenous narcotics (dilaudid). I tell him no because this story makes no sense.
By god it was a miracle I tell you when this man walked himself right out of the hospital after I refused the iv narcotics.
Also, the MRI was normal.
15. Aspirin
One my favorite things I wrote my first year out of medical school:
“Please note patient has stated multiple times that he wants to leave and would leave AMA(against medical advice). He asked multiple times whether he could eat and stating he is hungry. Explained to patient that we would like to start a full liquid diet first and if he tolerated it well, would transition to regular foods. However, pt ordered chinese food delivery instead. Then, patient was complaining of a headache. Was given Tylenol for the headache. Patient stated that this did not help him. His sister at bedside went to the nearby pharmacy and bought Goody powder (aspirin). Sister did ask whether she could give him Goody powder. She was told not to give patient the Goody powder. She supposedly did not.”
For context, the patient had a catastrophic GI bleed from taking too much aspirin.
16. WHY
One guy came in feigning unconsciousness. Did not respond to even the most painful of stimuli (some of these were pretty painful). Did not budge. We were talking amongst ourselves about intubating him. He then opened his eyes and said “they did that last time, I didn’t like it.”
17. A job
I had a patient that lied about having a job (?)
I asked because he had hepatitis A and I wanted to know if he needed a medical leave. He denied it even though I asked twice. Next day, he came back because he was going to get fired if he didn’t provide a doctor’s note.
18. Didn’t take their meds
Adherence to medical treatment when I have literally pulled their pharmacy records and know they haven’t picked up their medications in over a year…
19. Oh god.
Did cocaine the night before elective surgery, didn’t disclose at pre-op. Cardiac arrest. Beta Blockers and cocaine don’t mix well.
20. This poor lonely guy
It was a patient that was a really kind old man who always would talk a lot with us, telling stories, praising the beauty of everyone in a tender and respectable way, saying how really grateful for our work he was and so on… Said old mand would always appear with really high blood pressure values, even though he would swear that he always used his medication correctly. And after we did so many changes with his medication in many different ways, it’s only natural to think that there’s some problem with how he’s tacking them, if he was doing it at all. However, one day, after noticing that he would always go to the bathroom before even reaching out to the receptionist, someone discovered he would always eat a load of pure salt before being seen by any of the doctors, trying to make his pressure intentionally go sky high. Later we also, obviously, discovered that he indeed would not take his medications correctly as well, in order to obtain this result again and again.
Turns out he suffered a lot from loneliness, and he was an old man that didn’t had much contact with his family anymore, but mostly because his family didn’t reached out to him almost at any given time, even though everyone lived close by. And in his desperation, sustaining dangerous high blood pressure was the best way that he had to obtain human contact within the emergency every week.
This was the most odd one, but it’s really common in general among elderly patients to appear lying about their symptoms, only trying to gather some attention and a private minute to speak about anything else. Most of the time they book an appointment only to talk about recent trivialities, which makes them clearly better, although by the end of the talk, it’s also easy to see how they gather back part of the sadness that the loneliness bring to them. Around my patients, at least, it’s common for many to cry as they leave.
