We’ve all faked being sick at least once, whether for school or work. And if done right, getting away with it without raising suspicion is almost a guarantee.
However, faking an illness with a medical professional is a different scenario, and a foolish one to be in, at that. However, that didn’t stop these individuals from engaging in such behavior, as evidenced by this Reddit thread from a while back.
From feigning seizures to using a prop pebble to claim a kidney stone affliction, these stories may just make you shake your head in utter disbelief.
#1
I’m an audiologist, and it’s fairly common to have people fake a hearing loss. With adults, it’s commonly for worker’s compensation/benefits. Children do it for attention or to get out of school for a day.
They are fairly easy to spot…patients will come in, conversing with me very normally, but the audiogram will show a profound hearing loss. We all have our tricks to get them to slip – I like to lower my mic volume to a normal range and mention that they dropped something when they’re in the booth, they instinctively reach for it, forgetting that they shouldn’t have heard it because of their “loss.” We can also do an auditory brainstem response, bypassing the need for patient responses. A Stenger Test can identify those fakers that only have a “hearing loss” in one ear.
My favorite is when testing kids that are clearly faking, part of the test requires me to have them repeat words. So I present them at a normal volume and the kids are REEEAAALLLYY straining to hear them, then I slip in funny words like “buttcrack” and watch to see them smile because they clearly heard it.
tl/dr: don’t fake your hearing test, it’s super easy to catch you.
Image credits: Mynameiskelli
#2
My mom’s an ER nurse and she said once some crazy lady came in and complained hat she had the whooping cough. And whenever she coughed she followed it with a loud “woooOOOP!”.
Image credits: KingJonathan
#3
I’ll tell you the opposite side of many of these experiences.
When I was 23, my lung collapsed. Probably the most painful thing that had happened to me aside from broken bones and such. Went the hospital in an ambulance, and and you the time I got there I wasn’t in pain anymore. I was terrified they would think I was faking it, but thankfully the chest X-ray revealed that my lung had completed its collapse, and I guess it just hurts when it’s coming apart from the chest wall. I didn’t have surgery but I was on suction, attached to the wall with a tube inserted in my chest for several days, over the thanksgiving holiday. Standard hospital, you’re left alone mostly unless you ring your bell and then they come visit you.
The second day I rang my bell because I was in a bit of discomfort. No on came. Rang it again. And again. And again. Nothing.
Picked up the phone, got an outside line, called the hospital and asked for the nurses station on my floor. Got through to them and explained my plight. Apparently my buzzer was broken, they came down so apologetic and had a new bed delivered and transferred me to it.
Point is, first time I was in huge pain and then it was suddenly gone and I was in fear theyrd think I was faking it. And second time, due to mechanical failure i got ignored.
And it gets better. Six months later, that lung collapsed again. I knew what the pain from before felt like, so I was like “hey, my lungs collapsing I think”. It was midnight, my friend took me to the hospital, they took X-rays and then told me not to worry and discharged me. I was like “I’m in a lot of pain here” and they were like “nonsense, there’s nothing wrong”.
Next morning i wake up short of breathe and the phones ringing. It’s the hospital. The doctor was reviewing the previous nights X-rays and apparently the tech or nurse whoever looked at it missed that my lung had in fact collapsed. So he was demanding my address so they could send an ambulance to fetch me. That time I had the surgery to staple the lung in place, no more collapses ever since. 🙂
Point is. Sometimes the pros are wrong. Not wrong, but the overlook things. Human error, and worry about lawsuits I guess. And we patients can be just as nervous presenting pain to doctors because we’re afraid the docs will think we’re faking.
Image credits: lucasjkr
#4
Paramedic here – I have three stories that come to mind.
Story #1 – We get called to a local Waffle House for a seizure. We walk in to find a man lying on the floor, not moving, but breathing. We start talking to the waitress, asking what had happened. While talking to her, we occasionally look down at the patient, and find him with one eye barely open, watching us; when he sees us looking at him, he closes his eye. This happens a few times. Then the cops show up and find out what’s going on. One of the officers asks the waitress, “Did he (patient) eat here?” “Yes, he did.” “How much is his bill?” “Fourteen dollars.” At this point, the officers roll the patient over and find his wallet; the guy has a $20 bill in it. One of the officers takes out the $20, gives it to the waitress, and tells her, “Keep the change.” You could see the anger in the patient’s face when he realizes he’s not getting out of paying his bill. He ended up faking a seizure on the way to the hospital (I’m not about to explain how I know it was fake, because I’m not going to give anyone ANY info on how to fake a seizure).
Story #2 – We get called to a fall in the women’s bathroom at Wal-Mart. We walk in, and the manager is FREAKING OUT. We go into the bathroom to find a white female face up on the floor – I’m guessing she weighs at least 350 lbs; there were two friends of hers standing in there with her. I ask her what happened; she says she slipped on a puddle and fell, hurting her back. I look all over the bathroom floor; there’s NO water on the floor. I ask the manager AND the patient’s friends – “Do you see water on the floor?” They all said, “No.” I then tell the patient, “There’s no water on the floor, ma’am.” She says, “I’m lying on top of it.” We’re going to have to roll her to her side in order to get a backboard under her and pick her up; I explain that to her. As we roll her to her side, I check her back for any obvious injuries; I then check her clothing AND the floor she was lying on – nothing was wet. I have the manager (who was grinning from ear to ear at this point) and the patient’s friends look – “Do you see water on the floor? Are her clothes wet?” They all said, “No.” We then roll the patient onto the board, pick her up, and place her on a stretcher. At this point, I tell the patient, “I’m going to be writing up paperwork for this call and your treatment. Part of what is going to be written up is the fact that you said you slipped on a wet floor, and that no water was found either on the floor or soaked into your clothing. This is standard; I have to write up what I’m told in addition to what I see. What you need to understand is this – if you happen to decide to take Wal-Mart to court, they can request a copy of my run report, and it’s going to show what you said and what I found. They can also summon me to testify, and if they do, I’m going to tell them what you told me and what I saw, the manager saw, and what your friends saw. That being said, do you want to keep dragging this out and go to the hospital, or do you want to just get up from my stretcher and be done with it?” She chose to get up and leave.
Story #3 – We get called to a 13 year old having a first-time seizure. We get on scene, and the entire family is freaking out, except for the father. I walk into the room where the kid was – OBVIOUS FAKER. I turn to dad and have him go outside into the hallway, I tell him the boy is faking, and I ask if anything unusual happened today. The father tells me he found marijuana in the kid’s room, and he was getting on to him about it when the kid started “seizing.” I reassured the father that his son was NOT seizing, and he asked if we could take him to the hospital “just to be safe.” I said no problem. We pick the kid up and put him on the stretcher, and as we head outside to the ambulance, he exhibits more behavior that shows he’s faking. Inside the ambulance, I tell the kid that I know he’s faking and ask him to stop, but he keeps on. The hospital we take him to doesn’t have board-certified Emergency Department physicians; they use General Practice and Internal Medicine physicians (a LOT of smaller hospitals do this). I bring the kid in and give a patient report to the internal medicine doc and the RN, and I say the kid is “faking his seizure activity.” The doctor had a problem with that – “You can’t possibly tell that he’s faking.” I assure him that, yes, the kid is faking. I explain the situation that led up to him faking, and that I could prove it. The doctor says, “I’d like to see that.” The RN knows EXACTLY what’s going on and what I wanted to do; he’s all for it! So I say to the kid, “Bob (I don’t remember his name), we need a urine sample from you, and we need you to wake up to do it. If you don’t wake up, we’re going to shove a tube into your private part, run it all the way into your bladder, and take a urine sample from you. Please, just wake up and give us a sample.” Nothing from the kid. “Okay, Bob, if you don’t wake up in 10 seconds, we’re going to start prepping you to get the tube shoved in. Ten, nine, eight, FIVEFOURTHREETWOONE!” His eyes opened wide as saucers before he realized we caught him. He then closed his eyes, started blinking, looked around the room, and said, “What happened?” The RN was laughing, and the doc was a little mad.
Image credits: bigbabysurfer
#5
My mother (who is a doctor) likes to tell the story of when I was about five and was claiming I was sick, she asked me if my eyelashes hurt and I said yes.
Image credits: anon
#6
Get called for an unconscious intox’s at a bar. Get her out to the ambulance, she shouts “I’M HAVING A SEIZURE” and starts waving her arms around. I tell her “people who have seizures generally don’t announce it first.”
Her response?
“You’re being very judgemental, I was getting ready in case I had a seizure.”
……gotta stretch, I guess.
Image credits: anon
#7
There are some fun ones in psych.
The patient went into her room and, in a very obvious stage-voice (just loud enough for us to hear her in the main area), started saying random, unconnected sentences/phrases. Then she immediately came out, walked straight up to us and asked, “How do I know if the voices are real?” She would act perfectly normal when she thought we weren’t looking, but as soon as we walked loudly up to her door she’d start “talking to herself” again. Yeah, no. That’s not how psychosis works lol. Good try though.
Also there was the girl who “strangled” herself unconscious. There was no pressure whatsoever on her throat/neck. The doctor quietly snuck up to her, then smacked his hands together in a single giant clap. She jumped.
And another patient who had “seizures”. She lay in bed, twitching, when I called her for lunch. I said all right, but if you lie there for too long you’re going to be stuck with the vegetarian option. The seizures magically stopped.
Image credits: Merceri
#8
This isn’t quite the same, but I once had a bunch of people thinking I was faking being in really bad stomach pain when I was in high school. Talked to Dr. A who asked me all these questions, kept saying I was too stoic. He called in Dr. B who was like “well, to check your appendix we have to stick our finger up your butt…so if you’re lying speak up now.”
Heard them conferring outside that I just wanted the day off school, chuckling to each other and stuff. Said my mom was just babying me and what not. Which, isn’t/wasn’t really my mom’s style. They came back in and were like “well, we have to dye your insides and to do that you have to eat this nasty banana flavored stuff then we put you in a machine and it’s really unpleasant.” I was just like yeah whatever all I know is I’m in a lot of pain and want it to stop.
So, they give me the nasty banana flavored stuff and I vomit it out. They’re like oh, well we have to give you more and you have to keep it down. I was like dude, I didn’t throw up because it tasted bad I’m feeling a lot worse. The guy is being all condescending and leaves to get more nasty flavored dye, and as he comes back in the room I’m laying on the floor throwing up exorcist style basically feeling like I’m having a seizure or something. My appendix burst as those dickholes were retrieving more of the nasty liquid.
Anyway, my mom still goes to the same doctor. So, whenever I’m in town and it coincides with a visit to said doctor, I like to go with and remind him of the time he almost let me die because I was too stoic to be nearing an appendix burst. Still makes him pretty uncomfortable to talk about.
Image credits: tennmyc21
#9
Not a doctor, but my mom said my brother came to her one morning saying he was sick and asked her to feel his head (this was how she decided if we had a fever and were therefor aloud to stay home) my mom told him sternly to get ready for school. He didn’t realize that he’d had grate marks on his forehead from pressing it against the heater.
Image credits: WaWaCrAtEs
#10
My wife did her residency at a county hospital in a mid west city. On really cold night, they would usually get a few homeless people in the ER with “chest pains”, basically just using it as a nice place to get a meal and stay warm for a bit.
Image credits: gidikh
#11
A quick note of being on the other end.
I have Multiple Sclerosis but my original symptoms were non-typical so they sent me to Stanford to be evaluated.
It was very strange to see one Doctor turn to another and say that their diagnosis was that I was faking it.
All of my symptoms were numbness, itchiness or weird tension on my skin so I had no way to prove it.
Luckily one of my eyes had an enlarged optic nerve and when they did a test of my spinal fluid they found white blood cells in there.
But I think of that all the time. That Doctor was right, my symptoms were kind of crazy. I’m glad they found some real evidence.
By the way, doing great. Symptom free and taking a daily injection of Copaxone to keep it away.
Image credits: Pingly
#12
Husband is a Urologist. ER calls with a patient who is reportedly writhing in pain from kidney stones. Patient brought with him a stone he passed for analysis. Hubby walks in, sees one of the regular substance seekers, takes a look at the sample determines it’s a pebble guy picked up in the parking lot.
Image credits: ImNotButPretendIAm
#13
When I was in first grade I told my school nurse that I wasn’t feeling well and I thought I had a computer virus.
Image credits: mydadisnotyourdad
#14
Not a Dr but I have a story. My son’s Uncle was pretty much bed bound, to go to the toilet he had to use a walker and it would take him about 10 minutes to slowly get himself to the toilet at the back of the house, he had the whole family waiting on him hand and foot for years.
We were visiting once and my son a baby at the time fell asleep in the lounge, I didn’t want to move him so I stayed behind reading a book while the rest of the family went out. The house was really quiet I heard Uncle get up and watched him march past me with no walker and no mobility issues, he certainly jumped a foot in the air when I said hi, his face was a picture!
Image credits: woolycardigan
#15
My partner at work is an Administrator with an ED Nursing background. She was called in to the ED one night last year to deal with a patient who was complaining of severe headaches and nosebleeds but was refusing to go for any kind of examination in favor of being admitted. They are pretty sure at this point that she is illegal substance seeking as she refused to even lie in the bed. My friend left the room and was standing a few feet outside the patient’s glass bay talking with the Charge Nurse when she noticed the patient turn around and hunch over. She subtly stopped the conversation so they could observe.
The patient turned around with more blood on her nose and blood on her fingers from where she had been reaching into her underwear and smearing period blood all over her face to fake a nosebleed.
Image credits: spacemiles
#16
When I was a junior medical student without much experience on the wards, a homeless patient came in who was ‘unconscious’. Except, she wasn’t. I mean, obviously wasn’t.
The doctor would hold up her limp arm, position her hand over her head and let go. If she was truly unconscious, her hand would hit her in the face. Somehow, every time he let go of her hand, it would swerve at the last minute and miss her face.
In an effort to rouse her, the doctor loudly asked me to go and get ‘the biggest needle you can find’. When I returned, he asked me if I’d ever taken blood before. I replied that I had not. He said that as Miss X was unconscious, this would be an excellent opportunity for me to have some one-on-one teaching on the subject. He also said that this would ordinarily be extremely painful for someone with such a large needle being used.
Unfortunately, she ‘woke up’ at that point, so I didn’t get to learn how to take blood.
Image credits: anon
#17
“I’m allergic to ibuprofen, tylenol, aspirin, and zofran. I swear.”
Also, one time I had a patient who was complaining of severe abdominal pain and the symptoms of cholecystitis. Typically we would do a CT but based on his reported medical/surgical history and allergies we were limited in the tests we could do. He was refusing the tests we could offer. He was from another town and didn’t have a physician we could get records off of. His blood work and vital signs were normal. It was all very suspicious but they admitted him to the ICU until we could figure out an action plan.
I’m doing his admission and he says he knows that it’s his gall bladder because he’s had issues before. He keeps apologizing for being so dramatic but he’s never felt such bad pain. The resident orders him a concoction of the good stuff until the intensivist makes it up to the floor to see him.
Finally the physician walks in. I give him a report and then he does his assessment. The patient writhes in bed while the doctor asks him questions and palpates his stomach. The doctor says it sounds like a bad case of gallstones and cholecystitis. The patient agrees and asks for something for the pain.
The physician responds, “Yeah for gall bladder troubles like yours I would recommend it.” The patient stopped writhing and smiled. Thd doctor continued, “however, you don’t have a gall bladder, I remember I took it out a few years ago when I worked at XYZ hospital. It’s nice to see you again.”
The patient’s smile turned into the most disgruntled look I have ever seen. He sat up in bed, removed his IV, gathered his things and made for the door. I chased him down the hall telling him he was leaving AMA. His response was, “F. that. Obviously you know I’m fine.”.
Image credits: nothallie
#18
Well, I’m not a doctor or nurse, but I am a disability attorney. I’ve seen a few obvious fakes. My favorite was at this hearing office that’s a single courtroom sort of tacked onto the back of one of the satellite offices. Judges come down from the main ODAR office every so often to do hearings there. However, the entrance is around the side of the building so people often go in the front of the building and sit there waiting (even though I told them it’s around the side).
So, I have this client that did exactly that. She’s claiming disability in part because she can’t walk more than a few steps without falling over in extreme pain. Uses a cane or a walker to get around everywhere. Of course, none of this is in her records – she originally claimed it was because she couldn’t afford to see a doctor so I believed her.
Well, it gets close to her hearing time and she hasn’t arrived, so I go out to the parking lot to give her a call. No answer – phone already off. I figure that she went in the front entrance. Sure enough, as soon as I start heading toward the front of the building, I see her *running* around the side of the building. Cane in one hand. She doesn’t even notice me in the parking lot. I go back in to talk to her ahead of the hearing. Suddenly she can’t walk anymore.
Yeah there are a ton of cases where people can do short bursts of walking or even running but can’t do sustained standing/walking to hold down a light exertional level job, but this wasn’t that. This was straight up faking it for the hearing. Now, luckily she had other (mental) things that were going on with her which were actually pretty well documented, but it was still pretty funny seeing the miracle cure come running around the side of the building.
Image credits: Alatar1313
#19
My husband is a firefighter and EMT and he told me about a time where they were called for a man seizing. When they got there a guy was lying face up on the floor not moving and then started faking a seizure. They stood there saying things like “Oh wow. This is a bad one. But if they did [insert specific behavior] then we should really be worried!” and the patient would suddenly start doing that behavior. Apparently this went on for a while until he miraculously woke up in the ambulance asking for opiates.
Image credits: anon
#20
I work in a psychiatrist’s office. Curious how many people “lose” their prescriptions, or even their whole bottles of Adderall, Valium, etc. We’ve heard some good ones – lots of them “lose” their bottles by dropping them into the toilet. One guy told that story and the very next week, the RX apparently flew out of his convertible on the highway LOL. We now tell all patients – especially college age patients – that they need a police report stating that their meds were stolen to get a refill if it’s too early. It’s always the same people who do this time after time.
Image credits: tanyanubin
#21
As a resident, I had a patient who had a blood clotting disorder, but also who was addicted to IV pain meds. He figured out how to get admitted for an extensive workup for a possible blood clot in the lung and iv pain meds for his “chest pain”. He came in all the time, but it was very difficult to block the admission, because he actually did have a risk of this problem, never took his blood thinner correctly, and his symptoms always bought him a couple of days at least while we ruled out a clot and got his blood levels where they are supposed to be. But it meant he had accumulated >30 high resolution CT scans of the chest over his life, as part of the workup, which is not good for you.
I had this one question I would ask people who tended to come in complaining of every serious sounding symptom they could think of: “Does it ever hurt behind your eyes when you pee?”.
I was very salty at that point, and this guy was a nightmare when he ended up on your service, and it really bothered me that this guy was buying himself a lung tumor with all those PE protocol CTs just to get a days worth of IV pain meds and benadryl. With him, I started asking the “pain behind your eyes when you pee” question like it was extremely important, and quickly he started answering “yes”, and I acted like it was an extremely serious condition that warranted evaluation – once it was clear I couldn’t avoid the admission anyway. I considered it one of my greatest achievements in residency that he one day showed up in the ER with “pain behind my eyes when I pee” as his chief complaint. Heard a colleague talking about this crazy dude who came in demanding to be admitted because he had excruciating urination-related eye pain. Made my day.
#22
I am an X-ray tech. All the time in the ED you will have patients that come in seeking things. These patients will have a bunch of X-rays ordered. So when you first start the exams they will be in all sorts of pain. They cannot position any bod part. Fighting and begging you to not do it. Then after about 15 minutes, when they notice you’re going to do your job. They stop the charade and get through the stack of images ordered on them. It’s quite incredible really.
The other thing that blows my mind is when people want the worst possible outcome of their disease. Like you can feel the craving for sympathy emanating from them. With phrases “Ohhh that’s really bad isn’t it” or “Oh man is that the worse you’ve seen?”. Not said with dread, but barely hidden excitement.
Image credits: AllGenreBuffaloClub
#23
Had an employee that was “allergic to everything” and a huge hypochondriac. She was such a headache that we ended up moving her desk waaaaaay away from pretty much anyone else so she would stop complaining. One day, a lady walks by with a strong perfume, and our lovable hypochondriac falls out.
Predictably, EMS is called, and by this point our employee is laying on the ground rolling her eyes back in her head. Scary stuff if you didn’t know she was literally insane.
So EMS arrives and they come over, put the O2 meter on her finger, and she’s choking through her speech when they’re asking her if she can breathe or not. O2 saturation was at like 97% or something like that. Medic goes “ma’am, there’s no reason why you should be having trouble breathing right now.”
They hung around for another couple minutes, then bounced.
Image credits: ryan_m
#24
Faking seizures is super common. Faking unconscious is also super common and very embarrassing for the both of us.
Image credits: Mr_Bashdangles
#25
“I’m allergic to all pain medications except that one that begins with a D. I don’t remember the name though.”.
#26
I was an intern in a busy trauma ED when a guy walks up the ambulance bay and screams he needs to be seen immediately. They take him back and he starts telling everyone he was in a car accident last night going “100+ mph” on the interstate but did not go to the hospital because he was worried about his friend, the driver. But now he’s losing feeling in his legs and has severe back pain and needs to be seen.
So of course the story is super fishy but we put him on a backboard/collar and get some xrays of chest and pelvis (our protocol for any severe trauma). The radiologist who is stationed in the ED flags me and asks when out patient got a CT scan. He showed me his pelvis x ray and his bladder is super bright: it’s filled with the iodine contrast agent they inject in your veins when you get a CT which is then excreted by the kidneys over the next few hours.
So we confront our patient about why he didn’t tell us about being seen at another hospital and getting a CT. He launches into a rambling explanation about concussions and amnesia. He has, of course, also exhibited several other substance seeking behaviors in his short time in the ED. He decides to leave AMA but not before asking the nurse directions to the nearest hospital, presumably to try the same trick.
#27
Another paramedic piping in! One day I went out to a “no tell motel” at about 3:30 pm for seizures. When we get there a ~25yo guy is sitting on the bed, his girl friend describes “his whole body shaking, it stopped just before you got here”. He’s completely alert and oriented (people who have seizures generally take a while to ‘wake up’), and they describe a vague seizure history, no diagnosis or meds, he hands me his drivers license for ID (if you have a legit seizure the first thing they do is take your drivers license away). We finally walk him out to the ambulance and the girlfriend asks if she can come too. I tell her of course, and the real reason comes out. Apparently she’s on a pass from the same hospital we’re transporting to and has to be back by 4pm. There’s only one unit that does passes like that… psychiatry!
#28
EMT here. The one that sticks out is the most textbook example of substance seeking behavior.
Get called out to a residence at 2 am (because of course, it’s always 2 am). Guy says he’s having 10/10 finger pain and gingerly holding his hand in the air. Says there was no trauma, just started suddenly and it’s unbearable.
So we load him up, take him the 25 minutes the the hospital. Entire time he’s holding his hand in the air. But we had a full conversation, talked about Football, never once did he complain about pain.
We wheel him into the ER and literally the second we walk through the door, this guy starts *writhing* in pain. Says he can’t sit still the pain is unbearable, he has to stand up, screaming at the nurse to help. Then he turned to the nurse and said:
“I had this same issue at a different hospital 2 weeks ago. They couldn’t tell what was wrong. They gave me morphine but that didn’t work so then they gave me dilaudid. That worked. So maybe you should just start with dilaudid tonight”. And then he went back to moaning in pain.
Nurse and I just looked at each other, we put him in a bed and I drove the 35 minutes back to station. Highly doubt he was given any pain less that night, was just a colossal waste of everyone’s time.
#29
My mother was the school nurse when I was in high school, but she’s been a nurse my whole life. She’s told me a few good stories (obviously without names). But I was lucky enough to overhear one of the students trying to fake an illness to get out of class. The kid, we’ll call him Derrick, was a skud. White trash, moody, and destructive. Not my favorite classmate. But I was laying there when I heard him come in and start his routine of attention seeking. (mom used to let me skip seminary and nap on the empty beds).So my mom runs through all the basics, temp, blood pressure, etc. Well Derrick finally just cuts to the chase, obviously frustrated with the procedure, “Look Mrs. S, something is seriously wrong here and I’m not faking it this time!” He screeched, defenses already 10 feet high.
“OK Derrick, what’s the problem this time?” She asked.
“Well, earlier this morning, I started feeling sick, so I went to the bathroom to throw up. After I was done I looked at the toilet…(dramatic pause) and there where over a dozen whole baby carrots…(another pause, this one I think was for any gasps that might be coming) AND I DON’T EVEN EAT CARROTS!” He nearly shouted.
Well, after about a 10 second pause and what I’m guessing was the hardest straight face my mother ever had to keep. She said, still fighting back laughter, “Well, Derrick your body is producing carrots at an alarming rate. Weird that it only seems to happen during gym, though. Here is a Gatorade and a hall pass to get back to class, see you tomorrow, Derrick.”
He left, stunned to be written off so easily and we had a good ol’ laugh.
“And I don’t even eat carrots!” has become a family favorite catchphrase.
#30
Not a doctor but do hospital security. Had a mental health pt try the catatonic thing…. worked until the nurse inserted a catheter then he remembered his words.
#31
A nurse friend told me this one, this happened about a month ago. A woman and her boyfriend are rushed in by ambulance after being in a car accident. My nurse friend is with the boyfriend, who keeps yelling about his baby. It takes a minute to calm him down, but my friend gathers that the guy’s girlfriend is pregnant. So they check for a heartbeat but don’t hear anything. The woman keeps asking the doctor to check again. Both her and her boyfriend are in tears. Finally another nurse comes in with some of her tests results and announces that the woman wasn’t ever even pregnant. The woman starts arguing, saying that yes she was pregnant and has been for a while and that the results are wrong. Turns out a few months back her boyfriend tried to break up with her so she lied to about being pregnant to get him to stay.
#32
It’s always abdominal pain and they always want food still.
A girl came in complaining of 20/10 abdominal pain. Lab work all normal, pelvic normal, CT normal. I closed the door and curtain in her room, but kept a little crack where I could see her. Within 5 minutes she stopped yelling and screaming about her pain. I saw her on her phone, eating McDonald’s, and walking around. This went on for almost an hour. She then heard another staff member outside her room and began screaming again. After being left alone for 5 minutes, she would stop. When I went in to discharge her, she said she was having a AAA and was going to die. She tried to rip down the curtain and then intentionally smacked her head on the computer.
Security escorted her out… She was back the next day.
Another one was the guy that said he was at a different hospital where they told him he was having a heart attack and needed morphine. But just before they could give it to him, someone came into the ER and started shooting, so he got up and ran. We called over to that hospital and they just laughed. Guy signed out AMA 10 minutes later.
#33
I’ve heard a lot of people faking fainting are found out by simply raising their hand above their head and letting go, magically these people tend to move their hand out of the way to stop their face getting hit
similarly, at a summer internship we get a lot of patients claiming they’re in terrible pain, rolling around in pain, unable to move (notice the irony) and then 15 minutes later you see them smoking a cigarette. Drives me crazy, on the plus side however that internship when I was out for a ‘smoke break’ (just an excuse to get fresh air) I was given one of those electric lighters from one of them who ‘quit’ right then and there when they got called out
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#34
Guy came into the ER the other day FORCEFULLY trying to get himself to vomit. I’m talking over one hour of Exorcist-like wretching to get any stomach contents out. It was amusing for the first minute but then became really sad to realize how far this guy was going to get his fix for morphine.
#35
As a nurse and as someone who has had a seizure, I wonder about all of the fakers who pretend to seize. First, pretending to have a seizure well is hard to do. Second, they forget that certain types of seizures cause you to pee yourself or bite your tongue, or even worse, the horrific sounds people can make when they seize. My advice: fake something easier than a seizure because you are unlikely to convince me, and even if you do, a neurologist with an EEG will figure out that they aren’t true seizures eventually.
Although I did have one patient who would have pseudo-seizures that broke her nose falling on the floor. That was pretty impressive.
#36
Not a doctor. I was in the ER for a broken ankle in college, and where I was at (Tampa) had a fair bit of homeless people. One guy came in complaining of terrible chest pain and couldn’t breathe and other random symptoms. This guy is obviously homeless. The nurse asks for a urine sample, he says he can’t. She says they’ll need to put a catheter in. He freaks out saying it’s not necessary, and says all he needs is medicine and food. And of course, the only medicine that works for all of his symptoms is oxycodone or percocets.
From what I gathered in a Dilaudid-induced haze, they did some basic tests, and he miraculously felt better when they weren’t going to give him meds.
It REALLY irked me, because I was waiting on that doctor to reset my ankle which was 90° sideways.
#37
Obligatory, not a doctor but my mate lives opposite a guy who claims disability benefit, has a subsidised car, disabled parking permit, walks with a crutch – the whole thing.
Last summer he landscaped his garden and had 12 railway sleepers delivered in front of his house. We watched as he and his son manhandled all the sleepers up onto their shoulders and walk them through to the back. Moving one would end me.
Later he walked out carrying his crutch, got in his car and went shopping.
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