In many places of the world, the Covid-19 pandemic has reshaped the way people view health care. In the United States, for example, a nationwide survey led by Northeastern University found that public trust in physicians and hospitals plummeted, going from 71.5% in April 2020 to an abysmal 40.1% in January 2024.
And the consequences of this can look surprisingly revealing. There's a thread on Reddit where healthcare professionals have been sharing the things patients try to keep a secret from them—ranging from minor embarrassments to bizarre habits—and it proves that doctors are detectives just as much as they're medical experts, constantly piecing together clues to get the full story.
#1
Not a doctor, but a nurse. When you come in to the hospital wanting to detox, and I ask you how much you drink, please stop lying to me. Withdrawal from alcohol is NASTY but I can make it a little more bearable. If it’s 2 bottles of vodka a day, TELL ME so I can medicate you accordingly. You’ll thank me later when you aren’t having a seizure.
57points
#2
I'm a pediatric dentist, so maybe not the type of doctor you were looking for, but this one throws me for a loop every time so I'll share it. When I sedate kids they have to be NPO for 8 hours before, so I always ask if they had anything to eat or drink in the morning. Parents NEVER want to admit their kid ate or drank, even when I remind them it's very important because if they vomit and aspirate they could die. Often they try to minimize it and say it was just a few bites, but one kid walked in eating a bag of Cheetos at reception and then the parent insisted to me that they hadn't eaten. Yeah, I'm 100% not sedating your child today.
51points
#3
Not a dr. But worked in a hospital for a long time.
Had a pt come in that had OD on h****n. Was able to get him set on that front, however he had necrotizing fasciitis in his pectoral from injecting there.
He was septic and honestly a bit of an a*****e. He kept trying to tell us the reason he was there was because of a motorcycle accident.
We all knew but he was in absolute denial. He eventually heals up and transfers out, after a couple months.
He came back about 6 months later to say thank you to all of us and to apologize for all the lies and assholish behavior.
Seems it was enough to get him out of that life and onto a new one. I think about him now and then and hope he stayed clean.
Had a pt come in that had OD on h****n. Was able to get him set on that front, however he had necrotizing fasciitis in his pectoral from injecting there.
He was septic and honestly a bit of an a*****e. He kept trying to tell us the reason he was there was because of a motorcycle accident.
We all knew but he was in absolute denial. He eventually heals up and transfers out, after a couple months.
He came back about 6 months later to say thank you to all of us and to apologize for all the lies and assholish behavior.
Seems it was enough to get him out of that life and onto a new one. I think about him now and then and hope he stayed clean.
44points
#4
I can literally smell the smoke on your clothes and breath, see the nicotine stains on your fingers, and you're trying to tell me you quit smoking 10 years ago?
43points
#5
Am vet student. Many clients like to say "I don't over feed my dog/cat, thats just their normal size!" when their pet looks like a watermelon.
38points
#6
That they don’t know how to read. I’ve been taught the trick of handing a paper upside down to them to see if they can read. It’s good to know if they dont, so you can make EXTRA sure they have a full understanding of their instructions instead of saying to read the details on the sheet .
36points
#7
How the remote control to a Zenith television wound up in the r****m of a 54 year old father of two?
They stopped making Zenith Television sets years ago. From a medical perspective, why do you still own this remote?
They stopped making Zenith Television sets years ago. From a medical perspective, why do you still own this remote?
33points
#8
I admitted a guy for chest pain. As part of the workup, I did a urine d**g screen which came back positive for c*****e.
After the rest of his cardiac workup was negative, I said to him, "Good news, you didn't have a heart attack. It's likely that your chest pain was caused by c*****e."
His answer: "I didn't use c*****e. See, I was at a party and people had some lines of c*****e out on a table. As I was walking by, an oscillating fan blew the c*****e into my face, which is why my urine was positive."
Mmmhmm. Got it.
After the rest of his cardiac workup was negative, I said to him, "Good news, you didn't have a heart attack. It's likely that your chest pain was caused by c*****e."
His answer: "I didn't use c*****e. See, I was at a party and people had some lines of c*****e out on a table. As I was walking by, an oscillating fan blew the c*****e into my face, which is why my urine was positive."
Mmmhmm. Got it.
33points
#9
I'm a CT tech and I was to scan a woman's abdomen for belly pain. She and her girlfriend were there. I have to have a pregnancy test. I have to have one done. I can't radiate a fetus. I even ask nuns so no exceptions. She denies up and down she's pregnant, and then, after the test I did, it said she was. She denied it and demanded a blood test, since she was a lesbian and *never* has s*x with men.
Well the blood test came back positive also (surprise!) And the argument that ensued was biblical. She was arguing with her girlfriend and the nurses and the doctor. I never ended up scanning her and they chalked up her pain to her being pregnant. The look on her girlfriend's face when I said it came back positive was one I will never forget.
Edit: because I've gotten this comment a lot, the woman in the room with the patient was her SO and they had been together a long time, and the patient had given her SO permission, in writing, to allow her to hear her medical information. Many of you are saying "you shouldn't have told her in front of her SO!" and you're partially right in a way, but, the patient had given her SO that permission, and I did not question it. Had she not, I would have asked her SO to leave the room. You can give anyone you deem necessary access (or no access!) to your medical information. It's not limited to spouses.
Well the blood test came back positive also (surprise!) And the argument that ensued was biblical. She was arguing with her girlfriend and the nurses and the doctor. I never ended up scanning her and they chalked up her pain to her being pregnant. The look on her girlfriend's face when I said it came back positive was one I will never forget.
Edit: because I've gotten this comment a lot, the woman in the room with the patient was her SO and they had been together a long time, and the patient had given her SO permission, in writing, to allow her to hear her medical information. Many of you are saying "you shouldn't have told her in front of her SO!" and you're partially right in a way, but, the patient had given her SO that permission, and I did not question it. Had she not, I would have asked her SO to leave the room. You can give anyone you deem necessary access (or no access!) to your medical information. It's not limited to spouses.
32points
#10
Not a doctor (yet) but was volunteering in the emerg ward and a woman came in with her pregnant daughter. Not only did she refuse to believe her daughter was pregnant, but was feeding her laxatives to “deal with the extra weight.” It was pretty horrible stuff.
31points
#11
Not a doctor but many years ago was working as an assistant to an occupational therapist.
We got a call out to help mobilise a woman who had been morbidly obese and was told to lose weight. We learned from the daughter she had GAINED weight but her mother would refuse to come clean on what she was eating. All the daughter knew was that her mother may have been eating deep-fried food due to the vast amounts of cooking oil she found in the pantry.
When we arrived, she had gained an extra six kilos but insisted she had lost weight. She did not look it. Before we began mobilising her and check her living room for trip hazards (she also had horrendous knees) we took a look at the pantry.
Olive oil, peanut oil, sesame oil, any kind of common cooking oil you can find off a supermarket shelf, she had it. A vast stockpile of oil. We asked what she was frying with the oil. She insisted that she wasn't frying anything and that she was eating healthy since the oils she used were 'healthy'. We had to explain to her that oils are still fatty and will still contribute to weight gain.
After a bit of poking around the pantry, I noticed that for the amount of oil she had, she had very little in food that could be traditionally fried. She also had little in other foodstuffs that could explain the obesity.
I brought it up with the therapist and the therapist then demanded the truth. We couldn't provide complete healthcare until we knew everything.
She admitted that she thought healthy oils would help her lose weight and suppress the appetite so she had taken to drinking the bottles of oil whenever she got hungry.
Needless to say, we disposed of most of the bottle of oil and set her up for a home visit with a dietitian.
We got a call out to help mobilise a woman who had been morbidly obese and was told to lose weight. We learned from the daughter she had GAINED weight but her mother would refuse to come clean on what she was eating. All the daughter knew was that her mother may have been eating deep-fried food due to the vast amounts of cooking oil she found in the pantry.
When we arrived, she had gained an extra six kilos but insisted she had lost weight. She did not look it. Before we began mobilising her and check her living room for trip hazards (she also had horrendous knees) we took a look at the pantry.
Olive oil, peanut oil, sesame oil, any kind of common cooking oil you can find off a supermarket shelf, she had it. A vast stockpile of oil. We asked what she was frying with the oil. She insisted that she wasn't frying anything and that she was eating healthy since the oils she used were 'healthy'. We had to explain to her that oils are still fatty and will still contribute to weight gain.
After a bit of poking around the pantry, I noticed that for the amount of oil she had, she had very little in food that could be traditionally fried. She also had little in other foodstuffs that could explain the obesity.
I brought it up with the therapist and the therapist then demanded the truth. We couldn't provide complete healthcare until we knew everything.
She admitted that she thought healthy oils would help her lose weight and suppress the appetite so she had taken to drinking the bottles of oil whenever she got hungry.
Needless to say, we disposed of most of the bottle of oil and set her up for a home visit with a dietitian.
30points
#12
Once had a woman come in for a “possible yeast infection”. On exam she had a glass bottle stuck in her vaginal filled with urine. Totally wouldn’t admit it was hers or explain how it got there even after we removed it. Just kept saying “I think this is all a joke and you put it up there”.
28points
#13
Nurse here. Had parents bring their 3 year old son to the emergency department for one month of abdominal pain that kept getting worse. I ask all the routine questions for this complaint, lots of questions about his poop....is it bloody? Diarrhea? Mucous? When was his last bowel movement? Any changes in the stool? They deny any other concerning symptoms but abdominal pain.
We do bloodwork, ultrasound, X-ray. Everything comes back completely normal but the kid is intermittently screaming in pain, curled in a ball.
Over the next 5 hours I continue to repeat the same questions, I asked repeatedly if there was anything else going on that they could think of....nope.
The kid just doesn’t seem well but we have no reason to keep him, we decide to watch him a little longer, let him eat. The kid eats a bunch, a PBJ, apple juice, crackers, popsicle, no pain so we decide to send them home.
I bring in the discharge paperwork and I’m about to start going over instructions and they dad goes “You know.....for the past 3 months he’s had A LOT of worms in his poop”
WORMS. F*****g worms. You spent 6+ hours denying worms. I literally just turned around and walked out of the room without saying a word. I was laughing almost to the point of tears. Could not wait to tell my resident. Deworming medications, a s**t load of wasted time, and they were on their way.
We do bloodwork, ultrasound, X-ray. Everything comes back completely normal but the kid is intermittently screaming in pain, curled in a ball.
Over the next 5 hours I continue to repeat the same questions, I asked repeatedly if there was anything else going on that they could think of....nope.
The kid just doesn’t seem well but we have no reason to keep him, we decide to watch him a little longer, let him eat. The kid eats a bunch, a PBJ, apple juice, crackers, popsicle, no pain so we decide to send them home.
I bring in the discharge paperwork and I’m about to start going over instructions and they dad goes “You know.....for the past 3 months he’s had A LOT of worms in his poop”
WORMS. F*****g worms. You spent 6+ hours denying worms. I literally just turned around and walked out of the room without saying a word. I was laughing almost to the point of tears. Could not wait to tell my resident. Deworming medications, a s**t load of wasted time, and they were on their way.
28points
#14
I’m a nurse, not a doctor, but it’s amazing how many patients lie about how much they drink. Dude, we aren’t judging you. We just want to know if we need to worry about you detoxing when you come out of open heart (or any other) surgery!
ETA: A lot of comments in here seem to be about your personal doctor visits. My comment was very specifically referring to major surgery. All I am saying is this: If you’re going to land in the hospital for a significant amount of time and you’re an alcoholic, it is to your benefit and safety to be honest about that, because the odds that you will withdraw in your time there is high. If providers know, they can plan to manage that so you don’t withdraw.
Last, sounds like a lot of you have run into s****y, judgy people in healthcare. We aren’t all like that. And even the judgy ones really don’t want you to detox on their shift.
ETA: A lot of comments in here seem to be about your personal doctor visits. My comment was very specifically referring to major surgery. All I am saying is this: If you’re going to land in the hospital for a significant amount of time and you’re an alcoholic, it is to your benefit and safety to be honest about that, because the odds that you will withdraw in your time there is high. If providers know, they can plan to manage that so you don’t withdraw.
Last, sounds like a lot of you have run into s****y, judgy people in healthcare. We aren’t all like that. And even the judgy ones really don’t want you to detox on their shift.
28points
#15
Not a doctor, but I work in a big, busy hospital. We had a 20ish year old obese woman come in complaining of severe abdominal pain. Before she was even examined it became clear that she was about to give birth. Side note- my hospital does not have labor and delivery- that is at our other campus a couple of miles away. This woman proceeded to give birth to a full term 8lb healthy boy in our ER and denied that she was pregnant and denied that the baby was hers (the placenta was still in her umbilical cord not cut- the Dr said "it's a boy!" and she said "that's not my baby!" mmmmmmmkay. Needless to say psych was called along with a team from the other hospital to take the baby over to their campus. I often wonder about that baby, and hope he is doing ok... hopefully the mom put him up for adoption and he ended up with some great parents.
27points
#16
When I used to work in a navy ER we had a woman who came in complaining of abdominal pain. She’d only speak to the nurse, and I soon wheeled her over to radiology to get films of an “obstruction”. No one was given any information beyond that.
I soon found out why. The rad tech took a couple of shots and we saw it. She’d lost a phallic-shaped object up there (PSA: when partaking in a**l play, use toys with either a bigger base than the toy or some other type of retrieval method.) She tried a few shots, but couldn’t get a really good image of it. Finally, after the third shot the rad tech stomped into the room and said “it’s still on, isn’t it?” (It was 3 am. The tech had worked all day and was woken up to take the films. Was it Ted’s mom who said nothing good ever happens after two am?) The patient sat up as straight as she could, held her head high, and said “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” How I finished that shift without passing out laughing, I’ll never know.
I soon found out why. The rad tech took a couple of shots and we saw it. She’d lost a phallic-shaped object up there (PSA: when partaking in a**l play, use toys with either a bigger base than the toy or some other type of retrieval method.) She tried a few shots, but couldn’t get a really good image of it. Finally, after the third shot the rad tech stomped into the room and said “it’s still on, isn’t it?” (It was 3 am. The tech had worked all day and was woken up to take the films. Was it Ted’s mom who said nothing good ever happens after two am?) The patient sat up as straight as she could, held her head high, and said “I have no idea what you’re talking about.” How I finished that shift without passing out laughing, I’ll never know.
27points
#17
I might be to late for the party. Also English is not my first language and I'm on mobile. I'm an internal medicine resident. Had a patient with sepsis that was being seen by the urology department. When I first read his clinical history it stated something along the lines of: "infected wound in the p***s, patient claims he doesn't know how he got it."
So I begin my assessment and ask him about his wound. Indeed, he claimed he didn't know how it happened. I decided that the priority was to stabilize the patient and I made some adjustments to antibiotics and other meds.
Well the guy went downhill, the sepsis became severe even though he was with the strongest antibiotics we had and two different vasopressors. His blood pressure was through the floor and eventually he needed intubation and went to the ICU.
He managed to survive after a complete penectomy. And about 2 weeks later I saw him again.
Turns out the dude was trying to get his dog to lick his p***s, and put on some peanut butter on it. Naturally the dog bit him. He didn't seek medical help for about 10 days before the pain and fever was to much. If we knew from the beginning that the wound was inflicted that way the antibiotic would have been different, probably would have made a difference.
I still feel sorry for that guy, but with a wound like that he is lucky to be alive.
Edit: I should've said that a total penectomy is total removal of the p***s. Sorry for all of you that went to Google images.
So I begin my assessment and ask him about his wound. Indeed, he claimed he didn't know how it happened. I decided that the priority was to stabilize the patient and I made some adjustments to antibiotics and other meds.
Well the guy went downhill, the sepsis became severe even though he was with the strongest antibiotics we had and two different vasopressors. His blood pressure was through the floor and eventually he needed intubation and went to the ICU.
He managed to survive after a complete penectomy. And about 2 weeks later I saw him again.
Turns out the dude was trying to get his dog to lick his p***s, and put on some peanut butter on it. Naturally the dog bit him. He didn't seek medical help for about 10 days before the pain and fever was to much. If we knew from the beginning that the wound was inflicted that way the antibiotic would have been different, probably would have made a difference.
I still feel sorry for that guy, but with a wound like that he is lucky to be alive.
Edit: I should've said that a total penectomy is total removal of the p***s. Sorry for all of you that went to Google images.
26points
#18
Only work records in a clinic, but we had a woman come in with a report of vaginal odor. All well and good, it happens all the time in an Ob/Gyn clinic. What she hadn't bothered to say was that she'd gotten a tampon stuck around the end of her last period. She'd gone through menopause 7 years prior.
25points
#19
Not a doctor but my husband. He had a 17 year old girl with abdominal pains come into the ER with her Mum, turns out she’s in full-blown labour. Assures them she can’t be pregnant, she’s a virgin. The baby is literally crowning right there in ER (no maternity ward in their hospital and she was in advanced labour when she arrived) and she still insists she’s a virgin.
Edit: poor wording ... my husband was the doctor, not the 17 year old girl.
Edit: poor wording ... my husband was the doctor, not the 17 year old girl.
25points
#20
Had a patient refuse to admit he swallowed a pen, even though an x-ray showed the pen in his small bowel and we took the pen out during an emergency surgery.
24points