Wild Medical Plot Twists
These medical professionals share their experiences with patients—and the real-life plot twists they never saw coming.
1. Pain Tolerance
I had a male in his 50s WALK into the ER to have his left thigh stitched up. Not an uncommon wound in an agricultural area.
Speaking to him while stitching him up he tells me he fell off a ladder while cutting a branch and the machete sliced him on the way down. Told him I was going to write him up for an x-ray of the entire leg just in case.
He kept on saying he was fine, his knee hurt a bit but logically that was from the fall. I agreed, but asked him to go to the x-ray department just in case. He reluctantly walked there and back.
The x-rays showed a helical fracture almost the entire length of his femur! Besides being a dangerous fracture, the femur is supposed to be the most painful bone to break and he was walking around.
In the end I had to show him the break to get him to sit down on a wheelchair and into the hands of orthopedics. He couldn't believe what he was seeing. That man's pain tolerance still impresses me.
2. Not The Antidote You Were Looking For
I had a patient come into the ER with some sort of spider/bug bite on her hand that had progressed to a red line running up her arm. She stated she put Benadryl cream on and it was very itchy. We continued talking and I asked if she had any allergies… "Yes, Benadryl!" I thought, good lord what?? I'm sure she could see the shock on my face.
We washed the Benadryl cream off her arm and miraculously it stopped itching.
3. Forgot To Mention…
This was one of my first patients as a medical student. We were asking her about prior medical history because she was on a waitlist for an intestinal transplant, and we asked her in every possible way if she had any history and she was like, "No, I was very healthy before this". Finally we ask her "Do you take any medications at home"? That's when the truth came out: "Oh, just the meds I take for the lupus".
I swear to god, I almost slapped her.
4. Is This Really Necessary?
I was working in an area with lots of Mennonites. A mom called into the clinic because a wheel had broken and one of the spokes had penetrated her toddler’s eye.
The reason for the call was to ask if he needed to be seen by a doctor…she indicated they had removed the spoke and she knew he was going to lose the eye, so was there really a reason for him to be seen? The answer was yes. Definitely, yes.
