There might not be any tougher job out there than working in the healthcare field. Doctors and nurses have seen it all—but despite that, some patients may try to hide what they're dealing with. And in those cases, it's usually something pretty unforgettable, as these stories prove.
1. This Guy Was Dy-no-mite!
When I worked as an ER medical technician, we had a man in his mid-70s come in with dangerously low blood pressure and heavy bruising across his face and upper body. EMS brought him from a nursing home after staff found him on the floor of his room, and there was blood on the wall nearby.
He wouldn’t tell us why he was there, but he was happy to chat about almost anything else—sports, current events, whatever. We spent a long time trying to figure out what had happened. He had no internal bleeding, his fluid levels looked fine, and he hadn’t left the nursing home, so there was no obvious explanation for injuries that severe. When he finally told us what he’d done, I was stunned.
After about four hours, he opened up and admitted he had been trying to end his life. He had taken the rest of his prescribed nitroglycerin, which he used for chest pain and which lowers blood pressure very quickly. Nitroglycerin is also the active ingredient in TNT, though the amount in tablets is tiny compared with actual explosives. He had tried to make himself “explode” by repeatedly slamming himself into the wall. He was actually a very kind man and even sent us a card afterward. He was just deeply lonely.
2. The Lung And Short Of It
I admitted a man for pneumonia, which seemed strange because he was young, strong, and otherwise healthy. Right away, I could tell something wasn’t adding up. His X-ray looked unusual, and the whole picture just felt off, so I started asking more direct questions. I asked if he used illicit substances, and he said, “That’s disgusting. I’m not a user. I’ve never touched that stuff in my life.”
So I moved on, but then he suddenly said, “Look, doc, I should mention I may have used coke once or twice years ago. I only snorted it, though. That wouldn’t cause this, right?” I asked, “How long ago?” He said, “Like ten years, maybe longer.” I told him, “That wouldn’t still be affecting you after that much time.”
Then he said, “More like five.” I asked, “Years?” He said, “Uh... more like five months ago”. This kept going until he finally admitted he had just come off a huge binge the day before. He had spent the previous three days in a hotel with some “wild women". Then he added, “But I don’t want you to think I’m some kind of person like that.” I just stared at him.
I didn’t think he was “that kind of person.” I thought he was someone lying to me while being treated for pneumonia instead of getting the right treatment for crack lung, which was what he actually had. I truly didn’t care about judging him. I wasn’t his parent, partner, or pastor. I just didn’t want him wasting time and putting himself at risk by lying. Whatever you think is too embarrassing to admit, I can promise you I’ve heard worse.
3. Not So Sharp
I was a paramedic and got called for someone who was unresponsive and not breathing. We found a young man in his underwear in his father’s bathroom, blue in the face, with a tourniquet and a needle on the floor nearby. He was soaked because, in that town, people would throw cold water on anyone they thought had overdosed. We started breathing for him, gave Narcan, and he woke up.
I said, “Hey, welcome back. Tell me what you took tonight so we can help you.” He said, “Nothing.” I replied, “Are you sure? Because that seems very unlikely, unless that syringe over there belongs to your dad.” He insisted, “It’s not mine. I didn’t take anything.”
4. Test Case
I tested a patient who should have shown positive for opiates because I had prescribed them. Their urine looked completely normal, but the test results were strange. It had an extremely high specific gravity, meaning there was a lot of material dissolved in it. The sample tested positive for opiates, but it had none of the confirmatory metabolites—the substances your body produces after processing those substances.
Everything else about the test was normal. It took me a little while to figure out how that could happen. Then it clicked: the patient was selling the pills instead of taking them and didn’t want to get caught. They had crushed a pill and mixed it into the urine sample. That made the screen show “positive” for opiates, but since the substance had never actually gone through the body, there were no metabolites for the machine to detect. I still use that case sometimes to spot the sharpest med student in the group.
5. Out Of Nowhere?
When I was an intern in OB/GYN, we had a woman sent to the ER for vaginal bleeding. During the exam, the doctor was stunned. She had a huge tumor, about the size of a football, growing between her legs. Her husband was with her, and both of them claimed it had just appeared and that they had never noticed it before. There was no question it had been growing for months. Sometimes, when people are in shock, they can deny even the most obvious reality.
6. She Was Poking Around
A 60-year-old woman came in after saying she had “fallen asleep and rolled onto a pin cushion.” The X-ray showed three needles, each about two inches long, stuck in her left shoulder. Later, we found out she had actually been trying to do acupuncture on herself.
7. She Didn’t Have A Glue
My cousin told me about a patient who kept saying her nipple was “falling off” all the time. She said she had tried gluing it back on and using skin creams to make it stay attached to her chest. It turned out she had pretty advanced cancer. The tumor had grown so large that the skin on her chest was stretched a lot. Somehow, that and the friction caused an open, oozing wound that reached her nipple and wouldn’t heal.
No one could understand why she hadn’t gone to a doctor or hospital sooner. This happened in Germany, and the woman had a job, health insurance, and everything.
8. Hook, Line, And Sinker
I used to be a nurse. One time, a patient came in with severe intestinal injuries and needed his colon repaired with stitches. He said he had been fishing, slipped, and landed in exactly the wrong way on the fishing pole. It must have been quite a fishing trip to be out there without any clothes on.
9. All Choked Up
I was an army medic. For a while, I worked at a clinic that only treated trainees. The people who came in usually fell into one of two groups: those trying to avoid training and those saying, “I’m fine, but they made me come anyway.” We saw a lot more of the first group, but I’ll never forget one patient from the second.
He had been made to come in after an injury and was determined not to miss any training. While we were listening to him talk about his ankle pain, the PA I was working with cut in and asked if his throat hurt, because he sounded like something was blocking it. He admitted that it did, but he insisted he didn’t want to miss training over a sore throat. Once we examined him, we realized he had a tonsil abscess.
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10. Let It All Hang Out
I used to work the overnight answering service for a large medical group that covered several specialists. We weren’t allowed to give medical advice; all we could do was contact the doctor on call. One night around 2 AM, a woman called and was speaking very softly. I asked her to talk a little louder because I could barely hear her.
She started over and explained that she was calling from the garage because she didn’t want to alarm her family. Then she told me that her intestines were hanging out of her body and asked if she should go to the ER. Even though it was against my instructions, I told her she absolutely needed to go to the ER right away and that I would contact her doctor as soon as possible. I was stunned that anyone would need to ask whether intestines outside the body counted as an emergency.
11. The Missing Piece
In 1983, I was a medical resident in New England. We admitted a patient for better management of end-stage kidney disease caused by diabetes. Six months earlier, the patient had undergone an above-the-knee leg amputation at another hospital because of severe vascular disease. The patient was married and had a 19-year-old child.
The patient’s wife explained that, one month earlier, she had learned that her husband, who had worked as a construction worker and truck driver, was biologically female and had been living as a man for decades. I was present when a psychiatrist interviewed the wife, and she insisted she had never known.
She had already been pregnant when they met, and when she was asked about intimacy, she said, “I don’t know, but he managed.” The patient had even had an above-the-knee amputation, which would have required full skin prep and disinfection. I still don’t understand how no one noticed what this “man” did not have.
12. The Cupboard Was Not Bare
There was a patient who was supposed to provide a stool sample for testing. The patient said they had not been able to have a bowel movement for a week. They were being observed and were given medication to help, but still nothing happened. Then a healthcare aide came in to check the room. While making sure everything was clean and in order, he noticed the room smelled a little more like stool than usual.
He checked the bedpan, but it was empty. He asked the patient, “Did you have a bowel movement?” The patient answered, “No, I can’t go.” The aide was puzzled but kept tidying the room until he found the source of the smell. When he opened one of the cabinets, he found several days’ worth of stool. The patient had been using her hand and hiding it in the cabinet.
13. Self-Inflicted Lies
I was a paramedic, and we were called to help a woman. When we arrived, she had a single bullet wound in her right thigh with very little bleeding. She was standing, limping, and calmly talking to the authorities. She was polite, friendly, and thanked us for coming. She said she had been walking through a restaurant parking lot when she saw a blue car drive past.
Then, she said, someone leaned out and started popping off, and she felt something hit her leg. We helped her into the ambulance, and I bandaged the wound. I gave her pain medication, and we headed to the hospital. She joked that she had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time and was having very bad luck. She answered all our questions with “Yes sir” and “No sir,” even after I told her that wasn’t necessary.
When we got to the ER, I was giving my report to the trauma team when one of the officers from the scene quietly stepped into the room. I was repeating the patient’s story when the officer got a huge grin and nodded for me to step outside. He told me a blue car had pulled up right after we left and told the authorities to check the restaurant security footage.
The officers reviewed the video and saw my patient inside the restaurant, suddenly yelling at the driver of the blue car. The other person left, apparently trying to get away, and my patient chased after her. The parking lot video then showed my patient going to her own vehicle, taking out a pistol, and running after the other person. Then there was a flash on camera, and she started limping. She had been the one to shoot herself in the leg.
14. Who’s The Baby Daddy?
When I was an intern on my ER rotation, a woman in her late 30s came in complaining of nausea and lower abdominal discomfort that had lasted several days. I took a careful history and, as part of that, asked whether she might be pregnant. She became furious and started shouting at me. She said she was a lesbian and had not been with a man in more than 10 years.
She demanded that I get my supervising doctor and let an “adult” treat her. I went back to my attending and outlined the tests I wanted to order. He said, “I didn’t hear pregnancy test in that plan.” I told him, “I don’t think we need one. She’s a lesbian and hasn’t been with a man in 10 years.” My attending smiled and said, “Humor me.” The patient turned out to be very pregnant. When I went back into the room, two men were glaring at each other like they were about to start a fight.
15. Nailed It!
A patient came in with chest pain and said they had fallen and hit their chest on a table. An X-ray was done to check for a rib fracture or a collapsed lung. Instead, it showed a long metal object in the left side of the chest, actually inside the heart. When questioned again, the patient admitted they had not told the truth and said they had accidentally pierced themselves in the chest with a nail gun. The wound was barely bleeding and was hard to see. The patient was taken to surgery and recovered surprisingly well after open-heart surgery.
16. Her Story Was The Pits
There was a woman who came in with blood in her urine, which can sometimes be a sign of bladder cancer. Scans are not always very reliable for that, so the next step is to pass a camera through the urethra and look directly into the bladder. I was still a junior doctor and learning the procedure, so I was being supervised. I managed to get the camera in, but at first I had no idea what I was looking at.
Once I got the focus right, it turned out her bladder was full of citrus seeds. There had to be at least 50, probably more. So I said, “Why are you putting fruit seeds into your bladder? That is really not a good idea, and we are going to have to remove them.” She said, “I didn’t do that. I would never... but I do eat a lot of fruit, so that must be where they came from.” At that point my consultant stepped in and got more and more frustrated because she refused to admit she had put them there. She kept insisting they had come from her diet.
17. On The Right Tack
When I was in medical school, I did a radiology rotation with an interventional team. They did some incredibly interesting procedures. One day we were doing a case that required sedation, so afterward the patient needed some time to recover. Everything went well, and I went back to the reading room with the doctor to catch up on some films.
We sat down at the viewing box. This was back when everything was still on film, so there was a big automatic rotator that flipped the next image into place. At the end of the procedure, they had taken a film of the entire abdomen just to make sure nothing had gone seriously wrong. Right then, the specials tech who had been in the procedure with us came back. The image of the whole abdomen appeared, and all of us tilted our heads, completely puzzled.
There were three bright white objects in the pelvis: one circular, one more oval-shaped, and one T-shaped. They were all about the same size and sitting close together. The tech asked, “What are those?” The radiologist had no idea. I was new to medicine and still had a very immature sense of humor, so I said, “I think those are push pins.”
At first we went back and forth, thinking, “No, that cannot be right,” and then wondering whether push pins could somehow have fallen onto the patient’s back before he was draped. Finally, I said, “They could be inside him.” Unfortunately, we did not have a side-view image, so there was no way to confirm it. The radiologist started wondering why anyone would swallow push pins and how long they had been there.
After a few minutes of talking it over with the tech, I came to an unfortunate conclusion: “There is a much shorter route to where they are.” The room went quiet. Then I said, “Someone is going to have to tell him what we found. He cannot leave until we know what those are.” The radiologist and I looked at each other, then at the tech. He sighed, looking completely defeated, and went out to the recovery room.
A couple of minutes later he came back looking completely shaken. I asked, “What did he say?” The tech replied, “I told him the procedure had gone well, there were no complications, the stents were in place, and everything looked fine. Then I said we had taken one last picture to make sure we had not missed anything, and when we reviewed it we saw some metallic-looking objects in the pelvis.”
“I told him, ‘They are not anything we normally use during the procedure, and we are not sure whether they were on top of you or inside the pelvis. They looked like push pins, and we just wanted to know if you had any idea what they might be.’” The patient interrupted him and said, “Yes, I know about those. Please do not tell my wife.” The tech said nothing else after that. We were all too uncomfortable to ask more questions. The radiologist dictated the report as carefully as he could. I never heard the rest of the story, but I have never forgotten that film. I could still sketch it from memory.
18. Itchy And Scratchy
I once saw a high-school-aged kid come in with a dinner candle stuck in his behind. He claimed he had been using it to scratch an itch. Apparently the itch was very far in, because the candle was deep enough to be quite alarming. His mother told me the whole story and added that she had already asked him before not to use her belongings that way. I did not ask for any more detail. Honestly, I think she truly believed he had just been very itchy.
19. He Wasn’t Kidding
I used to work in psychiatry, and we had a regular patient everyone knew well. He had paranoid schizophrenia and often talked about spider eggs in his brain. One time, when he was admitted, he complained that his backside hurt because he had sent a rat up there to deliver a message. Naturally, no one believed him, but we still had to examine him.
Sure enough, there was a rat’s tail hanging out. His main concern was whether he had received the important message from the rat, which was, of course, dead—and in any case would not have been able to speak.
20. Hard To Swallow
When I was a fourth-year medical student rotating at the VA hospital, a patient came into the emergency department complaining of stomach pain. We got an X-ray, and it showed two toothbrushes in his stomach. He told us he had felt like something was stuck at the back of his throat, used a toothbrush to try to clear it, and accidentally swallowed it.
Then, according to him, the exact same thing happened with the second toothbrush. Gastroenterology was consulted, and both toothbrushes were removed by endoscopy. He was admitted overnight for observation. The next morning he complained of stomach pain again, and that was when we realized something else had to be going on. A repeat X-ray showed that he had swallowed the entire convenience kit from the hospital.
He had swallowed a small toothbrush, a small tube of toothpaste, and even a plastic razor. At that point, psychiatry was consulted. It turned out this was not his first episode—he simply had a habit of swallowing objects.
21. Hammer Time
A patient’s relatives came into my office asking if I could see an older man who had accidentally cut himself and needed stitches. I told them I couldn’t do any suturing because we didn’t have sterile equipment, but I’d be happy to use steri-strips if the wound was suitable, as long as they brought him to the office.
They refused and kept insisting that I come to the house instead. So I packed my bag and went to check on him. I found him in bed, awake but refusing to speak, with several shallow cuts on his abdomen and a huge hematoma swelling on his forehead. I was stunned and finally got the family to explain what had happened.
They said he had argued with his sister and then tried to hurt himself by hitting himself in the forehead with a hammer and trying to stab himself in the abdomen with a kitchen knife. They hadn’t called an ambulance because they were “ashamed” and didn’t want to deal with taking him to a distant hospital. I gave them 15 minutes to sort out their priorities and either call an ambulance or take him there themselves.
22. Running From The Truth
I was a neurologist in Spain. We had a patient who suffered an acute stroke that morning. When we first asked what had happened, he said he had gone out for an early jog, fallen, and then couldn’t move the left side of his body. Later, when a nurse asked again, he gave a completely different made-up story.
It turned out he had gotten up early, left home, and was with a street worker when the stroke happened. She was the one who called the ambulance. The hardest part was facing his family afterward.
23. Reality Was His Kryptonite
I had my nose reset and my septum trimmed after I broke it. When I woke up from anesthesia, I felt unstoppable. About a minute after waking up, I pulled out my IV, stood up, and started walking out of my room because I was determined to walk home—about three miles—and finish a mission in Heroes of Might and Magic 3.
I walked past a nurse, and she said, “You’re bleeding!” I laughed and told her, “No, I feel amazing.” I kept going until I reached the elevator and caught my reflection in the metal. The moment I saw myself, my stomach sank. My face was wrapped in bandages, dark bruises were spreading under the white fabric, my eyes were bloodshot, and I looked awful.
I woke up later back in bed, with the IV in my other arm and restraints keeping me there. It turned out I was on a morphine drip, which explained why I felt invincible. My parents were yelling, and I had no idea why. Apparently, I had given myself a concussion when I collapsed waiting for the elevator.
24. It Was Balls Out A Crazy Ride
When I was 12, I got an infection in my scrotum. I tried to hide it, hoping it would just go away, and I still regret that. I started walking strangely, and eventually it turned purple. My parents got concerned and asked why I was moving that way. In the end, I had to show my mom my swollen purple testicle, and we went to the doctor the next day.
At the appointment, I explained what was going on. They needed to run some tests, so they gave me morphine before doing an ultrasound. The nurse performing it was very attractive. She put clear gel all over me down there. It still hurt, but my body had a...different reaction. I was completely embarrassed, and I can only imagine how awkward it was for her too.
I tried as hard as I could not to grin because it felt good, but I was also ticklish. Every few seconds I’d laugh or smile, and then right after that it would hurt again. It was a confusing experience, especially at that age. It went on like that for at least five minutes.
It turned out to be a bacterial infection, but it cleared up and I was fine. The only long-term effect is that women with short hair are still very attractive to me.
25. Even Chainsaws Have Recoil
While I was in the ER, a man came in carrying a couple of towels over his shoulder, and blood was already starting to soak through. The nurse asked what had happened and began to lift the towel. Her expression changed instantly from friendly to serious. She called over the doctor and several other staff members. The man said, “I was cutting branches overhead with a chainsaw. It got caught and swung back into my shoulder.”
By then, a small crowd had gathered around him, and they were preparing to rush him into surgery. He had basically cut into his chest with a chainsaw. It didn’t seem immediately life-threatening since he had managed to walk in on his own, but I was amazed. I still wonder how he managed to shut it off before doing even more damage.
26. His Actions Were Hardly Crystal Clear
I was a physical therapist working with a patient who had a traumatic brain injury after a car accident. I had just started getting him moving when I noticed he kept picking at his beard and then putting his fingers in his mouth. I couldn’t see him actually eating anything, so I assumed it might be some kind of tic related to the brain injury.
I documented it in my notes and sent the information to his physician. The next day, before his follow-up visit, I checked the chart and saw they had discovered that brain tissue and cerebrospinal fluid were leaking from his nose, and he had been swallowing it. It was clear, so I hadn’t been able to see it.
27. Basketball Diaries
A man came into the emergency department holding his abdomen and complaining of intense stomach pain. He seemed evasive and kept changing his story, his symptoms, and even where the pain was located. My sister’s friend and a few other nurses suspected something was off, and after about an hour, he finally admitted what had really caused it.
He had inserted a deflated full-size basketball into his behind and then inflated it. Somehow, he managed to pump it up until it burst inside him. The burst was what caused the pain, but the surprising part was that he hadn’t come to the ED because of the pain itself. The basketball was still inside him, and after it popped, the pain, likely swelling, and the partially inflated ball made it impossible for him to remove it on his own.
28. Taking In The View
One night, two people came into the emergency department. One had cuts across the lower back, upper thighs, and around the buttocks. The other had cuts on the face and a piece of glass lodged there. When they were first admitted, they wouldn’t explain how they got hurt. It wasn’t until staff found traces of fecal matter in the second patient’s wounds that they finally told the story.
It turned out the first patient had been sitting on a glass table while having a bowel movement, and the second person was sitting directly underneath watching. During all of this, the glass table shattered.
29. Packed To The Rim
We had a woman come in with severe stomach pain, diarrhea, and a fever that had lasted a couple of days. I started asking the usual questions: where the pain was, whether she took any regular medications, and if she had any other symptoms. Then I asked the standard question, “When was your last solid bowel movement?” She thought for a while and then said, “I think about a month ago.”
I asked whether that was normal for her, and she said, “No, I usually go once every two months.” She said it as if that were completely typical. The doctor ordered an X-ray, and her bowel was packed with stool. I had never seen anything like it. The diarrhea was essentially overflow around the blockage. After gently explaining what a normal bowel pattern looks like, I then had the unpleasant job of giving three enemas and checking on her regularly until everything finally came out.
30. Junk In The Trunk
My mom has worked in several hospitals processing charts, and one story has always stuck with me. A man came into the ER crying hysterically and covered in blood. Naturally, the doctors and nurses rushed to help and asked what had happened. He said his testicles hurt. That explained the blood on his pants, but there was one major problem: his testicles were missing.
They asked where they were, and he kept insisting he didn’t know—that they had somehow just disappeared. Eventually, he admitted they were in his car. Staff went to check and found them in an empty, but unwashed, mayonnaise jar in the trunk. As far as I know, they were not able to be reattached.
31. Hit Right Between The Eyes
When I was about ten, I lived deep in rural Louisiana. It wasn’t unusual for kids to help with heavy chores. My neighbor, who was about my age, was chopping wood with a double-bladed axe. Suddenly, the axe head flew off during an upward swing and lodged right between his eyes, straight into his forehead. He turned and looked at me with a confused expression. I immediately started screaming.
Neither of our parents was around, but there was a fire station about two blocks away. I walked him there, and we basically just strolled in—me holding his hand while he looked around in confusion with an axe head stuck in his forehead. The firefighters nearly lost it and rushed him to the ER in a firetruck.
Since our parents weren’t there yet, I got to ride with him and stayed in the ER with one of the firefighters until both families arrived. It turned out the axe had wedged right between the two lobes of his brain, and he had come within a hair of permanent brain damage.
32. Her Bosom Buddies
When my mom was a resident, she was getting a woman ready for weight-loss surgery. She took her vitals, asked all the standard pre-op questions, and then started attaching the monitor leads with adhesive pads on her chest. The patient had a large chest that were physically blocking where the pads needed to go, and she kept trying to stop my mom from reaching those spots.
Finally, my mom said, “Look, this has to happen or there’s no surgery.” She lifted the woman’s tissue out of the way and found an entire pack of soggy Oreos, with a few already eaten. They had to postpone the surgery because the patient had eaten recently and no longer had the required empty stomach for the procedure. She had been hiding a stash of junk food under there.
33. Pain In The Rear
A patient came into the ED with severe pain on both sides of her buttocks, along with fevers and other signs of infection. After more testing, she was diagnosed with a serious deep-tissue infection that required hospitalization and IV antibiotics. The big question, though, was what had caused it. Eventually, she admitted she had read online that rubbing fish oil on your behind could make it look fuller.
She decided that if it worked on the outside, it might work even better on the inside. So she used insulin syringes to draw fish oil out of oral capsules and injected it into herself every day for two weeks, until she developed an infection. Her behind was not fuller—it was red, swollen, hard, extremely painful, and she couldn’t lie on her back or sit down for weeks.
34. Full Of It
A few years ago, I had awful abdominal pain. I was shaking, had chills, and a 100-degree fever. So I went to my mother, a former pediatrician who had retrained and was then working in allergy and immunology. She was clearly worried, so she did something called an obturator test to check for appendicitis. Sure enough, I doubled over in pain, and she rushed me to the hospital.
Before surgery, they wanted to confirm that it really was appendicitis. So they gave me a scan with contrast dye. It turned out I was severely constipated. In the words of the attending physician, “I’ve never seen so much stool in someone in my life.” I was completely mortified.
They gave me medication for the pain, which only made the constipation worse. I spent the next few miserable days on the toilet and had digestive issues for a week afterward.
35. It Could Have Been Nipped In The Bud
I once had a 57-year-old woman come in with a tiny 5 mm nodule on her lower eyelid. It was most likely basal cell carcinoma, which is usually very treatable and can often be removed in a short office procedure that takes about 15 minutes under local anesthesia. She refused treatment but, oddly, came back every three months just to refuse it again.
The nodule kept growing. I saw her for five years. During the last three, she hid the expanding tumor behind her glasses with a folded piece of tissue. Eventually, she agreed to surgery. By then, the operation took seven hours, and they had to remove her eye, surrounding muscles, and bone. Afterward, there was a massive hole where her eye had been. By that point, the cancer had already spread, and it was too late.
36. In Chronic Denial
We had a longtime IV illicit substance user come into the ward who needed IV antibiotics for a severe infection in her legs from repeatedly injecting unknown substances. She constantly denied ever injecting anything and claimed it was “because it had been so hot lately, and I’d been walking a lot. I got a rash and ignored it.” Still, she somehow had a very high opioid tolerance that she couldn’t explain either.
To be cautious, we made sure she wasn’t allowed to leave the ward unsupervised and kept her near the nurses’ station so we could keep an eye on her. One day, a code blue was called, and after everything settled down, we remembered to check on her. Sure enough, she was unconscious on the bathroom floor, with a needle still hanging from the IV line in her arm.
When she woke up, she strongly denied doing anything. She said she had fainted and that someone must have poisoned her. At that point, the doctors were direct with her and said that either she followed the treatment plan or she would be discharged for wasting public resources and putting other patients at risk. No one saw her again after that day. It was sad, really.
37. What A Screwball
I was a corrections officer, and one inmate complained of pain in his nether regions. I took him to the facility hospital, where they discovered he had jammed about 14 screws inside it. They removed the screws and started him on psychiatric medication. About a week later, he cut it off and flushed it down the toilet. The organ was never recovered.
38. A Case Of Animal Magnetism
My sister was a nurse working in the ER when a woman came in with a bad rash on her legs. She was being evasive about what had happened, and the department was especially busy that night. So my sister told her she needed to explain what was going on, or she would have to move on to someone else. Apparently, the patient had been asleep when she woke up and felt a strange bumping sensation on her leg.
She looked down and saw her pet chinchilla mating with her. According to the patient, it continued for a short time before the chinchilla “finished.” “Finished?” my sister asked. The woman then made a splashing motion with her hands and said, “You know, it… finished.” My sister nodded and said she’d go get the doctor. She barely made it into the hallway and closed the door before she started laughing.
Eventually, the doctor came by to find out what was going on. My sister explained, and they both had a laugh. The doctor then pointed out that for the patient to have that kind of reaction, it probably wasn’t the first time she had been exposed. After that, he prescribed a topical cream and advised her to avoid any future contact like that with the chinchilla.
39. Faking It
I once had a girl pretend to be unconscious so we wouldn’t discharge her after a minor outpatient surgery. It was strange because it’s very hard not to react to things like a sternal rub, so we knew she was awake and aware. She just refused to talk, open her eyes, move, or respond. Eventually, after enough uncomfortable stimulation, she opened her eyes and moved, but then went right back to pretending to sleep.
We kept her in the hospital overnight, and by morning, she was acting completely normal, like nothing had happened, and then she went home. She was an odd patient, and rumor had it that she was also a medical student.
40. An Apple A Day Didn’t Keep The Doctor Away
A man came into the ER complaining of severe abdominal pain. He was admitted, and while he was talking with the doctor, he was clearly very uncomfortable. The doctor ordered an X-ray. When the images came back, the doctor stood there staring at them until my friend, who was a nurse, happened to walk by.
The doctor called her over and said, “Come here.” She was confused, but once she saw the X-ray, she understood immediately. The doctor asked, “Doesn’t that look like an apple to you?” My friend nodded, trying not to laugh, and said, “Yes, it definitely does.” The doctor then asked the man if there was anything he wanted to share.
The man hesitated, and it took some time to get the story out of him. In the end, he needed surgery to remove the apple from his behind. After an object is removed from someone’s body, it has to be fully documented and described. So my friend got to read a very detailed report about what the apple consisted of. At the end, it said: “Appears to be a Golden Delicious.”
41. Mellon Baller
I was a med student on a general surgery rotation. Usually, when someone comes in with groin pain and says, “I think I have a hernia,” you look and don’t see much, then feel around and still don’t find much, but they end up going to surgery anyway. This patient was a very large man, about 6'4" and 400 pounds. He dropped his pants, and I expected nothing out of the ordinary. I got far more than I was ready for. His scrotum was about the size of a cantaloupe.
I stepped back and went to get the surgeon. I didn’t warn her; I just asked her to come take a look. She walked in, saw it, and you could tell it hit her immediately. Then she said, “It looks like Mickey Mouse,” because his testicles were sitting high on top like Mickey’s ears. She apologized right after, but she was clearly rattled. Once we left the room, she told me that in 20 years of practice, she had never seen a hernia like that.
We did the repair, and there were 18 inches of intestine in his scrotum, along with nine pounds of fat. I had to keep pushing the fat back up into his body, but it wouldn’t stay. I’d get his intestines back in and most of the fat too, then the pressure would push it all back out again like a scrotal jack-in-the-box. In the end, we had to tilt the table upside down and let gravity help me get everything back where it belonged.
42. She Was Trying To Sugar Coat It
I was a family doctor. A new patient came in, and I asked about her medical history. She said she didn’t have any chronic health problems. Eventually we got to her medication list. The first medication was insulin. When I asked about it, she said it was for her high blood sugar, but she didn’t remember ever being told she had diabetes.
43. A Couple Of Slugs
A friend of mine was a surgeon working in proctology at a hospital in Switzerland. One patient was a very athletic man in his late 30s, deeply tanned, very well groomed, and clearly anxious. He complained of severe itching around his backside, and his GP hadn’t been able to find the cause. My friend started by asking whether anything unusual had happened in that area recently.
The man denied it and kept repeating that he wasn’t gay. My friend told him he wasn’t there to judge and that it had nothing to do with orientation. The patient still insisted nothing had happened. After a thorough exam with the proper tools, my friend found severe irritation that clearly looked like it had been caused by some outside substance. At that point, he still didn’t know what it was and needed to find out quickly to treat it properly.
So he asked again, and the patient denied everything again, saying, “I already told you, I’m not gay.” My friend then tried a different approach and said, “Sir, if you’re completely sure that no substance, product, or object has recently been inserted there, then what I’m seeing is extremely abnormal and looks like some kind of serious tissue change. We may need surgery to stop it from getting worse.”
That finally made him tell the truth. He said, “Okay, I’ll tell you, but you have to promise never to mention my name when you tell this story to your colleagues.” My friend reassured him: “I’m not here to judge or laugh. I’m here to help.” The man said, “Okay. I’m really not gay, but sometimes, in the heat of the moment… things happen.”
He explained that he was having a foursome in his garden with his wife and another couple. They switched partners. At some point, the women paired off together, and the two men ended up together. He was on the receiving end, and his partner didn’t have any lubricant. They were outside and noticed a few slugs in the flowerbeds.
In the moment, they decided to try using the slugs as lubricant, which obviously went badly. By the time they realized it was a terrible idea, it was too late. The slugs stayed there long enough to release an irritating defensive substance. The man was so embarrassed that he didn’t go to the doctor right away. My friend never found out what happened to the other man involved.
44. We Got A Leg Up On The Problem
We had a patient who tried to describe a severe staph infection as “just some leg swelling.” What he actually had was a serious infection in and around his nether regions called Fournier’s gangrene. The swelling had become so extreme that the entire organ had essentially retracted inward. He later told us he had to urinate into a five-gallon bucket held against his crotch because he no longer knew where the urine was going.
He went into emergency surgery within hours. The only way to treat an infection like that is surgical removal of damaged tissue in the operating room, along with a huge amount of antibiotics. Somehow, he still had none of the usual whole-body signs of infection, like fever or low blood pressure. The last I heard, he was probably going to lose one testicle, but I don’t think they expected to remove the entire organ. If he had waited much longer, his life absolutely would have been at risk.
45. They Were Trying To Milk It
I was a nurse, and one of a patient’s family members asked me for advice. She had a son around 12 or 13 years old and wanted to know whether it was normal for boys to squirt milk from their nipples. I think I said something like, “What?” Then she explained that her son and two of his friends had been trying to “milk” their own nipples, and now they were actually producing some discharge. She wanted to know if that was normal.
46. White Lies
I was working as an agency nurse at a teaching hospital. As a lot of agency nurses know, when the staff hears an agency nurse is coming in, we often get the patients the regular nurses don’t want to handle—in other words, the toughest ones on the floor. I got report and started walking rounds with the nurses who were ending their shift.
We passed one patient’s room, and he wasn’t there. The outgoing nurse said, “He’s always going down to smoke,” and added that he was “very demanding.” He was homeless and had been admitted for an infected arm related to IV substance misuse. I asked why he was being allowed to leave the floor regularly with an IV still in his arm, and she just shrugged.
About an hour later, my patient finally came back and shuffled into his room. I made a mental note to assess him next after I finished giving another patient their medications.
When I went to his room, the door was partly open. I heard snoring, so I knocked as I stepped inside. I said hello and introduced myself. He didn’t react.
I knew he was alive because I could hear him breathing. I put my hand on his arm and gently shook him. Biggest mistake of my career. He jolted awake screaming, flailing his arms, yelling, and threw a bag of white powder straight into my face. I hit the code blue button because I was genuinely terrified. He was completely out of control, and I looked like I’d been dusted head to toe in some unknown white powder.
The code team rushed in with the crash cart, saw me and the panicked patient, and immediately stopped in confusion.
Someone ran out to call security, and a large respiratory therapist helped hold the man down. Security came in and handcuffed him to the bed. The nursing supervisor started questioning him about the powder, and I heard him insist it was “baby powder.”
He claimed I had startled him while he was “cleaning up,” and that was why he threw it at me. That’s the last thing I clearly remember. I woke up later in the ER, where the doctor explained what had happened. Security footage showed the truth: the patient had been going downstairs, meeting his supplier, bringing illicit substances back upstairs, and mixing them with hospital baby powder he had requested for “chafing.”
Then he would go back downstairs and meet customers in the ER parking lot. He had passed out after injecting into his IV in the parking lot, and I accidentally startled him when I came in. He had thrown a bag containing illicit substances and baby powder in my face. My husband had to come pick me up, and I was given a note in case the agency tested me afterward. I also had to give a statement to the authorities. It was somehow both the best and worst day I ever had at work—and it ended up being my last hospital shift.
47. It Was Two Too Late
My mother, the medical professional in our family, once had a 13-year-old girl who was nine months pregnant, in active labor, fully dilated, and crowning in emergency triage, all while insisting loudly that she was a virgin and that everyone else was wrong. Her mother stood nearby causing a scene and demanding that a “real doctor” come in. It was absolute chaos.
Let’s just say that when the twins arrived ten minutes later, everyone had changed their tune.
48. We Almost Threw In The Towel
I worked on an internal medicine ward outside New York City. We had a 55-year-old woman who was mute come into the emergency department. She was severely constipated, had intense abdominal pain, and needed rectal disimpaction along with more than just a basic evaluation. She was reluctantly admitted to surgery. The next morning during rounds, she was talking nonstop—in full detail—about her diet, symptoms, family, and everything else.
By that afternoon, she was mute again and back to complaining of abdominal pain and constipation. Two days later, the same thing happened. The medical team was completely confused. She was shocked that we couldn’t figure out what was wrong, and honestly, so were we. The labs, scans, and consults weren’t giving us any answers. When we finally found out what was really happening, I could hardly believe it.
She had strict intake and output monitoring and very limited dietary rules, and we were trying everything we could think of. Then a janitor happened to mention he was annoyed about replacing the paper towels in that room so often. It seemed like the entire floor was somehow going through them because of that one patient. Sure enough, she had been eating around 2,500 paper towels in 24 hours. The psych team came in for the expected consult, and of course she was mute again. We eventually got her talking—one paper towel at a time.
49. Stitched And Ditched
My mom worked intake in the ER. One night, a man came in with bloody, open wounds on his hand. He claimed he’d burned it on a radiator. After they stitched him up, he vanished. But that wasn’t the last my mom heard of him. He had found the staff cafeteria, taken my mom’s car keys from her coat pocket, stolen her car, driven back to a house, and filled the car with stolen items.
It turned out he had gone at an elderly woman during a home invasion earlier that night. He’d cut his hand while stabbing her. He was caught that same night, and my mom’s car was impounded. When she went to pick it up, the officers told her to keep whatever was in the trunk for the inconvenience. They even suggested she list the items on the official report as if they’d already been in the car.
She said no, but the authorities left one of those old-fashioned sleds—the wooden kind with metal runners—in the trunk anyway. She never took it out. It stayed there until the car finally gave out. I remember going grocery shopping and piling bags into the trunk right on top of that sled.
50. As Fertile As A Turtle
An older woman came into the ER with a high fever, abdominal pain, dizziness, and other symptoms. She appeared to be showing signs of toxic shock syndrome. Since that can happen when a tampon is left in too long, the doctor decided to examine her to make sure nothing was stuck inside. Sure enough, when she looked, she was shocked to see two tiny eyes staring back at her.
The doctor started to pull it out, and the woman said, “Put it back!” It turned out she was well past menopause and had gone to a questionable traditional healer for help getting pregnant. The advice she was given was to place a now-lifeless turtle inside herself for a few days, and supposedly that would restore her fertility.
