Which is probably why, when Reddit userGraynardasked all the doctors on the platform to share the wildest conversations they’ve had with adults, many came forth with stories that were equal parts surprising and amusing. From grown men thinking they’re experiencing menopause to women fearing they’ll contract AIDS through a toilet seat, our ignorance can be pretty impressive.
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Well it looks like she is about 30 days pregnant congrats!How can she be pregnant she is only around her brother?…well actually they don’t follow the same moral code as you or I.- veterinarian.
Patient made an appointment and brought in his s**t in a box. He was concerned about the size of his turd, and if it’s normal. All he got from the visit was, “Normal turd. Yes, it’s pretty wide.“Turd box was set out with biohazard waste. Waste guy thought it was a misplaced package and put it on the front desk. Secretary got quite the surprise that day..
I was a newly minted graduate with fresh and optimistic views on my life as a doctor. Second week in came this old lady and her very dysfunctional family.They would argue and complain about everything, from the food, the nurses they didnt like and every single medical decision we made. She was very very sick so her management was just as complicated.She had several children and they all didnt like one another and would not talk to one another. Each time we would have to explain a long update to every single one of them because they “are entitled to hear it from a doctor”.One of these stories being sitting down and explaining why you don’t give gatorade as an IV drip. They did not understand why we were giving “salt water” to her.Conversation with her son:“Look she likes gatorade, she is drinking it so why cant you give it to her through her drip?“We explain why.Son frowns. “But its isotonic.“We explain again.“Yes but gatorade has more electrolytes.“We explain again.“Salt water just seems to be too cheap. Cant you give her something else closer to gatorade? That has electrolytes?“Continues for two hours. Wash and repeat every day during her admission.Afterwards I told my fiance. He opened up a scene from Idiocracy on youtube and I just sat there with my mouth open for a while.
Step mom is an ER nurse, she used to tell stories about her fun patients she had. My favorite was always this:Severely drunk guy came in with signs of alcohol poisoning. They put a urethral catheter in him so he didn’t ps himself. He didn’t quite understand what it was and why he had it in his dk and kept on messing with it.At one point he tried pulling it out and my step mom (she’s not the very best at subtlety mind you) leans over and said in his ear: “If you pull that out now, your d**k will never work again”. Well wouldn’t you know it? He stopped trying to pull it out after that.
Im an ER doc and see this far too often with young and middle aged people with minor achesPatient : I have some insert pain in random joint/limb/back since yesterday.Me: Did you take any thing for the painPatient: no I didn’tMe: whyHeres where I get multiple equally stupid answers from peopleA : I wanted to see a doctor first (why??????? These people have mild pain and are willing to wait for hours for no reason)B: I don’t know what to take (how does anyone from the age of 15 onwards not know about Tylenol/advil/generic OTC pain meds is beyond me )C: I don’t like taking pills (the fk do you think I’m going to do, lay hands and make it better I’m not a f***g paladin!!!
My sister (who is a new redditor and hope sees this) is a doctor and 25 years ago when she had her very very first patient out of residency and this patient refused to allow her to see her breasts (which were sore and needed a mammogram to check out a lump). So sister asks why and this girl who is about 30 and single said matter of factly “oh. That’s lesbian. We can’t do that. It’s against the lord’s wishes.” She loves telling this story at the dinner table on family gatherings. Especially to our religious side.
I’m a paramedic and recently transported an idiot who self presented to the local hospital, who found he was having a heart attack (stemi) and needed him sent to a bigger hospital for treatment.During my assessment I asked him how long he’d been having chest pain. On and off for twelve months, he tells me.Any family history? (One of the biggest indicators). Oh, yes. Dad died of a heart attack. Brother died of a heart attack. Both of them first presentation, stone dead on the spot, no f***g about.So… you have a 12 month history of intermittent chest pain, and a family history of your closest male relatives spontaneously chucking hearties and dying, and you’ve never got it investigated. Further more, the only reason you came to the hospital tonight is because your family badgered you into it.I told him he needed a solid kick in the ae. To his credit, he agreed.
Medical Assistant to a cataract surgeon here.If you f*****g sleep in your contact lenses long enough, they will fuse to your eyes and will need surgery to have them removed. Yes, you can go blind from this. For the love of God, don’t sleep in your contact lenses.
There was a nursing student I had once who laughed loudly and exclaimed ‘How can you possibly get an STD in your mouth?’ ahh the innocence of youth.
I had severe asthma as a kid. I was intubated for a sever attack a few times. My parents were instructed to take better precautions in our home and went through instructions, more dusting, washing bedsheets etc.. and the big one NO SMOKING inside the house. So my parents agree to all of this.Few weeks later I’m back in the hospital. A doctor recognized me and came over to talk. Then he bent over and smelled my head (I’ll never forget that. I thought it was so weird). He told a nurse to sit there and not let me leave with my parents. When my parents showed up he asked point blank:“Did you not understand what I told you last time? Do you understand these attacks could be fatal?““But we open windows and have stopped smoking in her room when we put her to bed” :/.
That the 30+ cups of coffee he was drinking every day could possibly be the cause of his chief complaints of anxiety and insomnia. He said he was not willing to give this up or try decaf.
I’m really late to this one but maybe someone will get a kick out of it.A few years ago, the subject of human anatomy came up between a friend and I. He went on this whole tangent about how all men have uteruses because his college professor said so. I don’t know if his professor was trying to explain transmen and some wires got crossed or what. But I had to explain to this fully grown man that he did not, nor did any natural born male, have a uterus. I sent him diagrams and told him to google for himself if he didn’t believe me. He said those were fake, “Professor so and so said!” I asked him where he thought his uterus was and he said “the same place yours is”. When I countered with “oh you have a vagina?” He got quite angry and said men don’t have vaginas. I explained that not having a vagina means not having a uterus. He laughed at me and said “okay, just go ahead and believe that.” Why yes I will go ahead and believe anatomical facts 🙄.We weren’t really friends anymore after that, especially since I asked about 20 times wether or not he was joking.
My Dad’s answer(I am not a doctor): My dad had to tell a patient that they were not pregnant. The patient was male.
Patient comes in at 2am for insomnia, clearly tweaking her brains out, heart rate 200. Can’t sit still, bouncing off the walls. I suggest maybe easing up on the ce. “But doctor, I LOVE ce.” K.
I was living in China and taught English on the side to a student whose mother was a physician. This was in 2012 just prior to the London Olympics, the mother wanted to send her daughter to London with a school group to watch the Olympics but has reservations about it. I asked why, she said she was worried that her daughter would catch AIDS from using the public toilets. Yes, a doctor.
Not a doctor, dental hygienist…Had to explain that brushing your teeth with Comet ( the cleaner ) was not a good way to clean your teeth to a 40 year old woman.Also had to tell a woman that painting her teeth with white finger nail polish was a bad idea.
Had a patient in our high priority area for DKA. Sugar was in the 800s. Stomach pain, nausea, vomiting and the such. Pulled Burger King and gummy worms out of his backpack and proceeded to eat them. Like bro do you even know what diabetes is? Noncompliance and lack of medical knowledge is a big thing in Detroit.
My friend is a student doctor and is on placement at a small town doctor’s office.She had a 70-ish year old woman come in with complaints of a small but painless growth that was visible at the back of her throat.Turns out it took her 70 years to notice her uvula.
As a veterinarian, I had a 10 minute conversation with an owner explaining which side was the dog’s left side.
Lady had a broken jaw. She comes in after 2 weeks with an open mandible fracture. Referred her to the hospital for immediate surgery. She never went bc it “doesn’t bother her and she’ll see if it gets better”.
Nurse here. Retired after 27 years on the job. The number of American 20-somethings that don’t know if they’re circumcised or not is surprisingly high. When one with urinary tract infection symptoms needs to give a specimen for testing, I ask, “Are you circumcised?” If not, I have to tell them to pull back the foreskin before peeing in the cup. The number of guys who have asked, “What’s that?” is way too many. For the record, I can count the number who were uncircumcised on two hands.
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So, not a doctor but I work at a hospital.We had someone come into A&E because they needed their nails redoing…They genuinely thought it was a good idea to go to accident and emergency to have their fake nails taken off and redone because they had gotten too long and become uncomfortable.
Obligatory not me but my wife. She’s a nurse practitioner and had to explain to a 40 year old man that brown sugar did, in fact, contain sugar and that is most likely the reason why he now has diabetes. The same man also adamantly insisted his wine consumption was not an issue because he “only drank the dry stuff like chianti so it doesn’t have any sugar.”.
Doctor here.I think the most frustrating I’ve seen since I was a resident was a very pretty (like stunningly pretty) 17 year old with what appeared to be normal, loving, affluent parents. She had a tumor in her pelvis (rhabdomyosarcoma) that we could resect to potentially cure her. The parents declined, also declined chemo and said they want to try holistic medicine because that made more sense to them.I last saw her 3 years ago, she was getting huge lymph nodes removed from her groin because they were unsightly. Obviously metastatic disease. Parents did not want primary tumor removed and again declined chemo.I see 100 patients/week probably, lots of devastatingly sad cases. But I still think about that girl, listening to her parents, costing her life. I bet she’s dead now.I can assure people, doctors are not trying to swindle you, give you unnecessary care, or have some ulterior motive in this sort of setting. 99.99% of doctors are treating patients the same way they’d treat family, so try not to be dense, we want to help.
Not a doctor, but I agreed to pick up my good friend’s wife from her pregnancy sonogram. Driving home, the wife tells me she’s surprised it’s a girl because the last kid was a girl and “it’s supposed to go ‘boy-girl-boy-girl’, right?”.
Not a doctor, but my favorite story from the last time this topic came up.A woman came to her obgyn for an exam as she had an infection of some sort. The doctor did the exam and asked the usual questions “Are you sexually active, etc.” and nothing seemed to obviously be the case. At some point though, the woman lets slip that she’s sick and tired of dealing with this infection that she’s had her whole life. That perks up the doctors antennae and so the doctor tentatively asked her which direction she wiped when she uses the toilet. This 30-something year old woman had been wiping back to front her whole life and didn’t have any idea of the problems that could, and was, leading to.
That coming to the ER for a pregnancy test is a very very expensive way to do it. Apparently she didn’t know you could buy one at the Rite-Aid down the block. Seriously, don’t come to the ER for a pregnancy test, cause the test results won’t be the only surprise you’ll be getting.Also, if you have diabetes, that you need to take your medication. No, ‘getting fatter’ isn’t the worst that can happen. The worst that can happen is that you’ll die. That’s why you’re in the ER with diabetic ketoacidosis and suffering organ damage. It’s why you’re gonna lose your toes. Take your goddamn meds.
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This is kind of the opposite. I’m a patient and went to a doc in the box because i hurt my foot and i have diabetes. (foot injuries should always be checked when you have diabetes) the Doc at the urgent care pricked my finger and saw that my sugar was 150. I just had lunch and my “normal” is between 120 and 150. He told me i had to lower it and said i should drink a coke because coke always regulates peoples sugar for some reason and he doesn’t know why. I say no thanks and and he gets all mad cause he’s the Dr and doesn’t want me to leave until my sugar goes down. I called my real Dr while he was out of the room and after getting yelled at for going to a doc in the box he said he’ll take care of it. 2 mins later the nurse came in and i was free to go. I didn’t see the Dr. on the way out. Either with a different patient or avoiding me. Ill never go there again.Edit: A “doc in a box” is any urgent care facility acting as a primary/ER but not quite either.
Paramedic here.Was driving with my partner and patient in the back. Patient was fine. Patient’s skeezy boyfriend was riding in the front with me and apparently saw a golden opportunity to ask a question that had obviously been on his mind for some time.Him: So when cats and dogs eat grass, that means they have cancer, right?Me: Ummm. No. No it does not.Made for an awkwardly silent ride the rest of the way.
Had to explain to an adult you have to brush all the sides of a teeth. Like… no, just the side that shows when you smile is not enough. And yes flossing is not just a thing for rich people.
I’m a dental hygienist and once was telling a patient after a cleaning that she had gingivitis. She replies with “I must have caught it from my boyfriend”. Had to explain to her that it’s because she doesn’t brush/floss enough. She was 36.
A 32 year old grown man asked me if the hot spells he was experiencing at night meant he was going through menopause.
Not a doctor, but a coworker asked about a surgery we had just finished at the animal hospital I work at. The dog had a pyometra (pus filed uterus) we removed. When I told her this, she looked at me in horror and asked how the dog was going to be able to pee without a uterus.She’s 25.
My mother helps the Amish get dental care. One Amish woman complained that she needed new dentures. When asked why she thought so, she replied, “Well, I’ve lost weight, and you know that when you lose weight, you lose it in your gums first.“Doctors and dentists: if you’re looking for a community to serve, the Amish can truly use your help. I could write a book about the things I’ve seen.
OMFG, finally something I can comment on. Well, here in México we have something called social service (Our college education is free in some institutions, so we have to pay for it with one year of free work in a rural area).So the first month a woman in her 30s came to consult because she was feeling weird in the mornings since forever. I asked what her symptoms were and she told me that every day she wakes up feeling her mouth dry, and that feeling disappears in about one or two hours. “well lady, how many water do you drink?” “Hmm, one or maybe two glasses, one at breakfast, and one middleday"“Do you know what thirst is?““Yeah, when you drink water so you can p**s"So I had a conversation that took one hour long about what thirst is and how it feels, also I had to told her that she needed to drink more water.
I don’t know how much of this is true, it was my cousin (who is a doctor) who told me. He was in his first year in a clinic and people went there to have an appointment because he was good looking. Elder ladies loved him particularly. But this is totally unrelated, and the worst case was when this elder lady goes in with her granddaughter, around 8 yo. She had a severely infected wound in her head. Upon close inspection, he saw the wound crawling with small maggots and the smell was terrible. He was pissed, of course, and asked why didn’t she washed the wound and brought her earlier. She said she thought it would heal with time and was afraid to wash it, lest water enters her brain and kills her. There was also this woman that took her 6 yo daughter there to check why she still didn’t have pubes.
That taking that weird plant they bought from a “pharmacy” online isn’t 14.324 times better than chemo and doesn’t only attack cancer cells because it likes the acid environment in it.
While on dermatological rotation, a Middle Eastern patient saw me with what she described as some funny, itching growth in her butt crack. Some quick investigation revealed it to be a severe case of genital warts. I explained the diagnosis and that it was an STD until she shockingly assured that she was still a virgin. Now virginity is a big issue for young muslim women (or perhaps their families even more), but apparently that doesn’t cover a**l sex and therefore no birth control in the form of, say, condoms was needed.EDIT: I thought I share another story but this time with a colleague being the one acting stupidly. This was when I finally made it to neuroradiology and in comes this mother whose maybe three, four months old son we would scan today because he had epileptic seizures after his birth. Apparently, the paediatricians didn’t tell her about the fits nor the severe neurological birth defects they knew about for weeks so I had to explain her that her child had mental disabilities. That was probably the first time I flipped out on a colleague I didn’t even know over the telephone and, in the heat of the moment, wanted to find this idiot and spit in his face. He was totally oblivious of how he f****d up, saying there was a language barrier while this hospital employs a whole department of translators just for such cases.
Where the penis goes in the female reproductive system during sex.I had to explain this to a first-year female medical student. So someone with presumably 4 years of a pre-med/biology education.To her credit, she understood that the vagina was involved somehow. She just also thought the penis kept going through the cervix and uterus to the uterine tubes….and maybe further?
During residency in an urban NE USA city, I was in clinic. A very pleasant 50s something lady came in for a physical. Everything was going fine when she casually asks if there are any new vaccines out. She was up to date with everything so I asked if she had any specific concerns. She was casually asking to see if she could vaccinate her gay adult son against homosexuality. Very nice, always had a smile on her face, even when I broke the “bad” news to her.
Not a Doctor but when I was in Afghanistan a local man came up to us on patrol with his hand wrapped in a sheet. He was in visible pain and was asking for a doctor, so we got the medic to go see him and I helped unwrap his hand and it was just fg huge. He’d cut his hand very badly and, for whatever reason, kept it submerged in diesel for three days before seeking help. His hand appeared to have soaked up a st load of diesel, or it was just infected to fk but it resembled a water balloon and lightly touching it caused it to p*s liquid. It was naaaasty.
Son of a physician here. Was told an interesting one a while back.Basically, there were some patients who would have rings put around the top of the stomach in an attempt to make it so they couldn’t eat as much food (they’d get sick if they had more than could pass through the ring, if I recall correctly). The idea was that this would help in reducing weight in patients who drastically needed it down so as to help with their health issues.Well, some of them would learn that if you ate only a little over what the ring would allow at a time, you’d eventually be able to eat ridiculously large servings again. This was because the ring would stretch out over time.You can imagine what the conversation between doctor and patient was like when the doctor found out what the patient had been doing.
I saw a patient for a follow up after three ER visits in as many days for asthma. He was from another country, so this was the first time I ever met him. His lungs sound absolutely terrible, but he swears he is taking the inhaler every 2-4 hours with no relief. This raises suspicion to me, as the same meds are working in the ER. I ask him to show me how he is using it. He holds it about a foot away from his mouth and does two puffs like Binaca and swallows. I felt really bad, he had never received any education about his illness or medications.
I’m not a doctor, but my mom doesn’t have a good grasp on the reproductive system so I had to be the one to explain that:1. Getting my tubes removed did not remove my ability to get a period.2. That we women have a urethra, a vagina, and an a**s–babies do not come from the urethra. This one was strange because she had me and my sister so…3. That when you neuter a dog, you just remove the balls, not the red rocket too.China/Taiwan’s sex ed was severely…. lacking. So my mom, until she was in her 20s believed that if you sat on a seat still warm on the bus that a guy sat in before you, you can get pregnant. If you kissed a guy, you could get pregnant.I’m still finding out, years later, misconceptions that my poor mother has about reproduction and explaining things to her.
EMT here, I had a grown adult try to explain to ME that someone else st his pants. Got toned out for finger pain at a homeless shelter at 0200, we get there and the guy jumps in the truck with very mild swelling to the tip of his right index finger. Here’s how the conversation went:Me: so what happened?Patient: I smoked some meth and then I fell asleep in my bunk and I woke up next to my bunk and my finger hurt and there was poop!Me: there was poop..? Did you fall in poop..?Patient: no no, like in my pants!Me: so… you pooped your pants?Patient: no! It wasn’t me!Me: so let me get this straight… you smoked meth, took a nap, rolled out of bed in your sleep, hurt your finger, and someone ELSE came along and st in your pants before you woke up…?Patient: yeah! It wasn’t me!
While in dental school my friend pulled out several bombed out (technical term) teeth on a adult male. After the procedure was finished and post-op instructions we given, the man asked, “So when should I expect my new teeth to grow in?” He was serious.
My dad told me about an extremely religious male patient who was concerned about his nocturnal emissions. He saw it as a offense to God and wanted to know what he could do to stop it. My dad’s response: “Well, It’s gotta go somewhere guy”.
I was working in GP and had a patient scheduled for an appointment. Looked through his notes to gain an idea of why he may be seeing me and saw he’d been seen a few times with knee pains/shoulder pains and the like. The guy is in his 70s so probably just arthritis. I’m thinking I’ll do an examination of his sore joints and ask a few questions, prescribe some painkillers and it’ll be a quick one.Call him in and he walks in sits down and is cheery as anything.“What seems to be the problem then, sir? I notice you’ve had some issues recently with sore joints” I ask.He then proceeds to tell me about this sore knee. So I check his knee and take a history and it all seems fine. Ask anything else and he’s like oh actually my neck is sore too. So I check his neck and nothing untoward to be found there either. At this point he’s like ok well thanks doc I’ll be off then.I say to him oh good glad we could help. And you have no other pains at all before you go? He then sits back down and tells me he’s been having central, crushing chest pain radiating down his left arm and into his jaw since last night and has been feeling breathless and when it happened he had an impending sense of doom.I know a lot of you won’t be doctors here but I’m sure you all recognise signs of an MI there. He had all the classic textbooks symptoms.Called an ambulance and he was rushed to hospital for PCI. (Edit: Percutaneous coronary intervention - thread a catheter up the arteries into the coronary artery to find and then treat the blockage - sorry for the medical acronym haha)Tl;Dr - man came in complaining of arthritis and when he was about to leave decided to tell me he’d had a heart attack the night before and thought nothing of it.
My mom lost her s**t when she found out my grandma didn’t change her needle between blood sugar tests. My mom lectured her, I lectured her, and she still wont change it. It’s like two years old. Grandma’s gonna die of an infection one day but that’s her problem. Also she had a friend who didn’t know how to use the needle right, so instead of poking herself with it, she’d scratch her skin till she bled. I cringed when I heard that.
I had a patient drive himself to the neurology clinic who ended up being completely deaf, cortically blind in half his visual field, and demented to the point where he didn’t know what decade it was.
My uncle told about a patient who thought he had Ebola because he was in the same Que as a coughing black guy. :/.
This one is a little different.My dad is a pediatrician. He told me the story of a teenage boy (around 13 y/o) who was referred to him (something unrelated, can’t remember what). When he asked him if he was on medications, the boy’s mom pulled out some birth control pills. Apparently his family physician suggested birth control as a way to treat his acne.Yes, you read that correctly. A licensed doctor told a teenage BOY that was just going through puberty to take female hormones as acne treatment.I think he had been taking them regularly for the past year…
Christ, the number of times I have to explain colds to adults. You’re 40 years old, you’ve probably had 100 of these, how have you not figured this out yet?? Do you come to the doctor every time??? Antibiotics won’t help, drink fluids, sudafed, and write this s**t down for next time.
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