30 Awkward Questions Doctors Wish Their Friends And Family Didn't Ask

Occasionally - less often as I and my circle age - someone will, upon finding out that I’m a surgeon, ask, “what’s the worst thing you’ve ever seen?” The answer is, and has always been, something about which I’ve been trying very hard to avoid thinking, no matter what that is. The worst thing I’ve ever seen is very likely something that I can’t remember and deliberately so.

My wife’s cousin wanted me to see if his testicles had shrank from using steroids. I politely declined.

Not a doctor, but since people are telling stories…

My grandmother (a former nurse) asked me to take her to her doctor’s appointment, which involved a routine chest x-ray. I was a nurse working in radiology at the time; I knew the tech at the office and got to have a look at her x-ray immediately after it was shot. She had a massive mass in her chest and pleural effusion… how she wasn’t symptomatic was beyond me.

I must have had a look on my face, because she said “I’ve got cancer, don’t I?”

She passed away less than a month later.

Not a doctor or medical professional at all.

I grew up in a small town where everyone's phone number started with the same 3 digit exchange. In my mid teens the town had finally grown enough that a 2nd phone exchange was needed. A new doctor's office ended up with a number on the new exchange that had the same last 4 digits as my family's home.

We would get so many wrong numbers where the moment we would say hello the caller would launch into the most graphic description of various body parts oozing various fluids.

I get people mistaking us for the doctor's office, but was baffled that they thought the doctor was answering their office phone direct and not a receptionist.

Edit for autocorrect typos.

Not a doctor, I’m a sonographer. I had a friend I was on a sports team with send me her images from an ultrasound she had performed on a breast mass. It was not good.

Not sure if this counts. I'm not a Doctor, but I work in a hospital in a medical field, so obviously my family all think I'm an expert. My mum ended up in hopsital after a series of falls. She had an MRI scan, followed by emergency surgery. The Surgeon wrote up the report to my mums family doctor, but it was in another language which my Dad doesn't speak, so he forwarded it on to me.

My mother had had a bowel tumour some 4 years earlier, and it had metastacised to the brain - 2 distinct tumours, the second proved inoperable. Three months later she passed away.

I went to emergency with an acquaintance to get his chest and abdominal x-rays, only to watch with the tech as the cr scanner slowly revealed a sea of white. Metastatic stomach cancer. It was a long walk back with him to his cubicle. No words were spoken but he could read my face.

Nurse not a doctor but having to explain genital warts and STI transmission with my mother is something I wish I could forget.

I don’t know about “wish they hadn’t,” because I was happy to be there for my friend. But I was an EMT and also worked in hospitals and eventually specialty medical technician stuff. A friend of mine got her lab results in MyChart late at night and couldn’t talk to her doctor before the morning. I had to explain to her, at like 23 years old, that she had type 2 diabetes.

Not good news and also it was during COVID, so that was extra scary for her.

Can you read my husbands MRI report…. Report clearly shows metastatic cancer. Oof.