30 Doctors Share The Dumbest Lies They've Heard From Patients

Woman comes to emerg with complaints of vaginal discharge and discomfort.
Pelvic exam initially reveals significant yeast infection, but there appears to be a foreign body in her vagina.
“Is there something stuck inside?”
“No, I don’t know what’s in there…”
Speculum examination reveals a very soft mandarin orange, peel still on.
“Oh, that! We heard it would improve our fertility…”

You can’t make this s**t up.

Not a surgeon or doctor, but an Anesthesia Nurse/ OR Nurse...
But a mom directly lied to us about her 12 year old pre ENT surgery.

We always confirm with the pacient and legal guardians all the pre surgery check up:
Name
Age/date of birth
Any past medical history
Common medication, and medication took in the last 24h
Surgery proposed
Last time you eat or drink anything

The thing is in the last item of the check list the mom lied... Her answer "no he doesn't eat anything since yesterday", the kid confirmed. Note that it was 4 PM.

Outcome:

Surgery went well, no problems. When comes the time to remove the tube... The kid starts vomiting tons of rice and beans... When I say tons I mean at least 1kg of said food.
The kid aspirates part of the food against our best efforts... We aspirate do everything we can including a broncofibroscopy.

Everything ends up ok, the kid survived, no further complications and recovered to full health in only 2 days.

When confronted about the lie, and explained how her son could have died, the "Karen" mom said "what could I do?! He was ungry and eats like a bull! Who am I to say he can't" We all lost our pacience and just said "HIS MOM!!! , he could and was close to dieing because of this"

Conclusion: Please take the fasting period, and pre surgery recommendations seriously, any doubt be honest with your health team.

"Do you have any medical problems?"

"No"

"So no diabetes?"

"No diabetes"

"What medications are you taking?"

"Metformin. For my diabetes."

I facepalm every time

In the ER, 4 am, teenage girl and her parents arrive, she's been constipated for days and no poop has come out at all. I was busy so I ask the nurse to check if the patient indeed has poop and needs an enema. So a rectal exam is needed. A few minutes later the nurse urgently called me. When we uncovered the girl (she had tons of clothes) we just saw this cute little head popping out. A baby on the way.
' why didn't you tell us that you were pregnant?' I asked
"I'm not pregnant" she kept saying while I was cutting the umbilical cord
She lied to her parents (don't know how to this day) the whole pregnancy. She lived with them. I had to explain everything to the parents. They didn't have a clue and judging by their face, I believed them.

I fell down onto my couch and a cucumber was sticking up between the cushions. It went right in.

Had a patient show up the ER with a wound to the back of her head.

I say, “Hey Ms. X, what happened?”

“I don’t know, I picked up chicken from the gas station and went to bed. And this morning I noticed I was bleeding”

I start inspecting the wound. Looks like it tracks pretty far, and there’s this strange cotton-like material sticking out that is also tracking too deep to visualize. I press her some more about the circumstances because my ER Doc spider sense starts going off.

Me: “Were you assaulted? Did someone harm you? Were you in a car accident? Did something fall on you”

Patient: “No. I just went to bed. Maybe I got up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom”

Finally I decide to send her through the Donut Of Truth (aka get a CT scan) of her head before me and my trusty scalpel start seeing where this trail of mystery cotton leads.

The lady had a bullet lodged up against her skull bone.

Still don’t have an answer to the cotton, but I’m guessing the gun fired through some cloth.

When I told her she had a bullet in her head her response was “Oh. weird” and then she went back to playing candy crush on her phone.

Once I asked a patient if he had done any surgeries in the past and he said no. When we did a CT abdomen he had one kidney and signs of scarring, so I went back to ask what happened to the kidney. He said he has no idea and started winking at me and sweating. I took the hint and came back later when he was alone, turns out he sold his kidney because he lost a lot of money gambling.

One dude lied about being paralyzed after a lumbar puncture. Get a call from nurse patient says he can’t move legs following a lumbar puncture (spinal tap). I called the team that did the procedure and they assured me there was no indication of this sort of injury happening during the procedure but agreed with my plan to get an urgent MRI. I go to examine him and nurse says she thinks he moved one of his feet. Next thing I know he says he can actually move his legs again but they are feeling weird. Then this weird feeling turns into intense pain and he asks for intravenous narcotics (dilaudid). I tell him no because this story makes no sense.

By god it was a miracle I tell you when this man walked himself right out of the hospital after I refused the iv narcotics.

Also, the MRI was normal.

“I haven’t had sex in five years”

-woman who was actively in labor in the ED.

Honestly the "dumbest" lies are the one people who lie about how much alcohol or other drugs they use. Alcohol and benzodiazepine withdrawal can kill you, and if you use opioids from the street than you likely have a higher tolerance and may need more medications in the hospital so be honest, I truly don't care how much you drink/ use, I just don't want you to get worse for something we can plan for and prevent.

When I was a Peds nurse, I had a super trashy lady come in with a 2 year old. She said the baby wasn’t eating or drinking anything. We admit the baby and legitimately start getting concerned because the food trays aren’t touched, no wet diapers, not drinking her juice, etc. Weigh is staying the same though.

The pediatrician asked me to sit outside the room and watch through a cracked window shade (that looked into the room). So I watch and this mother is shoving pizza and soda down this baby’s throat, the baby obviously has no interest for the mashed potato’s/chicken on her tray because she’s stuffed on junk food. The mom would change the diaper and hide it instead of leaving it to be weighed.

It was so bizarre and she completely denied doing it even though I saw her. Poor baby.

Nurse here. The absolute dumbest thing patients have said...and to be fair this was the patients parents since I was in Pedi but still dumb AF and caused no end of grief trying to unspin it.

I was rooming patients and I went to the full lobby and called the next one in by last name. They stand up and mom and dad bring the little girl back. I'm rooming them, take the vitals, review purpose of visit, make some adjustments to the chart, update their pharmacy and allergies and go out and let the pediatrician know they are ready.

The pediatrician goes into the room and come out like 3 minutes later and says...that's not my patient, where is my patient? I'm like wtf? I go in and ask the parents and no in fact they were not the patient. I'm like why did you say you were someone you were not? They simply said they didn't want to wait so they just came back.

We had to completely unspin all the changes to the chart and had to get legal involved to make sure there were no HIPAA violations, which fortunately, there weren't. I'm fascinated that people can collectively think...yeah, let's do this, no one will know. Like, how does that even play out in their minds?

Dad is a physician and has a million funny stories. He told me this one from a few decades ago:

Had a patient come into the ER with a towel over his groin, covered in blood. Claimed he was cutting vegetables in his kitchen and the knife slipped. Dad takes a look and the guy is butchered down there. Had to call a urologist in the middle of the night to consult.

Guy eventually confesses to trying to give himself a circumcision because he didn't want to pay the $200 it would have cost. Urologist was able to help save... 'him', but it cost a helluva lot more than $200 for emergency penis surgery.

I have one right now.

60 year old male hospitalized for an infection following a spinal fusion. He had surgery to remove the infected hardware, and has a cervical collar (neck brace) to stabilize his spine and a treatment plan that says to keep it on 24/7 for 4 weeks. It’s been 16 days and he removed it Sunday night. When confronted he told me that he had cleared it with his surgeon and told them he had removed it. He had not. I explained that he has an extremely unstable spine and the wrong move could result in irreversible quadriplegia, to which he responded, “I don’t think that’s going to happen. Even if there’s an explosion I’ll hold real still.”

On the phone with his sister, shouting into the speaker, he said, “well I took it off because it was so uncomfortable, at first my neck was real stiff but I shook my head a few times and something in there broke loose. It feels much better now.” While his nurse and I stared at each other in silent horror.

I'm just a med student but a doctor shared this with us, she's a gynecologist and this women came to her complaining about how she hasn't gotten her periods in few months and well she was showing menopausal symptoms and in fact she looked almost 50 but she kept saying she's only 30 and she can't have menopause. It has a funny ending, when the doctor asked if the women had a kid and she said yes he's 27 y/o. Idk why people lie about their age but this was a funny story for the whole class

Dude came in asking for a second vasectomy. It’s been 10 years since his first vasectomy with numerous sperm counts all being zero throughout the years. He now has a new baby. His sperm count is still zero and wants the vasectomy “fixed”. Didn’t know if he was lying to himself or not.

“Do you smoke cigarettes?”

“No, I quit!”

“When did you quit?”

“This morning”

Part of my job is dealing with medical records- my favorite part is when you are reading the doctors notes and you can tell they are fed up with the patients b******t from their tone.

“Patient in for routine colonoscopy, asked if solids consumed in 24 hrs prior, patient confirms no. In process of procedure, several dozen kernels of corn are discovered in colon and cannot continue. Patient specifically instructed not to consume corn beforehand as this happened prior visit.”

Their age. Had a woman say shes 30 when she clearly didn’t look it. Oh well I move on to other questions. Look at her files and lab reports have her real age on them. 41. Like y tho? What difference does it make lying to healthcare staff? This is health related, not ur tinder profile. Nobody gon see this n go I aint dating an old lady. Btw she was married with children.

Occupational physical.

Have you ever had surgery?
No
Reveal chest. Ziper scar from a CABG.
Oh, yeah forgot about that.
(Forgot about a heart bypass)