36 Insane Cases Of Patients Definitely Faking An Illness, That Doctors Experienced In Their Careers

Not exactly faking it but funny story:
When I was working in the hospital a patient's screen with his vital parameters started showing dangerously low levels of oxygen in blood, which basically means somebody is suffocating in a way. So all alarms go on and the nurses and one doctor rush to the patients room while the CPR mode is active. Surprisingly the patient was looking all well and didn't show any blue skin (sign of deoxygenate blood), he was even smiling. So everybody just confusedly went on with their business, except for this one sister that grinned at the old man raising her finger, saying "oh mr smith, did you hold your breath again to see how fast the oxygen levels drop?". And he just started grinning like a five year old and nodded. One of the funniest moments :D.

Had a patient arrive to my unit thrashing around on the stretcher and saying "I'm having a seizure, I'm having a seizure!"

Transport and I moved her into her room and I told her to call me when she's done. Amazingly, she was cured!

Crazy, I actually just got out of the hospital and Im reading this in bed. I SHOULD have gone to the hospital Monday when I had terrible pain in my left side that doubled me over and made me vomit but I have an irrational fear that doctors arw always going to think Im faking and yell at me for wasting their time. So I psyched myself out and convinced myself that I was overreacting and the doctor would think I just want meds or something but I still felt horrible today so I forced myself to go. The doctor was very nice and it turns out I had passed a kidney stone on Monday. He sent me home with a note keeping me out of work for the next couple days and a small prescription for meds. And told me from now on if you're in so much pain it's causing you to double over, just go to the darn hospital.

I've just retired, but I was a pathologist. By the time a patient got to me, there's no way they were faking it.

My mom had a "frequent flyer" at the emergency room she worked at. This lady was constantly in unimaginable pain over everything. She got a spinter in her finger and that constituted a 10 on the pain scale and she needed pain meds to deal with it. She was a known using illegal substances as well. She had been caught stealing needles and shoving them up under her huge sweaty chest. The only reason my mom found out was because she came back in to place the EKG pads, and to do so, she had to lift her breasts up to place the pad. When she did, the needles rolled out.

From that point on, they had to have a member of security watching her any time a nurse or doctor left the room. She also had a massive arrest record and there were times the cops would bring her to the ER instead of an ambulance.

Had a pt come in with uncontrolled diabetes. He was type 1. His bsl was really high. A couple days and it was back under control and he was ready to be discharged when they went out of control again. Those pattern continued.

About 7am one morning his girlfriend fronts me needing a note for the judge. He was supposed to be in court at 8am. He'd been eating wild amounts of food to try to get out of going to court, then wanted us to fix the situation with 1 hour notice. We did nothing. He went home about 11am.

Had a frequent-flyer patient who did have some legitimate medical issues, but you could tell that there was more to it than that. Patient would tell us to push IV controlled pain meds as fast as possible because "it works better." Also had the usual "I'm allergic to every single weaker pain med but specific strong ones" story. I suspected they were also fudging some admissions information (was making the rounds at area facilities) but that's another story.

Patient had to self-catheterize due to a bladder problem, but would regularly come in with raging urinary tract infections. While catheters can cause UTIs, the frequency and severity didn't seem to add up, on top of the other questionable aspects of this particular patient. Turns out, patient was putting their bodily fluids on the catheters before inserting them to cause the infections so they could come into the hospital for meds.

Not necessarily faking it but I work at an clinic and definitely memorable when a patient asked if we would fill out an FMLA form for her period week every month. Like if you are actually so debilitated (which can happen) that is definitely something we need to address and first step would be to get on birth control. Didnt want any sort of assessment or to start trying treatments, just the form so she could get out of work every month. Unsurprisingly we denied that one.

Husband is a doctor waiting for his residency to start, last year during a pediatrics clinical rotation he had several parents who has clearly coached thier kids into faking all sorts of idiomatic aches and pains in order to get the doctors to prescribe controlled meds.

Getting pages that patients state they are in indescribable agony and screaming nonstop, then going outside their room and listening a bit while they joke and laugh with their family....only for them to start screaming again as soon as I walk in the room.

Not a medical professional. I was thought to have been making my symptoms up. That it was all in my head. 2 years and a mess load of doctors later. Turns out I have a muscle disease. So apparently I'm really bad at having a disease. I know even the doctor that found it, thought I was faking it. He apologized profusely and sent me to a specialist that deals with rare muscle diseases.

Literally every day. Fake seizures. Fake syncope. Fake chest pain. The list goes on.

I used to see kids faking it a lot to avoid going to school/doing homework back when I was rotating in Pediatrics. Best one was a 11 year old who had read every symptom of appendicitis and regurgitated It as a medical student would in exams and he didn't even have fever and his USG was normal. He could have won an Oscar for the acting though including that small moan when examining the abdomen and checking for rebound tenderness.

I commonly have young kids who really want glasses because some of their friends have them. They’ll come in acting like they can barely see the big E on the chart. I change some lenses in front of their eyes, give them a little encouragement that they can see better, and they can magically read 20/20 with little to no prescription. They’re not big fans when I tell them they don’t really need glasses.

Not a medical professional, but when I was a teenager I had this friend who would literally fake seizures.

At first we took it seriously because my other friends and I were young and didn’t know better. She only did this when other people were around to watch and to sympathize with her. We would just stand there and watch, she wouldn’t even shake, yet she called them seizures.

Eventually we smarted up and realized she wasn’t even doing a good job of faking. Especially after she was taken to the hospital— we tagged along because we were sleeping over—and we witnessed the doctor telling her parents that he doesn’t know what’s going on, but her body shows no signs of having a seizure. That person was darn weird.

Got called for a seizure to a park well known to be full homeless users. We walk up and there is a man, laying in the grass in no distress. As soon as I say “hi there” he starts shaking his whole body and yells “oh no help me I’m seizing” and his friend says “I think you need to give him some meds for the seizures.”.

I’ve worked at a hospital for about a year, so I’ve only had two cases where I knew a patient was faking it.
The first one was a young male patient who had an abscess under his arm and demanded inpatient treatment (he did not. I don’t know why he was admitted). He refused to let a nurse put in an iv so we had to call RRT (rapid response) to put in an iv using their ultrasound (complete waste of resources. We use this for patients who are old with poor veins). I took him to the shower and he says he’s dizzy, I go to walk him to bed with the gait belt on and this man DROPS. It was 100% a fake fall with the way he fell to his side to protect himself from belly flopping the floor. Then he fakes being unresponsive. We call RRT and the fall team to come and assess. Fun fact: this patient fakes 3 falls in the week he was in the hospital. This patient was a complete waste of a bed and resources. He was telling me he was a medical assistant but now he’s on disability (in his early twenties?? When he walks fine???) which is kinda a red flag for Munchhausen‘s. Surprise surprise he’s back a few months later with the same issue. Surprise surprise.... he falls twice more during his stay. House doctor started charting that they were purposeful and so they didn’t count toward for floor fall count.

Second one was a few weeks ago, lady comes in with “pseudo-seizures” as she states.... she literally said she has fake seizures. Ok. So she “seized” in the room. RRT is already on the floor so they come and check it out. This woman doesn’t even jerk right, she looks like she’s grinding/doing the worm.... in the bed. RRT RN picks up her arm above her head and she guards........ so it’s definitely fake. That, and she has no postictal phase (when people seize, it takes them a little while to come back down to earth). She just sits up and whines that she’s in pain. She goes number 2 in the bed.... on purpose to show me she’s in pain and the PA refuses to order her the meds she’s asking for. She asks someone to help her up out of bed to the bathroom but I popped into the room and told her “because her seizures are /so unpredictable/ there’s no way we can get her up without the risk of her seizing again. Bedpan it is.”.