"Convinced She Was Pregnant": 48 Times Doctors Had To Correct Patients Who Tried To Self-Diagnose

Doctor here.
One story that sticks out is a woman who was convinced that she had Helicobacter pylori (bacteria that causes stomach ulcers in some) and had to be tested. I reviewed her chart and it showed multiple negative tests over the years and even a biopsy sample from an upper GI scope that was negative. Her treatment for this "infection" was to eat dirt. Literally dirt from the Internet advertised to cure stomach issues. There was no convincing her that this wasn't a thing.

This is a tame one, but the others are too specific to tell without the possibility of revealing the patient's identity.

Not my patient but my dad's. In the early 70's, a guy walks in claiming that he has colon cancer, and is really worried. he had a history of coming in repeatedly to the clinic for various ailments. Dad checked him out and saw no problems. Sent him back with a scheduled review. The patient still had the same worries and stuck with his claim that he had colon cancer. Dad told hi: if you want I'll give you in writing that you don't have this (can you imagine that today :P) and if you do, I'll take care of you. The patient stopped coming to the clinic with the complaint, but he and dad became really good friends. 40 yrs later he is still a hypochondriac, and dad still reassures him.

Not a doctor, but had a patient say her anti-malaria pills gave her typhoid fever.

As a resident I had one patient wait in the ER waiting room for 8 hours for painful lips. Diagnosis: chapped lips. Prescribed chap stick.
Another patient waited the same amount of time in the ED waiting room at the county h**l hole hospital. The reason: mosquito bite. One stupid mosquito bite. He said he was a hemophiliac and was afraid he would bleed to death.

My dad is a physician, and he's got a lot of great stories! This is from memory, if anyone is interested I can ask my dad about a few more stories, but my favorite is when a little old lady who didn't speak English came into the clinic with a live chicken. She claimed the chicken had the spirit of her dead husband in it, and it was giving her nightmares. She told the check-in desk she wanted to talk to the doctor about what to do. So my dad, the only guy who spoke Spanish at the moment in the clinic, listens to her and doesn't quite know what to do. He asks the lady if she has tried getting rid of the chicken, the lady says no she doesn't want to get rid of the chicken, she wants to keep it alive it's a pet. She tells my dad she wants the doctor to cleanse the chicken of her husbands spirit so he can rest in peace and so she can stop having nightmares. My dad tells her he doesn't think he has anything to fix that particular problem, and asked if she'd tried anything already. (At the time he is working on a reservation in the southwest, and traditional healing practices tend to take place along side modern medicine) she says yes but it didn't work, that's why she went to the clinic. She said thank you and left with her chicken.

TLDR: women comes into clinic with a chicken.

My boyfriend is a doctor. His patient came in claiming he has testosterone deficiency with the only symptom being headache. A freaking headache.

Well, I'm not a doctor but I am an EMT. I stepped into a house in the projects to hear, "GYAT d****t IM HAVIN A HAAT ATTACK! I KNOW WHAT A HAAT ATTACK FEELS LIKE LORRAINE!!!" There was a lot of feces and urine involved, but no cardiac issues.

Edit: This was actually a dialogue between two obese black women in NJ. The one screaming was calling the other one baby from time to time so lesbians? I don't know. She demanded that the paramedics come so I kind of just waited in that cesspool of a bedroom discretely watching the Nat Geo special on water bison that was playing on her giant TV.

Spend 5 minutes on WebMD searching your symptom and conclude you have cancer with 3 weeks to live ~ hypochondriacs everywhere.