"Convinced She Was Pregnant": 49 Times Doctors Had To Correct Patients Who Tried To Self-Diagnose

I work in physical therapy, and once had a guy with dementia say "I know I'm in pain...but I just can't remember where". I felt bad for laughing about it later but I had never heard something like that.

Had a patient come in once due to weight gain that she thought was due to being pregnant. Made sense, except she'd taken more than half a dozen pregnancy tests and they were all negative. She was convinced she was pregnant though, and wanted me to check. I tell her ok, I'll do a blood test, since we can detect pregnancy earlier with that, and she refuses. Says that she just wants to pee on the stick in front of me and have me read it. So I say sure, and lo and behold, it's negative.

Little more questioning, and it turns out she'd been eating literally nothing but chicken wings for weeks. When I asked her why in the world she would do that, she replied that she just really liked chicken wings.

ER and family practice mid-level here. Had someone come in one day saying they had wires and fibers under their skin, including a little ziplock bag of (you guessed it) wires and fibers that they had pulled out, he said with a needle. Now, this is Morgellon's, a well known psychological entity, but to see it so blatantly like you read about in the text books just blew me away. He actually believed it. Very unsettling.

Not a doctor, was the patient. A few years ago, during the summer, I started to get really sick. Fever, itchy/sore throat, cough with mucus. Went to urgent care after my throat began to swell. The doctors tested for strep, test was negative. They insisted it was mono. Tested for mono, test was negative, yet they kept insisting it was mono. Doctors gave me steroids and sent me home. Over the next two weeks the symptoms became worse. At this point, the pain of swelling was so bad, all I did was sleep and drink water/chicken broth...barely. My throat was so swollen I couldn't swallow anything solid. One morning I get up and my throat is completely swollen to the point I can't even. Swallow my own saliva. I have a panic attack, and call urgent care. They tell me time come in right away. I go back and the doctor doesn't even look at my throat, insists it's mono. So, my bf (ex) freaks out and demands she look. She does finally and gets really nervous. Tells me to go to the ER immediately and they would be waiting for my arrival. Turns out I my tonsils are abscess, about to burst, and I have tonsillitis.

I'm trying to see if my doctor is in here. Last week I was thoroughly convinced I had cancer in my neck and shoulder because I felt two hard masses.

I just knew it had to be cancer. Doc looks at it and then slings me up and said 'the damage has been done. You just need to let it heal.' and I was of course confused. I had apparently damaged my muscle and it had formed two pinto beans sized knots.

He was right though... Knots are starting to go away.

Dr Rob of you're in here, I admit it, you were right and I was wrong.

(not a Dr.) but I was in the ER in college in New York City for some crazy stress (I think I was over caffeinated and had not slept in 2 days from studying) but anyway, I ended up just being dehydrated and they gave me an IV and let me hang out there for a while. In the background I kept hearing this guy yelling "I'M GONNA FAINT! I'M GONNA FAINT!" And it seems pretty legit, so I was getting worried. Finally, He yells it out one more time, and a doctor walks by and says, "Mister - you're in a hospital bed, so if you faint, I think you'll be OK.".

Patient told me she knew it wasn't a heart attack this time. It felt different than the last 19 times she came to the ER (which weren't heart attacks). She was half right. It wasn't the same as the other times. She died :-(

Heart attack. Refused transport to a cardiac center.

My best friend had weird symptoms for awhile and became obsessed with googling and researching the possible causes. She was convinced that she had Multiple Sclerosis. She woke up one morning and the lower half of her right side was numb. She went to an emergency care and asked for an MRI. The doctor there believed she had sciatica pain and refused. Weeks went by and she went to another urgent care and was final referred for an MRI. Turns out she had very advanced MS, now is partially paralyzed.

"I popped a pimple on his side and chicken bones fell out." Obese, uneducated lady with her small dog featuring a gnarly granulated abscess on the side of his lower abdomen.
The kicker? She wasn't lying.
Hernia present that allowed chicken bones to perforate through small intestine directly into subcutaneous space.

I am not a doctor. I once had a middle school band student who had to miss a rehearsal because she had bruises all over her legs. The doctors diagnosis? Unwashed blue jeans.

I was the patient in this scenario.

I had an infected toe from an ingrown tornail, having one before (other toe) my doctor gave me antibiotics and it cleaned it up within a week. So the second time I went in, my doctor was on vacation and the nurse practitioner was out on maternity leave, so they set me up with someone else in the practice.

So i show her my toe and explain 1 perscription of antibiotics cleared it up last time and thats all i needed. She just gave me an expression that looked like "who the f**k do you think you are" and said id need surgery, so she gave me a referral to get surgery done on the toe and told me to go set it up with the receptionist. So i went and told her to set me up with an appointment with my doctor when she got back. She got back. Antibiotics and that was that.

Always get a 2nd opinion regarding surgeries.

My elderly friend is the queen of self diagnosis. She tells the doctors her prognosis and rarely follows through with their treatment for her actual issues. My personal favorite is that she produces too much electricity. Because of this she has issues with anything electrical. Namely computers, cash registers, pin pads, and my personal favorite, gas pumps. She is afraid she will blow up the pump so I fill her tank for her. In reality she is confused by technology and never wears her glasses. She was recently put on Vitamin D pills because she rarely goes outside. Her house is basically a black box inside. I'm afraid to find her wrapped in foil one day.

Dentist here - 27 year old patient comes in with mother. Mother is on disability. Patient has large amounts of decay on every single tooth in his mouth. Kid absolutely will not even listen to having his teeth pulled and dentures placed (public health office so most are uninsured/low financial status). Really should have most if not all of them pulled. Agreed to do a mock-up treatment plan which came out to roughly $4500 (that's with the sliding fee discount of (50% for the lowest financial level). They agree to pay, mom plunks $800 cash down for root canal to start off. I ask what happened for his teeth to get that bad. Stupidest answer I've had yet: "A dentist before told me to mix dollar store mouthwash with peroxide and rinse with it. It absolutely wrecked my teeth afterwards." Mother agrees and swears that same thing happened to her husband. Older brother is getting all of his pulled.

Not a doctor, but I went to the ER, post DVT, with symptoms of a pulmonary embolism. I had chest pains, could not catch my breath, and I passed out in the waiting room. Even though I had oxygen sats below 80%, and was clearly struggling for air, the ER doctor actually patted my hand and told me I must be stressed and tried to discharge me. I told him I refused to leave, and he needed to check with my PCP before he did anything else. I ended up staying in the hospital for four days, and eventually they found a small clot in my lungs. I still couldn't walk very far without stopping by the time they discharged me.

I had a woman once that was convinced that someone was trying to steal her Klonopin, so she ate all 45 of them. We try to get her to drink AC so that we hopefully don't have to lavage them out. She fought us over that because now we were the ones who were trying to steal them from her. That was on an ER rotation in paramedic school.

Another was the woman who SWORE she was having a heart attack, despite not having any symptoms at all. We did the EKG and full work up, which unsurprisingly came out completely normal. She insisted so we transported her anyways. ER apparently ran all their tests and discharged her when they were clear. Three hours later, guess who calls. She's still convinced she's having an MI, an wants to be transported to another hospital. She was politely told to go away. Found out later that she calls once a week or so.

Unrelated but funny was the old man who called us out because he couldn't find the TV remote, and his son was asleep.

(Not a doctor) Once had a patient come in who was *convinced* he had colon cancer. He was just constipated.


Had an overweight young woman come in saying that she was pregnant and the baby's foot was protruding out of her v****a. We get her back quickly, start a set of vitals... and she is terribly calm about the whole thing. Ended up she was not pregnant at all.. just crazy.


An older gentleman came in complaining of headaches. During his history, he became agitated and kept insisting that the government had been experimenting on him by dusting his house, food, water, etc. with anthrax. He was quite certain that there was anthrax in his brain because he could "see it in the back of his throat." Turns out he just had an upper respiratory infection. So... same thing I guess.

My sister keeps diagnosing me with endometriosis and polycystic ovaries and another one I can't remember. She gets furious with me for not going to the doctor because i "Don't care about my health" and im sticking my head in the sand etc etc. My only symptom is irregular periods and normal cramps/fatigue while on my period.

But apparently cramps aren't normal and neither is wanting to eat chocolate and take a nap. It's gotten to the point where I literally cannot say a single word about my health in any way shape or form without her jumping on my a*s. And no she's not a doctor. She does have endo and pcos which apparently qualifies her to diagnose me.

At the psych hospital , we had a difficult patient - violent, making wild accusations, completely psychotic. During treatment team meeting at the psych hospital, when we were working out her treatment plan, she suddenly started screaming that she'd gone blind, that she couldn't see, and if we cared anything about her we'd help her.

This time, she had a point, though. The lens of her eyeglasses had fallen out and landed in the breast pocket of her shirt.

Not a doctor but a lady I nursed had an ascites (accumulation of fluid on the abdomen that gives it a hard swollen look) and she convinced all the ladies in her ward bay that she was pregnant. She would walk round rubbing her 'bump'.

Patient here. I was around 7-8 years old when this happened and I went in with joint pain, neck stiffness, a tick bite resembling a bull's eye and probably some other stuff (this was a while ago). Doctors run a bunch of tests and they all come back negative for any reasonable afflictions so they all say it will pass. Weeks go by and we keep visiting different doctors. My parents look into it as my symptoms get worse and come up with Lyme disease which fit all the symptoms. No doctor could be convinced to test for Lyme disease since this is California and there's no way someone could have Lyme disease in California (despite telling the doctors we had been out of state in places where deer ticks are common). After a couple of months my symptoms have started to include chest pain and issues bending my knees and elbows so a doctor finally decided to test for it and surprise, I had Lyme disease. And it was fairly advanced since it took so long to diagnose. Then came the weekly blood tests where they would take multiple vials of blood. It's been a decade and I'm still having huge issues getting blood drawn. Oh and I'm also still suffering from chest pain that most likely stems from Lyme disease...

Tl;Dr: I was a kid who was bit by a tick and I caught Lyme disease. But I live in California and Lyme disease is impossible to get in California so it took months to diagnose and likely still affects me due to it advancing pretty far.