Funniest Chief Complaints

[Kittenmommy]

So we did a pelvic and her mucosa had grown thru the holes in the ball and we had to take her to the OR...

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[VonKarolinas]

and the mysterious disappearance of their pet parakeet...

 

[SB100]

CC: "I have rebound tenderness in my LLQ"

PMH/PSH: Lap chole, lap appy, multiple detox admissions for opioid and ETOH abuse

You fill in the blanks.

 

[astrocreep96]

CC: Prepatellar bursitis
Occupation: Exotic Dancer

Me:

.
.
.

.
.
.

 

[jdh71]

cc: I'm tired and very lonely. Also my neighbor is dying of cancer and he looks really sick and puffy. That scared me so I came to the ER.


Pt with long standing cancer came is to the Er because she was lonely... Kinda sad actually. All labs normal, SW had a chat with her and she went home.

You're getting soft my friend.

I am disappoint.

 

[Julietcf14]

CC: One of my toes came off... I was told to come back to the hospital if it happened again

You guessed, diabetic ulcer patient. It was NASTY... woman only had like 3 toes left and they all had to be removed. This is why Im going into pediatrics people!

 

[Crajee]

These posts are truly precious! :')

Not a CC (difference between a Yank and a Brit, I guess... we say 'Presenting Complaint' instead of chief complaint and I got completely and utterly confused by this thread title, thinking it was the funniest complaints chiefs made about medical care... 'Chief' of course, being somewhere between a resident and an attending, in my head... um, don't ask! Still trying to get my head around the American system! ) - but something hilarious on the wards all the same:

So we're taking a Hx from a darling, demented old lady, and whilst doing the AMT, we asked her if she could tell us the name of the Queen. So she looks at us calmly, pausing for effect for a second and then declares in a soft-yet-confident voice: "Tennis"

It was all my hospital partner and I could do to not laugh out loud, Lord bless her. :')

 

[olemissbabydoc]

From this morning
CC: My tunnel cath fell out.

Those of you who've been around a while know this is pretty much impossible. No, dude, you PULLED it out bc you've been out of the hospital a week and you wanna come back.

 

[Dissected]

"unidentified scrotal object"

Ended up being a small abscess but he was freaked the eff out, lol.

 

[MossPoh]

Not a CC, but the questionaire for the adolescent psych floor has a question along the lines of, "What do you do for fun when you are stressed?"

Answer from a 16 year old girl: "Musik, masterbation, heroine"

The other that was a CC on the same floor from a 14 year old girl: "Cutting makes me cum and my mom walked in on me masturbating in my blood, but she doesn't understand there is nothing wrong with it."

I looked at my psychiatrist and we both had this expression of, "Oh crap, we have a lot of work ahead of us."

Same week, I did a psych day at the jail. The inmate walks in with that blank stare and disheveled hair. My doctor then stands up and says, "I gotta pee real fast. Why don't you tell MossPoh here what your thoughts have been and what brings you here?!" and then walks out of the room quickly. As the door is shutting the inmate says in a monotone voice, "You mean the thoughts about me hurting and killing people?" The door shuts with that loud slamming click sound. The room then fills with the stagnant prison air and awkward silence. "Uhhhhhhhh, yea. Lets talk about those feelings, sir."

 

[olemissbabydoc]

"the benadryl made me loopy"

(on why we presented post Tylenol PM OD)

 

[MossPoh]

I've gotten an allergy to atropine. The response? "It made my heart race..."

 

[VneZonyDostupa]

"Crack pipe in my vagina"

Apparently, she and her boyfriend/dealer were smoking it up and he went outside to get something from his car. He accidently clicked the lights on a couple times somehow, which is also their sign for "hey, cops are coming", so she just shoves it right up there. She finds out there are, in fact, no po-pos on the way and has the boyfriend drive her to the ER so we can sew up the lacerations caused by her crushed crack pipe still in her vagina.

 

[DocEspana]

The CC isn't so funny here, but the whole situation made my resident (and then the attending) laugh at this woman.

CC: "I want to get my chlamydia results and cancel my appointment for depo"

PMhx: Chlamydia 12/2009, 2/2010, 8/2010, 3/2011, 9/2011 (yea she was positive again).
Gynhx: 1 sexual partner since 6/2009. Patient asserts relationship is monogamous. Partner informed of chlamydia infx x4 (about to be 5), pt unsure if partner had ever been treated. Pt refuses to use condoms, states "I wanna have fun, they aint fun", refuses free condoms.
ObHx: G5P3023. G3 TOP, G4 TOP. Due back at clinic for depo provera in 1 week. Pt wishes to cancel appointment, stating that she cannot afford depo due to costs of children. Wishes to save up money and resume depo treatment in 3/2012. Refuses any other form of contraception.

so lets see what we know here.
She got a few kids as it is (none of them from the current man). She wont use condoms cause they're not fun. Her partner infects her with chlamydia every 3rd month it seems. She wont leave her partner. She thinks depo (no insurance price: $50 for 3 months) is too expensive so she's gonna go without any birth control for 6 months (p.s. who needs 6 months to save up $50).

Bonus points: This was the same day as the G14P0,2,11,2 with a request for a 12th TOP, and just before the 48 BMI woman who we couldn't give mirena because she was too large to have her cervix visualized and then she threw a fit because she heard Depo "might make her fat"

 

[Rollo]

Bonus points: This was the same day as the G14P0,2,11,2 with a request for a 12th TOP, and just before the 48 BMI woman who we couldn't give mirena because she was too large to have her cervix visualized and then she threw a fit because she heard Depo "might make her fat"

How the **** does this whale managed to get porked?? Seriously, are some of us men really this desperate????

 

[DocEspana]

How the **** does this whale managed to get porked?? Seriously, are some of us men really this desperate????

two different people... but the 48 BMI was G?P2 herself. I guess some people like their woman insanely big. Apparently last month (before I rotated here) one of the students looked at a similarly huge woman and said "her husband must be really thin to fit in there"

 

[luscious]

CC: haunted by ghosts

That one earned a remark from my attending. But that was literally her chief complaint! And what if she was telling the truth? Then "visual-auditory hallucinations" would have been inaccurate.

Of course she wound up being admitted and having her children taken away by CPS

 

[Brewmeister]

CC: bit by hamster

 

[ToldYouSo]

from last year...

Cc: 15 yo f with abd pain

you guys know the drill, we did thorough h&p, kicked mom out of the room, did a sexual history, everything was negative. Finally the resident was like um idk, then asked me if i had any qs, so i asked "do you have any idea why you might be having this pain?"

she was like "not really... Well..."

"go on..."

"um idk if this is related, but a couple months ago i stuck a wiffle ball in my vag."

(thinking, wtf???)

"a couple months ago? Well that prolly isnt it..."

"no you don't understand, it's still up there."

So we did a pelvic and her mucosa had grown thru the holes in the ball and we had to take her to the or...

wthhhhhhhhhhhhh

 

[Valadi]

CC: "It's tough having a big di**, cuz they all after me"

22 year old homeless kid working as a male prostitute in order to afford PCP. First paranoid schizophrenic narcissist I've ever encountered...

 

[olemissbabydoc]

two different people... but the 48 BMI was G?P2 herself. I guess some people like their woman insanely big. Apparently last month (before I rotated here) one of the students looked at a similarly huge woman and said "her husband must be really thin to fit in there"

One week on L&D I scrubbed a C/S for a BMI 61 and 68.

Welcome to Mississippi

 

[thepoopologist]

How the **** does this whale managed to get porked?? Seriously, are some of us men really this desperate????

For every pig, there's a pig ****er.

 

[Zork]

Yep, I've seen people on full disability for an anxiety disorder..



As if there was any doubt in your head, the insides of their homes are exactly as you'd expect. 50" flat screen TV, xbox/ps3, computer with wireless internet, surround sound, a car that probably has $20k-$30k invested in it. I work fire/ems in one of these neighborhoods, it's absolutely maddening, and we see the same patients you see; asthma patient who can't afford her albuterol (but has a carton of cigs and a case of beer nearby), morbidly obese patients smoking while on oxygen c/o COPD exacerbation, diabetics who seemingly refuse to keep their blood sugar in order.... but I digress..

I too ask myself how long this system is sustainable. Every one of these patients that we stack into the ER (which will invariably go on diversion) is costing ME money <sigh>

I think there are two things that anyone going into the medical field should keep in mind.
1. Anxiety disorders can be hard to control and severely debilitating.
2. You cannot always tell how much a disorder or illness impacts the patient from a clinical examination.

I speak from experience as I have early onset OCD, which is actually a basal ganglia dysregulation disorder, more similar neurologically to a movement disorder like Tourette's or Parkinsons, and can be innate or caused by physical damage, and I have a neuromuscular disorder with intermittent symptoms.

My OCD generally does not respond well to medication, and my childhood was characterized by trying one medication after another with little positive result, and a lot of negative results. I was hospitalized once and was so fed up at one point that I begged them to try a bilateral cingulotomy. I had become severely sleep deprived due to the OCD to the point where I had started having seizures.

I was on SSI for the first few years of my adult life while I tried to find a way to manage my condition. SSI is not easy to get. It takes a lot more than one doctor's note but I had a medical file as thick as a phone book documenting my condition from the age of 6. At the time I received $600 a month. $400 went to rent, utilities and it was supposed to include my portion of food as well but it was usually the case that there was nothing to eat. The $200 that remained was supposed to go to transportation costs, personal hygiene items, medical care not covered by medi-cal, and clothing when needed but I frequently had to put it towards food. Needless to say, I ate a lot of cheap breaded items and most of my clothes were on their way out.

If you know people on SSI who are driving cars they spent tens of thousands of dollars on, or who are buying flat screen TV's, I can assure you they didn't get that money from the social security administration.

I did have a gym membership, however that was to get rid of the 100lbs I gained from the medication that didn't work.

I eventually got the OCD under control and am no longer on SSI, but I still have a hard time driving...I can't shake the feeling I've ran over someone when I hit a bump, and when I get stressed I have a hard time controlling it. I used to re-write homework problems compulsively in school because I didn't feel I was doing it right even though I was, and this would consume me for 10 hours straight sometimes.

The neuromuscular disorder was consistently missed by clinical examinations because most doctors aren't familiar with it and I was frequently asymptotic when I was examined. I could be fine one day and not fine the next. I could be fine one hour and not fine the next.

Remember we have all of these fancy medical tests now days because there are a lot of things that can't be detected on clinical evaluations. Eventually a person is going to come to you who is at the end of their rope because they are struggling with some condition that has severely impacted their lives and has been brushed off by other doctors who were just not knowledgeable about it or were of the erroneous opinion that if they couldn't see that something was wrong then nothing was wrong, and you're going to brush them off too, and they're going to go and kill themselves, because that's how depressed people who are struggling with undiagnosed or invisible conditions can get.

It's your job to have understanding for these patients, not doubt them when they say something is troubling them. If you can't understand that then you shouldn't go into medicine.

 

[Zork]

In all fairness, there are LOTS of people who abuse disability and doctors often just sign off on it instead of dealing with the BS.

In all fairness, there are lot of people on disability who actually do have a disability. And I promise you someone isn't going to get on disability on one doctor's note. You usually have to submit full copies of medical records including test results.

 

[45408]

It's your job to have understanding for these patients, not doubt them when they say something is troubling them. If you can't understand that then you shouldn't go into medicine.

No, our job is to correctly diagnose and treat them. I frequently doubt them when they say what is troubling them, because if I took all of my patients at their word, I would end up doing a lot of unnecessary operations. This causes unnecessary complications, which results in lawsuits.

 

[Zork]

No, our job is to correctly diagnose and treat them. I frequently doubt them when they say what is troubling them, because if I took all of my patients at their word, I would end up doing a lot of unnecessary operations. This causes unnecessary complications, which results in lawsuits.

Brushing patients off because you doubt them and have decided their complaints aren't valid results in more deaths and lawsuits. More importantly, more deaths.

My cousin went to three doctors for a watery eye. The first thought it was allergies. Reasonable assumption. Gave her allegra. Brushed her off when she went back. She went to a second doctor. He insisted it was allergies and and refused to look into it beyond that. He would not even refer who to an ophthalmologist. She went to a third doctor, an ophthalmologist which she paid for out of pocket. He took her complaint seriously and did an MRI. She had a tumor which had metastasized by the time they went to remove it, and now has terminal cancer. Granted had the first doctor took her more seriously it still may have been too late, however if none of the doctors believe her symptoms were as troublesome as they were, she likely would have missed the window of opportunity for life extending treatment.

My sister started having anxiety attacks and waking up in cold sweats. She got referred to a psychiatrist right off the bat who diagnosed her as being bi-polar and put her on lithium. Everytime she insisted the medication didn't help and something else was wrong, he tried her on a new mood stabilizer, SSRI, or anti-psychotic. Every doctor brushed her off as a psych case. This went on for years until she fell into psychosis and tried to kill herself. A fairly young doctor was assigned to her while she was in the hospital and decided to do a thyroid panel. She had Grave's Disease. They removed her thyroid and she has been fine since but she lost almost a decade of her life dealing with uncontrolled hyperthyroidism because no one thought for a moment that she might not be a psych case after all.

My neuromuscular disorder. Myself and nearly every other person with this disorder had out complaints brushed off as "growing pains" or out inability to function like others as "laziness" growing up. Granted it's a rare condition but most of us were only finally diagnosed when our complaints were taken seriously and we were referred to a neurologist.

I can go on. Doctors are human and it can be difficult to properly diagnose someone, I understand that, the issue in all of these cases were the individuals complaints were not taken seriously and the doctor did not give them the benefit of the doubt, and take diagnostic measures he or she otherwise would have if he had not doubted the individual. Measures which would have lead to a proper diagnosis.

Instead, the doubt lead to the patient just getting brushed off, delaying treatments which could have greatly improved the quality of life or even saved a life.

 

[45408]

I'll just let you grind your ax, since that seems to be the reason you joined this forum. Regardless, I will only be operating on patients that I think need an operation.

 

[Zork]

I'll just let you grind your ax, since that seems to be the reason you joined this forum. Regardless, I will only be operating on patients that I think need an operation.

I think you are misunderstanding what I am saying. I'm not telling surgeons they should operate on patients in lieu in knowing what's wrong with them/having an idea what's wrong with them, or simply because the patients think there is something wrong with them. Generally a person does not get sent to a surgeon without a diagnosis....at least around here.

The issue I was speaking of is medical professionals who don't listen to their patients and take their complaints seriously, and who's failure to do so biases them in a way which prevents them from ordering diagnostic tests which are actually warranted based on the symptoms the patient complains of, or prevents them from referring their patients to a specialist who might be more qualified to pursue a diagnosis.

My initial issue was with the post by the paramedic concerning individuals on disability who he felt were defrauding the system because he couldn't see anything physically wrong with them and gave examples of those who claimed they had bad backs (which is a common injury among paramedics and fire fighters btw) but most conditions and disorders are invisible, which is again, why we have tests.

But it's important for people in the medical community to understand the nature of these invisible disorders and that suffering isn't necessarily something that can be seen on clinical evaluation or detected by a medical test. The best indicator of suffering and quality of life is still direct feedback from your patient.

 

[Limetime]

I'll just let you grind your ax, since that seems to be the reason you joined this forum. Regardless, I will only be operating on patients that I think need an operation.

Agreed, please can we get this thread back to a place for more lighthearted discussion/release it was created to be?

 

[DocEspana]

Agreed, please can we get this thread back to a place for more lighthearted discussion/release it was created to be?

ill save you guys.

Pt presented to ER with CC of "foreign body in ear". The foreign body isnt all that funny, its styrofoam. What is incredibly funny is that this old man stated the styrofoam got in there because he's paranoid of getting ear infections. so when he walks on the boardwalk he puts earplugs in. Since he forgot his earplugs today he broke down some packing styrofoam he found on the beach and stuffed it into his ears.Clearly... they become stuck as they expanded in the moist air.

oh.. and when he presented he had paperclips coming out of the external ear canal as he tried to spear the styrofoam and pull it out with paperclips. Eventually he gave up, but left the paperclips in, just incase we wanted to try our leverage with them.

 

[Mr hawkings]

16yo sexually active, never uses barrier protection

cc: school nurse says i have blue balls and i dont think shes right

Actual Dx: Epididymitis

Me: Actually you have the exact opposite of blue balls. You were correct to assume she was wrong
:

 

[MilkmanAl]

"In fact, you have red balls."

 

[DocEspana]

"In fact, you have red balls."

 

[Limetime]

ill save you guys.

Thank you

 

[engineeredout]

Friday night in the ED:

CC: "DEMONS! GET AWAY FROM ME"

 

[DocEspana]

Here is one from our inpatient medicine teaching floor

CC: "I am a tree whose dirt is being taken away. I cannot live without my dirt. I will wilt and lose my leaves. Please save my dirt so the animals can live under me"

actual issue: Multiple episodes of coffee ground emesis. Extremely labile BP with frequent hypotensive crisis. Turn out her vomit was the "dirt"

Amusing fact: after her apparent upper GI bleed resolved she remained as crazy as ever, but decided she was a cricket.instead of a tree and her primary complaint was that she was buried in a human coffin not a cricket sized coffin. Not sure if there was something to read into there.

 

[Quinn1988]

We had one the other day that was in the waiting room at the ER and the CC said, "Stroke".

We were like...that's not good...why are they still in the waiting room...sigh.

Please do NOT take as disrespect, throwing the BS flag on that one.....That seriously is a lawsuit waiting to happen....

 

[DuxburyPembroke]

Please do NOT take as disrespect, throwing the BS flag on that one.....That seriously is a lawsuit waiting to happen....

I am happy for you that you have only rotated at good hospitals, but this is entirely believable to me.

 

[Quinn1988]

I am happy for you that you have only rotated at good hospitals, but this is entirely believable to me.

I thank you for your kind words! However, I'm in pre-med phases so still got a way to go till residency/rotations take place.

Also, I don't think a good hospital really has anything to do with it. In situations like that, it falls on the individual not so much the hospital. In other words, common sense would dictate someone presenting with a CVA automatically took presidense(Sp?) Damn, might as well make the MIs go to the waiting room with the CVA pt...

 

[cliquesh]

"I have large stools. I need to scoop them out of the toilet in order for the toilet to flush."

 

[ThePursuit]

Pt presented to ED with perirectal abscess. After my H&P, he was asking how one could get such a thing. After a brief explanation on my part there was a pause, followed by......"so how about, like, if someone sticks their finger in your butt....would that do it too?"

 

[Quinn1988]

"I fell from a truck and broke my arm"

Now try to get a differential diagnosis for that.

Could easily turn this one into a psych referral.

 

[Siverhideo1985]

5 y/o w/ CC: "period from mouth"

turned out the pt had a nosebleed while having a cold & he coughed up some bloody mucous. Mom didn't speak english very well so the only way she knew how to describe it was to compare it with her menstruation.

 

[Slevin]

33 year old "I have a funny odor coming from my testicles"

Turns out that his GF had a yeast infection right before he started getting symptoms.

 

[DocEspana]

CC: "Constipation, N/V x4 days. Rectal bleeding." (Nursing Home patient. its relevant)

Admitting to the floor Diagnosis: Fecal Impaction with profuse rectorrhagia (of unknown origin)

Actual Diagnosis once the guy was immediately brought up to surgery and given an abd x-ray: approximately 8 pencils, 6 butterfly needles, a few safety pins, an IV catheter with a few inches of IV tubing, and a bar of soap had lodged into his distal sigmoid (yes. distal sigmoid if I recall correctly. I remember being shocked how high up he jammed it) and it made a beaver dam.

He had apparently become obsessed with the idea of sharp things going into his ass and was *saving* them up for the perfect moment to put them all up there. The soap, I assume, was to help lubricate and then he just jammed it in too at the end. I still am so curious as to what the hell the nurses at the home thought happened when his IV and part of the tubing went missing.

 

[lacrosse87]

CC: "Constipation, N/V x4 days. Rectal bleeding." (Nursing Home patient. its relevant)

Admitting to the floor Diagnosis: Fecal Impaction with profuse rectorrhagia (of unknown origin)

Actual Diagnosis once the guy was immediately brought up to surgery and given an abd x-ray: approximately 8 pencils, 6 butterfly needles, a few safety pins, an IV catheter with a few inches of IV tubing, and a bar of soap had lodged into his distal sigmoid (yes. distal sigmoid if I recall correctly. I remember being shocked how high up he jammed it) and it made a beaver dam.

He had apparently become obsessed with the idea of sharp things going into his ass and was *saving* them up for the perfect moment to put them all up there. The soap, I assume, was to help lubricate and then he just jammed it in too at the end. I still am so curious as to what the hell the nurses at the home thought happened when his IV and part of the tubing went missing.

Holy crap

 

[bleeker10]

CC: "Diagnosis"

 

[Poiu86]

Not really a CC, but a funny moment on rounds.

Really likable elderly guy with massive fluid overload that has some IMPRESSIVE scrotal edema. He calls them his "big boys" and loves showing them off on rounds. Today he says to me (my first time seeing him), "hey son. come here, got something to show ya." proceeds to pull his blanket up in front of the whole team and says "ohh yah. Couple of prize winners huh?"

 

[FiremedicMike]

Can I play again? I have a new #1 in my own books.

Stuffy nose for 4 weeks. Patient has already been to the ED for this, given medicine that aren't working, no car/doctor, demands transport back to ED.

 

[Slevin]

CC: When I was little my mom had me hold the metal prongs and plug in the vacuum cleaner. Do you think this could have caused an artery to pop off of my heart?