Doctors' time is far too valuable to be wasted. Still, not everyone respects it. Every now and then, whether it's for attention, prescription drugs, or skipping class, people attempt to fake a condition. Only it's not easy to trick someone who's spent years in medical school and even longer treating patients.
So when Reddit user Palmfranz asked doctors to describe the biggest manipulators they met at work, more than 2,000 replies came in. Scroll down to read some of the craziest stories and decide for yourself if any of them actually stood a chance of succeeding. As for the case files? Diagnosis: "Nice try."
#1
Lady was in a minor rear-end collision and claimed that she was unable to see ever since the accident. Not just claiming that her vision was blurry, she was claiming no light perception. Safe to say we were a little suspicious based on the mechanism and initial imaging. Called neuro-ophthalmology in to prove she was full of it. You can’t just say, “Patient full of lies” in a medical record unless they’re there for constipation, but Ophtho was able to write a beautiful not that said just that, without directly saying it.
© Photo: _PyramidHead_
#2
I have allergies to most plants and animals (foods by extension) around me, but for years this went undiagnosed because my mother was so certain I was faking it.
I would feel a great deal of pain after eating a normal meal at school and be sent to the nurse because I was in too much pain to concentrate. For a long time, the nurse also thought I was faking it, but she must have picked up on it at some point because she began taking me seriously.
This pattern persisted with my mother accusing me of faking it and blaming my internal body heat (I regularly wear sweaters regardless of temperature) on my "sick" stomach.
Just after starting high school, the constant trauma to my digestive tract began to take its toll. I would occasionally have to spit up blood (I have blisters in my esophagus due to the allergic reactions which was discovered years earlier when I was projectile vomiting blood one day, but that's another story). I would constantly feel week, be extremely pale, and constantly need to sleep for long periods while my body recovered.
Went to a gastroenterologist, and I am indescribably greatful to that man. After a lot of tests and scopings, he came to the conclusion that my digestive tract was just covered in blisters constantly bleeding, making me sick, and costing a lot of energy to keep up repairs on the daily basis because I wasn't digesting most compounds in my food and instead just damaging the lining on various organs.
Mom was very supportive after that. I have so much gratitude for that man. He saved my life and make special trips to his clinic on his days off whenever I was having severe problems. He gave me his personal supply of diet replacement shake/powder because my insurance wouldnt pay for it. The man did everything in his power to keep me alive. I have never met a more selfless person in my life.
© Photo: spinto1
#3
"Ugh, I'm in so much pain, but boy does that ibuprofen make my stomach upset. Do you have anything else you could give me that's... different?"
"Mam, I'm a physical therapist, I can't prescribe medications"
This conversation took place while she was nearly nodding off and slurring during therapy, obviously from opiates. Lots of faking takes place to try to score more [substances].
© Photo: anon
#4
Not a doctor, but relevant.
My professor was a Paramedic for many years, and people fake a lot of illnesses. Sometimes for medicines and sometimes for attention.
It turns out, it’s really hard to act like you’re unconscious, there is a lot of ways to tell. For example, unless they have practiced, they won’t hit themselves. So if you hold their hand above their face and let go, they will move their hand out of the way of their face.
So, many years ago my professor arrived on a scene where someone “had”a seizure and was “unconscious” in a busy market. He goes and checks the patient and he had good breathing and circulation. My professor was suspicious about he situation because of his years of experience. He lifts his hand and drops it. Sure enough, his hand misses his face and lands above his head. At this point, my professor knows he’s not really unconscious.
My professor leans down and whispers in his ear,
“We can do this the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is we will put you on oxygen and you will wake up, he hard way is we will do CPR and put 3,000 volts of electricity through your heart and it will hurt and you will wake up.”
Simple to say, he woke up with oxygen and walked it off. A miracle!
© Photo: BenAreLamb
#5
Had a patient about 2 years ago. Woman in her late 40s, had a good job, kids in university, divorced. She had insane uncontrollable asthma. No matter what we prescribed, she was having attacks, even wound up in ITU a few times. Went through everything we could think of with the team. Started doing really niche research. Brought her into the hospital as an in-patient to run more tests, etc.
The plan was to see her body's reaction to a steroid. We would take a blood sample before, give the medicine, take another sample, give her more, take another sample, etc.
The first tests showed NO reaction to the steroid. It's something we haven't seen before, nothing in the literature....
Then I see her throwing her garbage away into a large, communal garbage. Odd, nurses + healthcare support workers + ward cleaners are quite good with this. I don't know why I go to investigate, but I do.
Saw a tiny puddle of pink liquid at the bottom of her trash. Her steroids. She was drinking it in front of the nurses, then spitting it out into another solid (as in, not see-through) cup, and throwing that cup away.
I know it sounds obvious, but this woman was super normal and educated and just not someone who I pegged to be literally making herself unwell for attention. And by unwell, I mean to the point of putting her life at risk. Then I realized her kid took a semester off school to come home and look after her because she had such severe asthma attacks so often.
© Photo: DrBasia
#6
Obligatory not a doctor... I stubbed my toe on a bannister when I was maybe 9-10 years old. After hobbling around for a week complaining literally all the time while my mum thought I was faking, my dad finally gave in and took me to the hospital. Turns out I pushed all the bones in my foot backwards and was on crutches for 2 months. Take that mum!
#7
I felt like a faker back in March. I had an abcess on my jaw that I had gone to an urgent care for and gotten two fairly strong antibiotics. Two days later I got in bed after no change in the abcess and started shivering violently like i had a fever so I had my wife take me to the er thinking the infection was maybe spreading.
I told the nurse what was up and they took my temperature which ended up being completely normal. The nurses mood changed and I had a feeling that she thought I was in there looking for pills.
They took me to a room and luckily the dr recognised my symptoms as an allergic reaction to bactrum, one of the antibiotics I was on. He drained the abcess and prescribed me a milder antibiotic and some Vicodin for my troubles.
I told my mom what had happened the next day and she then informed me that I've been allergic to bactrum since I was young. For some reason it wasn't in my records.
#8
Not doctor but (accused) faker.
Woke up one day with a weird spotty rash all up my chest and shoulder, had a massive headache and joints hurt. I was still freshly graduated from uni so I remembered the old meningitis test with the glass, did it but couldn't really see of rash went away. Boyfriend called non emergency NHS line (this was like 10 years ago) and they instantly sent an ambulance. I spent the day in hospital being prodded and poked, including a lumbar puncture. Turned out my body is weird and reacted to a 'normal' virus. Was sent home and told to sleep for a few days and I'll be fine.
At home I knew right away something was wrong, every time I stood up my head exploded, I've never in my life experienced that pain (albeit not given birth nor ever broken a bone). I soldiered on for 2 days but it got to the point where I was crawling along the floor because even a slight angle hurt so much. Me being stupidly British I didn't want to go to A&E again so, being Sunday, I went to an out of hours doctor. At the time we didn't have a car so got a taxi. I had to hold back the screams of pain during the 15 minute journey. Finally got to the doctors, I went and lay on the floor right away sobbing hysterically because I genuinely thought I was going to pass. The most pompous, theatrically 'posh British doctor' saw me and he told me to stop being so dramatic, there was nothing wrong with me and he wasn't going to sign me off work. He told my boyfriend I was probably a user too (okay sure, I'd not showered in like 4 days and was wearing a jogging suit because I couldn't bare to wear anything else... But still). He sent us home after a long lecture about how people our age (early 20s) didn't know what real pain was (?!) and that we just wanted something for nothing.
After another day in pain we called an ambulance, turned out they had mucked up the lumbar puncture and spinal fluid had been leaking out my neck. The pressure was so low they were surprised I was conscious. Ended up getting a cool type of surgery that night (they took blood from my arm and put it in my neck, a natural plaster apparently!) and sent me home with a sick note for a month off work and a month of codeine.
#9
Saw a guy fake a stroke convincingly enough that he got a very powerful clot-busting medication to try and reverse the effects of the stroke. His story only fell apart when he got a little entitled and started describing some visual symptoms that weren’t consistent with his other symptoms. Repeat imaging revealed his secret.
I thought the neurologist was gonna do something to that guy. Instead we just discharged him back to jail.
© Photo: anon
#10
We had a young guy come in with severe lower leg pain and a red area the size of your palm over his shin. We start treatment for cellulitis as his story sounds like that, but over the course of four days it doesn't get better or worse, despite very normal tests and no fevers. On the fourth day one of the nurses hears a noise coming from the toilets, and sees the patient walk out with a metal water bottle. We confront him and he confesses to hitting his leg repeatedly so he could get time off work and pain meds. We discharged him on the spot and gave him a very stern talking to about wasting resources and lying.
© Photo: sam_galactic
#11
Not a doctor but a buddy of mine had a crazy ex. When he ended it with her she said she was pregnant. Knowing she was a little crazy he wasn't buying it. She sent him a "positive" pregnancy test. Just out of curiosity we googled positive pregnancy tests and clicked images. It was like the third image. So knowing she was full of lies he just stopped responding but that didn't settle well with her. The next day she went on to send him a very gory, disgusting tale of her having an accident. She was basically describing a horrific, ER worthy medical debacle that somehow she was dealing with all on her own in her room and still having the where with all to type out every single detail. The last text just simply said, "I think it's passed"
Don't know about any baby but the relationship most definitely was.
© Photo: Loud_Mouth_Soup
#12
I was a paramedic and picked up a so-called unconscious patient. He passed the sternal rub and the twist test and when I tried the hand drop to the face test his hand hit ground above his head. I told his family that something wasn't right because when I dropped his hand an unconscious patient would hold their hand up in the air. I repeated the test and sure enough he He held his hand in the air. Because of local policy I did have to transport him to the local emergency room. Just before we went into the back of the emergency room with him lying flat on the litter I told my partner "hey let's check on one more time and make sure he's still unconscious." I took his hand and extended it straight up into the air and shaped a bird with his fingers. We walked to the back with his arm straight in the air flipping a bird at the entire emergency department. When I came out of the room a trauma physician ask me what on earth was going on. I told him I was shocked that he didn't recognize an unconscious patient when he saw one. He laughed and told me to get out of his emergency room.
© Photo: User
#13
We had a lady come in hysterical after a car accident. At first, we were convinced she had a complete spinal cord injury at the mid thoracic level. (We checked her reflexes, rectal tone, pinprick in the feet, etc.) We got a CT scan.
Normal.
We had no explanation as to why she seemed to be paralyzed from the chest down.
Then she sat right up and vomited. And then immediately went limp again.
We admitted her. Within a day she had fully recovered.
I believe she was subconsciously terrified of being paralyzed and so her mind invented it. I don't believe she was intentionally faking it. After awhile, it just faded away and she was normal again.
One of the weirdest things I've ever witnessed firsthand.
© Photo: lord_wilmore
#14
Not a doctor, but had classes with a girl who faked seizures for attention. Ranging from rolling her eyes back and falling over to full on flop like a fish. Definitely aren't any Oscars in her future.
#15
Eye doc. When training we had a guy doctor shopping for medicines. Said he got bleach in his eyes and he did, but he put it in here himself. The tip off is always when they ask for a medicine by name. “Last time this happened, Valium worked really well!” He did not get them from me, but who knows where he ended up.
#16
Paramedic: my favorite is the Cinncinati Stroke Scale. This is where you describe this new diagnostic test coming out that indicates the severity of the stroke. The way you preform this rest is by explaining it to your partner as you go. First you grab the wrist "unconscious" seizure patient. Then tell your partner a grade 1 seizure is when you hold up 1 arm over the patients body, and if it freezes in place it's a grade 1. Repeat on each of the extremities up to a "grade 4". My record is both arms and a leg, in the air like a [passed] cartoon horse as I pushed him into the ER.
#17
Nurse here. We get a lot of people who really like being in hospital and will do anything to stay in (it's the UK so all for free).
I used to work in an elderly care ward which sometimes admitted younger patients. We had a 40 ish year old woman who insisted she couldn't go home because of her persistent vomiting. It took about 24 hours for us nurses to figure out her 'vomit' was juice poured into a sick bowl with a large amount of spit in it. It took the doctors a lot longer.
#18
Not a doc, but I have my own case of faking the stuff out of a sickness when I was in third grade. Woke up one day and got a case of "I don't wanna go to school". Started coughing (like whooping cough bad). After a few weeks, Doctors told my parents they didn't know what the deal was. Kept faking it. Doctors were like "it might be his adenoids" got them removed. Stopped coughing. Missed a month of school. Didn't have to make up any assignments. Parents still don't know.
#19
Not a doctor but a student. In high school i had to go to a suspension center for bad kids for a few weeks. The instructor once freaked out at a kid about opening a sprite at lunch. Apparently she was allergic to lemons. She then made a point to let every new student know that she was allergic (many students came and went). One day a kid in the class brought a fake plastic lemon, went to the bathroom and rolled it in front of her on his way out. She proceeded to flop on the ground convulsing and "choking" until someone picked it up and said it's a fake.
#20
I’m an Obstetrician and have had numerous women come to Labor and Delivery, sometimes by ambulance, huffing and puffing all the while screaming” I have to lush” and they are NOT pregnant. This is a severe mental disorder called pseudociesis.
#21
Actually the reverse happened to me. I had the swine flu and went to the doctors a few years ago. He basically called me a liar and said I just wanted to get out of school. Immediately afterward I threw up all over him and the room.
#22
Not a doctor, but I worked as an Emergency Room secretary while I was finishing school. There were a few crazy ones, some people would come regularly looking for pain killers (or attention) and make a huge scene every time.
One guy in particular was actually someone I knew outside of work. It was the first time I had seen him there, but I knew he had had a few surgeries in the past, and that he had a lot of qwerks.
Dude comes in with his wife in the odd hours of the night, really worked up, saying his shoulder was dislocated and having painful muscle spasms. Tells me it happens all the time since he had his surgery, had this big story about how he did and when he knew it was separated. We were talking while I checked him in and waited for the triage nurse and he would randomly jump or violently flop in his chair clutching his shoulder for a few seconds, then go back to normal.
Goes back, doc checks him out, says he doesn't have a dislocated shoulder, dude insists, doc takes an xray at his request, no dislocation, and my man loses his mind. Starts screaming at the doctor that he is insinuating he is a liar in front of his wife. Doctor keeps it cool, tells him he's not calling him a liar, just telling him his shoulder isn't separated, and that he can give him IV acetaminophen if the pain is really bothering him. Dude asks if he can have dilaudid pills instead so he can just go home and go to bed. Doc says no, dude loses his mind again, screaming that he is going to sue to hospital and get the doc's license revoked. Doc just says ok and tells him they are finished. Haven't seen the guy since, but we are facebook friends.
© Photo: User
#23
IANAD, though I was once accused of being a faker.
I had a UTI on Christmas Eve a few years ago. Suffered through it for a few hours, thinking it was testicular torsion and eventually ended going to the ER Christmas morning complaining of groin pain. It hurt real bad and I was doing my best to muscle my way though it. The nurse helping me through all of this was pleasant and cheerful and really making the best of a bad situation.
I eventually asked if there was anything they could do about my pain and got this horribly stern look from the nurse and the friendliness disappeared. She told me in a rude tone that I'd have to wait until the doctor could see me (turned out to take hours). Meanwhile, I got to sit on a gurney in pain and listen to countless other people come in, all with varying degrees of stories about looking for pills. "My prescription ran out and my doctor is on vacation", "I'm travelling and have this chronic knee problem but forgot my pills at home", etc.
© Photo: UncomfortableChuckle
#24
A tall child came into my office saying he peed too many times per day. Turns out he needed Xanax because he gets nervous on airplanes.
#25
I hurt my wrist playing football. No swelling and I could move it but I knew something was wrong. Went to the hospital, they wouldn't even give me paracetamol. Doctor clearly thought I was faking/exaggerating but did an xray which he said was fine, it's just a sprain and to keep it moving.
10 days after leaving the hospital, they phoned me to say they'd reviewed my xray and I actually had a few small breaks in my wrist and I needed to go back immediately to get a cast.
#26
Not a doctor, but a dentist. Had a patient think I would prescribe her oxy for really sensitive teeth. She even pretended to spit out the water in the dental cup and said she was in so much pain and couldnt drink or eat. I gave her advice on sensitivity and treatment alternatives, but she got angry when I said I dont believe her (not the sensitivity part, but the part she needed strong painkillers to get through the day). I finally told her i might not be qualified enough to diagnose her issue, so ill happily write a referral to an expensive neural pain management specialist. She quickly declined and was on her way.
#27
Med student here. Saw this one woman in A and E who self presented. She was placed on a bed in a bay, and claimed she had been hit by a car and was in loads of pain and needed morphine. Except she had no injuries. This lady is well known to come in once a month with various issues and every time she asks for morphine. When the doctors said they could only prescribe her paracetamol or NSAIDs, the lady lost it. She spent the next 3 hours either screaming her head off or loudly fake sobbing, saying she was in pain and needed morphine, that she was going to report us all to the GMC, that she was going to write to her MP... We told her that she needed to vacate her bed because shed been discharged. Well she wasn't very happy with that and screamed saying that we were cruel people, that she was paralysed from the neck down and couldn't walk. One of the junior doctors made the mistake of saying that we'd all seen her walk into A and E, and that started her off again. She claimed that we were all liars, that the security cameras had been tampered with, and when security came to remove her she got [angry] and [emptied] herself :/
Moral of the story: don't work in A and E.
#28
Not a doc, but was a CNA on an intermediate cardiac floor. Although I have a couple of stories, my best is the rich guy who came in complaining of chest pain. He wasn't your normal looking medicine seeker. He was youngish, well-groomed, and sounded very educated when he spoke and his doctors did a variety of tests to determine what was wrong. Then things started going downhill. He started taking off his EKG leads and getting aggressive with the aides when we'd have to go in to put them back on. He got one of those patient-controlled pain pumps, but it would only administer a small dose every hour I wanna say. He started screaming at the nurses and aides to get his doctor on the phone to adjust his dosage and refused all vitals checks. Then he accused an aide of stealing his money, which was a large pile of cash on his bedside table that he refused to have security put in a lock box for him. Doctor's ended up throwing him out after 3 days of this (and constant pleading from the aides and nurses) after finding nothing wrong. He had to be escorted off hospital property because he refused to leave.
#29
Me: how bad is your pain in your feet? (I’m a podiatrist)
Patient: 11/10! I need something stronger than this morphine drip
This is while I’m palpating all over his feet and he’s slurring his words and falling asleep. People become the best actors when they want narcotics. Anyone from 20 year old college students to 95 year old grandmas can become narcotic addicts. THEYRE EVERYWHERE!
#30
A guy I know got into a car accident and ended up being transported in an ambulance (nothing broken, just a small bruise on his thigh). He walked into the ER. He had his mom take pictures of him at the hospital holding his leg and immediately posted it on Facebook, thanking people concerned about him. He took off work for weeks.
He posted on Facebook about his leg pain and about the car accident for the next several weeks even though people saw him walking normally.
#31
Not a doctor, but a former health worker at an inpatient psych facility. Had a "depressed" patient whose real problem was a [intense] oxycontin a*******n. He pushed himself around in a wheelchair for his supposed back problems and would literally nod out mid sentence while begging for more oxycontin.
#32
When I was an EMT we transported a patient to a hospital I ddin't frequent in a zone I wasn't used to. a PA came in as we moved her unconcious self to the bed, he goes "ahh yes, xxxxx. unconcious?" we said yes. He picked her arm up and dropped it over her face. she moved her arm so she wouldn't hit herself. he then loudly called her name and said its time to wake up. She acted like a kid getting up for school when they thought it was gonna be a snow day. Nothing wrong with her (physically) psychiatrically? yea.
#33
My mom as a nurse would have to deal with people faking seizures all the time (people looking for a fix) they would call to the doctor to, "Quick! Get the normalsaline!" Normal - Saline is just salt water that does nothing to you, people would immediately stop "seizing" after getting it xD
Edit: A word.
#34
Munchausen syndrome is a factitious disorder, a mental disorder in which a person repeatedly and deliberately acts as if he or she has a physical or mental illness when he or she is not really sick. Munchausen syndrome is considered a mental illness because it is associated with severe emotional difficulties.
#35
A 16-year-old girl arrives at the hospital alone claiming an unbearable allergy. She had surface blisters all over her body. No exam pointed to any problem. Obviously we distrusted her and she accused her own mother of burning her body with cigarette butts. She cried, an actress. Police was called since the hospital reported child mistreatment. Only after much pressure she begin to fall into contradiction until she was diagnosed with munchhausen syndrome. She was hurting her own body to blame and punish her mother.
#36
I once had a patient that had involuntary arm movement in his right arm that started after hurting his elbow on a desk. Apparently the next morning he had this repetitive twitch and felt he injured something.
His right arm would push to the right randomly through out the day with no specific activity provoking it. The gentleman seemed rather neurotic and honestly, I felt he was clearly faking. Stated he could control it if he attempted to concentrate hard.
I told him, after we ran a whole series of tests, that we found absolutely nothing wrong with his arm that would be causing such an issue.
He stated he found it fascinating and a “mystery” considering (insert another arm jerk), the random movements.
I proceeded to explain how I felt there was another possible explanation... that he could be faking. We argued slightly and he got defensive stating how and why would someone waste so much valuable time on something fake like this.
I told him it would obviously take someone who was very sick, very immature, a person who has no regard for wasting other people’s valuable time. He took offense and proceed to storm out. On the way out he bumped his elbow on my desk and let out a shriek. We shared a deathly stare.
Last I heard he still had a twitch / arm movement. Who knows. Maybe it was real. Maybe it was fake. Maybe it was fake and that last bumped actually caused an issue.
Oh well. Obviously my time isn’t valuable either. Happy Friday.
#37
A man lived next door to my parents for many years, over a decade. He had been claiming liability from his employer, a mining company, for a back injury which he claimed total disability arising from. My parents hardly saw him, but they worked for the same company so knew his story. His yard went unmaintained for many years and my parents noticed him out in the yard one day cleaning up all the rubbish that had accumulated, mowing the lawns etc. Not long after that he simply vanished - they never saw him again but apparently the insurance provider had been monitoring him on and off for years, and the one day he decided to clean up his yard an investigator had been parked outside his house observing for just such behavior. A few pictures later and the dude's life got very ugly very quickly.
#38
One of my friends tried to pull a bit of a stunt recently with his (and my) employer. He had been trying to negotiate for some holiday leave, but others at work also wanted that time and had put their applications in earlier. He came over one day with his shoulder all strapped up, saying he had aggravated an old sporting injury. I was quite dubious as he was not showing any sign of it impeding his activities, he appeared not to be in any pain. This was just about the time he wanted for his holiday. Anyway, he fronted up to work with a medical certificate for his shoulder demanding a month off. Work held fast though, told him they would just put him on ''light duties'' (notoriously dull, admin stuff) instead. I saw him that day and he was grumbling about our employer not caring about his health etc etc but the strapping had all gone and it was never spoken of again. I was amazed that he even attempted to do what he did, even more amazed that he thought he could spin me this wild story.
#39
I had a patient once claim that we "fractured her tibial plateau" during a routine gallbladder removal.
She literally just called my office a day or so after the operation and told my nurse that. "You guys fractured my tibial plateau during the surgery."
I called her right back, concerned that (while I knew nothing had happened to her leg in the OR) maybe something had happened after she left the hospital, like falling at home or something. And really all she would say is that her shin kinda hurt.
She didn't even sound upset--it wasn't like she was claiming this and then going, "And IMMA CALL MY LAWYER." She was pretty much nonchalant about it.
I tried to have her come in and get x-rays, or even an exam, and asked her things like, "is your leg swollen, bruised? Is there a wound? Can you walk on it? Is it jutting out at a weird angle with bare [darn] bone sticking out? Anything?"
Yeah, no, her shin just kinda hurt a little. But clearly a fractured tibial plateau. Wouldn't come in. Didn't go to the ED, her PCP's office, or anything else. She came to her post op appointment about two weeks later walking under her own steam, nary a limp, and basically acted like the whole episode had never happened.
I still don't know what that was.
#40
I'm not a doctor, but... Once upon a time ago, I was in the ER for reasons (passed out while very pregnant - paramedics insisted I had to go, hated every minute of it.) When I was finally cleared to stand up and walk around again, I made a mad dash (or as mad dash as a girl can while 9 months pregnant) to the bathroom. On my way back to my room, some middle aged guy came out of his room... laid down on the floor (like actually got down properly to lay there) and pretended he passed out.
I shared a WHAT look with the nurse at the desk and asked the guy what he was doing. "Oh... uh... I must have passed out!"
Kept thinking to myself, maybe if I had just laid down rather than fall, I could have avoided that whole trip to the ER. When I was finally discharged, I saw the guy again being escorted away.
#41
We have a patient who fakes seizures incredibly convincingly. The disturbing part is that they can tolerate intubation. As in having a tube shoved down your windpipe while a large metal instrument sits in your larynx via your mouth and hoists your throat into the air.
#42
I was a manager at a restaurant and we were in one of our peak hours. One of the servers asked if she could go smoke, I told her not right now we need to get through the rush and clean up then we can run smoke breaks. This is after restaurants went to non-smoking. Well a few minutes later she's laying on the floor having a "seizure". She faked a seizure bc I didn't let her go smoke. One of the many crazy things I've seen. I didn't know a cigarette was that critical.
#43
IANAD, but a Radiography Student. We had a patient come in after a holiday weekend saying that they had fallen while they were out and had possibly broken their ankle. They apparently managed to drag themselves to some shelter where they laid there for 2 days until someone found them.
The first thing that I noticed was that this patient wasn't making the same kind of "in pain" sounds that I normally hear. When we went behind the glass to take the x-ray, they stopped moaning. The second thing I noticed was that although the patient was quite large and the weekend had been very hot, they didn't smell bad and didn't look like they had been sweating.
The x-rays came up and surprise surprise, nothing was broken. They also had a CAT scan that turned up nothing. They were released from hospital two days later.
#44
Not a doctor (I knooooooooow, I know), but when I was being monitored in the mother/baby unit of a hospital, my roomie was insane.
Her husband was deployed (and had JUST left. Like...that week) and she wanted him back home so she faked being in labor. She kept dumping water on herself and trying to convince the nurses that her water was breaking. When they'd tell her nothing was happening, she'd pretend like she couldn't speak English.
A week later I was still in the hospital and the nurses were still joking about her.
#45
Paramedic, not a Doctor so my answer is pretty underwhelming. Still, it's fun watching people who fake seizures hold their breath when you crack open an amonia tablet.
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