I was taking the history of a guy in clinic and I asked about his past medical problems, ‘You’ve had 20 heart attacks?’ ‘Yup. I never went to a doctor. My wife is a massage therapist, and whenever a heart attack hits, she starts to massage some pressure points and it stops. I don’t ever remember them. My wife tells me that I fall onto the floor and my arms and legs start jerking. She says it takes about a minute of her massaging before it stops.’ The dude was having seizures, and thought that they were heart attacks. Patient is diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma of the breast, confirmed with biopsy. Surgery prepped for two weeks time. Patient goes to an outside facility, and does a mammogram. Radiologist read states it is benign. Patient writes an email to her primary doctor (my attending), ‘PRAYER WORKS. Please find attached report stating I no longer have breast cancer. Please tell Dr. X (Surgeon) that I will be no longer needing surgery.’ An elderly woman came in the ER with new onset seizure. The patient’s daughter was convinced her mother had a brain tumor. On review of the medications, turns out the patient had been out of her Xanax prescription for 4 days, and had a withdrawal seizure. During my time as an intern, a patient was admitted for anemia (hematocrit of 16) requiring blood transfusions. Turns out that at some point in the past, after she was diagnosed with an in-born error of metabolism, her primary care physician prescribed her vitamin B12 injections (your body requires B12 to make hemoglobin). Instead of going back for refills after she ran out, however, she headed over to her local pharmacy, bought vitamin B6 tablets, and proceeded to take two per day, and went on to explain how, you know doc, it’s the same thing! Yeah, no. Veterinarian here. I had a client come in with a dog suffering from an allergy to flea saliva that causes them to get insanely itchy. This poor little guy had chewed his fur out to the point that his back half was just about completely naked. After explaining the diagnosis, his owner proceeded to tell me how foolish I was, ‘The dog was not itchy because of fleas. He was chewing at himself as a psychological response to the disturbance caused by having his butt shaved by an unknown intruder who must have broken into the house while they were away.’ I’m an orthopedic surgeon. I’ve encountered a patient who believed they broke their hip after a fall when they actually had a two inch piece of skateboard lodged into their side they forgot about…yeah. Optometrist here. This happened while I was on rotations as a student. The practice was use to seeing patients from rural areas, educated up to high school, usually some missing teeth. Anyway, this lady was convinced she had a bee in her eye, but it sounded more like ‘Derrs ahbeein merahh!’ I had to leave the room to get the doctor so he could translate. She had floaters.
