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Sometimes patients just do some wonderfully weird stuff. From the crazy things they try when they’re alone to the odd things they tell you, our patients have been known to make us laugh on more than one occasion! We got to wondering about the explanations they give you for why they’re hospitalized in the first place and what, exactly, they’re doing right now—so we asked our Facebook fans for the funniest excuses and explanations their patients have tried to give them. Which of these have your patients used on you before?.
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An elderly woman came in because she had “fireballs of the universe.” She was very insistent! It took us a few to realize she had fibroids of the uterus!
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—Kathy Berg
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Working a 28-day MICA program, we had to check in all belongings, since it’s an addiction unit. Imagine our surprise when we found a bunch of Viagra that a female patient had on check-in! When asked, she responded, “I’ll be damned if my ol’ man is going to be out cheating while I’m in here!” LOL! Sounded quite logical to us. ?
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—Tonya Snodgrass Hendershot
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I had a patient refuse to use her O2 for fear of “getting addicted.” I told her, “Hon, that happened the second you were born; hold your breath and see how long you can go without it. Now put it on please?” She did!
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—Roxy Dengler-Hauck
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In the ER, a patient came in with a carrot inside his rectum. When asked to explain, he said, “I fell over in the garden.”
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—Jodie Priestley
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Cardiologist to patient: “You need to quit smoking.”
Patient to cardiologist: “I will quit smoking 10 minutes after I am cremated.”
Too funny. I don’t think the doc liked it too much…
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—Jodi Cacioppo Stoafer
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I got a call from our local 911 dispatch stating that they had my patient on the phone, requesting a ride home. When I went back to her room and asked her why she would call them, she said it was because that’s how she got to the hospital, and figured that’s how she’d get home, too. I was thinking to myself, “Reeeeeeaaaaaally?”
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—Christina Hope Combs
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A patient who tested positive for cocaine said she was cleaning her bathroom and the cocaine must have been in the Comet…oh lordy.
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—Morgan Jarrard
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I had a young male TBI patient saying that his sprinkler was sprinkling. I lifted up his sheet and noticed he was urinating…yep, his sprinkler was sprinkling all right.
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—Cherie Francis
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In the NICU we had lots of transports from a smaller town in a neighboring state. I asked a young mother one time why we had so many babies from there. She said, “Well, we don’t have cable.”
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—Gayle Sherman
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10.
“Jesus told me to keep pressing the call button.”
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—Danielle Louque Arceneaux
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What’s the funniest explanation or excuse a patient has ever tried to give you?
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This article was republished with permission from SCRUBS Magazine.
Taking my first job and relocating from a big city into a very small rural area of the western NC mountains, I spent a week working side by side with a doctor getting to know each other. The language and accents are very different, and pronunciation of words are their own. One of his patients came in and when I asked if her son (6) was allergic to anything she said “peents”, I took this to mean peanuts, and asked if she had an EPI pen for him, she asked why, I said because if he is allergic to peanuts he should have one in case he has an attack. She said he’s not allergic to peanuts, he’s allergic to peents. I thought hmmmm, how do I gracefully ask what peents are?? I said well, what happens to him if he gets into peents? She said well if the peents bite him he breaks out in a bad rash..at that point I understood….pee ants (fire ants cause they sting the pee out of you!)
I little boy came into the clinic complaining of an ear ache. On exam the MD asked for a forceps. He proceeded to pull out a key chain. Upon seeing it the little boy excitedly said”that’s wear I put it! I was hiding it from my brother “
A Spanish-speaking mother brought her daughter to the ER. When asked what the child’s chief complaint was the mother replied, in rather accented English, what sounded like: “My daughter……..she swallow penis in camp today”. A bit taken aback, I politely asked her to repeat the complaint. Once again the mother replied, in rather accented English, “My daughter swallow penis in camp today”. Biting the inside of my lower lip I politely asked her again, but this time asked her to describe the object. She replied, “I say my daughter swallow penis in camp. You know. Penis. Dos o tres centavos”. The girl had swallowed two or three PENNIES!!! A later x-ray revealed two pennies in her stomach and not a penis anywhere to be found.
I used to work in a Skilled Nursing Facility. On my first graveyard shift, I explained to a resident who had dementia and was a retired RN, that I was the LVN Charge Nurse. Her reply?
“You ain’t nothing but a glorified ass-wiper!”
I had an older dialysis patient who insisted she would never take those genetic drugs……..she only gets the name brands. I guess the name brand ones don’t alter your DNA??
I had a little boy who came into Triage in the ER with a rock in his nose. When. Asked him why he put the rock in his nose, he said I didn’t have any pockets to put it in!
My first night at my new job at the nursing home in Key West, FL, I had an alzheimer’s resident under my care. This was my first time working with this population so I’m going off school knowledge. She also had severe arthritis where her joints have become disfigured. At med pass, she was very chatty, telling me about her life while growing up in Key West and being a “conch” which is the nickname of native Key Westians. Well, about 12 am she started screaming and crying. My CNA came to get me and she was sitting on the side of the bed crying that the CNA came in her room and bent her hands and feet out of shape. In 10 minutes she had completely forgotten that this particular CNA knew her from the island, knew she used to be a masseur and was massaging her hands and feet. It took all of 45 minutes to reorient and calm her down.
Had a lady with shakiness and sweating. She wanted her ‘ peanut butter balls “. We thought she was diabetic but no…she needed Phenobarbital !
A LADY CAME OUT POSITIVE FOR MARIJUANA HER EXPLANATION WAS: I WAS PULLING WEEDS IN THE BACK YARD.
I was working in the OR, had a little guy about 5 parked right under the room assignment board with who was having what, he was Removal of FOB from R ear. Not his first removal of FOB either!…he had had his pre op meds and was pretty silly, he looked over at me and kept saying Pssst hey lady, so I went over, he giggled and said do you know why I am here, I did but I played along…Why…he said I got a truck in my ear. I, surprised, said a truck!? Yes a little one. I said how did a little truck (it was a micromachine) get into your ear. …..he began a long story of how he was just sittin’ at the kitchen table and he wasn’t doin’ nuffin and when he wasn’t doin’ nuffin, he had his hand up here by his ear and then there was a little truck and it was just sittin’ there on his finger, not doin’ nuffin….(seems they have a lot of doin’ nuffin at their house) and then all of the sudden he said I yelled over to my MOM, help a truck just got in my ear! He told me all the things she did to try to get it ….stating she even was smacking me on my other ear to knock it out. So he said he had to go to the Dr and the Dr said he had to come there and take a special nap and it would come out then. (Magic I guess) The ENT doing his procedure told us a few stories as he extracted, a truck, yes a truck as they boy had stated, stories of a pea up his nose, a bean up his nose, a bean in his ear, and a crayon broke off in his nose, and now a truck. And I guess each visit to the Dr he told the same version of the story….the story where he was just sittin’ there doin’ nuffin and all of the sudden…. The moral of the story I guess is don’t just sit around doin’ nuffin!
Too funny! My sister, twelve yrs younger, was in a spica cast for nearly a year. She put all kinds of things up her nose, so far it would drop into her sinus. The most memorable ER visit was the one my father and I took her to. The intern came out and demanded to know who put the rock up this unfortunate child’s nose? My father was escorted out after he loudly took offense and cleared the space between the intern and himself in record time. I was enlisted to hold her down while the smooth, oval stone was retrieved.