- This guy told me he had pink eye. He had metal shards in
his eye from welding. Oh my god. Can that happen? Hey, guys. Doctor Mike here. Welcome to the third episode of responding to Reddit threads. This week's response video is
gonna be to the thread titled "Doctors of Reddit, what's
your thank god they came in "for a second opinion moment?" I know mine. Are you ready for me to tell you? Bee-whoop. I'm working in an urgent care, and the last patients on my schedule happen to be part of a family. And when I walk into the room,
they're covered in bruises. They looked horrible, like
in horrible condition. It almost looked like they belonged in a level one trauma center. I asked what happened. They told me they were
coming back from a road trip. Unfortunately, they
got into a car accident driving, like, 70 miles an hour. They were treated, let go, but they were still
having so many symptoms that they wanted to come see me. My first question was,
"Give me your records." Show me what tests were done in this place where you were treated. They give them to me. I look and it's like, okay, scan one, scan two, scan
three, labs, this, that. Everything looks decent. Where is the scan of the head to make sure you're not
bleeding inside your brain? And they're like, "Oh, they
told us we shouldn't do it. "We didn't need it." And I'm thinking to
myself, "That's crazy." Not only is one of the family members on blood thinning medication, but they were involved in a
70 mile an hour car accident. So despite the fact that
it was very difficult to get them to the ER for
the second time that day, I made it happen. We got them there. And what do you know? They were scanned. One of the family members,
bleeding into the brain, ended up staying in the neural ICU, and is effected to this day. Had they gone home, not
seen me, went to sleep, the outcomes would've been much worse. So that's my thank god for
a second opinion moment. Now it's time for me to
read and react to yours. Well, not yours, but Redditors. Are people on Reddit called, ah, sorry. My dad went to the same ear
doctor for around nine years due to poor hearing and was
told there was nothing wrong. When he finally went to a second doctor, they referred him to the hospital and found tumors in his
ears that had eaten entirely through his inner ear bones and ear drums. He needed four operations to remove them, one every six months. If the second doctor hadn't
offered their opinion, he probably would've had tumors eating through the back of
his skull into his brain. Well, I don't know if that's true, but the fact that you're going to see a doctor for nine years, and you have a loss of hearing, and they're telling you
everything's fine, that's wrong. You have a symptom. If they're not curing the symptom or addressing the symptom or explaining why the symptom is there, they're not doing their job. Are you yawning during my Reddit thread? That's so rude. (Bear licks) ER nurse here. Had a lady in for simple pneumonia. Her 13-year-old son was getting bored, so I showed him some equipment. I connected a simple heart monitor to him and discovered he was
in complete heart block. I printed a strip and
showed it to the doc. We suddenly and unexpectedly
got a cardiac patient. Yo, that's crazy. That's like in medical school when we're all listening
to each other's hearts, practicing, and then we
find out someone has, like, a serious heart condition. That's crazy. I had a doctor in high
school who was unconcerned when I suddenly developed
vertical double vision, which was freaking out
everyone in the emergency room where I had gone initially, and I had lost 60 pounds for no reason. That's an insane amount of weight loss. It was only a year or
two later when I told him that my arm would fall asleep
much faster than normal when I raise to ask it a question in class that he thought there might
be something wrong with me. MRI ordered. Brain tumor found. Bear, isn't that crazy. (Bear licks) Bear doesn't sound concerned. That's a crazy story to me, because the first question you ask, even if you're remotely concerned
about a cancer history is, "Do you have any weight loss." Unintended weight loss, specifically. And when they say,
"Yes," that encourages me to start scanning and looking for things that I
normally don't check for. Having a 60 pound weight loss should automatically be a red flag. Raising your hand and having
it fall asleep on you? Not a huge red flag. That could be simply an issue
with cervical radiculopathy which means that your vertebrae, where the nerves come out
between your vertebrae, can get impinged and cause symptoms that shoot down the
nerve or cause it to get, for you to develop some
numbness or tingling. 60 pound weight loss? (sharply exhales) That's major disease
unless proven otherwise, and I think Bear agrees. (kiss) Dermatologist here. I have seen probably five instances of my other doctor told me it
was fine that were melanomas. A lot of times people
don't want full skin exams. There are lots of perfectly
sane reasons for this, time, perceived cost,
history of personal trauma. However, I routinely find cancers people don't know they have. Keep this in mind if you
see a dermatologist for acne and they recommend you get in a gown. Yes, there's so many patients of mine that I recommend that we do full skin exam or maybe even offer them a
referral to the dermatologist and they pass up on it. Melanoma's one of those cancers that's growing in diagnoses, and it's one that can
be incredibly dangerous because it spreads when it metastasizes to really weird areas of
the body like the eye, bone. Like, these are problems that you just want to avoid
with careful screening. Psychiatrist here. A 30-year-old man with
mild depressive symptoms was in and out of the
hospital fairly quickly. He as under pressure from his home life, living with four roommates who were making life a
bit difficult for him. No suicidal thoughts. He was cleared of all psychopathologies by me and two other doctors. A few months later he came back. Same symptoms, however this time he talked
about five roommates. It felt wrong, and I
digged into his story, tried to contact his roommates. He lived alone and was severely psychotic. I have no idea to this day how he hid it so well from everyone. When we scan for psychosis,
we look for inconsistencies between the patient's subjective
experience of thinking, being, and acting, and
the objective reality accepted by the general cultural norm. This patient managed to live
in a subjective psychotic world that just fit so well
with the objective reality that tricked several
psychiatrists, including myself. In this day and age, it's
very easy for that to happen. We want to be as understanding and open and non-judgemental as possible. However, if you're trying to establish whether a patient is basing
their current situation in reality, sometimes you
have to ask probing questions. But now, there's an art to this. You can ask questions by making
yourself seem very curious as opposed to inquisitive as
if, like, you're a detective. That little change in
tone can go a long way, especially with a patient who may be psychotic
or psychologically ill. (stammers) (ululates) (Annoying Orange ululates) An elderly gentleman was brought in by his concerned adult
children for chest pain. He wanted to believe his primary doctor that it was some gas or heartburn, but his son just had a gut
feeling and made him go to the ER with everyone so he could get checked out. Heart attack was imminent. Like, we weren't sure if
treatment would take effect in time to prevent it. Declared code blue, means
heart stop, all hands on deck. Place went from very quiet, empty ER to sheer chaos in minutes. There is no doubt in my mind that this gut feeling saved his life. Wow. Knowing your own body and being a good advocate for yourself, or having a family member
that knows you well and is a good advocate for you is crucial in getting better health outcomes. That's why those who don't
have an extended family or are not married generally
have worse health outcomes because they don't have someone
to advocate on their behalf. I got a moderate traumatic
brain injury in October, and the week after I got
home from the hospital I wasn't' acting like myself, was refusing to eat, and
just didn't make much sense. My mom called the doctor a few times. They said it was normal, but to take me in if anything changed. She took me in on Saturday, a week later, because I started slurring my speech and was unsteady on my feet. The injury caused my sodium
levels to drop from 140 to 119. That's quite dangerous. This in turn caused stroke-like
symptoms which were, in reality, a small series of seizures. Yeah, electrolyte imbalances are no joke, and sodium levels, potassium levels, calcium levels all need
to be kept in homeostasis by your body's organs in
order for you to stay alive. Any disorder that, whether it makes those
levels go up or down, can have life or death consequences. Can you imagine? Potassium can kill. Makes you think about eating bananas. Just kidding. You can eat bananas and
nothing bad will happen because your own body's organs will decide how much potassium to take in, how much to let out, so on, so forth. Went to my family doc with the worst headache of my entire life. She dismissed it, telling
me it was a tension headache and I should take a Tylenol
and lay in a dark room. First of all, when a patient says, "I have the worst headache of my life," you don't even think as
a family medicine doctor. You say, "Are you certain of this?" You clarify, quantify, ask some questions. You send them to the ER because the worst headache of my life, that specific explanation, what is also know as a
thunderclap headache, it's something that needs to be checked with a CAT scan right now because we're looking for bleeding. Over the course of the next month, I saw her a total of 13 times, each time with worsening symptoms. First it was dizziness, then vomiting, then eventually I could no
longer see out of my right eye. Every time she told me
it was a tension headache or a weird migraine,
gave me a prescription for pain killers, and sent me on my way. The final straw was when I
could no longer walk properly. I would try and take a step, but all I could manage
was this weird shuffle. She reluctantly agreed to
send me to a neurologist. The next day I showed up at his office and was there for less than a minute. He took one look in my eyes and immediately called an ambulance. Turns out I had hydrocephalus. My ventricles were five times the size they were supposed to be and my brain was literally
being squeezed out of my head. Go figure. Hydrocephalus is a really scary condition because that increases
pressure and the ventricles, which are the spaces within your brain, actually start swelling
from increased fluid and actually start pushing the brain and increasing pressure on
it which can cause your brain to herniate out of the brain stem. Oh my god. That's just an awful condition. Can result in death. I'm an emergency medicine
doc in the Midwest USA. The patient was transferred
from rural nowhere to our tertiary care facility, big hospital with every specialist. Call was of really bad quality, but the transferring physician described a 21-year-old male that
had rapid heart rate and breathing rate, low
blood pressure, low oxygen, confusion, and a severe
opacification on his chest x-ray on the right side, diagnosed pneumonia. He gave him a ton fluids,
started antibiotics, put him on a ventilator, but he wasn't getting better
and wanted to send him to us. Sure, send away. An hour later, the gentleman
arrives, looks young, fit, and not the type to just
drop dead from pneumonia. We roll him onto our stretcher and find a huge stab wound in his back. The x-ray finding was
his entire right chest was full of blood. We put a tube in it, gave him some blood, and he had to go for
surgery to fix the bleeding. Lesson, look at your patient. This is why one of the biggest lessons that I learned working at
a level one trauma center as a medical student is
the first thing you do in an emergency, in a trauma situation, inspect the entirety of the patient, especially when a patient is unconscious because, when they're
unconscious, they can't tell you that they have a stab wound in their back. But unless you check that, you won't know why a patient is in shock. Experience while doing residency in China. Kid came in via reference
from his village doctor. He had a few random episodes of seizures. Well guess what. Imaging at our hospital showed that there were a few multiple
larva cysts in his head. Yep, kid loved to go to the rivers and put frogs in his mouth. He wouldn't eat them, but
he would just lick them. Don't ask me why. Not gonna lie, I probably would not think about larva and frog licking as part of my history taking
here in New York City. Maybe there's more that I need to learn. You gotta check out my other
two Reddit episodes right here, or if you want me to
compare what it's like to be a real doctor versus
TV doctor, click here. And I'll see you in one of these videos. Which one's it gonna be? (hums) (hip hop music)
You should do more videos with your nephews!
Yes!!! Thank you for putting Bear in more of your videos!
This I feel is your best Reddit video yet! I hope you keep doing these, they're great :-D
Second opinions are great! I have had chronic kneepain for a few years now after a work accident. I went into the hospital again and they basically said: you're screwed, nothing we can do, maybe putting in a new/fake knee will help! 23, male here. Not something I want to deal with tbh. I went for a second opinion, got a new/completely different diagnosis that actually matched my symptoms *shocked pikachu face* Still being treated, but maaannnn... Did that second opinion help a lot. Still not fully painfree, but so much better then before!
@u/realdoctormike I have an emergency! But, this is the only way I know how to ask you about my problem. So my friend was outside turning the waterhose on, he felt something bite him but didn't see what it was, his hand is swelling and it bit him in between his pink and ring finger on his right hand. What do I do?