Doctors, What is the worst case of someone faking an illness you've witnessed? r/AskReddit

doctors have read it what is the worst case of someone faking an illness you have ever witnessed right before my shift was over i get an admit of a nine-year-old boy with new onset seizures he and dad get settled into his room and we start hooking up electrodes to his head for an egg i explain that we are also video recording so any suspected seizure activity will be seen along with data from the eag i then ask if they have had dinner yet as kitchen is closing in five minutes the boy asks for chicken nuggets with barbecue sauce fries applesauce and chocolate milk i call down to the kitchen to order his meal when the egg tech says she is finished and we are recording on cue he begins to have a seizure i stare dumbfounded as do the tekken nurse assistant the father yells he's having one now in a total panic not realizing there is no way this is a real seizure the closest comparison would be as if this boy was doing the dance move from the 80s called the worm but lying on his back while doing it my co-workers and i are trying to hold back laughter desperately not looking at each other and i continue to order chicken nuggets applesauce and chocolate milk from mid seizure this kid yells don't forget the bbq sauce that was it i left quickly and hid in the bathroom laughing my ass off had a patient who was faking an idiopathic bilateral lower extremity paresis think extreme leg weakness turns out he was trying to miss a court date for child spousal support his story and physical presentation was inconsistent without going into needless details the final straw was attempting to throw himself to the ground while testing ambulation with a walker that is why we use gate belts so i could catch him he complained because i foiled his devious plan to blame or fall on worsening symptoms this happened while i was an intern the truth is most of my patients are honest often confused sometimes scared in my career this is the only blatant attempt of faking i've encountered exaggerated symptoms are another matter entirely the only reason people think they have to exaggerate symptoms is because docs don't take it seriously the first time hell i lost 15 pounds in a month 120 to 105 and even with unfackable evidence they blew it off two months later i got something stuck in my esophagus my appetite was tea because my esophagus was [ __ ] this was about 10 years ago when i was a pediatrics resident i had a patient from a juvenile detention center admitted for sudden inability to walk or stand he started peeing brown and it was found he had rhabdomyolysis severe skeletal muscle breakdown that was threatening to shut down his kidneys he had no idea how this happened and claimed he woke up and suddenly couldn't use his legs the second night of his admission his mom and sister came to visit his mom left but his sister stayed the night in his room the next morning i go to his room on rounds to discover this dude boning his sister in his hospital bed keep in mind this is a children's hospital with butterflies on the walls and little kids being pulled in wagons by their parents down the hallways needless to say all hell broke loose and the truth came out this sister was actually his girlfriend who was implicated in his weapons and drug charges and who he was forbidden by the court to have contact with the cops came and dragged her away while she screamed and cussed us all out stunned parents of other patients looked on in horror the guy's rhabdo eventually cleared and he didn't need to go on dialysis he started to regain strength in his legs before discharge he finally admitted what triggered the muscle breakdown and his leg weakness he did one thousand leg squats all to get released from juvie and see his girlfriend i presented the case at morning report the next day and called it the saw shank redemption everyone in my hospital knows the story of the patient who was under the infectious diseases unit he had a horrible foot ulcer that would not heal despite every antibiotic the team threw at him he was on four different antibiotics simultaneously at this point including being hooked up to a drip with a very strong broad-spectrum antibiotic called piptas his wound swabs kept growing strange and unusual bacteria and he had been in hospital for months they couldn't quite figure it out until the nurse caught him in the bathroom while she was doing medication rounds he had taken down the dressings and was rubbing his own feces into the wound had a dog coming once with intermittent lameness of the left hinder him had been going on for months and seemed to resolve only to pop up over and over it wasn't a mild lameness either the dog would be barely toe touching at times absolutely nothing wrong on physical exam no neuro issues radiographs show jack squat i eventually sent the dog out for an orthopedic referral and they couldn't find anything specific they assumed the dog was somehow just repeatedly injuring itself at home when the owner was away the owner installed cctv at home to watch the dog and try and figure out what was causing the trauma only to discover that the dog would happily tear around the house on all four legs during the day only to start limping the second the owner came home as far as we could surmise the dog must have actually injured itself at one point and realized that limping got it more attention and treats between diagnostics and specialist referral the owner spent over you acute 2000 just to find out her dog was faking my westy once got bit on her hind leg by another dog and there was no blood or broken skin and when i pressed on the area she didn't react but the first day or so if she jumped or went up the stairs or did anything where the pressure was on her back legs she'd limp immediately afterwards it didn't seem like anything to go to the vet over so i bought a baby carrying sling so i could carry her around and keep her weight off of it for a day or two a week later she was still occasionally limping so i took her in to check her out she was completely fine but the doctor said to pay attention to what she was doing when she started limping because she was probably just bruised and certain activities could aggravate it so i did and you know what i noticed when she didn't want to walk anymore or she just needed attention she'd start limping because she knew i'd pick her up and put her in the sling so she could be close to me she was so pathetic and i fell for it every time not a doctor but when i broke my ankle i had to go to the er which was inconveniently very busy filled with sick kids as well as a bunch of other people i was already checked in and sitting in the overflow waiting room when this lady with two kids comes in she immediately looks at all the people waiting and huffs loudly before storming up to the counter she tells the nurse that her baby the kid looked to be like 10 has the flu of course the nurse tells her that it'll be a bit of a wait and directs her to sit in one of the free chairs the lady huffs again and tells the nurse that they need to see a doctor now the nurse once again tells her to wait and that a couple just came in from a bad car wreck she is not happy about this so she lets go of her children's hands and pushes them to the side before she squats down on the floor the nurse gets confused and stands up from her desk to watch the lady and i'm watching because i'm nosy and my ankle hurts i kid you not this lady straight up sits in the floor of the waiting room and slowly lowered herself onto her back of course the nurse asks what she's doing and the lady responds i'm seizing before closing her eyes and shaking her legs a little i almost cried while trying to suppress my laughter this lady is just laying on the floor wiggling like a weird worm pausing to tell the nurse that she's having a seizure she was escorted out by three security officers my father-in-law did this in the middle of pearl street in boulder colorado let me just say both my spout and i have a complicated relationship with our respective families my in-laws visit us from florida and it's a beautiful spring day perfect pearl street in boulder for some shopping walking in some dinner i'm looking at some jewelry when my husband looks up and says have you seen my parents my eyes get big so we lost the toddlers i find them at the weed store no big deal they've been pretty wound up all day maybe they can relax a little phil keeps trying to light up on the street that's a no-go we convinced him to at least go behind some dumpsters he takes maybe a single hit we're walking back down pearl street when he starts to have a seizure that basically looks as described above like the worm dance and is screaming i'm concrete i'm concrete his flight is the next day and all i kept thinking was you are getting on that plane you are not getting involuntary committed so you can stay longer with us spouse and i managed to carry him to a park bench begging strangers not to call 9-1-1 because he's fine he's just had a little too much i run grab the car and figure out a way to carry him into it my mill is acting like this is all a perfectly normal saturday now if we get a little too high the joke is on a scale from 1 to 10 are you concrete double quote had a diabetic patient who used to inject himself with insulin in the waiting room then we would have to run out there with a gurney and a few techs throw him on and race him back into the er to get some glucose into him he liked the attention and to skip the line a few times he would be looking right at the girl's working intake stare right in the eyes and inject himself i was not there the one day he took it too far but it really sucked there's a mean trick you can do when you suspect someone is not really having a seizure they'll be lying flat acting unconscious and won't respond to voice or when you shake them you raise their arm way above their head then drop it down so that it will land on their face someone who is not really having a seizure will often move their arm away as it lands to avoid being smacked while somebody who is truly unconscious just gets smacked in the face it's important to determine if someone is having a true seizure or not to minimize unnecessary radiation from ct scans etc i have focal seizures i am 100 aware that i'm having a seizure i just can't move or speak it's like locked in syndrome except not permanent a nurse at an er thought i was faking a seizure and dropped my arm on my face even though the doctor treating me believed me anyway my really chunky bracelet hit me in the eye and i got one heck of a shiner the doctor who walked in on that was pissed and he kicked the nurse out of the entire er i learned later that she lost her job apparently she had been accusing a lot of patients of faking their illnesses and injuries while the doctors had their backs turned and would confront patients very aggressively i went to a med express last year and the crazy nurse did my vitals and walk nut she was covered head to toe in crystal jewelry her arms were covered with bracelets and she had on at least a dozen necklaces she even had necklaces wrapped in her hair i asked her about her jewelry and she pulled two fistfuls of beads from her pockets and told me of all of their healing properties she got fired from the med express for her lunacy and i haven't seen her since not a doctor but patient i have been trying to get on disability for years for chronic pain from fibromyalgia and scoliosis had to crush discs and shoulder tendonitis etc etc i was denied it's been 10 years and i'm still denied every time anyways you have to go see a doctor the state pays to tell them you're not disabled basically this other lady in the waiting room was literally rolling around on the floor moaning and yelling out finally a nurse said she needs to go to the er if she can't even sit in the chair she got up and was silent after that it made me so mad at someone with so much pain i can't have a real life but it's not like it helped her but it showed me why they never believe me even with damn x-rays and mris if you are faking an illness you have a disease just not the one you are claiming to have i try to have empathy and there are some psychological issues that can manifest as or augment physical problems when you think about it no child has a dream that they want to grow up and linger to doctors it is a cry for help in a way keeping them safe and not immediately labeling them crazy takes tact skill and effort there are some so isolated that doctors are the only ones they interact with as others won't i have a few that besides caches i bet i am the only person they interact with i estimate as a surgeon 20 of what i do has some psychology psychiatry people need reassurance hope cheerleading honest etc if i am in a room and i feel they are sucking the life out of me i know they are looking for something unrelated to what we are talking about the last time i went to the er was because my body was buzzing and i couldn't unclench my hands or move my legs much when i say my body was buzzing i mean like that feeling you get when your foot is asleep but all over me every bit of me felt like that i sincerely thought i was dying as i was coming off of an alcohol and cocaine binge i have a lot of anxiety and ptsd and well that combination makes me think i don't have them comma anyway so i go to the er and tell them i can't move and i'm scared and all the witch t my body is doing and they basically treated me like i was full of [ __ ] mind you i barely was able to even speak because my jaw was clenched involuntarily so hard i sat in the er alone literally expecting my heart to stop for three hours before a doctor came and basically treated me like an idiot i mean yes i was doing a stupid thing but i have never in my life gone to the er unless i sincerely thought i was going to die people treat mental illness like it's something to be punished and not taken seriously not a doctor but work in an iq we had a pt that was faking seizures it wasn't why she was there but it was making things a lot more difficult when the shift started and the intensivist was rounding on her points she gets report from the nurse that the pt is having pseudo seizures i'm not a nurse but i'm told that pseudo seizures is usually just code for fake seizures the pt immediately starts thrashing around on the bed the dock rolls her eyes pokes her head in the door and says calmly you were right in there the pt responds i i says okay we'll keep an eye on that and moves on patient here it was my second time into a psych ward now the only way you get in is if you are one cry away from grabbing a gun or the police haul you in this lady was already there when i was checked in now i have no idea what was wrong with her because she never said it not even during group instead she would complain about the food the movies the activities she never talked to any of the trained therapists or anything i mean these people are great they will go out of their way to make sure you feel comfortable with them and they will stop what they are doing if you need help one night she threw a fit because she couldn't take her medicine unless she had sweet tea water was gross the kool-aid was too bitter and she refused to add sugar to her kool-aid they finally struck a deal with milk she was at least in her 70s they let her go as soon as they could because if she wouldn't let them help her then she didn't need to be there she complained the whole way out the door saying that they refused to help her she also tried to get me put in a mental hospital [Music] doctor of literature here had a student say she couldn't write essays because they didn't have paragraphs where she came from she was british a woman badly faked seizures she had apparently convinced someone in the past so it was in the emr at one point i questioned out loud whether she actually had seizures and she started shaking more violently as if on cue her seizures would stop as soon as the nurse stated that the eight of them was pushed but before she the chance to flush the line most of the drug would have been stuck in the iv tube at the time and not actually administered i tried to fake a seizure to get out of the drunk tank once can confirm it is not easy to convincingly fake a seizure idk what my game plan was because it's not like they would have just let me out and let me go home if they thought i was having a seizure my dad paid for his phd in psychology by joining the national guard he got in state tuition on the weekends when his unit would go to drill he went to the army hospital to do sick evils one weekend he met with a guy who reported suicidal ideation dad evaluated him found him to be very suicidal and sent him to the state mental hospital in houston a staff psychiatrist there evaluated him said he was faking and sent him back to the army with a recommendation for regular duties he came back in two weeks later to see my dad saying he was still constantly thinking about killing himself dad sent him to houston again with a strong recommendation that he be placed on suicide watch and given full treatment for suicidality again the guy there said he's faking don't send him here again it happened once more within a month this time dr houston recommended that he be medically discharged but noted that he was obviously faking just to have an excuse to quit the army he then sent a letter to the ceo ripping my dad a new one for helping a soldier lie and recommending that he not be allowed to continue his doctoral studies if he wasn't going to take mental health practice seriously the soldier blew his brains out his second day home my dad is still a licensed psychologist i did my residency in the military a colleague had responsibility of sick call some days he noticed on his days on call that more young soldiers lined up a sick call than when other doctors were on call he suspected they were testing him as the new guy he sent his medical assistants to sick call one morning to line up and act sick the assistant then heard about half the line talking with each other that they were fine but wanted the day off so would be telling the new doctor they had a real problem the assistant ducked out 15 minutes later my colleague showed up to the sick call line called out specific people ordered them to attention screamed at them threatened them with court martial type rhetoric then had these guys drop and stop doing push-ups real full metal jacket type [ __ ] i suffered from a terrible bout of depression one year and went to the emergency to get some help and the er doc told me he didn't believe i was mentally sick and taking it so he sent me home after a few suicide attempts later and seeing a psychiatrist i very much have a mental illness i was actively self-harming suicidal had some wounds went to the er and they told me i was faking it because my friend who was with me there made me laugh a couple times like just because i'm in distress doesn't mean i can't still find a distracting joke funny patient here when i was 9 year old i used to have some seizures of cold sweat and fast shaking for an hour then i would have diarrhea and vomit whatever i had eating till my stomach is empty it was really painful and my temperature and pulse rate and pressure were all normal i went to multiple doctors twice to the er at different hospitals and had many different tests and they all thought i was faking it i hate an ecg and i'm in ct scan and paid a steady load of money and they all thought i was faking it the seizures were getting more violent and everyone thought that i was faking it except my mother she called a neurologist that we know all the previous doctors recommended that i see a neurologist and i visited one and he thought i was faking it the second neurologist and that i visited the one that my mother knew tested my brain's electricity while sitting in a study-like position i did the test previously but while sitting normally it turned out that i had an increase in my electricity in that i had some pressure on asserting urine while sitting like this which caused the seizures he prescribed depo king chrono for two years and i got cured no more seizures no more pain i know this story isn't about faking illness but rather the other way around and i wanted to share it it's not always someone's faking it sometimes it's some hidden problems and i'm not denying that many people fake them if my mom didn't believe it then maybe i would have more complications and it would have been more violent someone came in for drugs with fake documents that basically had every sickness that could be treated with lean and he tried to sue us for letting him acquire the drugs my ten-year-old daughter fooled three eye doctors and got herself a pair of incredibly strong and expensive reading glasses only to break down a few days after saying she wanted glasses so bad goddamnit in fourth grade i was having trouble seeing the board and my mom made me an appointment with the eye doctor before we went i mentioned that a character from the babysitter's club faked having trouble seeing seeing the blackboard so she could get glasses my mom was instantly suspicious and asked if i was doing that i said no the eye doctor had to reassure her that no i wasn't faking in my mom's defense i was not an easy child my wife has legit pseudo-seizures post-glass complication from her time in afghanistan presentation is a seizure but only the tonic portion of a tonic clonic full lock with injuries if there was a fall or nails broke skin on palms i'm to the point that when she starts rolling i get her supine with head supported and time the ordeal 90 seconds is okay 120 seconds notable anything resembling status after we are technically a behavioral issue but these puppies are subconscious not like she chooses to play this game brain just decides to have a windows xp restart sequence and i get to behold its glory i used to be her medic so i'm comfortable with the protocol come at me if you think i'm full of it soccer players i'm a soccer player goalkeeper and i can not stand some of the funny ass tea i've seen when kids are trying to not play because they're tired one kid on my enemy team was crying and he said he twisted his ankle and couldn't play anymore the guy was goalie like me had a patient late teens who was in hospital for symptoms no one could figure out he started bleeding from his gut requiring endoscopy procedures no source found kept bleeding a passerby nurse witnessed him drawing blood out of his central ivy and drinking it his mother carried syringes in her purse was a conspirator the mother likely has a factitious disorder by proxy and the son has a factitious disorder developed from his mother's abuse he wouldn't necessarily see it as his mother abusing him the two of them could be considered as having folia do syndrome literally shared madness not a doctor or saw the faking of an illness but back in high school about sophomore year this guy i knew really made some far-out excuses not to run in p e my favorite one was over the weekend he fell out of a tree onto a chainsaw that was running he still managed to come to school walk fine with no cuts or bruises amazing so i'm not a doctor but i've witnessed some stuff i commented below about my ex being on dialysis and his willingness to die to get attention well he's learned from the best to say the least his mom is always in pain she's an addict and refuses to admit it while she does have some problems with her back she lies a lot to doctors seeking pain medicine one night she was just going nuts acting like it was the end of the world and she was gonna die if i didn't drive her to the er so i did now she wanted because of her back pain and we got her registered and they called us back the doctor refused to give her pain meds bc she's there all the time and her dr already had her on pain pills regularly i completely agree with the doctor when we went in originally she was a hunched over and itchy ouch in all over the place and couldn't walk without me practically carrying her much bigger than mias and immediately made them put her in a wheelchair but after the dr refused to appear she suddenly had a kind of strength this woman almost 60 years old and in so much excruciating pain shoves the exam table completely across the room while throwing a whole fit in one single shove she went to jail that day she's also a dumbest and somehow still doing this sht to this day i really feel like they just give her what she wants so she'll go away which is not okay she's very very manipulative school nurses welp i have a ref king list for you me but i literally have a diagnosed traumatic brain injury and you told me nothing was wrong double quote i once accused of faking a back shoulder injury by a doctor i had been in three back-to-back major car accidents and i lost range of motion in both arms if i rotated my arms i could lift them all the way up but to think about it and push through some pain i guess he saw me do that and decided i was fine later i went to a cookie naturopath doctor i was almost positive he was a quack but he took care of me gave me exercises and hooked me up with a massage therapist [Music] [Applause] [Music] you

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Id: uTvFl_hOnJQ

Length: 28min 4sec (1684 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 15 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

My dog actually did a fake on us after he injured himself and was wrapped up and given cheese and a heating pad. From then on he'd cry and limp every day. Vet couldn't find anything wrong with him. It wasn't until the dog forgot what paw he hurt that we knew he was doing a fake. Munchie pup didn't start a sickstagram or anything, but he did run up quite the vet bill. Anyways, he just had a spinal stroke and I believed it, but my husband wasn't sure if he was faking lameness again or not.

[u/tenebraenz]

Someone having a full seizure and popping their head up half way through to see who was watching

[u/isuckatusernames2020]

“Eeeegh” test (pronounced) killed me.

[u/suelu8082]

😂💀😂💀

[u/[deleted]]

Thank you for this

[u/Normal-Smell2222]

A+ video

[u/11dingos]

“The Sore Shank Redemption” 🤣 These are incredible

[u/copuser2]

I saw this. So fucking funny!

[u/coolcaterpillar77]

This is fucking hilarious. What an awesome range of stories